Page 147 of Saint Céline

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“I do.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You have no idea what I mean anymore.”

“I know you.”

“You know what you needed me to be.”

Her face crumpled for half a second before she caught it.

And because I was cruel now, because she had made me cruel or because I had always been capable of it and only needed the right wound, I said, “I hope they expel you. I hope Thad finds out. I hope your mother knows exactly what you became inside that house.”

Céline’s eyes went flat.

“My mother has nothing to do with this.”

“She has everything to do with this. She raised you.”

“Katherine.Stop.”

“She cleaned our floors while you learned to pretend you belonged on them.”

“Stop.”

“And now look at you. Wearing my clothes, submitting my work, sleeping with the boy I wanted, standing here acting likeyou are the injured party because poor Selena Martin never had enough.”

She moved to shove me, and my heel slipped while I tried to dodge.

At first, I thought I would catch myself. That is the strange thing. Catastrophe begins with denial. A small, stupid certainty that the body will fix what the mind has not yet understood.

My shoe slid on the rain-slick stone. My hip struck the low ledge behind me. The world tilted violently, sky and terrace and Céline’s white face spinning in one impossible movement.

Then I was over. For one suspended second, there was no falling.

Only air.

Only my hand scraping against wet stone.

Only Céline screaming my name.

But she caught me.

Her hand closed around my wrist so tightly that pain shot up my arm.

The phone fell from my other hand and clattered somewhere above us. My body slammed against the outside of the ledge, shoulder striking stone, legs hanging over nothing. The drop below opened black and wet and endless, the courtyard stones far beneath us shining under rain.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Céline,” I gasped.

She was on her stomach over the ledge, both hands around my wrist now, face twisted with panic.

“I’ve got you,” she said.

Her voice was frantic.

For one second, hope arrived so violently it hurt.

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