Page 4 of Saint Céline
I wandered over to the kitchen sink and looked out across the estate toward the main house. That was when I saw her for the first time.
A girl stood in one of the second-floor windows. She was watching us. She looked about my age. Dark blond hair fell around her face. Her eyes were wide, like a deer’s, as she stared through the rain-streaked glass.
We looked at each other briefly. She didn’t look mean or stuck-up. Just curious. Like she had found something unexpected in her own backyard.
Then someone moved behind her in the room, and she stepped back, disappearing from the window.
I kept staring at the space long after she was gone. Something tightened in my chest. Not fear. Not the sharp kind I was used to. Just interest. Like she had noticed me the same way I noticed her.
“Selena,” my mother called softly from upstairs. “Come help me unpack our things.”
I stayed by the sink another few seconds, looking at the glowing windows of the big house through the rain. I had never seen a place like this before. Not in real life. And right then, the tight knot of fear I carried every day started to loosen even more.
I wanted this life. I wanted it so badly it scared me.
3
Céline
By Monday morning, the university had already turned Katherine into a beautiful memory. They placed her photograph under the main archway of Montgomery Hall, inside a silver frame, ringed it with white roses and those flickering electric candles that never burned down. Student affairs set up a table right beside it so people could leave notes in a wicker basket. When I walked up the steps, the basket was already half full of folded cards from students who had barely said two words to her while she was alive.
I stood there with my coat still buttoned tight to my throat and let my eyes drift over the handwriting. The loops and careful slants all blurred together until the messages became nothing more than black ink on white paper.
Rest in peace, Katherine. You were so brilliant. Bellamont won’t be the same without you.
Everyone knew exactly how to grieve a dead girl once she was gone. It was the living version of her they had never figured out what to do with.
Around me, the students moved more quietly than usual. Voices dropped when they passed the photograph. Some of them glanced my way and then looked somewhere else fast, as if my grief might be catching. Others offered those soft, wounded smiles people give when they want to feel kind but not too involved. I gave them back exactly what they needed. A small nod here, a brave little smile there, eyes lowered at the perfect moment so they could walk away feeling like they had done something good.
By ten o’clock, I had been hugged six times by girls who had never once invited Katherine to sit with them at lunch. By eleven, three different professors had pulled me aside to tell me to take all the time I needed. By noon, someone had left a cup of tea outside my dorm room door with a note that read:We love you, Céline.
Not Selena.Céline.I held the note between my fingers longer than I should have, the paper growing warm from my skin.
I was still standing in the doorway with the untouched tea cooling in my hand when Sophia Kwon came out of the shared living room. She moved with that quiet elegance she always had, dark hair twisted into a low knot at the nape of her neck, cashmere sweater draped just so over her shoulders. Even in our private dorm suite, she looked like she belonged in a drawing room somewhere, pouring tea for important guests.
“You don’t have to go to class today, Céline,” Sophia said gently, her voice carrying that soft aristocratic lilt she had never quite lost, no matter how many years she had spent in America. She had grown up between London and South Korea, her family essentially royalty, and it showed in every careful word. “We can all stay in if you want. I already told my professor I mightbe absent, and Anya hasn’t opened her textbook in two days anyway.”
Anya sat at the long oak desk by the tall windows, one pale eye fixed on the same page of her book for the last twenty minutes. Her South Indian features stayed perfectly still, those striking light eyes giving nothing away. She was only here for the degree her family expected her to collect before she went back to running the company that would one day be hers. University itself bored her, and she never pretended otherwise.
“I know I don’t have to go,” I said, stepping inside and closing the door behind me. The suite smelled faintly of Sophia’s vanilla perfume and the fresh lilies Anya’s mother had sent last week. Our shared living room stretched wide and bright, with deep velvet sofas and a fireplace that actually worked, each of us with our own bedroom branching off like private little worlds. I had changed into a soft Chanel skirt and matching blouse before coming downstairs, the fabric smooth and expensive against my skin, the kind of outfit that made me look put-together even when I felt scraped hollow inside.
Sophia watched me set the tea down on the side table. “Then don’t go. You’ve been running on empty since the funeral, and none of us expect you to keep pretending everything is fine. We’re right here if you need to fall apart for a little while.”
I crossed to my own room just long enough to drop my bag on the bed, then came back out and opened my laptop on the coffee table. “I need to do one thing first.”
Sophia’s gaze sharpened with that mother-hen concern she could never hide. She came over and perched on the arm of the sofa, close enough that her knee brushed mine. “What thing, darling? You know you can tell us anything.”
I stared at the screen. The email had been sitting in my drafts since three in the morning, written while the rain beat againstthe windows and both of them slept in their separate rooms. I read the words again.
Dear Professor Moreau,
Due to personal circumstances, I would like to formally withdraw my application for your research group this semester.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Céline Martin
