Page 80 of Saint Céline
Maybe that was why I kept letting her.
Because at Bellamont, everyone thought Céline was effortless.
Only Katherine knew how much of me she had to hold up from behind.
19
Céline
On Wednesday that week, Christina Bell hated me openly enough that even Julian noticed, which said a lot because Julian could contaminate two tissue samples in one afternoon and still look surprised when someone pointed out his hands.
She never said anything outright. Bellamont girls rarely did. Open cruelty was too messy, too public, too easy to remember. Christina preferred the cleaner kind, the half-second pause before she answered me, the polite smile that never quite reached her eyes, the way she looked over my shoulder whenever Professor Moreau spoke to me as if she were waiting for someone more deserving to appear behind me.
I had survived worse rooms than this one. Still, it exhausted me in a way I could not quite hide from myself.
The lab smelled sharply of ethanol and warm machinery, all sterile counters and glass cabinets and stainless steel surfaces that reflected everyone back in pale, distorted fragments. Dr.Patel moved between benches with her usual calm, correcting Julian’s grip on a pipette while Wendy pretended not to watch the tension forming between Christina and me. Elias sat at the computer with headphones around his neck, staring at another spreadsheet.
Professor Moreau was not there yet.
His office stood behind the glass wall with the blinds half-open, his black mug already on the desk, a stack of papers placed neatly beside it. The chair was empty. The room looked untouched. I knew the difference between his office when he had just left it and his office when he had not arrived yet. I hate that some weak, treacherous part of me was waiting.
Christina reached past me for a tray without asking me to move. I stepped back just enough to make it obvious that I had noticed. She smiled. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” I reply sharply.
Wendy’s head lifted immediately. Julian froze with a pipette tip still in his hand. Christina’s smile thinned. “Excuse me?”
I looked at her properly then, taking in the flawless ponytail, the red sweater beneath her lab coat, the angry little tremble she kept locked behind perfect manners. She was furious because Professor Moreau had chosen me too visibly. She was furious because everyone could see it. And underneath that, maybe worst of all, she was furious because some part of her believed I had not earned it.
It was what made my own anger rise too quickly. Because she was right. Not entirely. Not in the way she thought. But close enough that her resentment touched the wrong nerve.
“I said you’re not sorry,” I replied, keeping my voice even. “You’ve spent three days trying to make sure I understand how unwelcome I am here. It’s very elegant, Christina, but it’s getting boring.”
Wendy whispered my name like she wanted to stop a car crash already in motion.
Christina’s face flushed. “Maybe if some of us had private help from Professor Moreau, we’d be less boring.”
The lab went so still that even Dr. Patel looked up.
For one second, I felt every eye on me. Wendy’s alarm. Julian’s curiosity. Elias’s sudden interest despite the headphones. Christina’s sharp satisfaction that she had finally said something to wound me.
I could have let it pass. I should have let it pass.
Instead, I smiled. “If you need help,” I said softly, “you can always ask him. I’m sure he’s very generous with students who interest him. I can’t help it if he finds you incompetent.”
Christina’s mouth parted slightly.
The door opened before she could answer.
Professor Moreau stepped inside with rain darkening the shoulders of his coat, and his glasses pushed low on the bridge of his nose. His gaze moved from Christina’s flushed face to Wendy’s wide eyes, then finally to me.
My body quickly reacted to his attention. The sick little awareness of being seen in the exact moment I would rather disappear. Heat pooled low in my belly before I could stop it, a traitorous warmth that had nothing to do with the lab’s temperature and everything to do with the memory of his mouth on me in the dark.
He removed his coat slowly and hung it on the back of his office door. “Did I interrupt something?”
No one answered.
Dr. Patel returned to her notes as if refusing to participate in undergraduate warfare on principle.
