Page 97 of Saint Céline
“She’ll learn,” he said.
Katherine looked at me with mild panic.
“I hit the mailbox last month.”
“You grazed it,” Mrs. Montgomery corrected gently.
“The mailbox is still crooked.”
“The mailbox was in the wrong place; it’s not your fault, sweetheart.”
I stood beside them in the foyer, smiling because everyone else was smiling, but inside me, something had gone very dim.
A Porsche. For graduation. A super expensive car because their daughter had finished high school. Because this was what happened to girls like Katherine when they completed things everyone had always expected them to complete.
She walked outside with the rest of us, looking both pleased and deeply uncertain. The driver handed Mr. Montgomery the keys, and Mr. Montgomery handed them to Katherine. She held them for approximately ten seconds before turning to me.
“Here,” she said.
“What?” I blinked.
She dropped the keys into my hand without ceremony.
“You drive better than I do.”
The metal was warm from her palm. Heavy. I stared down at the Porsche emblem on the key fob.
“Katherine…”
“What? You can use it if you want. I probably won’t.”
Mrs. Montgomery laughed softly. “Sweetheart, maybe learn before giving it away.”
“I’m not giving it away,” Katherine said, already distracted as Miss Astoria wandered near the doorway and meowed indignantly at being excluded. “I’m just saying Céline can drive it when she wants.”
She said it so casually that no one even paused. Not Mr. or Mrs. Montgomery. Not the driver. Not Katherine. The key pressed into my palm hard enough to hurt. A gift that large meant almost nothing to Katherine. She could hand it to me because there would be other cars, chauffeurs, parents to arrange insurance, and money to fix whatever broke. She could be careless when she wanted. If she crashed it, there would be repairs. If she hated it, there would be another gift. If she forgot it existed, someone would maintain it anyway.
I thought of my mother comparing grocery prices in the kitchen. I thought of the visible logo on my belt. I thought of thewardrobe full of Katherine’s unwanted dresses, and how grateful I had been for every single one.
“Are you okay?” Katherine asked.
I looked up too quickly. She was watching me with genuine confusion.
“Yes,” I said, closing my fingers around the key. “It’s beautiful.”
“Then you drive it first.”
Mr. Montgomery chuckled. “Absolutely not until the insurance is finalized.”
Katherine rolled her eyes. Everyone laughed.
I laughed too, because that was what Céline did when the room required it.
* * *
That night, Camila Rodriguez from the graduating class hosted the graduation party. Technically, her parents hosted it. In reality, they had paid for catering, removed anything fragile from the main rooms, and disappeared upstairs with enough trust or indifference to let thirty newly graduated Bellamont students celebrate becoming legal adults with expensive alcohol and terrible judgment.
Katherine still walked beside me. Not behind me anymore, close enough that people understood we arrived together and far enough that they still greeted me first.
