Page 40 of Saint Céline
“Oh my God. You can’t be Selena there!”
I stared at her. “What’s wrong with Selena?”
“Nothing.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “But Céline sounds expensive.”
I should have known then. That line should have frightened me. Instead, a slow warmth spread through my chest. Expensive. Elegant. Chosen. Not Selena Martin from Portland with thrift-store jeans and a drunk father and a mother whoironed rich people’s sheets for a living. Someone else. Someone easier to love.
“Céline,” Katherine repeated softly, testing it. “Céline Martin.”
“That sounds so fake.”
“Exactly.”
I laughed despite myself, and Katherine smiled immediately, pleased she had won me closer to the idea. She grabbed her notebook and began writing things down with alarming seriousness.
“Okay. We say you lived in Paris until recently because your mother travelled for work. No, wait, the South of France sounds richer. Your accent doesn’t matter because Americans think all French accents sound the same anyway.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“You’ll need posture adjustment too.”
“My posture is normal.”
“You sit like someone prepared to run.”
The words hit harder than she intended.
Katherine noticed immediately, and her expression softened. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” I forced a shrug. “You’re probably right.”
Silence slipped briefly into the room. Then Katherine said more gently,
“Bellamont likes confidence. That’s all.”
“You say that like confidence is easy.”
“It is for you.”
“No, Katherine.” I looked at her directly.
“You just think it is because you don’t notice when I’m scared.”
That quieted her. “I notice,” she said quietly, the sincerity in her voice making something inside me ache unexpectedly.
* * *
Three days later, I walked into the main house after school and heard Katherine’s voice carrying down the hallway from the sitting room, sharp and determined in the way it got when she had decided something mattered. I stopped just outside the door.
“Mom, please,” Katherine was saying. “She’s smarter than half the girls in my class, and she hates her school. You know what it’s like there for me. I sit alone at lunch every single day. The other girls only talk to me when they need help with homework. Céline would actually be my friend.”
Mrs. Montgomery’s voice stayed calm and measured, the way it always did when she was weighing something carefully.
“Katherine, sweetheart, it’s not that simple. Tuition at Bellamont is substantial, and we already support the scholarship fund—”
“But this is different,” Katherine interrupted, her voice rising with that fierce stubbornness she rarely showed anyone but her parents. “She’s not a stranger. She lives here. She already knows how everything works. And she’s good with people. She makes me less… weird. You said yourself last year that I needed real friends, not just study partners. This is the same thing, except I’m asking for one specific person instead of waiting for the universe to send someone.”
There was a long pause. I pressed my back against the wall, heart beating too hard.
