Page 95 of Saint Céline
Vincent:Good girl.
I laughed once in the hallway, quietly enough that no one could hear it. Then I pressed my hand over my mouth because the laughter almost turned to tears. I felt insane.
When I reached the lobby, the doorman smiled at me as if I still belonged here.
“Have a good night, Miss Martin.”
I smiled back automatically. “You too.”
Outside, the rain had started again. The endless rain in this stupid town never bothered me before, but now I find it depressing. My cage was flooding, and there was no way out.
I walked into it without opening my umbrella, letting the rain blend with my tears.
21
Selena (Past)
Céline Martin had become easier to believe than Selena ever was by graduation. She had better clothes, better posture, better manners, and a better answer for almost every question. She knew how to accept compliments without looking hungry for them. She knew how to laugh softly when boys tried too hard. She knew how to look surprised when people wanted her somewhere, even when she had spent years learning exactly how to become the sort of girl people invited.
Selena still existed, of course. She was there in the staff cottage, barefoot in the kitchen, while my mother carefully ironed my expensive silk graduation dress. She was there in the way I checked price tags before remembering I no longer had to, because almost everything in my wardrobe had once belonged to Katherine. She was there in the relief I felt every time a sweater had a brand label visible enough to prove it was real.
Katherine had told me many times that actual rich people did not wear obvious logos. “Visible labels are for people who want strangers to know they spent money,” she said, lying across my bed while I tried on a Gucci cardigan she had decided she hated. “It’s embarrassing.”
I looked at myself in the mirror and adjusted the sleeve so the small embroidered designer mark showed at my wrist. “Maybe I want strangers to know.”
“Why?” She frowned.
Because otherwise they might forget. Because without proof, someone might look too closely and see the girl underneath. Because old money could afford invisibility, but girls like me needed receipts.
I did not say any of that.
I only shrugged and told her the cardigan looked plain without it.
My closet was almost entirely Katherine’s castoffs. Dresses she had worn twice and abandoned because the neckline annoyed her. Blouses she said made her look too fat. Coats that still smelled faintly like her perfume when I first brought them back to the cottage. Shoes that pinched her feet but fit mine perfectly.
My mother knew. She never said the clothes were not mine, but sometimes when she folded them after laundry, her hands slowed over the fabric. I could feel the silence in those moments, the careful grief of a mother watching her daughter become beautiful inside someone else’s discarded life.
The morning of graduation, she zipped me into a pale green dress Katherine had given me the week before. The fabric skimmed my waist and fell cleanly around my legs. It was simple and elegant. I had paired it with a thin gold belt that carried a small logo on the buckle, just visible enough to calm something anxious inside me. My mother noticed it immediately. She saidnothing at first. She only smoothed the skirt with both hands, then stepped back and looked at me.
“You look beautiful,” she said.
I smiled at her through the mirror. “You always say that.”
“Because it is always true.”
Her voice was warm, but her eyes were wet. I turned around before the look could settle too deeply inside me. “Don’t cry. You’ll make me cry, and then Katherine will accuse me of ruining the aesthetic.”
My mother laughed softly and reached up to fix one strand of my hair. “She is proud of you too, you know.”
“Katherine?”
“No.” Her fingers stilled briefly near my temple. “Me.”
Something in my chest tightened. “I know.”
She looked like she wanted to say more. Maybe that she was proud of the real Selena and not this faux version she now sees. Maybe that she missed the girl who used to wear thrift-store jeans and draw in the margins of grocery receipts. Maybe that she understood why I had needed to become someone else but still wished the world had not made that necessary. Instead, she kissed my forehead.
“Come. We should not be late.”
