“All right then.” Marcy offers up a tight, disingenuous smile. “I’ll leave you to it. Welcome to Loyola, Stella.”
As soon as she shuts the door behind her, my father turns back to me, and suddenly, he looks like he’s aged twenty years.
“Is everything okay, Dad?” I fidget with the spinner ring on my finger as I wait for his assurances.
“It’s fine.” He flippantly waves away any other possibility. “Just an accounting snafu. I’ll get it taken care of, Stella. You don’t need to worry about it. The only thing you need to worry about is your education.”
“Okay.” I offer him a weak smile.
He sits down on the bed beside me, and in a rare moment of vulnerability, I recognize the concern on his face. He seems nervous, but I don’t know why. “I need you to make the most of this opportunity, honey. This is important. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Loyola is going to be a challenge. I should have sent you to better schools from the beginning.”
“My school was great.” I shrug. “They offered advanced classes too. You know I never cared about the money, Dad. I was happy even when you were a photographer.”
He cringes at the reminder of his past, but those are the years I like to remember most. At least then, we weren’t just three strangers living together in a house. My mother wasn’t completely consumed by her social status, and their love hadn’t yet turned to hate. We didn’t have a house in the suburbs or the best of everything money could buy, but I still had a father.
“I need you to do well here,” Dad reiterates. “This is your last year of high school. From here, you can go straight to college. I think the plan your mother has laid out for you is a solid one. It’s important you follow it and don’t get into any trouble.” Disappointment lingers in his eyes, but I don’t know if it’s for me or himself. “I’m putting everything on the line to send you here, Stella. This is all I can do for you now.”
My breath catches as his eyes become glassy, and he turns away from me. My father isn’t an emotional man. At least, he hasn’t been since he became a corporate robot five years ago. If he’s admitting that things aren’t as good as they seem, then I know they must be pretty bad.
“You don’t have to send me here,” I tell him. “It’s so expensive, and if we can’t afford it—”
“No.” He shakes his head, adamant. “This is the last good thing I can do for you before you’re out on your own. I want you to go to Cornell. That degree means something in this world we live in. It will open doors for you that our name won’t. But they aren’t going to give it away. You have to put your head in the books and work hard. Can you do that for me?”
The knot in my throat makes it too difficult to speak, so I nod instead. And I really do mean it. I know I’ve disappointed my father lately with my stupid antics, and I want him to be proud of me. I want to be one less thing for him to worry about. If that means getting a degree in communications, then so be it. Even if it feels like a prison sentence, I make myself promise what he needs to hear.
“I’ll do it.” I offer him a watery smile. “I’ll make you proud, Dad.”
CHAPTER TWO
SEBASTIAN
ENTERINGthe grounds of Loyola Academy, freshly sharpened pencils aren’t the only scent lingering in the air. The stench of wealth and pretension invades every porous surface around me. A new wave of faces blurs together among the old familiar. Trust fund brats and their parents eye the competition in the courtyard while I narrowly avoid them all. The ever-present noose around my neck strangles the air from my lungs as I walk the sacred grounds of the asylum doubling as an educational institution. I hate this place. And yet, I find myself coming back here for the fourth year in a row.
I did not choose to be a teacher because I love the job. Prior to taking the position here, I’d spent the entirety of my life being groomed to work in a corporate skyscraper. The title and matching desk plate were mere formalities at the end of my tunnel to success. But when the time came for me to take the rightful place I’d earned through literal blood, sweat, and tears, I turned my back on all of it and came back to the establishment that represents everything I despise.
The New England boarding school tucked away just a short distance from Yale has a campus that rivals its Ivy League neighbor in size and prestige. And why shouldn’t it? With tuition fees totaling over sixty thousand a year, this isn’t a boarding school at all. It’s a machine designed to churn out America’s best and brightest. The future one percent. I know because, once upon a time, I was one of them.
Ten years ago, I walked these hallowed halls as a seventeen-year-old with his entire future laid out before him. My goals were lined up in militant fashion with little chance of deviation. AP classes, respectable extracurriculars, advanced standing at Harvard. I was on the fast track and set to graduate with a master’s in four years. Like a puppet, I soldiered on through the plan. I did and accomplished everything I’d been told to. But I’d learned the hard way that life was a fickle bitch, and the end goal crashed and burned the night I graduated. I traded a corporate office on the sixtieth floor for a teacher’s desk. And after three long years, I’m eager to finish what I started.
“Sebastian.” Misty Hargrave’s eyes light up as I enter the mail room. “It’s so good to see you back. How was your summer?”
“Not much to report.” I scan her from head to toe, noting that she’s come back with a tan. Misty is the resident English teacher at Loyola, and the reason hordes of teenage boys suddenly develop an interest in the subject. She’s classically beautiful, graceful, and eloquent. All the signature traits of fine breeding. Yet when she bats her eyelashes in my direction, my dick remains as limp as a noodle in her presence.
“Come now.” She laughs softly. “You must have done something interesting.”
I know how this game works. She wants to ask me about my summer, so that I’ll ask about hers out of politeness. It’s evident she wants to tell me about her days on some cliché of a tropical island. Misty still hasn’t quite figured out that I’m just an asshole who doesn’t care what she has to say.
“I stayed at my cottage in Nantucket,” I inform her as I reach into the wooden box designated with my name.
“That sounds lovely.” She sighs dreamily. “Were you there with family?”
“No.” I tuck the mail into my briefcase and duck through the door before she can ask any more probing questions. I imagine her standing there, mouth agape as I make my way across campus to my living quarters.
Teachers at Loyola Academy live in a separate village on the north side of the campus. Far enough from the dorms to have a reprieve from the endless chatter of students, but close enough that they could still knock on your door if they really want to. Since our job is to act as surrogate parents throughout the school year, we are encouraged to develop bonds with our students. It isn’t uncommon to see them traipsing across the quad in the middle of the night to knock on the math teacher’s door when they have a fight with their boyfriend or a pressing need to discuss some other teenage drama. However, in the three years I’ve resided here, only one visitor has bothered to darken my doorstep. After I’d numbly accepted Misty’s welcome basket of baked goods, she hasn’t bothered to come back, and neither has anyone else.
The house I chose when I moved in happens to be the one that affords the most privacy on campus. Tucked away behind a thicket of New England trees, there is little chance of others accidentally stumbling upon it. And given that most of my students refer to me as some form of Satan, it’s unlikely they would ever bother to seek it out.
I dust off the doorknob and turn the key, hesitating in the entryway as I step inside. There’s a faint note of my cologne along with the musty smell of a house that’s been locked up all summer. Other than that, everything else remains the same.