I didn’t bother asking how she knew. The Davenports are a legacy family here at St. John’s, and my grandmother is on the board of regents. She has regular phone calls with various members of faculty including the headmaster and lead administrator. I wouldn’t even put it past her to have someone posted here, watching me at all times. Their full-time job is to report my hairstyles and whether I had jam or butter on my toast that morning. Today she’s done a ponytail, and I’m sorry to report, but she switched it up and chose cream cheese today. For that, they’re likely paid over six figures, plus benefits. It makes me laugh to consider it. The absurdity of this life gets the better of me sometimes.

I look over to see Lavinia eyeing me curiously, but not in a nice way. It’s more like how she would inspect someone who’s escaped the looney bin. In her mind, I should be kept behind glass, observed from a safe distance.

Unfortunately, she’s not alone. I hear the whispers about me around St. John’s. I could set them straight. I’m not a witch, you idiots—or a ghost, for that matter. Just because my hair is dark and my eyes are an eerie pale green…just because I’m quiet and shy…just because I keep to myself…people fill in the blanks with the very worst. My mother would insist that I correct them. Set them straight and scratch your way out of this torment. Fight like hell, kid. She was fiery like that. She’d never allow anyone to walk all over her. It’s a constant war, remembering and imagining what she would want me to do while balancing the very real advice from my grandmother, the woman I’m wholly dependent on now.

It’s important to keep your calm. Decorum above all else. Girls should be polite and modest, timid and quiet. Speak only when spoken to.

In other words, smack yourself in the head with a rock and pretend you’re living back in the 1800s. Women’s suffrage movement? Yeah, it never happened.

I stare back at Lavinia, wishing I were bold enough to call her out.

What?

What is so interesting over here?

Blythe sighs when she notices our little standoff. “Lavinia, don’t bother. You’ll only encourage her.”

Encourage me to what? Stand up for myself? Not likely.

I might think rebellious thoughts from time to time, might dabble in the idea of telling them all to go fuck themselves. I might sneak off into the woods to get a glimpse of Emmett Mercier, but at the end of the day, I’m still Elaine Davenport, all-around good girl, rule follower, straight-A student. Oh yeah, and depressed.

I’m not actually sure if I have clinical depression. That would require a diagnosis, and I won’t be getting one of those anytime soon because I won’t be visiting a counselor anytime soon. Sure, I lost both my parents earlier this year in tragic ways and sure, it’s been a bleak landscape inside my head lately, but my grandmother thinks I need to keep a stiff upper lip. Whatever that means.