Chapter Text
Eula opens the door to a boundless sea. Silence swallows her. Light traces the floor underneath in faint outlines but every step she makes towards the edge is certain. Is this what it means to surrender? If God doesn’t exist, then why is there peace in this emptiness instead of fear?
She lays her arms down on the parapet and looks up. She looks up and feels nothing. There is nothing inside her. Yearning, words, gnawing. She is nothing.
“Eula?”
“Are you stalking me?”
Jean is there when Eula turns around, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl. She startles and stammers, “Sorry, I should leave…”
“Why?”
“I’m here for the same reason you are.”
Eula raises a brow at her. “What reason would that be?”
“To be alone.”
Eula says nothing at first. She takes in the silk pajamas Jean’s wearing underneath the blanket, the high moonlight in her hair, the way she stands with her back straight, always fully composed. With a scoff, she tells her, “You can stay if you want.”
To her surprise, Jean lays out the blanket on the floor and lies down on it, hair coming loose to fan out beneath her head in golden waves. Like rays of the sun. Like the light of God streaming out from Jesus’ head. Eula feels that she is a stranger.
“It’s so nice here,” Jean says quietly. “I didn’t think you could see a lot of stars from a place like this.”
“They only come out this late,” Eula explains. She turns her head back to face the blackness. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get caught?”
“I’ll tell them I was only looking for you since you weren’t in your room after lights out.”
“Funny, Jean Gunnhildr.”
Jean laughs, breathless. “They like me more, so I’ll take the blame,” she says, a little too simply for Eula’s liking. “Lie down with me; I’m sure it’s more comfortable.”
Words flood into Eula’s brain again. They tell her to stop, to stay frozen by the parapet, to keep her neck craned back to look at the sky. Against all that, she moves.
***
Eula is dropped off alone and unceremoniously, in a hired black car where the driver doesn’t say a word to her in the three hours it takes to go from the city center to the school. It’s also raining when she arrives, so she hurriedly puts on a trench coat over her uniform before stepping out of the car. She takes her luggage with her, the wheels sloshing water on the backs of her bare legs.
Someone comes out with an umbrella, walking briskly to Eula to give her reprieve from the rain. Eula lets out a small breath.
“Hi,” the girl says. “I’m Jean Gunnhildr, the Head Girl.”
“Eula Lawrence. Nice to meet you.”
“Can I help you with that?” Jean asks, referring to the luggage in Eula’s hand.
“I can handle it.”
With that, Jean drops her hand. She changes the topic as she leads Eula inside: “The headmistress told me to send her regards. She said your mom was an alumna.”
“It’s the only reason I could get in here, right?” Eula asks. Jean stays determinedly quiet as they transition to marble floors. “Never mind. I don’t think you know the answer to that.”
“Sorry,” Jean tells her with a sheepish smile. She puts down the umbrella and closes it into a bin by the entrance. “I’m just your tour guide today.”
Eula rolls her eyes, feigning disappointment. “Guide me, then.”
They walk aimlessly around the main floor while Jean shows her trophies encased in dark wooden shelves, the door that leads into the courtyard. A fountain sits in the middle, shut off because of the rain. Jean points out the way in which the courtyard and this building, which housed the administrative offices and library, connected everything else like the center of a web. She brings Eula down the side of the courtyard to the cafeteria then to a corridor that leads to the girls’ classrooms. The girls’ dormitories are at the far end—one had to cross the classrooms to reach it. Intent is made clear and chastity is ensured.
“The showers are communal,” Jean says when they arrive at the dormitory building, her finger pointing at the hallway to the left of the staircase. “No one can take a shower past ten pm.”
“Really? That sounds so severe,” Eula comments. “Why?”
“It’s lights out,” Jean answers then. “No one can make a noise or leave their room after ten.”
“What’s the punishment for breaking lights out?”
“Suspension. You get assigned a prefect to monitor you for a week,” Jean answers. “I don’t recommend it.”
“Why? Did you think I was gonna sneak out?” Eula asks with a sly smile. “My position here is very precarious, just so you know.”
Jean regards her with a confused look. “Why?”
“Let’s just say I’m on disciplinary probation,” Eula answers. “You have to keep me straight.”
“You can do that yourself,” Jean sniffs. “I’ll send you a copy of our handbook.”
“You’re very strict,” Eula notes. “Is that because you’re Head Girl? Or is that a personal affect?”
Jean colours at the comment, clearing her throat before saying, “It’s just the simplest way to be.”
***
Light floods into the storage closet, making Eula squint. Jean lowers herself to Eula, her long skirt pooling on the floor in a sea of blue plaid, and she quickly asks, “Are you okay?”
“Do you normally wander around the basement?”
“A student reported shouting. I had to go take a look.”
“I wasn’t shouting,” Eula says. “Must be those bitches who left me here.”
At that, Jean frowns and her brows knit together. “Who did this?”
“Forgot already, but my dad fucked over their dad,” Eula replies blithely, “so, of course, that makes it my fault.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Eula leans her head back into the shelf, not caring about the aged chemicals sticking to her hair. Her knees are hiked up to reveal spandex shorts underneath her skirt. “Does it matter what you think?” she asks.
Jean sighs and sits down fully across from Eula. “Don’t you want to get out of here?”
“Just leave the door unlocked so I can leave when I want.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. A teacher will come here any moment now and check.”
At that, Eula rolls her eyes and asks, “Are you gonna stay here with me until they find us?”
“Well, let’s not wait until it gets to that point,” Jean declares. She stands up, brushing dirt off her skirt as it settles past her knees. She holds a hand out towards Eula. “Come on.”
The hand is smooth and pale and slim and has a thin gold band hanging off of its wrist, glimmering in the now flickering light of a previously undisturbed detritus. Eula rests her palms on the floor and stands herself up, not wanting to sully Jean’s pristine look with dust from ages ago.
First thing Eula does when they reach the landing of the ground floor is find a bathroom to wash her hands in. Jean is waiting when she comes out, arms crossed over her chest, ponytail high on her head with a trailing of black ribbon. “What do you mean your dad…?” she asks.
“You haven’t heard about the Lawrence Ponzi scheme?” Eula asks back with surprise.
Jean splutters. “I have, but I didn’t connect the dots.”
Eula laughs, feeling cold through to her fingertips. “You’re too kind. It’s gonna hurt you.” And she laughs again when Jean flushes red. “Don’t worry about me.”
Jean gives Eula that look again with the furrowed brows. “I’m sure other people here have families who gave money to your dad,” she begins.
“I’ll get used to it,” Eula says with a shrug. “What can they do, banish me to hell?”
“Hell on earth.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
“I just hear things.”
Eula drops her voice conspiratorially, leaning closer to Jean. “What kind of things?”
Jean brushes her off. “I’ll walk you to your room,” she offers instead without waiting for a response. Eula falls into step next to her.
***
Eula doesn’t understand constellations. There’s Orion’s belt, where three stars shine together in single file. Sometimes, in a light-polluted city sky heavy with smog, only they and Venus show up, twinkling faintly against black. In a sky full of stars, Eula sees only a mess, a scattering of them. She prefers them that way.
“It’s funny,” Jean begins to say, her eyes suddenly glassy, “my mom used to take me hiking when I was little. We camped at the top of the mountain and watched the stars. Had fried eggs and toast for breakfast before heading down.” She rests one hand on her stomach, as if to store the memory there or to pull it out from her gut. “We stopped when I enrolled here. I had to be ladylike, she said.”
“Ladies don’t hike?” Eula says with a snort. She’s staying close to the edge of the blanket, as far away from Jean as the space could allow her.
“Not if they don’t want scratches on their arms and legs,” Jean sighs.
“I guess my mom says the same thing. Or means it, I mean,” Eula tells her. “‘Don’t make a fuss. Don’t cause a scene. Pray sincerely and fervently.’ Avoid all scratches, figurative and literal.”
“They mean well.”
“Of course they do. Mothers generally don’t mean badly.”
Jean turns to face Eula, her arm now stretched under her head as a pillow. Eula tilts her head to the left and sees her. “Do you pray?” she asks.
“No.”
The admission makes Jean’s eyes go wide. Her irises look grey in the dark. “You don’t?”
At this point, Eula turns on her side as well and puts her finger to her lip. “Can you keep my secret?”
Jean nods, somewhat earnestly.
“I don’t see the meaning of it, that’s all. Yes, God is here, but if you have to figure out His answers for yourself, then why can’t you just go and make your own? I don’t pray but I still feel guidance, if that makes sense.”
“That’s not too bad,” Jean decides. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“So why do you pray?”
“I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t know if I can find them for myself.” Jean places her other hand under her cheek. “It must be nice to live like that.”
Eula smiles ruefully. She notices the glint in the opening of Jean’s pajamas—a simple cross in white gold. It demands her attention, making her eyes trail down to the hollow between Jean’s collarbones. “It gets lonely sometimes,” she confesses.
***
Amber asks Eula for her untouched carton of milk. With the straw poised near her mouth, she says, “Hey, I heard the indie film place in town has a French one this weekend. Do you wanna go?”
“Hm?”
“You’re not listening to me,” Amber admonishes her petulantly. As punishment, she steals the mandarin from Eula’s tray to eat later. “I said there’s a French indie film screening in town this weekend. Wanna go? I saw you have some books in French in your room.”
Eula smiles as she takes the mandarin back and peels it slowly with her nails, the slight edge of her nail allowing her to peel back the rind with confidence. “Yeah, sounds fun. I’m sure there’ll be subs anyway,” she answers. “But I have to warn you—French movies are so boring.”
“Great! I can file the permission slip for both of us,” Amber tells her.
“Why do we need a permission slip?” Eula asks.
Amber purses her lips. “I don’t really know. I heard rumours before that someone tried to leave the school that way.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Eula mutters. “This place is like a prison.”
“Yeah, but for rich people,” Amber supplies, “and the ones who get power are the ones from the richest families.”
“Which ones?”
“Gunnhildr, Ragnvindr… I forgot who else, but they’re the prefects.”
Eula stares at Amber. “But you’re a prefect.”
“I’m a scholar,” Amber tells her with a shrug. “It helps with filling up my hours.”
“I see…” Eula notices Jean in her periphery, seated with Diluc, the Head Boy, and two others. “Is there something else I need to know about the people here?” she asks as she returns her attention to Amber, who hums over a sip of milk.
“What do you want to know?” Amber asks back with a grin. “I don’t really know, like, all the details, but I do hear things.”
Eula pops a section of mandarin into her mouth before saying, her voice dropping to a silly, sultry tone, “Tell me everything.”
***
Maybe Eula’s just young, but she doesn’t appreciate the meandering, self-indulgence of the movie they just watched. Amber was definitely only riding along, pretending to enjoy it until Eula tells her her thoughts later at a bookstore where they decide to wind down before heading back to school to make it by the time stated on the permission slip.
“I thought I was just being stupid because I didn’t know French,” Amber says with a nervous giggle. “Maybe I should learn it?”
“What language elective are you taking?” Eula asks. “Japanese?”
Amber’s eyes widen with shock. “How did you know?”
Eula laughs it off. “Just guessing.” She walks alongside Amber as she inspects the bookshelves one by one, picking up books to check the cover before returning them.
“Oh, hey,” Jean’s voice calls from behind. Eula turns around and ends up eye-to-eye with Jean and Lisa, who has her arm linked with Jean’s. “Lisa, this is Eula Lawrence.”
“I know her,” Lisa tells Jean. “She’s in my math class, but I don’t think we’ve talked.”
“Yeah, uhm, I’m with my friend Amber. We watched a movie.”
“Which one?” Jean asks.
“There was a French film screening at the…” Eula nudges Amber with her elbow and asks, “What’s the name of the place again?”
“Oh, hi! It was at the Tea House,” Amber tells them. “We could go together next time.”
“That’s cute,” Lisa says, though she says it mostly to Jean, “right?”
Jean nods and smiles at them. “Yeah, sounds fun. We’ll go ahead, okay?”
“Of course,” Eula says.
“See you at school!” Amber says then waves them off.
With Jean and Lisa gone, Eula looks at the shelf Amber is perusing now, asking her, “See anything you like?”
“Nothing yet,” Amber says. “You?”
“Let’s keep looking.” In the end, Amber gets a book about travelling in Japan and Eula a copy of a book she’s read before and remembers liking, the cover illustrated again for a new edition. Eula takes the book from Amber’s hand and gives it to the cashier.
“Seriously?” Amber asks.
“Yes. I wanted to repay you for the fun day,” Eula tells her with a smile. “It’s the least I could do.”
“You’re so sweet,” Amber teases before giving Eula a hug.
***
“And with your spirit.”
Eula stutters then keeps her mouth closed. She’s unaware of the change, has no idea of when it first happened, the instance when you differed from your spirit. This is her fault for attending mass without letting herself truly hear it.
Diluc is commentating. He instructs everyone to stand up then sit down. Eula’s mind is snapped to attention, following his instruction instead of taking visual cues from the people around her.
The choir sings the Psalms and their voices lift up to the high ceiling of the school’s church while Jean, as the Head Girl, reads Scripture with a careful cadence. Late morning light streams in through the windows, bathing her in gold and dust. Eula listens to every word though she doesn’t try to make sense of any of it—she just listens to the way Jean shapes them, her voice enshrouding Eula like cool water.
After that, Jean doesn’t need to speak anymore and Eula finds her attention lost. Jean makes her way to Eula’s pew during communion, kneels, and bows her head in prayer next to Eula, who wonders what Jean prays for while the body of Christ dissolves on her tongue. This is all while Eula sits quietly, hands over her lap in perfect stillness.
***
“Are you lonely?” Jean asks. The question, in its sincerity, drifts off into the night.
They’ve dropped the pretense of looking at the stars. Eula huddles into herself, the chill gently nipping at her cheeks so she puts the hood of her jacket up. “No,” she answers slowly, finding the words in Jean’s face, her eyes, “because that would mean there was a point where I wasn’t.”
“Was it always like that?”
“I’m an only child, and they—my parents—put me in so many after-school commitments. I had piano then violin at some point, but I only really liked dance and French.”
“What about friends?”
“Why does it matter to you so much?” Eula asks.
Jean chews on it, biting the inside of her cheek as she thinks. Eventually, she says, “Because you act so mysterious and above everyone all the time, like you know something the rest of us don’t.”
This can be a secret, Eula thinks. The roofdeck past midnight, all the lights turned off and the nearby town asleep as if under a spell. The way their eyes have to adjust so acutely. Jean on the floor, looking up then looking at her, saying Eula is above it all. Eula, keeping her distance.
“I don’t have secrets,” Eula tells her. “I don’t know anything.”
***
It starts at communion, though it should have been at confession. Jean ends her prayer and leans back into the pew. The sun filters in from the window again and shines on her hair and Eula wants to touch it, feel its warmth down to the tendrils curling against her nape, too short to be tied back.
Jean is an apparition, waiting to be called forth and rarely there out of her own volition. Yet she’s here sitting next to Eula in the back row of the side wing of the church, not wanting to be in the front where she’s forced to sing with the choir, an unnecessary task when she’s all but done with her job.
Eula confesses to the slight thrill when Jean seeks her out, the subtle reminder that she exists in her worldview.
***
Just before lights out, Eula knocks on Jean’s door. Jean opens the door with unsubtle surprise, asking, “Eula? Do you need something?”
“No, not really. I, uh… I got you something from town today,” Eula tells her in a whisper as she hands over the slim book, the cover blue and purple, to a wide-eyed Jean.
“Really? That’s so nice, thanks. But what for?”
“Just wanted to thank you for”—Eula clears her throat—“rescuing me last week.”
Jean turns the book over in her hands, examining the cover and flipping through the pages inside. “This looks like a good book. I’ll read it soon,” she says.
“No rush,” Eula hurries to say. “Good night, Jean.”
“Good night, Eula.” Jean closes the door, her hand keeping the door steady so as not to make a sound.
When Eula goes back to her room, she thinks of Jean’s and Lisa’s arms linked together, a kind of fevered image on the blank ceiling.
***
Jean shakes her head adamantly. “Everyone has secrets,” she says.
“Even you?”
“Yes.”
Eula moves herself closer to Jean, positioning her face near Jean’s mouth, ready for the whisper, the confession. “Tell me a secret, then,” she instructs.
To her surprise, Jean hooks her finger underneath Eula’s chin and lifts her head up so their eyes meet, and Eula, in the briefest of moments, cowers from the touch. “Promise you won’t tell anyone,” she tells Eula, her hold on her firm.
“Promise. Not a soul…” Eula’s voice trails off as she finds herself looking at Jean’s lips mouthing the words:
“Barbara Pegg is my sister.”
Eula’s own lips curl into a smile, telling Jean, “That’s not a secret.”
With a frown, Jean drops her hand.
“Come on,” Eula chides, “tell me something real.”
Jean just looks at her before saying, “Diluc kissed me and I didn’t like it.”
“When?”
“Just today. That’s why I… wanted to be alone.”
“To think about why you didn’t like it?”
“Yeah,” Jean sighs. “I guess everyone expected us to be together. Even him. It’s a perfect match, you know. Our families have been friends forever.”
“But you don’t like him? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Without a word, Jean nods, as if too afraid to say it out loud.
“You have to tell him,” Eula urges.
“He wouldn’t understand.”
“Feelings aren’t logical. He can’t blame you for not having them.”
Jean returns her hand to Eula’s face, stroking the chin with her thumb then Eula’s bottom lip. Eula’s breath hitches in her chest as she lets Jean touch her, search her. “I’m really not sure what I feel,” she whispers, and Eula is rendered silent. “I love him.” She keeps her fingers on Eula’s lips, letting Eula’s breath ghost over them. “I’ve known him since we were kids. We’re best friends. I can’t lose that. I just can’t.”
Eula finally gets hold of herself and wraps her fingers around Jean’s wrist, pulling her hand away with all the regret she can muster. “Well,” she says with a clearing of her throat, “I believe that’s your answer.”
Jean takes her hand back, cradling it like it’s been burned. “That can’t be it.”
“Why?”
“It’s unfair. And everybody loses.” Again, the glint of the cross on Jean’s throat. She fiddles with it, silently praying for guidance.
“Do you want something else?” Eula prompts. The lack of Jean’s hand on her makes Eula feel cold.
“May I kiss you?” Jean asks.
Eula laughs a little, the edges of her laughter frayed with nerves. “Is that what you want?”
“I’d like to try.”
“Okay, then.”
“N-now?”
“Would you rather we do it in front of everyone?” Eula asks, her brow raised at Jean.
Jean’s eyes flicker down to Eula’s lips then back up to meet her eyes. She chews on her own lip, letting it fall from between her teeth all tender. “Come closer,” she instructs. Then, when their mouths are all but touching, she stops Eula with a firm palm placed to her chest. “Stay right there.”
For once, Eula cannot find the words to say, all the strange instances of desire she had felt for Jean coming up to a head and making themselves known to her. She worries slightly about looking floundered and dispels it only with the thought of Jean being stuck in her own head. There is hesitancy in the space between their mouths.
It’s Jean who closes the gap first. No hands, just a chaste press of their lips together. Eula kisses her back in the same way, a sweet kiss before they part in a way that feels permanent.