CHAPTER THREE ARSÈNE

CHAPTER THREE

ARSèNE

Then

Like all cautionary tales, my story began in a big, sprawling mansion. With stained glass windows, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses.

Painted murals, hand-carved marble chess pieces, and grand curved staircases.

With an evil stepmother and a snotty stepsister.

The night that changed everything started out normally, as all disasters do.

Dad and Miranda drove into the city to see Chekhov’s The Seagull premiere in Calypso Hall Theater and left us behind. They did it often. Miranda enjoyed art, and Dad enjoyed Miranda. No one enjoyed us, though, so it was our job to entertain one another.

My stepsister, Gracelynn, and I flattened a cardboard box we’d stolen from the kitchen and took turns sitting on it, sliding down the stairway. We bumped into housekeepers as they rushed between rooms, carrying fluffy warm towels, ingredients for dinner, and dry-cleaned suits. They’d have crushed us like bugs if they could. But they couldn’t. We were Corbins. Entitled, privileged, and powerful. Scarsdale’s chosen ones. Destined to squash, not to be squashed.

We slid and we slid down the stairs until our asses were red under our designer garments. My spine felt like Jell-O from all the bumping against the stairs. Neither of us thought to stop. There weren’t many things to do in this castle. Video games were forbidden (“They make the mind lazy,” Dad said), toys were messy (“And you’re too old, anyway,” Miranda huffed), and we’d run out of homework to do.

Gracelynn was midair, gliding down the stairway, when the main door flew open. She bumped into my father. Her face pancaked against his shoes, and she let out a comic “Oomph.”

“What in the .?.?. Arsène!” my father thundered to the bottom of the stairway, sidestepping her. Fingernail streaks adorned his cheeks. “What is this mess?”

“We just—”

“Decided to get yourselves injured? Do you think I have the time to go to the ER with you?” he spit out. “Go to your room. Now.”

“Gracelynn.” My stepmother followed briskly, shutting the door behind her. I didn’t have to look at her fingernails to know they were caked with my father’s blood. When they fought, she always did this. Hurt him. “Go practice your ballet, darling. Daddy and I have grown-up things to discuss.”

Daddy.

He wasn’t her daddy.

Heck, he wasn’t even really my daddy.

Douglas Corbin was no fatherly creature.

Yet strangely enough, he didn’t hate Gracelynn, another man’s child, with the same passion he reserved for me.

“Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s okay, sweetie.”

Gracelynn stood up and dusted off her knees. She ran up the stairs, wrinkly cardboard tucked under her armpit. We shuffled down the darkened hall. We knew the score. Neither of us wanted a front-row seat to Dad and Miranda’s arguments.

All Dad and Miranda did was fight and make up. They didn’t want us present for either of those things. This was how the games of sliding stairways and tightrope started. Out of boredom because we were always so alone.

“Think they’ll punish us?” she asked me now.

I shrugged. “Don’t care.”

“Yeah .?.?. me either.” Gracelynn shoved her bony elbow in my ribs. “Hey, race you to my room?”

I shook my head. “I’ll catch up with you on the roof.”

She padded quickly across the golden marble, disappearing into her room.

Whenever they sent us to our rooms, we climbed the fire ladder and hung out on the roof. It was a way to pass the time, and we could talk about anything without the servants eavesdropping and snitching.

I walked into Gracelynn’s den, which looked like something Barbie herself had designed. She had a queen-size bed with a pink tulle canopy, a white carved fireplace, and upholstered recliners. Her ballet gear was scattered about.

Gracelynn loved ballet. I didn’t know why. Ballet clearly didn’t love her back. She made a crappy ballerina. Not because she wasn’t pretty—but because she was only pretty. She could barely move her feet and, ironically, lacked grace.

The window was open. The wind made the curtains dance. Even they danced better than Gracelynn.

I laced my sneakers before pulling my body out the window. I stomped my way up the rain-drenched iron ladder. I found Gracelynn leaning against one of the chimneys, ankles crossed, exhaling breath vapor like a dragon.

“Ready to tightrope it?” She grinned.

The ridge of the roof was edged so narrowly that we had to walk it one foot at a time. For our game, we walked the ridge, chimney to chimney, as fast as we could. We each had our turn. We timed one another, and sometimes—a lot of times—I suspected she was cheating, which was why I never, ever let her win.

“You timing me, or what?” Gracelynn lurched her chin toward me.

Nodding, I produced my stopwatch from my pocket. “Ready to eat dust again, sis?”

Gracelynn had a problem. Her problem was me. I was smarter than her, scoring higher on tests without even studying. I was more athletic than her—she was a mediocre dancer, while I was the second-best tennis player in my age group in the entire state.

Naturally, I was also much faster than her. I always won. It never occurred to me to let her have a little victory. She was an annoying, entitled brat.

So was I, but let’s admit it—I wore my faults better.

“I’m not gonna lose, you .?.?. you .?.?. hot dog–water breath!” she choked out, her face turning pink.

I laughed. “Your time starts now, fartface.” I raised the timer in the air.

“You know, I’m getting really tired of doing this.” She fisted her hair—onyx black, like her eyes—tying it into a painful-looking bun. “Making myself invisible for them. All of my friends’ parents—”

“Miranda and Doug aren’t parents.” I cut her off, squinting up as gray clouds gathered above our heads like schoolyard bullies. It was going to rain soon. “They’re just people with kids. There’s a difference.”

“But it’s not fair!” Grace stomped. “Mom punishes me whenever your dad annoys her.”

This was a good time to point out I was her mother’s personal punching bag. Miranda’s favorite pastime was lamenting to my father how screwed up I was.

He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t cry. Doesn’t take an interest in anything but astronomy and math, which—excuse me, Doug—simply isn’t normal for a ten-year-old. Maybe there is something wrong with him. We would do him a disservice if we don’t run some tests. Oh, and he doesn’t yawn when others do! Have you noticed that? That shows a lack of sympathy. He could be a sociopath. A sociopath! Living under our roof.

I couldn’t chance Gracelynn running back to her mom with the impression I gave half a crap, so I bit my tongue.

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“Like, I’ve been wanting this tutu Lucinda’s parents bought her from Moscow for ages. It’s custom made. Last week Mom told me she’d look into ordering it. But today, before she went with your dad to the theater, she snapped and said it was too expensive all of a sudden, and that I’d grow out of it too quickly. All because he pissed her off!”

“And you care about the stupid dress because .?.?.??”

“It’s not a dress, Ars. It’s a tutu!”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so! I’ll say it all day long!”

“You don’t want Lucinda’s tutu. You want her talent. And that can’t be bought in Russia, or anywhere else,” I said matter-of-factly.

Lucinda and Gracelynn were in the grade below me. Lucinda was the girl everyone wanted to be. Beautiful, and nice, and therefore loathed by Grace and her little clones.

“I can’t believe you just said that.” She balled her hand into a fist, waving it at me. “Mom’s right about you, you know.”

“Your mom’s not right about anything. Now start walking. I haven’t got all day,” I snapped, starting the stopwatch. “It’s on.”

“Ugh!” she growled. “I hate you!”

I started counting the seconds out loud, knowing it was gonna freak her out.

“Argh. I’ll show you! I’m gonna win!”

She raised her arms in the air and started jogging across the roof quickly. Too quickly. Gracelynn was practically hovering over the edge, cutting through the air like a bird of prey. She sliced in and out of the fog like a plane. She wobbled left and right. She was almost at the chimney, but what the hell? She could fall over any second.

“Jesus,” I hissed. “Slow down. What are you doi—”

Before I finished my sentence, her right leg missed the needlelike surface. She slipped, swinging herself left to regain balance. Her right leg twisted sharply. She let out a surprised gasp, throwing her arms forward to clutch the chimney. She fell about an inch short.

Gracelynn tumbled down the side of the roof with a feral scream, disappearing out of sight. Shit. My lungs closed up, rejecting oxygen. My first thought was, What was she thinking? Followed closely by Dad’s going to murder my ass.

I waited for the thud. Maybe I was a sociopath like Miranda said. Who waited to hear the body of their stepsister hitting the ground from a thirty-foot height?

“Grace?” My voice was drowned out by the rain that began pelting on the roof. “God dammit, Gracelynn!”

“Over here!” she choked out.

Relief washed over me. She wasn’t dead. I crouched down to sit on the ridge and slowly slid down the roof until I reached the gutter.

Her fingers were curled around the gutter pipe. Her body dangled in the air.

Should I go get Dad and Miranda? Should I try pulling her up?

Shit, I had no idea. I never thought either of us would be stupid enough to legit run across the roof like a maniac.

“Help me,” Gracelynn pleaded, tears and raindrops running across her face. “Please!”

I grabbed onto her wrists and leaned backward, starting to pull. Sharp spikes of rain blurred my vision. Her skin was cold, wet, and slippery. Her wrists so delicate I was scared I’d break them. Her fingers clawed into my skin, grasping, as she wiggled, trying to use me as a human ladder. She drew blood, just like her mother had done to my father tonight.

I decided I wasn’t going to share Douglas Corbin’s fate. I wasn’t going to bleed for a Langston woman ever again.

“Pull me harder!” She moaned. “I’m slipping. Can’t you see?”

The soles of my feet scorched as I tried to yank her up the roof. The odds were against me. Physics too. I had to climb uphill over the wet shingles while pulling someone my own weight. “You need to hold on to the gutter. I have to call Dad.”

“I can’t!”

“We’re both gonna fall.”

“Don’t leave me!”

Did she think I wanted to kill her or something? I was about to tip over too.

“Look, I can hold you for a few more seconds and give your arms a rest, but then you gotta hold the gutter for a minute or two until they get here.”

She slipped away from my grasp an inch. Wriggled in the air like a worm. “No! Don’t leave me! I don’t want to die.”

“Don’t look down,” I roared, falling to my knees, pulling harder, with everything I had in me. It felt like my limbs were being ripped from my body. But she was too heavy, too wet. “Just .?.?. just look at me.”

The pressuring, unrelenting weight of her was gone suddenly. My body jerked backward. The back of my head slammed against the shingles. A distant splash assaulted my ears.

She fell.

She fell.

Frantic, I crawled along the gutter, squinting down, trying to see past the rain and the mud and the thick bushes. Grace had landed on the canopy covering the empty pool. The belly of it was deep, and there was water all around her.

Gracelynn didn’t move. Her legs were in weird angles, and I immediately knew, even before she started screaming, that it was all over for her.

No more fancy tulle costumes, Russian tutus, or dance camps in Zurich.

My stepsister’s ballet career was over.

And so was my life as I knew it.

The x-rays arrived minutes after Dad and I got to the hospital.

He hadn’t looked at me, not even once, the entire journey there. I relayed to him everything that had happened, maybe other than the part where I’d goaded her. No need to be holier than the pope. Besides, she survived, didn’t she?

“She’s going to be okay, though. Right?” I chased him down the linoleum corridor to her room now. I was so full of adrenaline I couldn’t even feel my legs.

“She better be, for your sake,” he snarled, staring ahead. “What did you two do up there, anyway?”

“Played a game.”

He let out a snort. “You play high stakes. Typical Corbin male.”

What did steaks have to do with all this? I’d always been a burger dude, anyway.

“Is that good or bad?” I asked.

“Plainly speaking, it’s an incurable condition stemming from too much money, too much ego, and too much time.” He plucked his leather gloves by the fingers. “We Corbins tend to be rebels with a cause. Hopefully, yours isn’t killing your sister. Rein in on your personality, child.”

This was the most he’d spoken to me in months, maybe even years, so I basked in it. It wasn’t that he ignored me per se. Dad was good about making sure I got excellent grades, attended my extracurricular activities, stuff like that. He just wasn’t about talking all that much.

The verdict came along with the x-rays. Gracelynn was suffering from two broken legs and a minor spinal dislocation that required surgery.

She also suffered from a bad case of being a shit bag.

The latter wasn’t a medical diagnosis, but true, nonetheless. As soon as the painkillers kicked in and her legs were cast, she pointed an accusing finger at me, narrowing her tar eyes. “It’s him. He did this to me. He pushed me, Mommy.”

It was the first time I was truly speechless. Pushed her? I’d tried to save her, and she damn well knew it.

“Bull crap! You ran on the ledge and fell,” I said hotly. “I tried to pull you back up. You almost tore my arms off. Here, I can prove it.”

Pushing my sleeves up, I turned to show Dad and Miranda the marks Gracelynn had left on my skin. They were red and deep and raw, already halfway turning into scars.

Gracelynn shook her head adamantly. “You tried to push me, so I fought you. You wanted to get rid of me. You said so yourself. You were tired of sharing Mom and Dad’s attention.”

This sounded exactly like the kind of thing she’d do. I hated getting attention from Dad and Miranda. It was always negative and got me in trouble.

My mouth hung open. “Why’re you lying?”

“Why’re you lying?” She bared her teeth. “You’ve been caught. Just fess up! You could’ve killed me.”

“Oh, my little dove. What’s this monster done to you?” Miranda buried her face in her daughter’s neck, throwing her arms around her. She sounded like she was crying, but I bet her eyes were dry.

I looked around the room, waiting for .?.?. what? Someone to walk through the door and back me up? There was no one in the world who could protect me. I always knew that, but suddenly, the weight of my loneliness was pressing hard against my chest, making it hard to breathe.

“Lying’s the cowardly way out, son.” Dad’s fingers wrapped around my shoulder firmly, warning me not to plead my case. “Come clean and face the consequences like a man.”

He didn’t believe me.

He was never going to believe me.

He just wanted this to go away for him and for Miranda, so there’d be no more shouting, screaming, and slapping.

Gracelynn, despite lacking everywhere I excelled, was still their favorite child. The normal child. The one who laughed, and cried, and yawned when others did.

The painful realization I was truly alone in this world slammed into me.

Staring Gracelynn down, jaw clenched, eyes dead, I shrugged. “Sure. I pushed her. My only regret is I couldn’t finish the job. Better luck next time, I guess.”

And then it registered to Gracelynn. That this was all real. Not a part of our stupid, made-up games. I could see it in her eyes. The flash of regret, followed by the adrenaline rush. The recognition that whatever she was doing, it was working, at least for now. That she was finally winning against me at something.

But I would never let her win. Not if I still had breath in me.

I turned around and stalked out of the hospital room, leaving behind the poor imitation of what was supposed to be my family.

Later that night Miranda returned from the hospital without Gracelynn. Dad and I waited in the dining room, staring at our hands silently.

“Doug, a word,” Miranda clipped, summoning my father upstairs. They locked the bedroom door behind them. I pressed my ear to their door, my mouth dry.

“.?.?. too much, for too long. This is sheer neglect. I cannot, in good conscience, allow my daughter to become prey in the hands of your out-of-control son. I’ve had enough, Doug.”

I knew what really bothered Miranda about me, and it had nothing to do with Grace.

I looked exactly like my mother, the late Patrice Chalamet.

I was a constant reminder that she had been alive. That once upon a time, she had stolen Douglas Corbin from her. That if it weren’t for Patrice, I would have never been born.

Gracelynn wouldn’t have been either.

There was an alternate utopia for Dad and Miranda. A version of reality they’d almost managed to achieve. And it was yours truly who crapped all over it.

The servants talked about it all the time. Whispering as they fluffed pillows, prepared nutritious meals for us, drove Gracelynn and me to our tennis and ballet practices.

As the story goes, Miranda and Dad had been dating on and off throughout college. She overlooked Doug’s indiscretions—whatever that word meant—and wouldn’t let him out of her sight. When Dad went to a friend’s wedding in Paris eleven years ago, Miranda had wanted to join him. But it was a private event, consisting of fifty people, with no plus-one invitations.

That’s where he met Patrice. A glamorous wannabe actress from Rennes and the maid of honor. The two had a rendezvous (again, no idea what that meant), after which Dad went back to America.

It never occurred to Doug that Patrice would come knocking on his door two months later with a positive pregnancy test, white as a sheet. Legend says she vomited all over his shoes to prove her point before he even finished asking what she was doing there. And that Miranda was in his apartment at the time, In a less than decent condition, one housekeeper had said snidely.

Dad’s dad—my grandfather—forced his hand into doing the right thing. So Dad married Patrice, a complete stranger.

The servants always said my grandfather never liked Miranda.

Too high maintenance. Too much of a social climber.

Miranda’s answer to the public humiliation had been cold blooded. She fell pregnant with Dad’s best friend’s child shortly after. A man by the name of Leo Thayer. An Aussie heir to a beef-export empire. So thorough was her counterbetrayal that Gracelynn was born looking so much like Leo that the paternity test Miranda had sent Dad confirming Gracelynn wasn’t his hadn’t been necessary.

Versions varied about what happened afterward. I heard a few stories from a few servants. But the most popular tale was of how my father and Miranda had rekindled their affair before Gracelynn and I had gone off our wet nurses’ milk.

Only now Miranda wasn’t the prized girlfriend—she was the mistress. Until Patrice died, and she got promoted to wife.

Miranda, like her daughter, couldn’t stand to lose to anyone. Especially a ten-year-old kid.

“I’ll talk to him,” my father murmured. “Make him understand what he did was wrong.”

“That’s not enough. You think I can sleep at night knowing your son is across the hall from my daughter after what he did to her?”

“We don’t know exactly what happened, sweetheart.”

It surprised me that Dad stood up for me, but I knew he wasn’t going to stand his ground for long. She’d wear him down. She always did. And he, blinded by his own sins, by her beauty, would submit.

“Well, I hate to do this, but it’s either him or us.”

“And where should I put him?” Dad spit out impatiently. “He’s a kid, Miranda. Not a goddamn vase!”

“There’s a boarding school not too far from here. Andrew Dexter Academy. Elaine’s son goes there. The one who was in that gifted program? I have the brochure .?.?.” I heard the rustling of paper.

Of course she had the brochure handy.

“You want me to tuck him in a private school on the other side of the state?” he growled. “Jesus, Miranda, listen to yourself.”

“Oh, come on, Doug,” she said soothingly. “It’s a good place. We both know he’s being stalled here academically. You’d be doing him a favor. He could be fulfilling his potential, instead of being bored here and getting into all kinds of trouble. We’d love to have him for holidays and summer vacations. He would be so much more manageable.”

And so I became manageable.

Banished from my own house over a lie my stepsister had told to get rid of me.

Over her jealousy. Her greed.

Gracelynn got her Russian tutu. They put it behind glass, like the Armoury Chamber in the Kremlin. Precious and unattainable. Just like her ballet aspirations.

She also got our parents’ full attention.

This was where my obsession with Gracelynn Langston began. The feral hunger to conquer her at all costs.

In the moment of history when she won the one thing that matters—public opinion.

But this was a marathon, not a sprint.

Gracelynn was about to learn her lesson the hard way.

We Corbins always won in the end.

Even if it meant we needed to play dirty.