The crowd roared with applause. My throat constricted. Rage thundered in my ears. Tom had broken his promise. My eyes darted to him, and I found him staring straight at me as he applauded the recipient of the award. I watched as the corner of his mouth curled into a cruel smile.
This was my punishment.
Birdie looked back at me for permission. I stared at her, slack jawed. She had to make a choice in that moment, too.
I stood from the table as Birdie accepted the gilded Ford replica. I stumbled and grabbed the back of someone’s chair. I apologized. They glared. Eyes were on me. Eyes that had expected me to win. Professor Carrigan looked at me. She was clapping but her lips were just barely parted, like an I’m so sorry waited to be born from them.
I didn’t want her pity. I wanted to go home. I wanted to throw up.
And I wanted to kill Tom Wolsieffer.
Part Two
BIRDIE
BIRDIE
7 YEARS AGO
She looked back before she stepped forward. Applause thundered, shaking the chandeliers and making the glass tinkle against itself. Birdie read surprise on the faces of the students around her, but a thought flared on the periphery of her mind: Why not me?
The image of Ione’s shock at hearing Birdie’s name instead of her own began to burrow into Birdie, making itself a nest that it would not soon leave. She turned just in time to see Ione retreating out of the ballroom, and for a second she thought of going after her. She thought of leaving indignantly on behalf of her friend, enraged by Dr. Wolsieffer’s betrayal. But before she could act on it, another student’s hand was at her spine, one finger digging in and pushing her forward. She looked back at him—at Nolan—and nodded as he urged her forward.
She looked over her shoulder one more time and found Ione gone. The ballroom of people looked at her. She had slipped out of the skin that she’d worn for so long, wilting in Ione’s shadow. The temptation to step into the light was electrifying.
Why shouldn’t she accept the award? She’d worked just as hard—maybe harder—and she hadn’t done any of that work on her back. A smile threatened to reveal the gap between her front teeth, and she stifled it long enough to bring a hand to her mouth, always conscious of the imperfection.
She looked across the room at Dr. Wolsieffer, sitting beside his wife. What had Ione expected? There was no way the affair wouldn’t have ended in fire. Birdie just hadn’t realized she herself might become engulfed in the flames.
His eyes met hers, a smile on his lips. Almost cruel, if Birdie had described it. He looked to the back of the room, searching for Ione. Not finding her, he watched as Birdie cautiously took the stage. She felt a little like Carrie on prom night.
She accepted the award from Holly, her hands shaking. She looked out across the room and smiled. This time, she didn’t hide the gap. A feeling washed over her, like warm saltwater lapping the shore. She stood on the threshold of her future with the most coveted award in the department laid at her feet.
“You can say something if you’d like,” Holly said in her ear, out of range of the microphone.
Birdie didn’t know what she would say. A bitterness swept over her, making her want to say directly to Ione, I told you so. I told you this would never work out for you. But her friend was gone.
She shook her head, declining a moment in front of the microphone. Instead, she raised the award over her head and the applause roared again throughout the room. She looked down at the gilded Ford replica. This award would cost her whatever friendship had been salvaged with Ione.
Was it worth it?
Birdie had worked just as hard. She’d slogged through draft after draft, revision and critiques from classmates and from Dr. Wolsieffer himself. She’d gone to his office without Ione. Except when she went to his office, she actually went there to work. Something told her that she wanted this more—more than anyone here tonight, and certainly more than Ione.
She tucked the piece of gilded metal into the crook of her arm and descended the stairs that led to the stage, her kitten heels wobbly from the adrenaline. A boy reached out to help her down, but she didn’t need his help. She smiled down at the floor, placing her feet carefully. When she looked up, Dr. Wolsieffer stood in front of her.
“Can I see you for a minute?” he asked. His eyes narrowed on the award like a hawk’s. There was something in the way that he said it that didn’t indicate pure joy for Birdie. Her stomach flipped.
“Sure,” she said.
Dr. Wolsieffer turned on his heel and led Birdie out a side exit of the ballroom into the hallway of the union. With one hand in his pocket, he walked onward. They reached a small door in the wall and he pulled a set of keys out. He unlocked the door and ushered her inside.
The small room was a janitorial closet, and why Wolsieffer would have had the keys to it baffled Birdie. But then she thought it might have been one of the many locations that he liked to hold his trysts. No one could convince her that it had only been Ione.
“This where you bring all the girls?” Birdie asked.
Dr. Wolsieffer grabbed her wrist.
“Hey!”
“Listen,” he said. His grip loosened, he found himself again. “I wanted you to have this from the beginning. But things got complicated.”
Birdie snorted, skeptical.
“I
