“I am so sick of you walking around here like you’re perfect.” Ellie spat each word like acid. “I can see right through you, and you’re a total fake.”
“Ellie!” Lottie and Jamie gasped in unison, but Ellie gave them a sharp look that stopped them in their tracks.
“May I suggest we discuss what has upset you in the morning, once you’ve calmed down?” Sayuri seemed completely unfazed by the outburst.
“Upset me?” The venom was undeniable, and Lottie realized there was more behind Ellie’s anger than just Sayuri. “How could you upset me when you never do anything wrong, ever?”
“Ellie, you need to calm down.” Lottie grabbed her arm, intending to soften her fury, but all it did was change direction.
“How can I calm down when we’re completely trapped?” She turned suddenly, all her rage thundering in a whirling storm. “Don’t you see? We’re stuck here, we’re stuck, and you’re stuck because of me. The cage is bigger and looks different, but we’re still trapped, still as helpless as we always were, and it’s all my fault, and I HATE it!”
“Leave.”
Lottie blinked, for a moment unsure who’d spoken.
“I said, leave,” Sayuri repeated. “I’m moving you both to a room away from Miko and me. I think you’d both benefit from spending some time alone.”
“Oh, great. The perfect queen thinks she knows how to fix everything. We’re saved,” Ellie drawled sarcastically.
“I said, LEAVE!”
Ellie reared up, clearly preparing to make another snide comment, when a single salty tear escaped down Lottie’s cheek.
She squeezed her fists together painfully. “Let’s just go, Ellie.” She was so tired.
Ellie couldn’t even look her in the eye, her gaze landing on Jamie, who shot her with such an intensely profound look of disappointment that even Lottie could feel the burn of it.
“Fine, we’ll go,” she said.
Jamie helped them move their belongings. Everyone in the dorms watched in silent curiosity while they dragged their slippered feet through the wooden corridors to the tiny spare room that had previously been occupied by thirty or so hand-painted paper lanterns. It was stuffy and considerably less elegant than their last room, but Lottie didn’t have the energy to care anymore. Anastacia and Lola poked their heads in, but Lottie shook her head, not wanting to explain.
“Will you two be okay?” Jamie whispered to her through the doorway, moving the last lot of luggage. It was almost nice to see him show concern again.
“I’ll be fine.” She smiled, not caring how fake it looked. “I always am.” Although she couldn’t speak for Ellie.
Jamie nodded and she watched him walk down the gloomy path, a new symphony of nighttime creatures chirruping in the moonlight.
The moment he was gone, Lottie changed into the oversize Hello Kitty nightie and shorts she’d bought in Harajuku and climbed onto her futon. Ellie did the same and then they lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling, until one of them caved.
“Ellie,” Lottie began, the shape of her friend’s name a foreign object in her mouth. “You know it’s not your fault, right?”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
The words felt like a punch in the gut, and she turned to look at her princess. Ellie rolled onto her side to face her. “I shouldn’t have said all that stuff. I just got so angry when I saw us in the magazine. I feel so useless, and weak.”
But Lottie wasn’t upset about Ellie’s outburst; she was upset about everything surrounding it. “I don’t care about that; I’m happy you said it. I just . . . I wish you’d be honest with me.”
It wasn’t until she finished speaking that Lottie realized she was thinking about the kiss again, still confused by what it meant.
“Well, maybe the media’s right . . .” Ellie said dully.
“What?”
“About me. I’m a bad influence. You wouldn’t even be here if not for being my Portman, and that grade. If Leviathan—”
“I’d rather it was Leviathan. I still worry sometimes that it was just a stupid mistake I made.”
“Maybe the stupid mistake was you becoming my Portman in the first place.”
“Ellie!” Lottie growled, a sound she was not used to making, but she couldn’t help it. “How can you say that? How could you say something so cruel? I thought . . . and that kiss, and everything. What’s wrong with you?”
The words came tumbling out of her, like coughing up barbed wire, and she couldn’t stop them. Why would Ellie want her around if that’s how she felt? After everything they’d been through together, for her to turn around and say something so ridiculous.
“What?” Ellie spluttered.
This was too much. Lottie scrambled off her futon and stormed up to the paper screen where her sneakers lay, slipping them on.
“I’m going for a run. I’ll see you later.”
“Lottie, wait. I didn’t mean it like that. I—”
But in one violent bang of the door she shut Ellie out, and off she went to join the insects in the night and scream.
11
THE LATE-NIGHT AIR WAS HOT and oily, leaving a sheen of sticky sweat all over Lottie’s skin. Her clothes clung to her body with gummy adhesion and the peel-thin sliver of the moon provided little illumination on the tar-black paths. She’d run up the decking, all around the giant pond, and off down one of the walkways leading closer to the bamboo forest. Finally her feet slowed, and she found herself at the cat shrine, squinting stone grins watching her curiously. Her blood must have been particularly tasty, because itchy pink lumps were blooming all over her legs and arms from mosquito bites.
“And I suppose the vampire cat of Nabeshima will be after my blood too?” Lottie huffed up at one of the stone statues, leaning her hands on her knees while she caught her breath. “I’m afraid she’ll have to be quick, or the mosquitos will take it all.” She tried to smile at the cat, feeling stupid and lonely in the silence that followed.
The few lights left on in the dorms were
