And yet here I am, facing Dean Robin anyway with my shirt still unbuttoned. If she didn’t suspect me before, she does now. It’s a cruel twist of fate that in running from her … I’ve ended up exposing myself.
Even as she searches my face, I see the moment her own expression shifts. She sees the recognition on my eyes and without waiting another moment, she pounces.
“Do you want to press charges against Jasper and lose your spot at the school?” she asks, slowing her speech so I can understand. “Or do you want my help staying?”
“Help,” I say immediately. I’m not even sure if I’m understanding her. Lose my spot? Stay? What does it matter now that she knows for sure that I’m a girl.
She pulls a cellphone out of her pocket as she wraps one arm around my waist and half-walks, half-carries me to the classroom door. I hear her talking to someone named Cynthia in clipped tones.
Somewhere between the dark of the classroom and the light of the hallway, I pass out. When I swim back to consciousness, Nurse Weber frowns down at me from above.
“You really should be resting.”
I blink. “Where am I?”
“The infirmary.”
I should have recognized it right away. I look around, expecting to take in the sterile lined walls of instruments and the view looking out onto the courtyard outside, but that isn’t what I end up fixating on. To my shock and horror, behind Ms. Weber sits Dean Robin, her long legs crossed at the knees.
It’s daytime. Sunshine falls through the windows.
“What happened?” I barely recognize my own voice. It’s sounds as broken as I feel.
“Thank you, Cynthia,” Robin says, standing up. “I’ll take it from here.”
Cynthia. The woman Dean Robin cal
led as she hobbled me out of that classroom last night. That I remember. What happened afterwards …
Ms. Weber looks at Dean Robin doubtfully, but she nods and slips away, letting the curtain fall behind her. I hear the main infirmary door shut moments later. Robin and I are left alone in my little compartment.
I glance down. I’m in a hospital gown of sorts, which makes me seem shapeless, but I tug it up self-consciously anyway.
“No need, Alex. Or should I call you Alexis?”
My stomach drops as I remember.
She saw me. She knows.
My horror must register on my face, because Dean Robin rolls her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the one who approved your application. I’ve known you were a girl since the beginning.”
“What?” I can’t hide my astonishment.
“You want to continue at this prestigious establishment?” she asks. I blink at her wordlessly, so she elaborates. “Do you want to keep going to this school?”
“No, I—I understood the words,” I say a little defensively. “I just don’t understand what you mean.” I close my mouth and swallow my spit. My throat feels like it’s being punctured with a tiny rake. “Why would you approve my application here if you knew I was a girl all along?”
It’s Dean Robin’s turn to take a moment to find the right words. “I’ve been looking for someone like you for a long time, Alex,” she says, carefully. “I know you’re a girl. You know you’re a girl. And we both know something is terribly wrong with Bleakwood.”
I blink at her.
She stares back. “The Brotherhood,” she answers for me. “The boys’ club. The paying to get in instead of it being based on merit.”
“Oh.”
“So …” she starts, trailing off again. “So, when I saw your application … I saw an opportunity. One I couldn’t pass up.”
She begins to explain more, about how she nudged the dean here into accepting me in the first place. How she’s been hunting me down these last weeks, trying to get me to give my records to her instead of directly to the school. How she’s been trying to drop hints to me all semester.