chapter 2

Later that night Iris was slumped over her cluttered desk trying to keep her mind occupied. Barrett Wilbert Weeds’ voice was belting through her earphones as she sang Dead Girl Walking and Iris had nothing to do but sulk about her situation; she kept all her textbooks in her locker as the teachers had decided not to give them any homework. Not even her dark and wet hair clinging to her hips irritated her enough to keep the events of earlier that day away.

She groaned as it replayed in her head for the fiftieth time; looking down at the ice cream, lifting it up and smashing against Orion’s shirt. The heel of her palm slammed against her forehead as she wished for the world to split open and gobble her up.

She was, indeed, an idiot, Iris decided. What happened to blooming like a wallflower and keeping her head down? What happened to swallowing her voice and staying invisible? She created a plan at the beginning of the year and she was determined to stick with it. This one reckless, stupid, and angry event changed all of that. Was this how Veronica felt when Heather told her she had to go? Iris was still struggling with the emotional turmoil her recklessness caused her and, unfortunately, she didn’t have the vocal range to burst into a musical number of frustration. So, she had to settle with telling Danika and Zoya why she looked like she escaped an asylum. Not that they helped her either.

Zoya had joined them after Iris and Danika’s shift had ended. Zoya hadn’t even sat down before Iris shouted about her stupid and social suicidal actions.

Iris had then proceeded to tell them what had happened and they were excellent listeners, gasping and groaning at the appropriate times. After story time was over, Iris had asked them what she should do. They were no help whatsoever.

“Hug it out?”

“Sorry, babe, but I don’t know.”

Iris groaned again as she remembered their response, deciding that she needed new friends. Not that she would be making any new friends at the Academy any time soon. She could already imagine how this ridiculous one-sided fight would end; Orion standing on the main balcony of the school as she ran away after quitting school.

Maybe she should just drop out?

She could go back to Westwood and continue with her education there. Sure, the schooling might not be as great as what Crawford had to offer and she might suffer minimal amount humiliation at the hands of her classmates, but at least she wouldn’t be as ostracised as she was now. At Westwood, she wouldn’t feel like a flopping fish out of water gasping for its survival. She belonged at Westwood, belonged with the teenagers whose white shoes were stained brown, whose jeans were ripped due to wear and tear and not for the aesthetic.

Besides, what was the worst that could happen? It’s not as if dropping out of Crawford equals to being a waitress her entire life or that she would never attend university.

Didn’t it though?

Attending Crawford was an opportunity a lot of students in her community would kill for and it was a one-way ticket into the top fifty universities of the world due to the abundance of connections the parents of Crawford had. Iris knew for a fact that while the majority of students at Crawford were generally smart, there were also a few students who only got in due to their family name and the money behind it.

Besides wouldn’t dropping out be like admitting defeat? She had stood up against a bully - one who was humiliating her friend. Wasn’t that something she should be proud of? But no matter how she thought about it, she just couldn’t get rid of the dark pit of fear settling in her stomach, because it wasn’t just any bully she stood up to.

Orion had the world at his fingers and Iris had nothing but calloused hands and a trigger happy temper. She was the ant beneath his boot, and, in his mind, worth less than the air she breathed. He had enough connections to make her disappear and enough money to make sure no one questioned it.

What if he really did sell her to the black market? She wasn’t the brown-hair-in-a-messy-bun kind of girl who can magically acquire the skills to escape things like that. What if they took her kidneys while she was awake? She cried every time she bumped her pinkie toe against the furniture. Her pain tolerance was not high enough for organ removal surgery.

“Are you okay?” The voice of her mother shocked her out her daydream of dark corridors and men in white coats smiling down at her. “You haven’t eaten anything yet.”

“I’m fine,” said Iris with an unconvincing smile.

“Really?” she asked, skeptically. “Because your father made spaghetti and you haven’t even dished a bowl for yourself.”

Iris stayed silent. Her mind was too occupied. Why was she still thinking of black markets?

“You know,” her mother said as she sat down on Iris’s single bed, her voice casual enough to make Iris weary. “I may not have won full scholarships but I like to think I’m intelligent enough to see when something is bothering my children.” She patted the spot next to her. “And I know for a fact that something is happening at Crawford that’s eating at you.”

Seeing her mother smiling at her was enough to convince Iris to almost leap next to her mother and into her arms.

Laurel Holmes nee Barnes was her mother’s name and she gave the best hugs, Iris decided as she clung to her as a child would cling to their mother’s skirt, too shy to greet new people.

“Oh, wow!” Laurel laughed softly, trying to catch the breath that was knocked of out her lungs. She stroked Iris’s hair - identical to her own - and said, “Something tells me this has been happening for a while.”

It was too much. Iris rambled, her words coated with the tightly coiled emotions she’d experience the last few days. She told her mom about the R5 - she laughed at their name - and how they bullied the students - her mother stopped laughing then. The blinded eyes and turned cheeks from the teachers as they stomped all over people. The history essay she had spent so many nights on; how Victoria bought her ice cream and fell on Orion’s shoes; how he continued to humiliate her even after she apologised.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous how they get away with it, mom,” Iris breathed, shaking her head. “Nobody does anything to stand to them. All they do is record it to laugh about it later.” She laughed sadly, recalling the terrified looks on Victoria’s and Tom Radcliffe’s faces.

“Best education in the world, my ass,” Laurel snapped and rolled her eyes. “They can’t even teach these kids basic, human decency. Where are the parents in all of this?”

Iris frowned. “Honestly, mom? You think people whose idea of parenting means paying a nanny and throwing cash at their kids when they want attention is going to do anything? Hell, the principal is one of the bullies’ grandfather.”

“So, complaining about it is no use,” her mother sighed, finishing her thoughts out loud.

The best response Iris could give was a helpless shrug. Her mother was right. Even though a massive part of her wants to stomp her feet cry for her mother to storm into the principal’s office and demand justice, she knew it wouldn’t help. Truthfully, it would just make it worse. Children mimic their parents - as much as they hated to admit it - and if Iris could call in her mother then the Crawford students could call theirs, which would blow this entire situation out of proportion.

No, Iris thought, it wasn’t worth dragging her mother into this, no matter how much she wanted to. And she wanted to. Iris would pay to see how those rich people reacted when Laurel Holmes hurricaned through their lives. But a moment of satisfaction wasn’t worth a lifetime of consequences.

“So”, her mother drawled. “What are you going to do about this?”

“Drop out,” Iris mumbled.

The crickets outside her window chirped.

SMACK!

“Ow!” Iris howled and cradled her burning bicep. “What the hell?”

“Now, you listen here, young lady,” Laurel snapped. “I don’t care how much teenage angst you need to endure but you will not - I repeat, will not - drop out of the Academy. High school lasts five awful years, but a certificate saying you graduating from the Academy lasts a lifetime. You just have to endure two years and then you’ll never have to see them again.”

Iris couldn’t believe what her mother was saying. “What happened to ‘as long as your happy, Iris’ and ‘you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Iris’?

Laurel snorted. “Happiness is fleeting, capitalism is forever. And Crawford gives you the chance to be as high on the financial food chain as we can get. Besides, I know you’ll set them straight.”

“Mom!” Iris whined, throwing her head back.

“What makes you think I can do that?” Some of them aren’t even straight, she wanted to say but didn’t. “And why me? I don’t want to be noticed at Crawford. I just want to float beneath the radar and not cause any trouble.”

Too late for that, she thought, rolling her eyes.

Her mother got up and walked to the door. “Well, honey,” she said. “Someone has to and seeing how no one else has gone crying to their mother yet, I assume it has to be you. Now, the food’s ready and I’m afraid you won’t be getting any if you don’t come and get some. I won’t be able to keep Charlie and your father out of the kitchen much longer.” She left Iris’s room.

Iris rolled her eyes again and followed her mother. Blackholes, the both of them. With the endless appetite they shared, there was no doubt that they were father and son.