Zachary
final year at Spearcrest is a long series of unexpected events.
The first of those occurs on my first day back at home: my father summons me into his office as soon as I arrive. The solemn look on his face is disconcerting. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t done anything to draw his displeasure.
He asks me to sit down and then announces in the glummest of tones, “Your sister will be starting at Spearcrest Academy in the fall.”
“Pardon?”
It was the last thing I expected him to say.
“She’ll be starting in the upper school a year ahead of schedule.”
“How can she possibly do that?” I’m honestly so stunned I can barely organise my thoughts. “She can’t skip Year 11, she has her GCSEs to—”
“She sat them this summer with the Year 11 students at her school.”
I stare at him.
Zaro and I haven’t seen one another since last Christmas holidays. She was only home for a week, and she was a little more quiet than usual, but she never mentioned sitting her exams early. I think about our texts—I check in on her more or less every week—but again, she never made any mention of early exams, skipping a year, or coming to Spearcrest.
“I’ve had the transfer arranged, and I’ve already spoken to Mr Ambrose. She’ll be starting in the upper school, and the reason for that is that I want you to keep an eye on her.” My father sits back in his chair, flicking off his glasses and fixing me with a direct, insistent look. “I’m not asking you this lightly, and I’m not asking you to do this casually. I mean it. I want you to keep a close eye on her, do you understand?”
The implications of his words leave a distasteful flavour in my mouth. I narrow my eyes. “You want me to spy on her?”
His eyebrows lower into a glare. “Don’t be so melodramatic. I want you to keep an eye on your sister and make sure she stays out of trouble. I need you to swear to me you will.”
By this point, it’s clear something’s happened. But if my father thinks he can get me to swear to spy on my own sister without sharing whatever information he’s withholding, he’s gravely mistaken.
Settling myself into one of the seats facing his desk, I prop my elbows on the armrests and sit back, watching him closely.
“What happened?” My voice is firm; this isn’t a question I’ll allow him to ignore.
My father watches me for a moment, his mouth pinched in annoyance. He’s always resented the shifting dynamics between us. If he could, he would continue to treat me as his inferior, but I’m not. The fault lies at his feet—he didn’t raise me to be his inferior.
He lets out a loud sigh. “Look. Your sister was caught having an inappropriate relationship. I won’t be telling you anything more, so don’t bother asking. She won’t be returning to Sainte-Agnès; that’s all you need to know.”
My stomach churns. An inappropriate relationship could mean anything according to my father. Zaro could be dating the most well-mannered boy, and if my father so much as suspected they’d done more than hold hands, he would probably deem it inappropriate.
For all the Blackwood family prides itself on being a “modern” aristocratic family, my father’s views are positively Victorian when it comes to his daughter.
What’s making my stomach churn with unease is that she’s not returning to Sainte-Agnès. Leaving her school, skipping a year and transferring to Spearcrest—where my father has thus far been refusing to send her—would surely be an overreaction, even by his standards.
“Now give me your word,” he snaps. “I won’t ask you to spy on her—you don’t even need to report back to me. I just want you to keep an eye on her and make sure she stays out of trouble. No wild parties, no… inappropriate behaviour. Nothing compromising.”
This is going to be my final year at Spearcrest—my time to prepare for my exams, to work on my university applications, and my final year to best Theodora. I have a thousand things to do without adding to that the responsibility of looking after Zaro.
But she’s my sister.
And Blackwoods always put family first.
“Very well.” I stand. “I’ll see to it.”
“Make sure that you do.” My father doesn’t speak again until I reach the door. “And Zachary?” I turn back with a frown. “I want you to take this responsibility as seriously as any of your other responsibilities. If I have to find out through one of my contacts—or God forbid, via social media or the tabloids—that your sister has been getting into any sort of compromising situation or trouble—there’ll be hell to pay. For both of you.”
I nod. “Nothing’s going to happen to her. I give you my word.”
week after I do, preceded by a mountain of Louis Vuitton luggage.
She is summoned to my father’s office, where she spends the afternoon. Dinner that night is a tense affair. I make some attempts at lightening the atmosphere, but my parents remain taciturn, and Zaro is doing everything in her power to avoid eye contact with me.
Later, when I’m certain my parents have gone to bed, I go to her room. She ignores my knocks, forcing me to sneak through the guest bedroom adjacent to hers and climb across the adjoining balconies.
But when I reach the guest room balcony, I stop. Wrapped in a silk robe, Zaro is standing on her balcony, arms on the balustrade and hair floating in the wind like a modern Juliet.
Juliet with long curls and a bottle of whisky in her hand.
“Really? You’re drinking now?”
She turns her head sharply at the sound of my voice and immediately relaxes with a roll of her eyes.
“Ugh, Zach, I’m not in the mood. There’s a reason I didn’t answer your knocks. Can’t you take a hint?”
I ignore her and climb over the railing that separates the two balconies. I stand next to her and take the bottle out of her hands. She glares at me but lets me take it. I glance down at the label and lift an eyebrow.
“Whisky? Really?”
She shrugs. “Men love girls who drink like men.”
“Since when do you care what men love?”
With a roll of her eyes, she snatches the bottle back from me.
She’s changed—not just from when she was a child, but since the last time I saw her. She’s only fifteen, but she has the confidence and attitude of someone older. She reminds me of the scintillating party girls of Spearcrest, Kayana Kilburn, Seraphina Rosenthal, Camille Alawi—the way they carry themselves with that mixture of supreme confidence and desperate need.
Like the world belongs to them, but also like they belong to the world.
“I know Dad told you I’m transferring to Spearcrest,” she snaps. “And you’re obviously here to ask me what happened, so ask already.”
“What happened?”
“I was dating a teacher. The school found out. That’s all.”
My eyes widen at her words, my mouth dropping open, but she continues in a sour tone. “Please don’t bother. He lost his job, and I was forced to transfer schools, and now I get to spend the next year away from friends and being spied on. We’ve both been punished, so spare me the telling-off.”
“I’m not our father,” I tell her. “It’s not my job to tell you off.”
“Hah, right.” She takes a swig of her bottle and hands it to me. I despise whisky, but I drink anyway. I hand her the bottle back, and she takes it slowly, glancing up at me. “Are you… disgusted with me?”
I shake my head. “No, not disgusted. I suppose I’m… disappointed.”
I realise how it sounds as soon as I say it. Zaro’s entire body grows stiff, but instead of the angry tirade I expect, she bursts out into icy laughter.
“Of course you’re disappointed!” She throws her head back in a hollow cackle. “Just like Dad—just like always. You know what I loved about Jerome?” She’s not laughing now. Her tone is hard and hurt. “He never made me feel like I was a disappointment.”
I swallow. I want to say something comforting, but I can’t help but say the truth instead. “That’s because he was grooming you, Zaro.”
She watches me for a long moment. When she finally replies, her voice is low and soft and sad.
“Want to know a little secret, Zach? I’m not some naive teenager. I know exactly what it was. I knew about the age gap between us—and, before you say anything, the power imbalance. I knew exactly what he was doing—but I also knew exactly what I was doing. And do you want to know the sad, ugly, pathetic truth? Grooming or not, Jerome is the first person who ever made me feel like I was enough.” She pushes off the balcony and throws me a cold look. “So if you’re going to judge me, go ahead. But judge me for the right reasons.”
And then she walks away from me, slamming her window shut and shoving her curtains closed.
my triptych of summer misfortune comes several nights later, over dinner.
My parents, who are still icing Zaro out with a sort of courteous silent treatment, are recollecting their days in Cambridge, where they met.
My father is just finishing an anecdote when he laughs and says to me, “That’s old Professor Wyle for you. I should get in touch with him—ask him to keep an eye on you and make sure you have a great supervisor. You know how it is—politics is all about who you know.”
He says all this so casually I barely register it at first. When his words finally sink in, I pause with my fork inches from my mouth.
“I’m not going into politics.”
My father laughs and waves a hand, the thick gold crest on his ring catching the light. “Of course you are. You’re a Blackwood.”
“Be that as it may, but I’m still not going into politics.”
My father stiffens in his seat, and my mother’s posture, too, becomes almost imperceptibly more rigid.
“Our position in society—our name—doesn’t just come with privileges, Zachary,” he says in a lofty tone. “It comes with responsibilities, too.”
“I know that.” I hold his gaze. “I have every intention of serving society. But I’ll do it in my own way.”
“Where could you serve our country better than in politics?” my father asks in a withering tone.
My mother lifts a hand and lays it on his forearm. She doesn’t need to say a word for him to bite down and breathe in, nostrils flaring, as he pulls on the reins of his anger.
“You’re doing a great disservice to many sectors by implying politicians serve this country best,” I tell my father in a cool tone. “Sectors such as, oh, I don’t know—medicine and healthcare? The justice system? Academia and education?”
“You think a schoolteacher has as much impact as a minister?” My father’s voice quivers with cruel amusement.
I shrug. “In certain ways—more.”
He opens his mouth, but my mother finally speaks up.
“Caleb, please.” She doesn’t look at my father when she says his name but smiles at me, a gentle smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “Zachary is free to choose his own future, of course.” She squeezes my father’s arm and tosses me a look. “All we ask, Zachary, is that you make your choices carefully.”
“I always do,” I assure her.
Her eyes widen slightly—the same fawn brown as Zaro’s, framed by the same curly black lashes that give them both that doe-eyed look of innocence. She’s unhappy with me, that much is easy to tell, but she’s a politician through and through.
“Excellent,” she says. “That’s all we can ask.” Then, with an airy laugh, she releases my father’s arm and picks up her wineglass. “Besides, it’s so early in the year. You still have plenty of time to decide.”
I want to tell her I’ve already decided—that I’ve known all along—what I want to study when I leave Spearcrest. But I suppose I have some politician in me, too, because I answer her insincere smile with one of my own.
“Exactly.”
