Zachary
to Spearcrest, I brief Zaro thoroughly on everything she needs to know, from how to get around campus to the kind of expectations teachers have. I give her a thorough breakdown of the social hierarchy of the school, both the staff and students, and I tell her which students she should befriend and which she should stay away from.
I answer all her questions with complete honesty, even the ones that force me to paint my friends and myself in a negative light.
When she’s finally out of questions, I take her hand and squeeze it in mine.
“I’m going to ask one thing of you, and that’s it. One thing.”
She sighs but nods. “What is it?”
“I want you to use our mother’s maiden name while you’re at Spearcrest. I’ll speak to Mr Ambrose myself about it if you let me.”
“You don’t want everyone to know I’m your sister?” she asks.
“I don’t want everyone to know I’m your brother,” I correct.
“That means the same thing.”
“Almost. Trust me, Zaro, please. Whatever you’ve done, whatever you do—I’ve told you before, I’m not our father. The only thing I care about is that you’re safe and happy. You don’t want people to know I’m your brother. Spearcrest is just like the real world, there’ll be people there you can’t trust. People that might wish to use you as a way to get to me or my friends, or worse, people that might wish to use you against us. I want you to have a blank slate when you get there—and trust me when I say people will be scouring the internet for any information they find about you. You don’t want them to have anything over you. I’ll be there for you regardless. But trust me on this, alright?”
She stares at me, and for the first time, I see a flicker of worry in her eyes. Her glossy sheen of confidence wavers and she swallows nervously.
“Alright,” she says. “Alright. I’ll do as you say.”
day back at Spearcrest, making sure Zaro’s arrival goes as smoothly as possible. I visit Mr Ambrose and ask him to have Zaro’s surname changed to our mother’s maiden name—Auvray—on the school registers. When he asks me for my reasons, I give him nothing but the truth.
After everything is settled, I return to the sixth form boys’ building. Instead of going to my room to unpack my things, I head straight for Iakov’s room, knocking sharply on his door.
Silence answers me at first, but I wait patiently. Eventually, a grunt resounds from the other side of the door.
“Come in.”
I enter the room and close the door behind me. Even though it’s almost eleven in the morning, the curtains are still shut. An enormous body forms a mountain underneath the blankets.
The mountain shifts. A corner of the blanket is pulled down to reveal dark almond-shaped eyes blinking slowly.
“What,” Iakov says, the inflection of his voice indicating an accusation rather than a question.
I fling his curtains open, flooding the room with daylight. A scene of chaos is illuminated: a black duffel bag slumped into the desk chair, a crumpled school uniform hanging on the wardrobe door, two empty beer bottles glistening next to the bed, a pile of cracked boxing gloves shoved into a corner.
“Get up,” I say, yanking Iakov’s blanket off him. “It’s nearly eleven, for god’s sake.”
Iakov throws an arm across his face and then says his favourite word. “Fuck.”
“Had a good holiday with Papa Kavinski, huh?” I ask.
“Don’t call him that,” Iakov grunts.
He rears up to sit at the edge of his bed. Grabbing a bottle of water from the floor, he drinks in long, loud gulps. He’s wearing black boxers and nothing else. Stark daylight falls over him to reveal a map of bruises and cuts over his back, his ribs, his arms and legs. Some of them are old and fading, with yellow edges, while others are mottled, raised and red, betraying more recent injuries.
I resist the urge to avert my eyes. Sometimes, looking at Iakov is physically painful.
Iakov doesn’t seem ashamed of the way he looks, and he has this way of never explaining his injuries which makes it impossible to question him about them. His bruises are like his tattoos, black boots and buzz cut: unapologetically a part of him.
Iakov downs the water and tosses the bottle onto his blanket. He stands with a groan and stretches, his bones cracking as he twists his torso around. He shoves open his en-suite bathroom door, stands in front of his toilet and unceremoniously starts pissing.
“What do you want, then?” he asks over his shoulder.
“I’m not having a conversation with you while you’re urinating.” With a grimace, I shove the duffel bag off his desk chair and take a seat. From the bathroom, I hear the sound of the toilet flushing then the water running. Iakov comes back out with his face and hair dripping with water, his toothbrush in his mouth.
“Go on, then,” he says, leaning one shoulder against the wall and brushing his teeth with unnecessary aggression.
“I have a favour I need to ask you,” I tell him.
“Yea?” He lets out a low, growling laugh. “It’ll cost you.”
“A favour for a favour—I know.” I link my fingers together and lean back into the desk chair. “This one’s a big one.”
Iakov nods, then disappears back into the bathroom, where I hear him spit and rinse his mouth out. He returns and crouches by his duffel bag, rifling through it.
“Big favour, huh?” he asks without looking at me.
“Yes.”
He looks up. “Need me to kill someone?”
It’s impossible to tell whether he’s being serious or not. His tone is solemn, but then Iakov is always solemn, even when he’s being sarcastic. Equally, Iakov strikes me as the kind of person who is fully capable of taking a human life—I wouldn’t even be surprised to find out he already has.
That’s the reason I’m here, after all.
“No, I don’t need you to kill anyone. I need to give you some information before I tell you the favour, but you have to swear you won’t tell a soul.” I raise an eyebrow. “I mean that, Iakov. Not a soul.”
He nods. Grabbing a zipped black case out of his duffel bag, he tosses it on the bed and then sits down. Leaning forward, he props his elbows on his knees and looks directly at me.
“Right.” His voice is low and solemn. His black eyes are fixed on mine. “I swear.” He jabs his chin out. “Tell me.”
There’s only one person in Spearcrest whose word I could trust completely. That person is Iakov. I’ve never known him to betray a secret or break a promise. Iakov’s head is Fort Knocks. Nothing ever leaves that dark place he has for a mind.
“I have a little sister—Zahara. She’s sixteen. She used to go to a private school in France, but something… bad happened there and she had to leave.”
“Right,” Iakov says.
No expression crosses his face. If he has any questions about what happened to Zaro, he keeps them to himself. I suspect he has none—I’ve never known Iakov to be shocked by anything.
“Long story short—she’s starting at Spearcrest in the fall. She’ll be in the upper school like us. Her name on file is our mother’s, so nobody’s going to know she’s my sister, apart from Mr Ambrose. I don’t want anybody to know.”
“But you’re telling me,” Iakov says. “Why?”
I swallow. “That’s where the favour comes in.”
“Mm.” He reaches for his bedside and grabs a box of cigarettes. Taking a cigarette out, he taps it against the box, rolling it between his fingers. He’s not allowed to smoke indoors, but Iakov always plays with cigarettes when he’s thinking or concentrating or worried. It’s a little tic that easily gives him away. “Alright. Spit it out.”
“I need you to look after her.” I’m more nervous than I thought I would be, asking him this. “Zaro is… Zaro’s changed these past few years. I always assumed she was going to be alright. Foolishly so. I don’t think she’s alright at all. She’s incredibly bright, and she’s sharp—she’ll draw blood if she can—but that makes me forget how young she is. And I want to look after her, but I’m going to be busy, and I don’t want her to slip between the cracks just because I’m concentrating on other things. She’s too important for me to leave what happens to her up to chance.”
Iakov’s eyes rest on my face, dark and neutral. He thinks his thoughts the way he always does, without feeling any need to express what he’s thinking and without filler words to bide his time.
When he’s ready to speak, he does. And when he does, he takes me completely by surprise.
“I had a little sister too,” he says. “I know what you mean. I’ll do it.”
I didn’t know Iakov had a little sister. I notice that he said it in the past tense—he “had” a sister. Iakov’s sentences are often monosyllabic, but his grasp of English is perfect. This won’t have been a mistake.
I give him time to elaborate but he doesn’t. Instead, he grabs the black case from his bed and unzips it, laying out its contents next to him. Saline water, iodine, gauze.
This feral beast of a man has a whole med kit for his injuries.
He starts to tend some of his wounds and glances up at me. “Tell me what you need me to do. Be specific.”
“I need you to keep an eye on her. Just casually, around campus, at parties. If she’s staying out of trouble, if she seems safe and happy, then there’s no need to interfere. The main thing I’m worried about is her being taken advantage of. And I don’t want her going off campus.”
“Why?” Iakov interrupts. “We do.”
“She’s sixteen. She’s not going off campus. Anything could happen to her.”
“Alright,” Iakov says. “And if she tries?”
I sigh and rub my hand across my face, suddenly tired. “Fuck, I have no idea. Stop her. No, tell me. Maybe follow her discreetly, make sure she’s alright, and tell me. I’ll deal with it. It’s probably better if she doesn’t realise I’ve got you looking after her.”
Iakov cleans a wound on his thigh with almost professional efficiency before dressing it. When he’s done, he sets his things aside and looks straight at me. “Bad idea.”
“Really?”
“If she’s smart, she’ll work it out.”
Iakov, of course, is right. Zaro is smart, and Iakov isn’t exactly the kind of person who can lurk behind corners unnoticed.
“So you think I should tell her?” I pinch the bridge of my nose, sensing a headache forming behind my eyes. “She’ll think I’m having you spy on her.”
“You are,” Iakov says with merciless honesty.
“Not really—only for her own good.” I think for a moment. “What if telling her only makes her more secretive?”
Iakov shrugs. “Maybe she’ll be more secretive. But maybe she’ll be more careful.”
For a moment, we just sit in silence. Me in the chair with my nascent headache, Iakov sitting on his bed like a tattooed, bruised version of Rodin’s Thinker.
“Alright.” I stand up, full of grim resignation. “We’ll just have to do the best we can. I’ll call and tell her.”
“No.” Iakov stands and plucks the battered black denim jacket that hangs on the back of his door. He pulls his phone out of one pocket and hands it to me. “Put her number in there,” he says. “I’ll sort it out.”
I take his phone and raise my eyebrows at him. “Are you sure? She’s not going to take it lying down.”
“What is she going to do?” Iakov asks. “Beat me up?”
I save Zaro’s number in his phone and hand it back to him. “She’s a Blackwood. She fights with her words, not with her fists.”
“Hm,” Iakov says, tossing his phone onto his desk, where it lands with a clatter. “Better if she can fight with both. Maybe I’ll teach her.”
I open my mouth to tell him that sounds like a terrible idea, but an image flashes into my mind. My little sister, Zaro with the long curls and doe eyes, being clumsily seduced by that disgusting creep at Sainte-Agnès. My stomach clenches with hatred so visceral it makes my skin crawl.
If I ever met that man, I know for a fact I would rather fight him with my fists than with my words.
And one day, Zaro will feel exactly the same way.
I smile at Iakov. “Maybe you should.”
