She stared at her clock. "How long have I been here for?"
She silenced the alarm, picked up her bike, and rode home. She needed to think about tomorrow. About her parents. About whether telling them anything was even worth the energy it would cost her.
By the time she got home and pushed open the front door, she had her answer.
She wasn't going to tell them anything.
Her parents didn't know about school. Didn't know about the job. Didn't know about the trial tomorrow, and honestly, given the way they operated, telling them would probably make things worse rather than better.
These were people who had refused to give Lilith their surname. She had forged "Schze" herself at age twelve because neither of them wanted their name attached to her existence. That said everything she needed to know about what they would do with this information.
She went to her room and fell face-first onto her bed, too exhausted to change her bandage or her clothes or do anything at all.
She lay there, staring at nothing, waiting for tomorrow to come.
At some point she moved.
She didn't remember deciding to. One moment she was face down on the bed and the next she was sitting at her window, knees drawn up, back against the frame, looking out at the night.
The moon was full.
She hadn't noticed it on the ride home but now, in the dark and the quiet, it was impossible to miss. It sat heavy and silver in the sky, enormous in the way full moons always were, the kind that made you feel like if you reached far enough you could touch it.
The kind that made the whole world look different. Softer. Like everything sharp and cruel about the day had been sanded down by that light.
Lilith looked at it for a long time without thinking about anything specific.
It called to her. That was the only way she could describe it and she knew how strange that sounded. The moon called to her in a frequency she felt somewhere behind her sternum rather than in her ears. Like it recognised her. Like it had been waiting for her to look up.
She pressed her palm flat against the window glass.
"The Beauty of the Moon", she thought.
She would write a poem about the Moon. Not tonight, tonight she had nothing left to pour into words. But soon.
She stayed at the window until her eyes grew heavy and the caffeine and the pills were the only things standing between her and sleep.
Tomorrow, she thought.
Whatever happens, tomorrow.
___________________________
"I wonder why you hate her so much," Jasmine said, swirling the wine in her glass. "You're so hell-bent on ruining her life. It's almost impressive."
Belle was lying across her bed, staring at the ceiling of her very large, very beautiful bedroom. She had invited Jasmine over because she hadn't wanted to be alone tonight, though she would never say that out loud.
"Do you need a reason to hate someone?" Belle responded
"I believe you do," Jasmine said simply.
Belle was quiet for a long moment.
"There's just something about her," she finally said. "Something that gets under my skin. She walks around like the world has done nothing but disappoint her and she's completely fine with it. Like she doesn't need anything from anyone." Belle's jaw tightened. "I despise that."
"That's not a reason," Jasmine said. "That's jealousy."
"Don't push it."
Jasmine set her glass down and looked at Belle carefully. She had known Belle long enough to recognise the particular tension that lived around her eyes when she was thinking about something she refused to say.
"Is this about Kelvin?"
The name landed like a stone in still water.
Belle didn't move. Didn't blink. Kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Then slowly, very slowly, she sat up.
She set her wine glass down on the nightstand with a careful, deliberate click. And she was quiet in a way that was entirely different from her usual quiet. This wasn't the silence of someone choosing not to speak.
This was the silence of someone who had been hollowed out by a single word and was trying to remember how to breathe around the absence.
"Kelvin," Belle said finally, like she was testing how much the name still cost her. The answer, clearly, was everything.
"You want to talk about Kelvin?"
"I want to understand you," Jasmine said carefully. "That's all."
Belle laughed. It was a small, broken sound that had nothing to do with anything funny.
"He was the only person who ever liked me," she said. "Not my family name. Not my father's money. Not the version of me I perform for everyone in that school." She picked up her wine glass again, looked at it, set it back down. "Just me. He just, liked me. For absolutely no reason I could ever figure out."
Jasmine didn't say anything. She knew better.
"He wanted that scholarship more than he wanted anything," Belle continued, voice dropping. "He talked about it constantly. What he was going to do, who he was going to become. He had this whole plan."
She paused. "And then she got it instead. And he couldn't afford the fees without it."
"And I couldn't help him with all the money and influence I had, WHY, because I'm not free, not free to make choices of my own, not free to do things of my own will but Lilith she has that, that freedom. Belle paused, taking her wine slowly and sipping it.
And he left. And then —" She stopped, her voice breaking.
The rest of the sentence didn't need to be said.
"I just hate her, I despise her so much, I wish I could kill her, that's the extent to how much I hate her, Jasmine and how much I'm willing to ruin her life, I don't need a reason to hate her Jasmine, I just hate her"
Belle said suddenly and so fast, deviating from what she wanted to say, she just didn't have the heart and power to continue to talk about what happened to Kelvin
Jasmine had been there for her, after what happened to Kelvin She knew what the after looked like.
"Belle —"
"Lilith didn't even know he existed,"
Belle said quietly. "That's the part I can never get past. She took everything from him and she didn't even know his name." Her jaw tightened. "She still doesn't."
"Belle —"
"Don't"
"You have to –"
"I said don't."
The silence that followed was the heaviest kind.
Outside, the Moon was full and shinning so bright.