Darling - K. Ancrum

CHAPTER 1

Wendy scowled, scrunching herself down in the car seat angrily.

“I said no,” Mr. Darling declared.

“I know you did, but seriously? I’ve done a background check on her. Like, a literal criminal background check, Dad.”

“You never know who you could be meeting online,” Mrs. Darling said gently. “I know you’ve been friends with her for more than a year, but that doesn’t mean anything. She could be a serial killer for all you know. Besides, we didn’t bring you here to go running around with strangers in the night. We came here to—”

“—adopt other kids that you also won’t let go outside,” Wendy snapped.

“Wendy … darling,” Mr. Darling said, eyes crinkling at his own tired, ancient joke. “Can we please discuss this at another time? You can meet this ‘Eleanor’ person after you’ve had more time to get used to things and made a few new friends at school.”

“Boring prep school friends,” Wendy muttered.

“Lucky you!” Mrs. Darling said brightly. “We’ve just arrived at your boring new prep school! Aren’t you excited and thankful that you have parents who can provide you with a quality education in a safe neighborhood where you don’t have to take a bus to school and can walk instead?”

Wendy scowled deeper. She couldn’t say anything to that. She was well aware that her mom had grown up in much rougher circumstances, and it would feel like a punch in the chest for her to hear Wendy say that she wasn’t thankful. No matter how much she wanted to go out on her first night in Chicago.

Wendy kept up her silence all the way from the car through the building and into the principal’s office, taking the opportunity to look around. A lot of things were the same as the prep school she’d gone to before the move. But there was a lot more diversity. She wouldn’t be one of the only Black students, which seemed like it would be kind of nice. The uniforms everyone wore were a bit less stylish than the ones back in Hinsdale, but the girls rolled their skirts up and wore rule-breaking flourishes here, too. There were cuter guys, but that might just have been due to the quantity of them to choose from. There had to be three times as many kids in this building as there were in her entire town.

It looked like schools in Chicago had an alarming amount of security. She was familiar with the whole metal detector song and dance. But here they had a whole conveyor belt you put your backpack on, just like in the airport. There were also a ton of actual cops just standing around indoors. Her old school only had a regular security guard on staff, and he mostly just stood around looking bored outside the front door.

Mr. Darling clamped a hand on Wendy’s shoulder and steered her toward the administration office. “We have an appointment,” he reminded her crisply.

The Darling family settled down outside of the dean of admissions’s office to wait. Mrs. Darling filled out a registration form and handed it back to the secretary. Wendy watched as her mom tugged nervously at her skirt and combed her fingers through her flat-ironed hair to settle it more perfectly on her shoulders. Mr. Darling squeezed Mrs. Darling’s hand gently and raised his eyebrows at Wendy. Don’t fuck this up, his eyebrows said.

After a few minutes, the dean cracked the door open and called her name.

Wendy stood, but Mr. and Mrs. Darling stayed seated.

“Just me?” she asked her dad.

“Just you,” the dean’s secretary said sternly.

Wendy left her jacket on the chair and made her way into the dean’s office. It was a large room, bigger than some of the classrooms at her old school, and it was completely crammed with plants and bookshelves.

The dean sat in front of a wide window. His hair was gray, his suit was expensive, his desk was massive, and his chair was tall. The chair that Wendy was supposed to sit in was small and pushed far enough back from the desk to feel awkward.

Wendy sat in it anyway.

The dean shuffled through the papers Mrs. Darling had filled out, seemingly just to create suspense, before finally looking up at her.

“Welcome, Wendy. So—” he paused, looking down at his papers to check, “—you’re … seventeen, and you’ll be entering senior year in the middle of the school term. Do you feel as though your previous institution has prepared you adequately for shifting into a new environment?”

“I think so?”