she’s been in town since the banquet. After KenpÅ comes an hour of yoga. Then I’ll run around my courtyard like a lab rat for an hour. Only now nobody can see me, because Ms. Lydia insisted that Cal put shutters on the outside of the first-floor windows. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me during crazy-month, but it didn’t. Now when I’m in the courtyard, I’m completely closed off.
Ms. Lydia thinks me being the face of McNeal Solar is the best idea ever, and she helped me talk Cal into it one day when we were swimming in the manor’s indoor pool.
“But we don’t do traditional advertisements,” Cal said, wading into the shallow end. “We rely on trade conventions.”
“Don’t you want McNeal Solar to have a fresh, clean image?” Ms. Lydia sat perched on the edge of the pool wearing an ivory maillot.
“Well, yes, but—”
“And you want McNeal Solar to be seen as trustworthy, right?”
“Yes, of course! But—”
“Then you’ve got to use Blanca!” Ms. Lydia argued. “She’s your best asset, and you haven’t used her properly yet.”
Cal winced. “I don’t want to use Blanca. I only want her to be happy.”
“Well, she’ll never be happy. Not unless you give her a purpose. That’s what Vestals live for.” Ms. Lydia kicked the water with her dainty foot, making a small splash. “Vestals can sell anything. Give Blanca a chance, Calum. You’ll be amazed.”
Cal still wasn’t convinced, so Ms. Lydia went at it from a different angle.
“Calum,” she said, sliding into the water. “It would make me so happy too. It would give me the opportunity to be here all the time. I’ll coach Blanca every step of the way. Please let us do this for you.”
“Fine.” Cal shrugged. “If this is what Blanca wants, I’ll say yes.”
“Yes! It’s exactly what I want!” I bounded off the diving board and cannonballed into the water, splashing them both.
“I can’t very well say no to both of you.” Cal laughed.
And that was the moment it started. Ms. Lydia has become so tangled up with me and Cal and our lives together at the manor that it’s become harder and harder to tell where one of our lives starts and the other’s ends. She’s always here, watching over me, keeping me safe.
“All this bread and butter!” she said at lunch one day. “You’re not going in front of the camera just yet, Blanca.”
Hence my new regime. It was a month before the first photo shoot.
Four hours a day of exercise and a strict fish-and-veggies diet. Cal’s been complaining a lot about my new meal plan, but it always gets smoothed over.
Ms. Lydia’s worked on Cal so hard that she practically leads him around on a leash.
“Calum, darling,” she told him, entwining her arms around him after a particularly Spartan dinner. “We like to be healthy. Don’t you want us to live a long time?”
Of course Cal couldn’t argue with that. He was sneaking some whole-wheat bread into my diet when Ms. Lydia wasn’t looking, but now she’s here at the manor practically all the time.
“Doesn’t it bother you, Calum, that there’s no place to be in this whole house that’s truly private?” I heard Ms. Lydia say to him one afternoon. “If there were some lead-lined walls, we could … ”
As soon as I heard that, I made a beeline for my room. I try not to think about what they might be doing together while I’m in the courtyard, running around in circles. It’s none of my business. But I’m ecstatic that Cal’s happy.
And he is happy. Ridiculously so! I’ve never seen Cal smile so hard as he does when Ms. Lydia comes into a room. She’s like sunshine on his heart.
The only bad thing is when the postal service comes with a letter for Ms. Lydia. Then she heads off for a couple of hours, or a couple of days. But she always comes back. When she does, Cal and I are both here waiting.
It’s almost like we’re our own Vestal family.
But I wish for Cal’s sake that Seth wasn’t such a troll. Since Ms. Lydia became part of things, Seth has pretty much stayed away. The one time Seth did show up for dinner, he and Ms. Lydia got into a huge fight over the proofs from my first photo shoot.
It was a picture of me wearing white yoga pants, doing the Scorpion pose in front of the newest McNeal Solar Enterprise factory. I was balancing on my forearms