The Rush (The Siren Series) - By Rachel Higginson Page 0,43
to my head and my neck flooded with warmth. Breathing was becoming easier, the sick, venomous feeling slowly receding back to the depths of my black, toxic soul.
“Ivy sooner or later you’re going to have to get over this cry for attention,” Evaleen taunted from the other room. “If Nix loses his patience with you, you’re only going to have yourself to blame.”
“There is something wrong with you two,” Exie scolded as she joined us in the en suite bathroom. “You’re just like everybody else. It’s like you’ve turned into them.” Exie gestured toward the floor, indicating the party downstairs. She hit them with an insult that once upon a time would have really riled them up. “You’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid.”
“Grow up, Ex,” Anaxandra snarled. “Some of us like drinking the Kool-Aid. One day you’ll get it, you’ll accept what every single one of us eventually comes to accept. It’s easy to be judgmental from where you’re standing, but one day you’ll have to stand in our shoes, one day when they offer you the proverbial Kool-Aid you’re going to drink it. Just like we did, just like our mothers did, just like their mothers did. Remember that.” Anaxandra finished her speech by returning her gaze to the oval vanity mirror and preening for three more seconds before nodding her head to Evaleen. Both girls gave us one more pitying stare and then left to join the party downstairs.
The three of us stood silent and frozen in the safety of Sloane’s bathroom processing Anaxandra’s ominous words. Sloane was the first to move and when she did it was with an icy frigidness. She turned around and leaned forward on the bathroom’s marble countertop, gripping the edge until her hands became white.
“What if she’s right?” Sloane whispered, avoiding her face in the mirror. “What if we turn out just like them?”
A hundred different answers spun and twisted in my head but when I finally spoke it was with hope. “What if we don’t?” I paused, letting the question settle in the air around us. “Sloane, what if we don’t?” Each word was spoken with solid intension and earnest strength. There was so much hope in that seemingly impossible future that it was too tempting to set aside without further examination.
Exie looked up when I spoke, shaken from her fearful trance. There was a lighter spark in
her deep blue eyes, a glisten of miniscule hope that hadn’t been there before. “Sloane, what if we don’t?” she squealed and pulled me to her in a tight hug. She bounced up and down and then pulled Sloane into our circle of affection like we had already conquered this life and moved on to greener pastures.
I let myself get caught up in her excitement, feeling real hope bloom like the first flowers of spring after an endlessly frozen winter. There was no reason for it, no explanation for why this time my voice sounded confident and sure. But there it was all the same and the three of us were suddenly infected with as much hope as we were once diseased with despair.
Chapter Thirteen
“Alright ladies, it’s time to make an appearance,” Sloane admonished after several minutes of hugging.
Exie and I made simultaneous groans of frustration, but let Sloane lead the way out her door and down the staircase to the main floor. There weren’t that many women gathered tonight, less than fifty. But each room was packed with competitive estrogen and enough ego to suffocate an innocent bystander.
Caterers floated from room to room carrying trays of bite-sized canapés or flutes of champagne and soft jazz drifted through the air barely heard over the steady conversation. Men had joined the ranks of women since I was upstairs, dates, husbands, lovers, Nix’s apprentices…. There were not as many of them as there were women, but the crowd was diversified and it put me back on edge.
We waved and smiled at everyone important, at everyone we were supposed to pay notice to. But each of us avoided Nix’s authoritative eye and the expectation-filled expressions of our mothers. Exie and Sloane were as uncomfortable as I was dealing with these people and we shared a mutual acknowledgment that a quick walk-through constituted a legitimate appearance. With a sad, soul-crushing kind of despair I noticed Anaxandra and Eveleen mingling with the veteran women in the crowd, sipping vodka martinis and discussing current events.
Another one bites the dust.
And another one, and another one, and another one bites the dust.