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CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO mea culpa
⋆*✧･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ:
NADINE VIDAL HAD always been a little strange. She let spiders crawl up her arms, got knee-deep into brawls at school, and sicced imaginary snakes on people to watch them writhe. Her perfect, doll-like image was marred with split knuckles and bloody lips, black eyes and wild grins. People fell in love with her in spite of these flaws, tried to ignore the manic in her eyes and the clench of her fists, but eventually, what marred Nadine caught up to them, and, one way or another, they would edge themselves out of her life. This was what happened to Nadine's first love, Colette Badeau, who'd always been too saccharine for her own good. She was sweet as a honeysuckle and shy as a doe, a girl whose cheeks you couldn't help but want to pinch. And Nadine—brazing, loud, slightly arrogant Nadine—coaxed her out of her shell, attempted to help her regain her confidence. For Colette, simply being around Nadine ushered out her courage; for Nadine, being near Colette toned her down a little. They were perfect for each other—as perfect as any two thirteen-year-olds just discovering their budding sexualities could be, anyway. But they were not soulmates. They were not meant to stay together.
The King Cobra had been the end of Nadine and Colette's relationship. Colette—gentle, demure Colette—had been there to bear witness to Nadine reigning terror on Luis Allemand, and although he wasn't exactly innocent, seeing that great serpent flicking its tongue so closely to the boy chilled her to the core. She couldn't figure out how Nadine had done it—she obviously hadn't been carrying that snake around—and eventually, after a sleepless night and a bone-deep terror, she concluded that Nadine was a witch. An enchantress, who had lured Colette to her lips and away from the path of God. She'd summoned the snake out of thin air for Luis—who knew what else she could do? And that was why Colette decided to leave.
For Nadine, thirteen years old and on top of the world, when she stared back at the empty wall that had previously held her girlfriend in front of it, Colette's departure from her relationship crumbled something inside of her. After years without her mother's love, she'd built up walls around her heart, but something about Colette had torn them back down again.
She hadn't given up, though, not then. Instead, she'd gone back home, attempted to call Colette, to explain that she'd done it for the good of their relationship. But Colette never answered. And in school, she'd walk the other way. When they passed in the streets, she'd keep her head down. It was like she was trying to rebrand her life; trying to forget that Nadine had ever existed. A year later, Colette had found herself a boyfriend, a white-bread teacher's pet who always kept his hair neatly combed. He couldn't have been more different from Nadine, and each time she witnessed the couple kiss (without tongue, of course), her eyes would burn with tears longing to be shed.
Colette was the first girlfriend to leave Nadine's life, but she wasn't the last. Age seventeen: Manon Basile, with her warm vanilla shampoo and her laugh like wind chimes. She fled once she caught Nadine break a boy's nose for calling her a slur. Age twenty-two: Mirabelle Cantillon, with her love of astrology and red wine. She split after Nadine's flashbacks had gotten too difficult to bear with. Age twenty-nine: Camille Lambert, with skin like the sun and a smile like gold. She claimed to have fallen out of love just as easily as she'd fallen in it.
