The Tower

Hailey: Addley's Hollow Boarding School

"Your cereal is mocking me," Stella says.

I turn my eyes away from my canvas to look at the bowl. She's right. The few last pieces of brightly colored sugary cereal have drifted around the bowl to form the distinct shape of a frowning face. "The cereal wouldn't have anything to make fun of if you didn't look like you just ate something sour," I reply. 

She glares. "All that sugar is basically poison." 

"Well then I'm not the only one in this room who will end up sick because I know  you eat some when I'm not here." 

She laughs and settles back into the book nestled in her lap. I follow her lead and return to my partially finished canvas. The painting is of her. My brush creates a mirror image of what I see beyond it. 

Stella sits on the windowsill, legs curled gracefully to her chest, balancing a worn book with a broken spine on top of them. She wears plaid pants and an oversized sweater with patches on the elbows. There are faint marks of mud from her boots on the sill. Her auburn curls spill over her shoulders. Through the window, I can see the lake, partially shrouded in thick clouds of mist. Stella takes a small sip of the steaming mug in her hand. In my painting, the mug sits beside her, where it was when I first started working. In times like these, I am thankful for the stillness of my roommate. In the time it has taken my to almost finish the painting, she has hardly moved at all. 

"What are you painting?" She asks, eyes not moving from the page. 

"You."

She shoots me a quizzical look. I laugh as I clean my brush and tap it against the edge of the easel to shake off the excess water. My laugh is not a graceful or feminine one, instead loud and borderline obnoxious. Stella starts to laugh too, a quiet sound, more breath than anything. She always finds my laugh entertaining. "You're my muse," I tell her by way of explanation. 

When we first met at the beginning of the school year, unpacking our bags into our shared dorm room me saying anything like that would've made her uncomfortable, now it just makes her laugh harder. Stella has been my friend long enough to know that I don't mean much of what I say. 

She carefully marks her page and crosses the room to peer at the painting. Closer to her, I can see the freckles that spill across her nose and cheeks. "It's good," she says. 

Stella doesn't have to shower my paintings with praise. Of course they're good. If they weren't I wouldn't be here at Addley's Hollow Boarding School. It's one of the oldest, most prestigious private schools in the state. You wouldn't expect a school of such renown to be located right next to a small town, but the school was built long before the town of Addley's Hollow ever was and any attempt to urbanize the area has somehow always fell through. I'm constantly glad for that. The townspeople I know by name, the forests of evergreens and crisp mountain air are part of the beauty of Addley's Hollow. 

It's no easy thing to even be accepted into Addley's Hollow Boarding School. It only takes kids they think are going to do something huge with their life. The science students that could one day invent cures for cancer, the artists whose works will belong in a museum. I never thought of myself that way, but I've been painting my entire life and applied on a whim. A month later, I stepped onto the campus for the first time and met Stella, my roommate. This is only my first year at Addley's, but Stella has been attending since she was old enough. One of the benefits of having rich parents. Not that Stella doesn't deserve to be here. She's one of the smartest people I've ever met. Sometimes, when I am alone in the dorm room I flip through the leather bound journal she keeps on her nightstand, right next to the pair of wire frame glasses she wears when she doesn't have the energy to put in contacts. Her writing is incredible, from the story unfolding in her half finished journal to the little poems she scribbles in the margins of math assignments. 

"Is my nose really that sharp?" Stella asks, pointing to the painting. 

It isn't but I reply, "Sharper." 

"Plus my eyes aren't that color." She's right, as usual. I've painted Stella around a dozen times, but I've never found the right mixture of paint to match the color of her sea glass eyes.  She adds, "I don't blame you for painting me. I'm sure you aren't the only person I've inspired at this school." 

"Oh like how you inspired Ben Waverly's poem about the time you fell in the lake?" 

She hits me in the arm, but not hard enough to hurt before returning to the windowsill. She takes a small sip of her drink. Even now, when it's practically summer her drinks always smell like the fall. I asked her once before why she doesn't just drink coffee or regular tea. "For the aesthetic," Stella had replied, but I know that it's just because she can't stand the taste of anything else. 

As if she can sense my thoughts, Stella glances at her phone and says, "Autumn is coming."

"It's practically summer!" I protest. 

She rolls her eyes at me. "Autumn Callisto." 

Sure enough, Autumn knocks once at the door, hard, before letting herself in. "Hailey, Stella. Good morning." 

Autumn is tall, with messy blonde hair and bangs that seem to constantly be in her eyes. She wears dark lipstick and fidgets with her hoop earrings as she steps through the door. 

"Autumn!" Stella says, pulling her into a hug even though they just saw each other the day before. 

All of my friends were made through Stella. They've known each other long before I was ever at Addley's. After a year though, I still have no idea what kind of prodigy Autumn has to be in order to explain her attendance. 

"Happy last day of classes ladies." Autumn says. "Tabby is playing the piano down in the common room and sent me up here to find her an audience." 

Stella follows her out the door and I am quick behind. Tabitha Omega's place at Addley's was never a question. Her skill at the piano isn't natural and has made me cry more times than I would like to admit. Luckily, when we reach the common room she isn't playing a fast, dramatic piece, not a sad one. 

Stella leaves me alone with Autumn and crosses the room to stand next to Alexander Wells, whose place as Addley's lies in his sculpting abilities. He flashes her a dazzling smile and takes off his overcoat to put it around her shoulders. Anywhere else, Stella's intelligence would've been intimidating, but here at Addley's, academic excellence drips off the walls. 

"Want to go to Glen's Diner after school with the girls?" Autumn asks, winking as a boy a few years older than her passes. 

"Sure," I reply. "Know what you're wearing to the end of the year ball?"

Balls, galas and masquerades are another thing Addley's has in abundance. Most students here love them, but they're more of a chore to me. 

"I've only been planning it for an entire semester," Autumn says as if the question offends her. "You?"

"I'll find something." I reply. 

Autumn and I never really worked as one-on-one friends, more friends by association, but she isn't the type to stay quiet. "Are you excited?" 

"Yeah," I reply. It's a lie. Maybe it's my hate for big parties, or the dramatic building notes of Tabby's piano, but I have the sense that the end of the year ball will not end well.