Blaire's Body

LA PRELUDE

dedicated to theegonometry because she hates my stories but reads them because i force her to. ily.

YEAR: 2016

FOR KADENCE GAARDNER, pretending that nothing ever happened is easy. Pretending in itself has always come naturally to her - from the moment she showed herself in her mother's uterus (everyone thought she was a boy initially) to sashaying down the halls of Avensgrove High as if everything were fine. Normal. No one sees the cracks rippling across her skin, nor heard the slight tremor in her voice earlier that morning - no. Everything is fine. Perfect as it should be.

It has been a year since Blaire DuMonte has died. A year and a month since they reported her missing. A year since they found her body in the bottom of Avensgrove Lake. It has been a year - and her presence is forgotten. A ghost of the past. Her face may still be on Kadence's polaroids, and on their group pictures, but she is gone. Everything is fine. Everything is good.

This is what Kadence Gaardner tells herself as she sits down, taking her spot in The Middle Table, the table that is like literally every other table except it is in the middle of the cafeteria and is apparently the only place for the high-flyers, the kings and queens of Avensgrove High. Here, everyone can see her. Here, everyone orbits around her. Here, she is vulnerable.

But she takes her seat with class and grace, or as much of it as she can manage, because she knows that everyone's eyes are on her. This is what it is like to be Kadence Gaardner. Untouchable. Shiny hair and shiny skin and shiny smiles all lying on the surface, covering what she really is - poison.

Kadence Gaardner sits on the throne of Avensgrove High, a throne made of skulls and bones and soaked in the blood of man. But she is not as untouchable as she says she is.

After all, thrones are made to be stolen, and queens are built to fall.

- - -

XIENNA ALISTER IS mad. Pissed. Furious. Fucking enraged.

Why?

Because her best friend is an idiot - a fucking idiot. Xienna warned her about the consequences of pretense, but Kade never listens - not to anyone. She watches from the back of the cafeteria as Kadence Gaardner slips into her seat with a smile fixed on her face - the picture of beauty and grace.

She knows Kadence better than anyone else. She knows that she loves pretending, faking it until she makes it. But Kadence, for all her beauty and brains, does not know how people will react. Last year today, Blaire DuMonte's body was buried in the ground. Last year today, one of their best friends died. Today, Kadence is allowed not to be picture perfect - she is not supposed to. She is supposed to cry, to be a bit more quiet, to mourn the death of the girl she used to call sister.

Xienna sighs, knowing that Kadence can clear her mess up later. She walks into the canteen and takes her seat beside her best friend. All eyes are on the two of them, she knows this for a fact. Xienna wants to do nothing more than give Kade a black eye, and she knows that if she punched anyone else, no one would really be surprised. But punching her best friend would mean that Kadence would cry and slip into a different person. See, where Kade was a verbal abuser and pretender, Xienna was the physical tormentor. They were a match crafted by Satan themselves.

For the first time since last year, Xienna, Kadence, Braxton, Maverick and Orianna remain quiet, allowing the others to make conversation around them. The others - the girls and the boys who know nothing about Blaire DuMonte - their voices carry, and float in the air. People who Xienna doesn't really care much for.