Wealth, status, and beauty define the elite of Kensington Prep. Every one of them possesses the ability to get away with anything and everything they want, unscathed and remain as privileged and superior as ever.
But Amory Scout decides that tim...
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After prayers, on the way to the first class of my senior year, I stopped dead in my tracks because I saw a ghost.
She looks different now. She has outgrown her shiny black bob, her dark hair cascading down like a waterfall. Her glasses have been replaced by contacts and her braces are now off. She's taller, slimmer, prettier but there's still bits of her that remain the same- like the mischief in her eyes and her intelligence in the slope of her nose, her kindness in the way she smiles. She's with a boy, chatting animatedly by a water fountain as he bends down to take a drink. Seeing her by that water fountain on the third floor next to the economics classroom reminded me of a long time ago.
I was thirteen, and Delphi was twelve. I had always boasted superiority and shotgun seats on the basis that I was older, even if it's by only two months and fourteen days. She was my only friend at Kensington at the time, mostly because we based our friendship on the foundation that we were the only few kids who didn't live on the Upper East Side. She was a scholarship student and she was awfully smart, thanks to her nearly-photographic memory.
I remembered how we always hung around here by that water fountain, to avoid the cafeteria because as nobodies in Kensington, we would end up with nowhere to sit. But we were okay with that.
We survived Kensington for three years together, cruising by the unassuming years of middle school together unnoticed. We were anonymous but we were fine with that because we didn't crave the drama or the spotlight. We weren't targeted by Orson, Carmen, and their crew of popular kids but we weren't known either; we lived by simple, blissful ignorance.
Delphi hated them. She didn't understand their popularity or everybody's adoration of them, especially since they were such horrible people. She rolled her eyes at them and their fervent admirers. I wasn't like her. I didn't hate them back then. I didn't know them. How could I hate them?
I was merely fascinated with them. The way they beguiled everybody into loving them without any effort, the way they got away with their antics and played their cruel games. I admired them almost, in this twisted mix of disgust and begrudging respect. Until Atticus, of course. Then I see them for what they were.
After Atticus's suicide, Delphi and I grew apart in eighth grade. I started distancing myself from her, becoming a hollow shell of myself, trying to process and deal with the tragedy. We were still friends, somewhat, but it was like there was this bridge of disconnection that built between us.
The transition summer of eighth grade into freshman year was the summer my parents died. By then we stopped being friends completely and I moved to LA.
Looking at her is like peering into a sliver of the past, the very distant past of the last time I was happy. My eyes are focused on her like I'm mesmerized by her face, and our eyes inevitably meet for a few moments; she doesn't recognize me at all. It's been almost three years; her mouth slightly quirks in a barely noticeable awkward smile, as if to say hi, I guess? and the knot in my throat drops into my stomach.
