DARK ANGEL (Scarlett of the wolves #2)

6

Until Wednesday, the days passed with their share of complications. Everything had to be managed at the same time: the courses, the work to be returned, the research. And as if that weren’t enough, we were given the task of preparing a study project for next year. It had barely started! Three long days had already passed and I admit that despite my sentimental concerns, they had passed at a prodigious pace.

I hadn’t called Elgin since leaving his apartment the previous Sunday. I had expected him to do it first, but he didn’t. Resentful, I had preferred to chomp on my brains and fight not to contact him, but this untenable wait had only fuelled my imagination. I thought of this situation more and more as inevitable. I wanted to be wrong, but the fact that he didn’t call me taunted me in my dark thoughts. I was convinced that this blond was taking all his time.

I was emotionally unstable, irritable, and extremely moody. Having not told Tarja about the situation, she must not understand my repetitive mood swings. Perhaps she had blamed them on the stress accumulated this week? I hoped so anyway. Either way, she was far too polite to ask questions.

Thursday afternoon we were on our way to college, we had a class with Mr Jefferson at four o’clock. We arrived ten minutes early. Usually, there were always a few students waiting outside the door of the lecture hall for at least half an hour, but this time, no one.

“We’re not in the right place!” exclaimed Tarja, looking at the note stuck on the door of the lecture hall. 

“What are you talking about?” 

“We must have missed something; we have an appointment downtown. The first excursion is today!” 

I stepped forward to read for myself what was written.

“How could we miss this? Damn! We have an appointment in five minutes at the fountain on Market Street!” 

“We can make it,” Tarja decided, pulling me by the arm. 

We ran so fast that when we got there, we were sweaty and out of breath. Well, I was, anyway... I let myself fall to the ground, leaning against the fountain.

“We’re not the last!” laughed Tarja. 

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes for a moment. I was exhausted, this kind of effort was hard on me every time.

“Oh, no...” Tarja snarled.  

“What?” 

“Look who’s coming.”  

I lowered my head and saw Minah and Rucker with the twenty or so missing students.

“Oh, no!” I cried, seized with growing panic.   

“What’s wrong?” Tarja asked. 

“I forgot Elgin has to give a tour as well. Jefferson requested that two Art History students take charge of a group, Elgin is one of them. But with them,” I said, nodding to Rucker and Minah, “I’m afraid things will turn out badly.”  

“I don’t see him,” she said, looking around. “Are you sure he’ll come?”

I stood up and let out a long sigh.

Come to think of it, I don’t know exactly what worried me the most. Seeing Elgin confront Rucker once again or... seeing him at all.

“Hi, Scarlett,” Minah cooed, approaching.  

“Hi.”  

“You put yourself in our group?” 

The ‘our’ implied that she and Rucker wouldn’t be the only ones visiting. Caught off guard, I didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t think so,” a voice that I knew well thundered behind my back. “She’ll come with us.”  

I turned slowly on Elgin.

Furious, he glared at Minah and Rucker. I was about to walk towards him, but my first step was stopped abruptly by a violent leap in my chest. The blond was behind him, inches from his back. Her stunning beauty almost made me nauseous. What was she doing here?

“Scarlett?” Elgin said impatiently.  

I couldn’t answer, I was a statue, staring at this girl. She turned to look at him intently, then put her long fingers with painted nails on his shoulder. The gesture was so sweet that I flinched. She leaned over and whispered something in his ear that I didn’t hear.

My blood quivered in my veins and my ears turned as scarlet as the lipstick she was wearing. So, without even thinking for a single second of the consequences, I stepped back to stand next to Minah.

“I’ll take the tour with Rucker and Minah,” I said. 

Elgin’s face first expressed profound surprise before it hardened further, to the point where I thought he was going to explode. He took a step in our direction, but Miss World caught him by the arm.

“Very well,” she nodded, gazing at me coldly before looking at Minah. “It’s best if the group is divided into two. Sixteen with us, and sixteen with you. You agree?”   

“Absolutely!” Rucker said with a smile far too bright to be sincere.  

I didn’t dare look up at Elgin anymore, I stubbornly looked at my feet. I felt he kept his eyes on me.

Tarja walked over and whispered in my ear:

“What are you doing?”  

“I have no idea,” I replied just as quietly. 

She let out a long sigh and scratched her forehead.

“I’m going home.” 

“But why? You know the tour is compulsory.” 

“I know but... I don’t feel very well, I don’t like this situation. It’s ridiculous.” 

Before I could add another word, she turned around and I was very tempted to join her.

As she walked away, my eyes met Elgin. He had never looked at me with contempt before. It was the first time and it gripped my heart so violently that I almost ran up to him to tell him I was sorry. But I had my pride, I didn’t feel like I had anything to blame myself for. No one behaved with me as this girl had just done with him.

He gave me one last glare, disappointed, and turned his back on me to begin the city tour with his group.

I followed Rucker and Minah and took one last look behind me. The other group had already disappeared in another street.

I was half-listening to what our guides were saying. While most of the students took notes, I hadn’t taken out any paper or pencil. I was obsessed with what had just happened with Elgin. Yet I had to admit that Rucker was an excellent speaker. The students hung from his lips, he recounted St Andrews’ medieval past as if he had lived it himself. He was adding a few anecdotes, which I assumed were his own, just to wow the gallery, as no one could know so many details. It seemed that I was the only one to notice his show, the others were in awe.

Despite everything, and against all odds, I noticed that Rucker and Minah were very different from previous times. Pleasant, smiling and courteous, they patiently answered any question asked, even the most idiotic. They were nothing like the odious characters I had met last week.

As the tour continued, I would frequently look behind me, hoping to cross paths with the other group and find that Elgin didn’t blame me, that he would have calmed down. After all, what I had just done wasn’t that bad!

“Scarlett, are you alright?”  

Minah had approached me discreetly and had taken me by the arm to distance us a little from the others.

“Fine.”  

I didn’t have the heart to lie and no one was fooled.

“I don’t want to get involved in anything that doesn’t concern me but you know, you have the right to decide for yourself. Your boyfriend is a bit bossy with you, isn’t he? Why can’t you see whoever you want? You don’t need his permission.”  

I looked at her suspiciously, why was she showing so much compassion to me all of a sudden? Then, taking advantage of her outburst of kindness, I decided to find out more about what had been bothering me for days.

“The girl who was with Elgin, the blond, you know her?”  

“Georgia? Yes, of course, everyone knows her.” 

“Oh, yes?” 

“Georgia is that kind of girl who enjoys life if you know what I mean.” 

“No, not really.” 

“She doesn’t care what people think of her, she lives life to the full as they say, and not just life.”  

An icy sweat ran through my spine as I realized what she was referring to.

“She doesn’t have a very good reputation with women. The majority of college girls see her as a potential threat.”   

“Yeah,” I sighed in annoyance. 

“Didn’t your boyfriend tell you about her?” 

“Uh, no. Should he have?”  

“I think so, yes… Well, I don’t know, I would have liked mine to do so anyway.”

I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to like what Minah was going to reveal to me. Because now it was clear that I wanted to know everything.

“Can you tell me more?” 

“You should ask him instead.” 

“Yes, but you see, he’s not here!”  

She stopped walking for a few seconds to leave a little more distance between the group and us. I followed her.

“Georgia was Elgin’s girlfriend for the whole of last year,” she said. 

Although I expected it, I received the news like a stab.

“In fact,” she said, “no one ever knew if their relationship was very serious. Both Georgia and Elgin had more of a knack for cultivating other relationships.” 

I had a heavy chest; I was running out of air. The words Elgin and infidelity in one sentence choked me.

“I’m sorry, Scarlett...” 

She sounded so damn sincere.

“It’s okay. We had talked about this before, but not specifically Georgia.”  

“Maybe there’s something else you should know.”  

I raised an eyebrow. Yet I felt like it had all been said and was not positively cheerful about another revelation.

“Georgia and Elgin live together.”  

“What?!” I yelled so loudly that the whole group turned on us.   

“Calm down, Scarlett. It’s not the way it sounds. They were roommates before they were together and... they still are, well I think.”   

Roommates... that’s something I hadn’t even thought about. From the start, I had imagined that he was sharing his apartment with a man. I was blown away. I laughed nervously. The mystery of the spotless apartment was solved.

“At the beginning, there were three, with another guy who left the university very quickly. They got together and... well, that’s that.”  

“How do you know all this?”  

“St Andrews isn’t that big and the circles of friends mix, everything ends up in the open.”   

“However, it seemed to me that Elgin (implying the Circle) and you weren’t very close!”   

All at once, a small hope came to me that perhaps she had invented the whole story.

“That’s putting it mildly! However, I’m still aware of all this.”  

I stared at her. Unfortunately, she didn’t look like someone who was just talking nonsense.

Enraged by everything I had just learned, I rushed over to the group of students. The visit would be over in a few minutes, my ordeal with it.

A billion morbid ideas were popping up in my head. What if I show up at Elgin’s apartment tonight and knock him out with a baseball bat? Ridiculous, I wouldn’t even hurt him. Yet I wanted to try, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it a lot! Pff... I didn’t mean a word of it.

Rucker finished the very informative tour. Except that I had learned nothing about the history of St Andrews and elsewhere, I didn’t care at all. Without saying a word, I waved my hand at Minah and decided to go talk to Elgin. I was determined. He had no right to take me for a fool and he was going to see what I would do about it.

As I walked, I imagined all the scenarios that would best illustrate my anger. But as I got near his home, the few grams of courage I had flew away one by one. In front of the open door of his apartment building, I hesitated to enter. I wasn’t at all sure of myself. I didn’t even know if he was already here.

I took the elevator and watched the button lights come on at each floor.

1... 2... 3... 4... 5...

The door opened.

I sluggishly left and walked to Elgin’s door, my legs shaking. I took a deep breath before giving a few quiet knocks. No answer. My heart, which was pounding at a mad speed, slowed down in a moment of respite.

What was I supposed to do? Leave? I didn’t have much time to think, footsteps rushed on the stairs. I leaned over the handrail to see who it was, and two seconds later, although I didn’t see anyone running, Elgin appeared on the bottom step.

As I was about to open my mouth to attack, he walked past me without a word, opened his front door and closed it, leaving me like a jerk on the landing.

Elgin 1 - Scarlett 0.