The walls between us

I watched the gates of Ravencroft Academy rise from the fog like they'd been carved out of the cliffs themselves-tall, iron, and heartless. The car rolled to a stop, the smell of salt and rain thick in the air, and I tightened my grip on the cracked leather strap of my bag.

"You look like you're going to throw up," a voice said from beside me.

I turned. A girl in the car's other seat scrolled casually through her phone, lips glossed and perfectly disinterested. Her blazer looked tailored. Her eyebrows looked expensive.

"I'm fine," I lied.

She looked up at me properly now, one eyebrow arched like it had a life of its own. "No one's fine on their first day at Ravencroft. They're either terrified... or pretending not to be."

She returned to her screen. I swallowed hard.

Outside, students moved like they'd done this their whole lives-laughing, greeting each other with air kisses and lazy waves. Drivers in black coats unloaded monogrammed trunks from town cars. I was the only one with a duffel bag held together by desperation and duct tape.

My name was on a list. My tuition paid by a scholarship I still half-believed was a mistake. I was here because someone somewhere thought I was "exceptional." But staring at the stone towers above me, I felt about as exceptional as a moth on a window.

I stepped out into the cold.

---

Ravencroft was colder than I'd expected. Not just in temperature, but in tone. The hallways were stone, lined with portraits that looked like they whispered when you passed. A maid in gray led me through a side entrance and up two flights of narrow stairs.

"The South Wing," she said. "Third-floor girls. This used to be the servant quarters."

"Fitting," I muttered, earning a smirk from her before she turned and left.

I dropped my bag on the small twin bed in the corner of my room. The window overlooked the forest beyond the cliffs. Rain drizzled against the glass like fingers tapping to be let in.

There were already whispers about me before the day ended.

"She's the scholarship girl."

"American."

"Did you hear she got expelled from her last school?"

That last one wasn't true. But at Ravencroft, the truth was just the opening line of a better story.

---