Once An Eve Novel

doorway to the kitchen, her sweater pressed to her face, trying to quiet her sobs. Sarah wasn’t here. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do except hold her, her cheek pressed against my chest as she cried. After a few minutes I’d returned to the girls and Headmistress Burns, answered their questions and assured them my friend was fine, just sick from all those hours trapped in the Jeep’s stuffy cab.
    “The guards have brought up your bags.” Teacher Agnes turned in to a room on the right, moving through it, lighting the lanterns on the bedside tables. The familiar sounds of the students filled the corridor. The girls were huddled in the bathroom, brushing their teeth, their laughs louder against the tile walls. A Teacher strode out of the bathroom, turning when she noticed me. We stared at each other a moment before her face broke into a smile, which disappeared so quickly I wondered if I’d imagined it.
    It was Teacher Florence.
    “I’ll just be a minute,” I said, holding up a finger to Beatrice, who had settled down on the bed. Teacher Florence was still in her red blouse and blue slacks, her gray hair wavy from the humidity. “I was wondering if I would see you.” I glanced down the hall to the staircase to make sure Headmistress Burns was not in sight. “You’re all right?”
    We were standing in the hall, where I’d stood so many times, those nights when Ruby and I hovered outside the bathroom, waiting for a free sink. Teacher Florence gestured to a door at the end of the corridor—my old room—and we ducked inside. It was empty. She didn’t speak until we were alone, the metal door shut behind us. “I’m doing well,” she said. “And so are you, I hope.” Her eyes searched my face.
    I didn’t answer. I couldn’t stop looking at the room. They’d moved our beds so they were in a row against one wall. All three were unmade, strewn with tattered books and crumpled uniforms. A notepad on one bedside table was covered with doodles. Pinned to the wall above the desk was a paper with a black-and-white drawing of two girls, the words ANNIKA & BESS: FRIENDS FOREVER written below it in big puffy letters. All traces of Pip, Ruby, and me were gone.
    “I am. Life’s much different in the City,” I said, ignoring the lump in the back of my throat.
    “I didn’t know you were the King’s daughter,” Teacher Florence stated. “It was something only Headmistress Burns knew.” She sat down on a narrow bed, her fingers picking at the stiff gray blanket.
    I wondered if that would’ve changed things—if she still would’ve helped me escape that night, taking me out through the secret door in the wall. “I figured as much,” I said slowly.
    “I heard that Arden was brought back, that she’s on the other side of the lake now. Did you know?” she asked.
    I sat down beside her. “I did.” We both stared ahead, not meeting each other’s eyes. “I saw her when I was in the wild. She saved me.” I looked at the broken tile in the floor, the one that Pip and I used to hide notes under. The cracked piece was missing now, the dirty grout exposed.
    She stood, fidgeting with the keys in her pocket. “I was the one who brought the girls to the graduation ceremony. Pip didn’t want to leave. She started crying. She swore something had happened to you—that you never would’ve left. She kept asking Headmistress Burns to have the guards search outside the wall. It made me wonder about what I had told you …” She trailed off, her hand moving in her pocket, filling the quiet with the jingling of keys. “… maybe it could’ve been different.”
    I had replayed that moment in my head so many times before, recounting Teacher Florence’s words, her orders that I must go alone. I had imagined all the different things I could’ve done, imagined myself waking Pip and Ruby, or hiding out somewhere beyond the wall. I imagined coming back the next day when they congregated on the lawn, yelling to them about the Graduates and all the King’s plans.
    Teacher Florence walked to the far corner, where a single chair sat against the wall. She slid it forward. “It wasn’t until after the girls went over the bridge that I discovered this. I’d come back to clear out the room.”
    I kneeled behind the chair with her, my fingers running over the carved letters. EVE + PIP + RUBY WERE HERE , it said. I’d forgotten all about it. Pip had come into the room one morning after breakfast excited