Freya Arsov sits on top of a world of diamonds and sports cars. Her father is a billionaire, head of a world-renown company, her mother, an esteemed lawyer. She attends the most prestigious boarding school in England. She has four amazing best frien...
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SOFT EVENING SUNLIGHT FILTERED into the sitting room of Ebony House. Amelie had fled the upstairs rooms after she'd passed her room and was once again bombarded by memories of last term. To calm herself, she'd decided to take the time before the welcome ceremony and Maye and Juliet's arrival to go through all the texts and social media updates she'd missed over the summer.
She passed by pictures of Maye and Freya lounging on yachts in Cali and mowed through endless messages from Raina, guilt threading her stomach.
She ruefully found herself scrolling through Karsyn's Instagram, scrutinising each and every selfie, tapping on the profile of every tagged person. She felt like a lunatic. She exited the app and threw her phone a distance away on the couch.
It was then she heard the door open and the squeals, telling her that Juliet and Maye had finally arrived.
She willed him out of her head and flew to the foyer where both girls stood and joined in on their squealing. Anyone who passed outside the house would perhaps assume they were being murdered.
"Amelie!" They both said in unison, and there was a round of hugging.
Juliet looked as she always did after summer. Tanned and glorious. Her skin was naturally gold and pretty, making her emerald eyes stand, and during the term, it stayed that way. But when she returned, she looked radiant, and her sunlight brown hair flayed around her pretty face like a lion's mane.
Mayella's head of sleek and silk black hair brushed against Amelie's face as she tiptoed to hug her. It wasn't that Amelie was short. In fact, Amelie was quite tall in comparison to the others. It's just that Mayella was taller. She was slender and towering, with high cheekbones and curved eyes from her Asian heritage. Not a single tan touched Mayella's porcelain skin for someone who lived in California.
"I've missed you!" Juliet mused, finally stepping back to watch her from head to toe.
Maye too watched her, nothing short of suspicion flickering in her dark eyes.
Amelie knew it was coming, the questions. She braced for it.
"Where have you been?" Juliet, a French-speaker, had a flawless English accent, not even a ghost of French glittered on the edges of her accent. Then again, Raina, who had failed Spanish every year since Amelie knew her, easily juggled English and Arabic and a bit of Farsi without a hitch. Amelie wouldn't even start on Freya, the biggest showoff of language she knew. Amelie had barely a single grasp on French and had struggled with it for the entire summer. If she told anyone that her aunt was from France, they would not believe her.
"I was in Paris for the whole summer," Amelie revealed, feeling her friend's curiosity.
Juliet blinked.
"And you didn't tell me!" She shook her head. "I could have taken the jet and come to you, Amelie! Paris!"
Juliet's raging was light-hearted, Amelie knew, but it dug at her. She'd ignored them all for the entire summer. For what? Because she had made a mistake?
