Gansey Week #1
Gansey is almost relieved to hear her phone ring and have an excuse to duck out of her mother’s birthday party for a brief time. The number on the screen is Monmouth’s, and for a moment she wonders if it’ll be Ronan, calling to give her a break from her relatives, but when she answers it’s Eve’s voice on the other end of the line.
“It’s Eve. Declan just came by. Ronan’s been expelled.”
Gansey’s stomach drops. “Shit,” she says softly, pressing her thumb and forefinger to the corners of her eyes. “Okay. Okay, I’ll figure out a way to fix it.”
“I’m not sure it can be fixed this time. I thought maybe you could talk Declan into letting her stay. He might be easier to convince than the Aglionby admins.”
“He’ll never let her stay with me. As it is he doesn’t like that she’s out of his control, but I’ve done a better job reigning her in since her mom, keeping her in school. But if she’s expelled -- god, I don’t know what he’ll do. He doesn’t like having to explain her to people.” It’s one of the things about Declan that it took Gansey a long time to understand. Ronan’s resentment of him has always been brutal and entirely non-negotiable, but Gansey is the kind of person always looking to give second chances, so she’d tried to see good in him. At first, it had been easy. He wanted his sister to stay in school, he wanted her not to get in so many fights, he wanted her to go to therapy. These all seemed to her then like reasonable things for an older brother to want, but the more she got to know him, the more obvious it became that he didn’t care what happened to Ronan as long as her reputation didn’t interfere with his social life and his future career. Gansey has very little faith in him these days.
“You really don’t think he’d let her stay if you told her that she’d probably --”
Gansey cuts Eve off, not wanting her to finish the sentence. “No, he doesn’t care. Better have a tragedy for a sister than a disgrace.”
“Okay. Okay, if you think you can fix it with the school, give it a try. Sooner rather than later, I think. The letter says she shouldn’t come to class on Monday. Not that she was going to anyway.”
“I’ll fix it tonight. I promise,” she says, like it’s her own mess she’s cleaning up, like she needs to apologize to Eve. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She hangs up the phone and for a moment she just stands in the backyard with it pressed to her chest, her eyes closed. Damn Ronan. But she understands, of course she does. Ronan has always hated school, but she hasn’t always been like this. Belligerent, hostile, unwilling to do anything she doesn’t want to do. And it’s not Ronan’s fault that all she wants to do is go back to the Barns and look after animals. It’s not that she won’t work, it’s that she’s a creature deeply unsuited to the life of prep schools and the Ivy League. She doesn’t belong, and she knows it, and as if that wasn’t enough, she hasn’t had a night’s sleep since she found her mother’s body. Gansey more than anyone else knows that almost everything about Ronan’s life is unfair, but she wishes she could just say damn Ronan and be done with it.
*
Gansey’s measured control lasts just long enough to get her on the highway. She’d been polite throughout her mother’s birthday party, she’d tolerated hearing her birthname all night, she’d been smooth and persuasive with the Aglionby admissions woman, and she’d gotten through a conversation with her father. Really, she ought to be proud of herself, but she only feels exhausted and angry. She presses harder on the gas. With God as her witness, she’s going to get back to Monmouth and beat the shit out of Ronan. Not that she could ever take Ronan in a fight, but she thinks that on a night like this, chances are that Ronan would take the punishment without resistance. How long is she going to have to keep saving Ronan’s sorry ass? When can it stop being her job to drag Ronan to class and back home, to make sure Ronan is studying and not drinking, to keep her from killing herself? There’s a twinge of guilt at that thought, but she pushes it away and keeps pressing on the gas. Ronan can go to hell where she probably belongs.
She should have seen it coming, the way she keeps going faster and faster, but the shuddering of the engine as it dies takes her completely by surprise, and she only just manages to steer onto the shoulder before the wheels stopped moving. Dropping her hands to her lap, she tilts her head back and swears softly. Eve could have fixed whatever is wrong and Gansey has always believed that Ronan’s love of cars is reciprocated, and so as irrational as it is, she feels as though the Pig would have started back up for either of them. Even though it’s her car, the only thing she owns that she’s ever felt looks like her. Looks like her in the deep-down sense that Chainsaw looks like Ronan. She thinks about calling the tow company but she doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone right now. In fact, she’s not entirely sure that she could. She doesn’t go non-verbal very often, but when she does, it’s on nights like this. Maybe if she just waits for the engine to cool, it’ll start back up again. Maybe, like her, it just needs some time to stand still and uncoil.
Gansey has her eyes closed when the car pulls up, but she hears it and the headlights turn the insides of her eyelids orange. She squints through the bright light to see a strangely familiar car. Coincidence, she thinks, though she doesn’t believe in coincidences, though the turning of her stomach tells her that this car belongs to exactly who she thinks it does. The figure emerging from the headlights confirms what her gut is already telling her. It’s Whelk.