Episode Three: The Sisterhood #3 Read online

  “Eva,” the girl says, one thick, curved eyebrow arching impressively. “And if you think that’s funny, I’ll kick your ass.”

  “Iris,” Iris repeats, this time to the second girl.

  The redhead looks at Iris’s hand with obvious skepticism in her eyes. Ultimately, she refuses to shake it. But she offers an explanation, and her name. “Penny,” she says, “and I don’t touch other people. On principle.”

  “On principle,” Autumn can’t help but laugh, “and what does that mean?”

  “Who’s asking?” Eva jabs back, already protective of her seatmate.

  “This is Fall,” Iris offers before Autumn can speak, causing them both to launch into a fresh round of uproarious laughter.

  Penny and Eva exchange glances, silently agreeing that the two girls behind them are bat shit nuts. And that they should probably protect them at any and all cost.

  “It’s not Fall,” Autumn wheezes out between bouts of giggles. “It’s Autumn.”

  “Autumn. What the hell kind of name—” but Eva is cut off by a sudden round of exclamations from around them.

  The mostly quiet ride devolves into an excited cacophony. Eva and Penny turn back around in their seats to look up ahead of them, and Autumn and Iris lean towards the window to get a glance of whatever has caught the collective attention of the transport.

  The reason for the excitement is immediately clear: the wrought iron, gated entrance to the campus of the Whitmore School for Girls looms ahead of them, impressive and imperious at once. The mountains around them give way to a clearing, but the edges of the fence fade into fog in the distance—a characteristic of the Appalachian hills familiar to any who call the area home.

  The gates swing open in front of them, and Autumn finds her fingertips gripping tightly to Iris’s in anticipation as they enter.

  A few miles back, another transport is bumping its way up the mountainside. And Summer is trying valiantly to avoid throwing up. It’s not the type of first impression she wants to make, believe it or not.

  “Peppermint?” a quiet voice pipes up from her right.

  Summer valiantly drags her eyes away from the window where she’d been trying to find a horizon to fixate on—an arduous task on a winding mountain path. As soon as she turns, she is met with a plastic-wrapped red and white mint.

  “Just like grandma used to carry,” the girl continues. Summer’s eyes uncross and she sees the girl, all freckled with a button nose and affable grin. Her dark brown hair hangs straight across in a short style that lands just above her shoulders. “Helps with the nausea.”

  Summer does her best to smile, sure that her face must be a sickly green hue. She takes the peppermint and unwraps it quickly, popping it into her mouth to curb the queasiness of her stomach. She sucks on it for a moment, eyes closed, before she feels her shoulders relax.

  Eyes open again, she tongues the mint over into her cheek and leans back. She extends her hand to the girl next to her. “Thank you, what a miracle your grandmother is—I’m already feeling better. I’m Summer.”

  “Nice to meet you Summer, I’m Arke.”

  “That’s a cool name,” Summer says, and Arke murmurs her thanks. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m a local,” Arke replies, “but my family are kind of all over the place. Carolina is home though, you know?”

  “Yeah, my family hails from Virginia,” Summer nods, her penchant for sometimes speaking as if she’s from another era rearing its head. “But I don’t know that I’d so much call it home as a place to be from time to time.” She grins at Arke, and Arke grins shyly back. “I’m excited to see the School, I’ve heard so much about it.”

  Arke shrugs a shoulder. “It’s not so exciting once you’ve seen it a few times. Just another southern boarding school, but this one is up in the hills.”

  “‘Just another boarding school’ is exactly the thing a Whitmore would say.”

  Across the aisle from them, two girls have had their heads down together, chatting away a mile a minute. They act as if they’ve known each other all their short lives, and maybe they have. One girl—with skin so pale as to nearly be transparent and a shock of platinum blonde hair atop her head—is the one who has spoken up, interrupting Summer and Arke’s conversation.

  She hasn’t said it rudely, not necessarily—just like she’s stating a truth that everyone else should have already been aware of.

  “A Whitmore, huh?” the Black girl beside her says. “You one of the twins?”

  Arke nods and extends her hand to these new strangers. “Arke Whitmore,” she says, confirming the blonde’s voiced suspicions from before. She shakes each of their hands, and they introduce themselves as Blake Brenner, the blonde who spoke up first, and Zosia LeDoux, her seatmate. “Nice to meet you both.”

  “I’m Summer Norwood,” Summer leans across Arke to shake their hands.

  “Norwood,” Arke says. “A legacy, then?”

  Summer nods, and Zosia snorts from across the aisle. “And since you don’t recognize the two of us, Whitmore, you must realize that our parents bought our way in, yeah?”

  Arke ducks her chin down to her chest before looking up at the other two girls through her thick eyelashes. “I did figure as much,” she admits.

  Blake and Zosia each keep their faces smooth as stone before looking at each other, then cracking cheeky grins. Blake answers for them both with, “Honesty is important between friends.”

  And friends they will be, for a long time to come.

  In only a few minutes more, as the four girls continue to chat, they come upon the entrance to the Whitmore School for Girls. And as Summer tunes out of the conversation, she takes in the gate as it opens, splitting open the Whitmore “W” into two “V”s as it gapes widely to admit them.

  Autumn’s transport has already started unloading, and her new friends—Eva Sivandian and Penny Lawrence—are grilling their other new friend, Iris, about her last name, which has just been revealed.

  “You’re a Whitmore twin?!” Eva gapes, even as she helps Penny set her trunk right-side up in the drive. “I can’t believe you haven’t already spilled that info, dude. Where’s your other half?”

  “The transports up were assigned randomly. Trust me, we don’t get any special treatment.”

  Eva gives a disbelieving snort.

  “Well, they can’t do everything together, can they?” Penny asks, frowning—a feature that the other girls are already starting to see appears to be a permanent fixture on her face.

  “What do names matter, anyway?” Autumn asks. “My last name has changed at least three times in three generations—that’s what my dad tells me, anyway. Parish is a family name, but not the one his dad would have passed down, even.”

  “Why does your family change names so often?” Iris asks, intrigued—and in a hurry to change the conversation from her own surname and legacy.

  Autumn shrugs. “Anything to be more white-passing ‘cause of how much people hate Indian people.”

  Eva snorts. “You’re not Indian,” she says.

  “Yes I am,” Autumn says, her defenses raised, even among new friends. “We’re Cherokee,” she says.

  “Oh!” Eva proclaims, clapping her hand against her forehead. “You meant that kind of Indian.”

  Suddenly Iris looks stricken. She grasps Autumn by the wrist and whispers, “But how does your family feel—” she gestures over her shoulder at the imposing figure of the Whitmore School, “—sending you here?”

  “Well, my mom came here when she was my age. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “It used to be a residential school,” Penny offers.

  When Autumn’s furrowed brow betrays her confusion at this statement, Eva continues for Penny.

  “A Native boarding school. You know, for Indian kids. To wipe out their language and shit.”

  Iris looks into Autumn’s eyes, almost pleadingly. “The place has a pretty awful history,” she says. “But it hasn’t been that in over s
eventy years!”

  Autumn looks up at the school in a new light. Why hadn’t her mom said as much?

  “Well.” She thinks long and hard, for a good half a minute at least, before grabbing Iris’s hand to reassure her. “That was a long time ago. I mean, not a long time ago, but you know what I mean. As long as it’s not haunted, right?”

  Iris lets out a nervous chuckle and is opening her mouth to respond to Autumn’s nonchalant but also very serious inquiry into the likelihood of spectral roommates when another transport pulls up.

  The girls are all distracted by the next batch of newcomers, and those who haven’t yet heard that Iris is a Whitmore—and a twin—are surprised to see her nearly identical doppelganger hop down the transport steps. They could be the same person, Autumn thinks, if it wasn’t for the difference in the color of their hair.

  Iris immediately gives an enormous wave in her sister’s direction, and Arke gives a shy smile and head nod back.

  But Autumn is distracted—not by the twins’ exchange, but by the girl who steps off of the transport just after Arke.

  Her golden hair cascades around her shoulders, and as Autumn looks on, she pulls it up into a high ponytail. Her features are strong, her smile disarming, even from a distance and when not aimed directly at Autumn. She’s wearing these honey-colored chinos that cinch just above her ankles, stylish shoes that Autumn can’t even imagine owning, and a bright white t-shirt that looks like it’s probably never even been worn before. The shirt shows off the girl’s arms and fits her snugly. She’s also sporting dark sunglasses that hide her eyes, and Autumn feels lucky at this, relief that she doesn’t have yet another feature to swoon over.

  She may only be twelve, but Autumn fears she’s just figured out what love at first sight feels like.

  Across the drive, Summer is just putting up her hair into a ponytail to grab two of her three duffels. She sees another group of girls going through their things, grabbing them from beneath their own transport and heading up to the school’s front steps in groups of twos and threes.

  But one girl catches Summer’s attention. Because she’s just staring at her. So Summer takes her time, making a show of looking around—but all the while, her shaded eyes take in this girl who seems as enraptured by Summer as Summer is beginning to be by her. The girl is wearing a jean jacket with a striped blue and green shirt beneath it. She’s wearing denim shorts that used to be jeans, and Converse on her feet that have seen better days—but Summer thinks they look cute, like they’ve got character for ages. The girl’s hands are shoved into the pockets of her jacket, and the wind is blowing her short brown hair into her face. As Summer looks on, the girl combs her fingers back through her hair, scooping it all to one side and out of her face. She’s small, compact—looks almost like she could be a gymnast or something like that. Powerful and interesting—two of Summer’s favorite things.

  And Summer knows one thing for sure, and she knows it immediately: she has got to get to know this girl.

  “Come on,” Arke says, her soft voice interrupting Summer’s thoughts. “Grab your bags, I want you to meet my sister.”

  The two groups of girls converge near the stairs that lead up into the grand entrance of the Whitmore School for Girls. On one side, Iris and Autumn with Eva and Penny just behind them. On the other, Arke and Summer with Zosia and Blake side by side over their shoulders, pinkies linked.

  When Iris and Arke get close enough to each other, they share a conspiratorial wink and a practiced fist bump before turning to the girls next to them for introductions. While Autumn and Summer are busy staring at each other and forgetting what exactly words are, the other four girls make acquaintances with one another.

  “Autumn?” Iris pokes her finger into Autumn’s shoulder.

  “Y-yeah?” Autumn asks, finally pulling her eyes away from the tall, golden-haired goddess across from her.

  “This is my sister,” she says, “Arke.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Autumn finally musters, and Arke says, “Likewise.”

  And then the goddess removes her sunglasses, and Autumn is looking into eyes gray as slate, and warmer than she thought such a color could be.

  “I’m Summer,” the girl says, reaching out and shaking Iris’s hand.

  Then she turns to Autumn. And Autumn takes a step forward to shake Summer’s hand, which she hadn’t done when meeting Arke. But something about this feels different. Something about this moment is special, she just knows it.

  And Summer feels the same, stepping forward to meet the girl in a firm handshake. And when her hand finally slips into Autumn’s, she isn’t sure exactly what it is she feels in the pit of her stomach—it’s uncomfortable, a clenching motion that she can’t explain. And what she doesn’t know is that Autumn is feeling something very similar, laced with an awe at how good Summer’s hand feels in hers; strong, and certain, and delightfully warm.

  “Summer and Autumn,” Zosia barks out a laugh from over Summer’s shoulder.

  Blake joins in with a giggle of her own. “Would you look at that.”

  And behind Autumn, Eva and Penny exchange a glance. Eva’s face splits into a grin and Penny’s frown turns up into a rare smirk at the funny way the two girls are acting.

  Arke and Iris don’t have to even look at each other to know that they’re both thinking the same thing: something odd is happening. Something important.

  At once, Autumn and Summer seem to come to the same conclusion, that they need to properly introduce themselves.

  “Summer Norwood,” Summer says.

  At the same moment, Autumn blurts out, “Autumn Parish.”

  Their hands tighten around one another, both with mouths gone slack.

  The voice of Summer’s aunt clangs loudly in her head, and the warnings from Autumn’s mother do the same. Years of stories and visceral, unexplained hate explode at once between the two legacies on the Whitmore steps.

  Then, “No freaking way” and “You’ve got to be kidding” leave their respective mouths. They both pull away suddenly, as if disgusted that they had let the contact go on so long.

  Summer grabs her duffels from where she’d hastily dropped them for the round of introductions, shouldering them both and marching up the stairs quickly. Her new posse follows, and Autumn swears she hears Summer whispering the name Parish vehemently to the girls in her wake.

  “Norwood,” Autumn says, once the other crew has disappeared and her new friends have surrounded her, questions on the tips of their tongues. “Well,” she continues, the realization that this girl—this stunning creature that has appeared before her and then stormed off just as suddenly—is exactly the person her mother had warned her to stay away from settling like a stone in her stomach. “Fuck me,” she says.

  And so their tenure at the Whitmore School for Girls begins.

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  Also by Tali Inlow

  The Sisterhood

  The Sisterhood: Episode One (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Two (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Three (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Four (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Five (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Episode Six (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood (Seasons)

  The Sisterhood: Season One (Coming Soon)

  The Sisterhood: Season Two (Coming Soon)

  Watch for more at Tali Inlow’s site.

  About the Author

  Tali Inlow is an up-and-coming author of queer speculative fiction.

  Read more at Tali Inlow’s site.

 

 

  Tali Inlow, Episode Three: The Sisterhood, #3

 

 

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