CHAPTER 76 – Hurt

LAPA.
Monday.
Week 8.

So began Eppie’s observation diary of Valorie Sanders.

Her espionage work began with Lim, who had no qualms informing her where Valorie lived, where she usually hung out with William, and where and at what time Valorie could usually be found.

This gross invasion of privacy felt so creepy to Eppie that she had to mentally stop herself from refusing Lim’s liberal information, while reminding herself that William had already acquired far more on Euphemia Fontaine.

In the morning, she jogged in her hoodie and sweats to Lim’s nominated location at LAPA’s parking bay. After a few laps, she found Valorie and William being dropped off by a palatial-looking Mercedes G-wagon at the gates.

With the weather warming, Valorie had switched back to her old uniform—four-figure jackets and knee-length skirts in the Blair Waldorf style, headband and all. William didn’t look like a kid at all. With his long limbs and six-three height, he looked like some C-pop star from the mid 2020s, a fact cemented by his pale, almost vampiric appearance, an impression heightened by his elongated fox-slit eyes.

The two walked from the drop-off to the Old Music Building, greeting the students who came to pay their respects, then disappeared.

Valorie spends her weekends at William’s house. Lim had said.

So they’re happily married? Eppie huffed as she ran the circuit again. They had been dating longer than some of her teachers had been married, according to rumours.

For her morning Gen-Ed, Valorie attended AP English, AP Government and Politics, and Pre-Calculus on alternating days. She had AP French and Physics.

At lunch, Eppie observed Val going to and from her Musical Theatre and Theatre double-major arts blocks, but could not observe Valorie because of her own Sophomore block.

And for the Senior Block, she was right there with Valorie anyway, feeding each other lines.

Five weeks into their production schedules, both of their plays began to take shape. For the Sophomores, Eppie’s Draconian scheduling meant that not only were they under budget, but each phase took place without a day’s delay. No sickness, tardiness, or missing crew member derailed her project because Eppie had redundancies for everything. Across five weeks, her management thoroughly impressed all of her instructors and brought tears to Susan Carr’s eyes.

Tyker even jokingly asked if she would like to take up the role of Budget Chair for the Senior Production.

Eppie refused, citing that she had made enough enemies.

On Friday, Eppie sat through Dr Kirby’s final lesson of the week while day-dreaming about her booked trip for that same night, keeping Maddie’s email open in a tab as Kirby spoke about the dilemma of control.

Guess I’ll be observing Val over the weekend too… Eppie bit her lips.

“THE HIGH COURT,” Dr Kirby raised her voice when she caught Eppie slacking. “Not the church, not the Salem, but the COURT, cannot ever admit its own wrongdoing. Why? Eppie?”

It was just as well that Eppie knew the answer a lifetime ago.

“Mills himself tells us in the foreword.” She smiled back at her teacher. “He tells us that these are frightened children in the woods. He says that outside the fragile candlelight of Salem, there is only the Devil’s Preserve. There’s Indians…”

“Native Americans, Miss Fontaine.” Kirby interrupted. Someone chortled.

“Sorry… Indigenous Americans,” Eppie corrected herself. “And they’re killing every Pilgrim they can get their hands on. They’re blocking the trade routes, burning the fields, scalping their victims. Wabanaki Nation raids on the Pilgrims were common. Some of the families are literally surviving households from other Colonies.”

“Therefore?” Dr Kirby was impressed enough to ignore her email-checking.

“Therefore,” Eppie looked around the class as her [Script Analysis] clocked in to work. “Faith must absolve doubt, because the alternative is unthinkable. Danforth cannot refuse the girls now, not after he’s hung people, because the authority of the Church, of the High Court, is the only thing keeping Salem in one piece. Danforth cannot out Abigail—the court hanged forty men and women who are innocent rather than admit that they, and therefore God, are fallible.”

And this is why every scandal at LAPA is buried, why William Chen walks. Eppie noted with bitterness and irony. This is why Principal Burton won’t actively act to protect Mio, and why VP Thomas had Eppie sign an NDA. LAPA’s loss of credibility would ruin LAPA as it exists, and with it, the dreams of five hundred students, fee-paying and state-sponsored, would go up in flames.

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VP Thomas would rather let Mio disappear a second time than burn down the school she had spent ten years rebuilding. Burton… would prefer the new money chased out, offering Mio as a human sacrifice.

Lana, a lifetime ago, would have accepted far worse outcomes, just to keep the stock price pumped…

With Kirby satisfied, she kept an eye on the board and set her mind to karmic accounting.

[All the World’s a Stage]
Should she… save up?
Or should she spend to maximise returns?

Her [Prophet of Profits] trembled. Lana had been an aggressive day trader and an excellent hedge fund manager before the AI bubble flew her into the sun. Given the choice, she ALWAYS invested proactively rather than played the long game. She had borrowed Umbrella to frighten away William, and now she needed another song to top up her [Causality].

Was it possible to produce a song SOLELY for [Causality]?
Evidence suggested not really.
Everything thus far… was tethered by karmic threads.

So who the hell was House of the Rising Sun supposed to be for?

Twirling her pen, she audited her karmic tethers once more.
Eppie. Valorie. Simone. Luciana. Kellie. Kelvin. Kiritani.
Just WHO THE HELL—