To Be Gifted

Even dead, she still exuded a sort of beauty, the kind that could only be fully captured in Da Vinci’s Angel. Only, she wasn’t an angel. She was nothing at all.

Well, nothing but a girl with a very important last name. Emily Katherine McKinley.

She would’ve been a very useful addition to my collection. But she was too easily frightened and a little too easy to mould. If only she’d held out for a little while longer, I might have considered keeping her around. That sort of beauty should never go to waste. Emily would never last though; that much I was certain of.

Patting on her cheek, I got off the bed and admired my work. This was my first time but I had to say, I was quite impressive. It was very clean, barely any blood on her bed sheets (I was many things but you could never accuse me of being melodramatic). There were a few wounds. A bruise newly formed on her right eye. A shallow cut on her left wrist. A chest wound, formed because of the dagger, with the word Vengeance engraved into it, straight through her heart.

Vengeance was exactly what I was carrying out. Soon everyone would know my name.

I took another glance at her, checking to ensure that nothing was out of place. The look in her eyes was magnificent—complete horror and fear, as though she was staring at Medusa before her death. Emily looked like she had known she stood no chance, which was perfect.

Right now I was simply content in leaving the students perplexed and horrified by Emily’s death. I laughed thinking about how the Headmaster try to explain and console after Emily’s ‘tragic’ death. The McKinleys would be outraged I imagined, perhaps even withdrawing their donations to the school. I wondered how the Gifted would survive with the slow trickling of donations after this incident made its way to high society.

But it really wasn’t my concern. The Gifted didn’t matter to me, only my collection did. There would be more to come to add to it. And more to add to the school’s body count.

Soon, I promised myself.

Soon.



I’d left the male washroom and returned to my room, only to find Rose sitting on my bed.

“Where were you? I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” Her eyes were large and worried. Rose wrapped her arms around my pillow as though wanting to strangle it.

Evidently, she hadn’t looked in the boys’ washroom. Sighing, I plopped down next to her. “I can’t do it, Rosie. I’m not going for your blind dates, no matter how much you think I need a date.”

She blinked at me like this wasn’t why she’d been looking for me, like she'd already forgotten about it. “That’s not important right now, Hale. Julie Lawrence just found Emily. Emily—she’s dead.”

Emily was dead? Dead? But it couldn’t be true. I just saw Emily at dinner last night. She’d been her usual conceited self, too wrapped up in her own beauty to care about anybody around her.

“Breathe, Hale. Breathe,” reminded Rose. She’d dropped the pillow at some point and was patting my back.

I inhaled deeply and let it out. Then I did it again. Suddenly, it hit me. I was breathing right now but Emily would never take another breath again. “Oh my god.”

“There’s something else you need to know.”

I glanced at Rose and didn’t like the way she looked. Her worry wasn’t just for me, it was for herself as well. Emily’s death was awful but the way Rose looked now… There was more to it. I tried to brace myself.

“I heard from the others that Julie’s a total mess right now.” I gnawed on my lower lip, trying hard not to imagine how it felt like to find that your best friend was dead. Julie and Emily were extremely close and they had opted to share a room, just like Rose and I did. “And that Emily was murdered.”

“How do you know that?” I couldn’t stop my voice from trembling. In fact, my whole body was trembling.

Rose closed her eyes, not wanting to see how I’d react. “There was a knife in her chest.”

I couldn't understand it. Why would anyone want to kill Emily? She might not have been the nicest girl but that wasn’t enough motivation to want to murder her. What did she do? Or was it what hadn't she done?

Another thought struck me. A thought that made me very frightened. How did the murderer even get in? Our school had the best defense system developed. I was pretty sure that the defenses used by the school that wasn’t even deployed in some government facilities. How could anyone get past all that unless he or she had known the systems so well that they could escape notice? Or had it been an inside job? Was it someone from the school?

“What are you thinking of, Hale?”

I didn’t want to alarm Rose so I asked, “What else do you know?”

“That’s all I’ve managed to hear so far. But the teachers seem to be keeping it on the down low; I guess they don’t want to scare us.” Rose wrapped her long arms around her like she was cold. “They announced that they want everyone in their rooms five minutes ago. That’s why I was scared when you didn’t come back.”

I didn’t tell her that five minutes ago I’d been in the boys’ washroom with Drew Sutherland. I didn’t want Rose drawing any strange conclusions, like that I actually liked Drew. I didn't really. Not at all. “You don’t need to worry about me, Rosie. I’m fine, you see?”

She nodded and then stopped, remembering something. “I told you never to call me Rosie again, Hale!”

I smiled back at her, storing my worries and suspicions about Emily’s murder away.



Our school worked differently from other normal high schools.

Firstly, and most obviously, it was a boarding school. We stayed all year round, aside from winter vacations and summer vacations. The rooms were divided between the girls and guys; it also depended on which house you were in. Rose and I were in Blue (unlike in Harry Potter, the houses did not have cool names) while her boyfriend, Tyler was in Yellow. Drew was also in Yellow but Trent was in Red. Emily had been in Green.

Also, the school wasn’t actually called the School of the Elite and Gifted. Its actual name was Alexander Sanderson’s Academy for Fine Gentlemen and Ladies. Alex Sanderson had been a very rich man and used all his money to set up this school, probably in hopes that history would remember him. Sadly, history wasn’t very good to him despite all the money he’d spent. The first name was what it was better known for and so, how everyone remembered it.

The Gifted and the Elite didn’t share any classes together. We only shared our dorms. The Headmaster didn’t provide any details why, only that we were two very different groups and while he wanted us to build friendships, thus sharing dorms, he didn’t want to distract either group from their objectives. It was clear that the Gifted were here to make their scholarships worthwhile, whether they were offered a place because of their athletic abilities or their intelligence. It wasn’t as clear what he meant when referring to the Elite.

I didn’t like thinking about myself as an Elite. The word elite sounded so cold and snooty. But as far as I knew, I was the only one who didn't like it. Rose and the others embraced it. It could partly be because of how they disliked the Gifted.

It was easy to understand why. The Gifted were incredibly talented but they didn't like associating with us, as though we had some contagious disease. They weren’t subtle about it either.

Come to think of it, Drew Sutherland had been the only one that had actually talked to me since my fight with Trent two years ago.

I rolled over to my other side, restlessly turning to find a comfortable spot to fall asleep in. It seemed like after all the shock I’d received today; I couldn't sleep although I was tired.

Drew. I wasn’t sure why I was thinking about him. But thinking of Drew reminded me of my embarrassing accident at Phys Ed today.

I’m clumsy. It’s obvious that I wouldn’t excel in Phys Ed. But that wasn’t the end of it. I’m horrible; I can’t throw or catch anything properly. Today, we were playing baseball and I was batting. Rose threw and clearly, I was crap and missed by a large margin.

Embarrassed at how awful I was, I’d run after the ball and tripped over myself. Drew had caught me by the waist and for one second, I thought I’d seen something other than distaste in his eyes. But I was mistaken because he righted me and then ran back into the soccer game he was playing.

He even managed to score a goal a few seconds after he caught me, which only went to prove how good he was at all things athletic. That is, if you hadn’t already known about how he’d won nearly all the competitions he joined. Swimming, track, football, he did them all.

But everything that he'd done was taken for granted because Drew was part of the Gifted. Excelling and amazing everyone was part of being the Gifted. But honestly, was that all there were to them?