Rivals' Gambit

It takes hours longer than it should to discover the violently shattered body of Juliet Wyndham. It stormed the night before and the late-fall air still hangs in a stubborn fog over the cooling earth.

The few early risers walk past without sensing anything out of place. No one knows she is missing, much less lays dying on the ground. The world takes no notice when she stops breathing. Finally, the sun hovers over the horizon just enough to illuminate the broken form and the blood shining below a cloud of gold-lit fog. After that, it doesn’t take long for someone to notice, for someone to scream. The Headmaster is summoned, and the professors do their best to dissuade the gathering of students while they wait for the authorities to arrive on the scene. It takes a long time. Students flock, sickened and enthralled by the arrival of such violent death to the university, the place they eat, sleep, and study. Once a safe place, now made less so. Was it an accident? Most likely. The old stone corridors are known to be slick during rainstorms. The railing is low and the pathway poorly lit. It’s a historic building, after all. Yet this death feels personal. She was the brightest mind the university had seen in years, expected to graduate top of her class in the spring. Her trajectory was undeniable, even this early in the year.

Was it an accident? Maybe. But no one will ask. The body is removed as quickly as possible, but with the bright yellow crime scene tape and drying red stain, it makes no difference. Her ghost already lingers.

Maya first hears of Juliet’s death during breakfast in the dining hall. The whispers echo loudly off the stone walls, Juliet’s name layered over itself in a dozen different voices. Maya has heard another dozen renditions of the scene of her death by the time she reaches the library. Even once seated amongst the towering stacks, her death carries throughout the bookshelves and ruffles through the pages. Maya can’t brush the spines, searching for what she needs, without feeling Juliet’s breath on her neck.

Their rivalry was cutthroat from the beginning. Both ambitious, both willing to do whatever it took to be the best. Their classmates avoided them, their mutual tenacity too intense for anyone but each other to endure. Maya recognized it in Juliet the moment they met. Understood it and feared it, knowing even then that this girl would become both friend and rival. The one person who would both challenge and torment her. Their rivalry unfolds in prophetic manner. Fate is resourceful and placing both girls here puts something powerful into motion, two indominable forces destined to clash until one is left standing.

Maya feels this now, standing amongst the tomes that both their hands have paged through, searching for answers, yes, but not to their test questions. The answers they seek are weightier and born of a world that has shown them that to have a future ensured, they must prove themselves in the academic arena. In the end only one future is certain, the other sentenced to fade into dust and shadows.

Maya admires Juliet as one admires an idol. A projection of Maya’s own potential. What was once kinship morphs into admiration that before long withers into a wretched jealousy; a sense of having been stolen from. To see Juliet’s name above hers is a maddening rendition of Sisyphus’ boulder, always struggling uphill only for the weight to fall back to the bottom. Wyndham, Juliet. Followed by Alexander, Maya.

Maya can't deny that she finds herself on occasion praying that something causes the other girl to slip up just enough to close the gap in their scores. She imagines Juliet catching a horrible stomach bug, bedridden for weeks and unable to study. Or falling over the uneven stones in the courtyard and shattering her wrists. Maya falls asleep to these malicious but intoxicating daydreams, unable to contain the fear that grows as their final race commences. Every point Juliet pulls ahead is like bones being ripped from Maya’s ribs. It will take everything to come in merely second.

By the first semester of their sophomore year Maya finally accepts that she will never be better than Juliet Wyndham. By the first semester of their Junior year, she tries to convince herself there is room for both of them at the top. By the time Fall arrives during the beginning of their fourth and final year, Maya realizes the only way to get everything she has worked for is to take matters into her own hands. When the graduate fellowship is announced, Maya is desperate enough to act.

She now lies awake planning

(a stormy night, a well-timed shove)

ways to remove the obstacle in her path. To ensure Juliet Wyndham does not take everything Maya has worked her whole life for. Her academic recognition. Her guarantee of a future. Academia is the path forward – isn’t it? Maya has been taught no other way. She has never been presented with any other verified value in life than this. Without this validation she is nothing.

A late summer storm rolls in on an unusually hot night in October just before midterms. It feels like a gift. Maya knows Juliet will be the last one in the library because Juliet is, if nothing else, a disciplined creature of habit. In fact, she knows Juliet was given a key to the library after they both interned with the department heads last summer. Maya was never given a key.

She waits for Juliet, huddling down amongst the stacks until she hears the other girl begin to pack up. Maya slips out the door and tucks into the shadows in the long hallway. It doesn’t take Juliet long to slip out the door herself, turning to lock the door with a practiced hand. She doesn’t even look around before heading towards the dorms, unaware of Maya lurking nearby. Juliet is sure of herself and her surroundings. She is a queen on this campus and what could touch a queen in her own kingdom?

The wind is howling now, raindrops tearing past the low roof of the open-air corridor. Juliet hugs the wall to avoid the downpour. Barely audible over the storm, Maya calls to her.

“Jules.”

Juliet stops, surprised, and turns. She relaxes once she sees Maya, but this quickly turns to wariness.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Same as you,” Maya replies with a soft smile. “Studying.”

She can see the uneasiness on Juliet’s face. Women have a knack for sensing the violence underlying a situation, and Maya acknowledges with eerie calm that Juliet must sense it now. This is unusual, her body must tell her. This is not their routine.

“Right, of course.” Juliet offers a shaky smile. She steps backwards. “I’m just used to being the last one in the library. I, um, didn’t realize you were still there.” She lets out a false laugh. The real question hangs between them. Why didn’t I notice you were there with me? Why didn’t you want me to notice you?

Maya doesn’t respond. There's no reason to at this point. They move at the same time. Juliet darts for the door leading to the dorms as Maya lunges for her. Maya is faster, better. They wrestle briefly yet violently. Juliet is screaming but the wind works in Maya’s favor, drowning out her voice.

“Wait!” Juliet shouts, desperate. “Maya! Why are you do-“

Maya doesn’t let her finish. With a vicious, decisive push, she sends Juliet over the railing. She hears the moment her body hits the courtyard ground. Her books lay scattered across the corridor. Loose notes and brilliant papers litter the stone floor, telling a harrowing story of panic. Without thinking, Maya stoops and collects the loose leaflets. She pushes the battered books into a haphazard pile near the spot Juliet went over. With a last look into the darkness, Maya holds the papers over the railing and releases them, watching them rip from her grasp and disappear along with Juliet.

In the middle of the storm, Maya feels stable for the first time in four years.

The rest of the semester passes, and the absence of cutthroat academic competition slowly fades into a comfortable complacency. The other students in her class don’t come close to Maya’s scores. They trail her in pale imitation of the race that once existed in its place between her and Juliet. Maya knows what it takes to be the best. She had years of watching Juliet do it, and learned the game quickly, better even. She can finally be what she was meant to be.

 As the tragedy of Juliet fades to a dull ache amongst the student body, the laurels once reserved for her fall upon Maya. It is golden, this feeling, a warmth she had never known possible. Most days she imagines the other girl watching, understanding why Maya had to do what she did. Perhaps even admiring the commitment to sacrificing absolutely everything in pursuit of academic valor. On the bad days, she practices defending her actions to Jules. You would’ve done the same thing, she challenges, if you were in my place. I know you would have. We are the same. As spring semester begins, she has almost left Juliet’s ghost in that courtyard. When the fellowship is awarded to her, she knows she will finally be able to lay Jules to rest for good.

She waits, and studies, and sacrifices. Maya doesn’t have much left to give but what little she does have, she offers up without thought, knowing it will come back tenfold.

The first time Maya notices her shine is beginning to fade is during finals and it is like removing a lung from her body. Fear zips through her, awakening old insecurities. The fellowship looms and it’s as if the arrival of final exams and graduation has convinced everyone the slate has been wiped clean, that they are on equal footing. The only comfort comes in written proof; her name at the top of the class ranking. Alexander comma Maya. No one’s name sits above hers.

The snow is freshly gone when graduation day arrives. Families walk the small campus in cheerful groups. Students open champagne and celebrate in their caps and gowns, sipping from plastic cups. The energy on campus is high, everyone racing towards the finish line and the freedom that lies beyond. Everyone except Maya. There is only one right path, and her life hinges on the decision of the Academic Board. She tries to remind herself that she’s given everything to all but ensure she is chosen. Studied where other students slacked off, choosing socializing over the dignified dedication of lone scholarly application. She knows she’s a shoe-in. She’s already paid the toll of greatness. She knows Juliet would agree and as the mid-morning sun beats down on a sea of black-clad graduates, Maya swears she sees Jules standing among them. Here to witness the final triumph that she paid for with her life.

Maya blinks and Juliet is gone.

Maya sits through a haze of speeches that are rinsed and repeat renditions of one another. The students around her laugh and whisper to one another, eager to move into the next phase of their lives. For Maya, her life begins or ends on that stage.

Finally, the moment arrives. The Headmaster approaches the podium and wraps his hands around the dark colored wood. It is in this moment Maya feels her arrival, like a bead of cold sweat sliding down her back. Time slows. She knows what she will see in the split second before she looks towards the shadows at the side of the stage. Juliet, perfectly put together in a white dress that contrasts with the heavy velvet blackness of her robes. A gold string and sash hangs around her neck because of course she wouldn’t leave this place without the highest honors. She smiles, that self-assured smile that is both friendly and firm as if to remind Maya that she isn’t worried about anyone challenging her. She is the best and everyone else is just fighting for a place below her.

Time resumes is pace and the Headmaster’s words are the only thing strong enough to tear Maya’s eyes from the dead girl. Her stomach flips and bile rises in her throat. He is grinning widely, all teeth, and Maya can’t help but think of a wolf. The world is both too loud and too quiet as the moment unspools and the next thing Maya knows that same spool of thread is wrapping around her throat and tightening, tightening, tightening. Bile floods her mouth and the Headmaster’s words are ringing in her skull.

It’s not her.

It’s not her.

It’s not her.

How can it not be her?

The Headmaster is speaking again and a fresh wave of nausea sweeps through Maya. Everything arrives to her ears late, like hearing a burst of thunder seconds after seeing the silent dash of lightning strike. Then someone, a girl Maya barely knows, is walking up the steps to the stage and accepting the fellowship, her fellowship. Who does she think she is, stealing Maya’s future right out from under her after everything she sacrificed

(a stormy night, a well-timed shove)

to guarantee she was the one accepting that fellowship. An incomparable example of academic excellence produced by the sheer willpower and determination she tempered for years against Juliet’s own ambition.

The Headmaster’s words stab into her mind over and over and over.

A student who exemplifies not just the academic successes we strive for here but who also embodies the community and culture we aim to cultivate.

Not just the academic successes.

What else is there, if not that? What did she give four years of her life to, if not that. What did she barter and pay and sacrifice for if not to ensure she had a future at the end of the road. She has been so focused on the surety of this moment that no other path is open to her now. It all hinged on this and now Maya is watching it break apart in her hands like sand.

Her eyes slide to the side of the stage without thought. Juliet stands there still, only now blood is blooming across her chest and face, rivulets of red dripping from her mouth and falling onto her white dress. She grins, revealing bloody teeth and waves.