Chapter Text
Technically, Aglionby Academy hadn’t been a boys’ school since the 90s. As a way to get access to more funding–grants for co-educational institutions and the pockets of alumni who’d been unlucky enough to have only daughters–it had opened its doors to a number of young women since 1993. The application pool was small, and the acceptance rate was low, but since then, anywhere from four to ten Raven Girls had joined the incoming class each year. Starting with the Class of 1997, one to three Raven Women had graduated. They were always high achievers. Women had been valedictorian twice in the fifteen years they’d been eligible. Ninety percent of them went to Ivy League colleges. Of those early graduates, one was a state senator, one was running a very successful gubernatorial campaign, three had law degrees, two had gone to med school, and five had doctorates in their field. When the youngest Gansey child asked to enroll, the Gansey parents were happy. This wasn’t exactly what they’d envisioned–Helen and Mrs. Gansey had both gone to an all-girls’ boarding school–but this seemed to be a path for success. Richard Campbell Gansey Jr. paid for tuition and gave a hefty allowance for local housing, since there were no women’s dorms. And all was set. The youngest Gansey child would be one of five Raven Girls, alongside three other heiresses and one local scholarship student.
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While Gansey was enrolling in Aglionby, Blue Sargent was kissing a girl in the janitor’s closet of Henrietta High. Blue Sargent’s prophecy was very specific. If you are to kiss your true love, he will die. Always he. So it was a relief, when she grew up and started to feel attraction, that she was just as attracted to soft curves as she was to hard edges. Maybe she would never be able to have a kiss from a true love. But she could kiss someone who made her feel good, and maybe that would be good enough.
And then her mother found out, because she always did, and she told Blue that she had to be sensible. “Think of Orla,” she said. “Think of when she was younger. Just because someone was born a girl or looks like one doesn’t mean they’ll stay that way. I’m not telling you that you can’t date. But there are plenty of other ways you can pleasure someone, you know.”
Blue knew that. The walls of 300 Fox Way were not nearly thick enough, sometimes. But the kisses weren’t really about pleasure. They were about defiance. They were about taking a break from being sensible.
But it wasn’t fair to take risks with other people’s lives. So she stopped. And it made her angry, because that was easier than being sad. And she carried that anger with her to her shitty minimum wage job at Nino’s. She told herself she wasn’t allowed to be soft. She fed that anger until it burned. But she kept going.