by Eden Beck
She nods and steps out. Before the door closes, I see the smile slide off her face and her eyes become hard.
I must not have given her what she wanted.
Good.
Chapter Six
I’ve barely sat down at the table with Heath and Beck back down in the dining hall before my suspicions are confirmed.
“Our guy didn’t ask us anything,” Heath replies, digging into his breakfast.
“Yeah, same,” Beck agrees. “He just looked around and left. In and out in a couple minutes.”
He glances over at Heath.
I huff indignantly. “She stayed in my room for forever. Put me behind on my homework.”
Heath grins. “I can tutor you. In private. In your room.”
I kick him in the shins beneath the table; he laughs, and so do I.
“Yeah,” I say, “and give Dean Withers a good excuse to expel me so soon? No thank you.”
Both boys eye me for a moment until I’m forced to admit the rules now accompanying my new accommodations.
“Such a shame,” Beck says, turning away just long enough to stab his fork into a slice of ham on his plate. “Or it would be, if I gave a damn about rules.”
My face flushes, but thankfully, he changes the subject before I make a fool out of myself.
“Did you ever find out who was fighting down the hall?” Beck asks, glancing back up at Heath. “That’s all anyone’s talking about now.”
“A fight?” I ask, perking up. “This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
Heath’s eyes light up. “Yeah. I caught the tail end of it. It was that guy in our history class—that German kid?”
“Luka?” Beck guesses.
I look between the two of them. “Luka Scholz?” I ask incredulously.
“That’s the one!” Heath points his fork at me with a grin.
“He was in one of my classes last year,” I say thoughtfully. “He was always so … calm. I can’t believe he’d get into a fight.”
“Someone pissed him off, probably,” Beck says with a shrug. “You’d be surprised at what can make a guy snap.”
Heath nods as he pokes at his scrambled eggs with a fork. “I guess he doesn’t like his roommate, because he requested a change. He was moving into a different dorm when the inspection started.”
“Who was his roommate?” I ask.
“His cousin,” Beck tells me.
Heath nods. “They started shouting at each other in German, and I think he called Luka’s mom a whore. And that’s when Luka punched him in the face.”
Beck lets out a low whistle, and I stab angrily at my own breakfast, spearing my own sausage on the end of my fork.
“I can’t believe I missed it,” I mutter.
“You’re so far away now, and this happened in the dorms.”
I nod. I know that. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. What else am I going to miss out on this year?
The boys and I finish up our breakfast and head out of the dining hall together. I wave at Rafael as I pass him and he waves back, as does Neville beside him. I feel a fierce affection toward them suddenly. It’s only been a week, and already I miss being Rafael’s roommate.
I’d gladly give up my whole suite just to have some taste of normalcy again.
“What have we got going on in first period?” Heath asks, drawing my attention back.
Beck glances down at his schedule. “History.”
“I know that,” Heath retorts. “I meant, what are we doing today?”
“You should’ve been more specific, then.”
Heath snaps back a retort, and I let my mind wander as they bicker. I don’t have my first period with them, so I’ll soon be heading away from them anyway.
I scan the hallways as we walk, watching the students pass by us. Most of them avert their eyes from me. I’ve tried so hard to look the same as I did last year, to not change, hoping that no one would treat me differently, but I guess it’s not working.
Farther down the hallway, I see Jasper hanging around near the hallway leading to the library. He’s got some papers in his hands, and he’s frowning down at them.
My footsteps halter at the sight of him.
So far this year I’ve been able to avoid him, but I know it’s only a matter of time before that has to end. I’d rather it be my decision rather than waiting for Jasper to find an … opportunity … to do it himself.
“Hey,” I say, interrupting Beck and Heath’s bickering. They fall silent for a moment and turn their attention to me.
“Yeah?” Heath asks, squeezing one of my hands.
I smile as reassuringly as I can. “You two go on ahead,” I say, looking from Heath to Beck. “I’ve got to get some stuff ready before I go to my first period.”
“Okay.” Beck smiles back, readily accepting my excuse. He and Heath head off while I turn around and walk toward the library.
Jasper’s distracted, but he looks up in surprise when I approach.
“Alex,” he says softly. The expression on his face is almost sincere.
But I know better.
“Hi,” I say, stopping in front of him.
He’s definitely changed. He’s a little taller, I realize, and his jawline is sharper and lined with stubble. His eyes, however, are that same piercing blue, a shade that shouldn’t exist in humans.
I have to force my voice to work in his presence.
“Can we talk for a bit?” I ask, even as every muscle in my body tells me to run away.
Jasper’s blue, blue eyes dart around for a moment. “Okay.”
I take him by the elbow and tug him into the nearest empty classroom. The whiteboard at the front of the room reads Italian Renaissance in dry erase marker. I set my backpack down on a chair and hop up onto the nearest desk, swinging my feet.
I avoid looking at him for a moment, memories of a past time the two of us ended up alone in a classroom like this still scarring the inside of my eyelids.
When I do look back up, Jasper shuffles awkwardly to a desk across the aisle from mine. He doesn’t sit. He sets the papers down, then picks them back up and shuffles through them. I can see his handwriting. An essay?
“I want to know what’s going on with you,” I say, hesitantly.
Jasper frowns. “Nothing. Just … regular stuff.”
“You’re not hanging out with Heath and Beck.”
He scowls. “They’re not hanging out with me.” He leans against the desk behind him as his face drops. “Not that I blame them.”
“You didn’t contact me over the summer,” I say. I’d brought this up with Heath, but he at least has the excuse of being shy. We left things so uncertain last year. I couldn’t really blame him for needing some time to think.
However, I thought Jasper at least … I thought he at least owed me that. A phone call.
Right now, however, Jasper just keeps looking me in the face as he coolly crosses his arms across his chest.
“I don’t have your number.”
“You have my email,” I say, without missing a beat.
He nods.
“Yeah. I do.”
He falls silent, and I let it stretch between us, waiting for him to say something else. I want him to fill in the blanks.
“I didn’t feel like I deserved to talk to you,” he says finally, dipping his head.
“Excuse me?”
“All I wanted to do this summer,” he whispers, “was contact you. Come visit. Have you come visit me, maybe I just wanted to … be near you.”
My stomach does a little flip as butterflies explode in it, but I stomp the feelings down. No, I’ve got to be angry, I remind my heart as it flutters.
This isn’t what this conversation was supposed to be.
But now that I’m here, in front of him … I can’t help but wonder what it was supposed to be. Why did I want to talk to him?
Not to get an apology, certainly.
Not when I don’t even know what I’d do w
ith that apology if it was given.
“But I didn’t deserve it,” Jasper continues, his eyes flickering to mine for just a second. “And I don’t deserve it now. Not after what I did. I guess it’s my way of punishing myself.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Punishing yourself? By ignoring me and leaving me out in the cold?”
As so often it does in Jasper’s presence, my temper flares.
Jasper doesn’t answer or even look at me. He keeps his eyes on the floor in some sort of self-pitying gesture that only serves to make that rage simmer hotter.
Just looking at him like this … I’m absolutely disgusted. So, he’s still only thinking about himself and his own feelings? All summer, he didn’t stop to think that maybe I’d want to hear from him, or that maybe a written apology would be better than none at all?
I slide off my desk. “Heath and Beck didn’t contact me, either,” I tell him, grabbing the strap of my backpack. “I was upset about that. But I thought that they, at least, had an excuse. They felt awkward about finding out I’m a girl. And they’ve since apologized.”
And their crimes, of course, never quite measured up to yours—Jasper.
Jasper nods. “I’ve seen you with them.”
I don’t tell him that we’re … dating, sort of. It doesn’t seem like it relates much to this conversation. Plus, I’m not sure I want him to know. I want him to have to find out, on his own, to feel the sting of betrayal at being left out. I know it’s petty, but a small amount of pettiness has to be allowed … all circumstances considered.
I take another breath and fix him with a stare he can’t ignore any longer. “But out of all three of you, you’re the one who owes me the biggest apology. Or did. I don’t want it now, not now that I’ve had to ask.”
He winces. I swing my backpack onto my shoulders.
“Punishing yourself? Please.” I head toward the door of the classroom. “Seems more like you’re scared. You’re taking the easy way out.” I push the door open and head out into the hall, leaving him alone in the empty classroom.
I allow myself to glance back at him as the door swings shut behind me. He’s returned to standing there, his head bowed, his eyes on the floor.
Angrily, I turn and storm off, heading to math class.
Pathetic. That’s what he is.
And me … I must be pathetic too … because all I wanted was for him to be sorry.
Really sorry.
And once again, it seems even that was too much to ask.
Chapter Seven
There’s a quiet in my part of the school in the morning.
A quiet that I have decided after a week of being basically holed up here alone, I do not like.
I leave my room early the next morning and head over to the main dorms to loiter in the hallway, feeling stupid and desperate. I didn’t realize just how connected I felt to the other students when I was living in the same wing.
My conversation with Jasper has left me feeling more unsettled than usual, that’s why I’m looking for something familiar. That’s what I tell myself, at the very least.
I don’t even get so far as the dorms, however. As I reach the foot of the staircase, I’m intercepted by Ms. Ada, who smiles and reaches out to gently—but firmly—press her hand down on my shoulder.
I guess I should have tried even earlier.
“Good morning, Alex,” she says to me, false brightness in her voice as she glances first behind me up the stairs, and then to the boy’s dorms behind her. “Where are you off to so early?
I want to tell her it’s none of her business, but I know that won’t get me anywhere, so I just shrug. I don’t know if I’m even supposed to be up in the boys’ dorms at all. I almost wince as I realize they didn’t used to be the boys’ dorms; they were just the dorms.
Now I have to make the distinction.
“I was going to meet my friends today,” I tell her after a second, once the silence has stretched on long enough between us to tell me a shrug just isn’t going to cut it. “We’re going to meet up and apply to colleges.”
It’s not technically a lie; Rafael, Neville, and I do have those plans. Just not necessarily right now.
She looks around at the deserted hallway, that false brightness on her face making me wonder if she learned it from the queen of that expression—Headmistress Robin herself.
“Well, it doesn’t appear they’re here yet,” she says thoughtfully. “Might you have a few extra minutes?”
Of course, I have extra time; but I don’t want to spend it with Ms. Ada. In fact, I’d rather spend it quite literally anywhere else.
With anyone else. But it’s early, not too early to be cornered by an investigator but still too early to come up with an excuse in time, and this investigator—Ms. Ada—she knows it the moment I hesitate.
She doesn’t wait a moment longer for an answer. “Good,” she says happily, and she clamps down on my shoulder to steer me away from the dorms and toward the dining hall.
I have no choice but to submit and shuffle along at her side.
“I’ve really been eager for a chance to talk to you, you know,” she tells me. “I’ll grab us some coffee and we can sit and have a nice chat.”
Chat. Sounds more like a trap.
“Okay.” I sort of drift along as we head through the doorway. She steers me to a seat and I sit down heavily, still clutching my backpack as she leaves me to go get us some coffee from the kitchens.
I’ve never seen the dining hall so empty—except for the one time I came through here on my way to the kitchens in what turned into an ill-fated attempt to feed the crew setting up for last year’s competition against the girl’s school. I sweep my gaze across it. Somehow, it really does seem so much smaller when it’s not filled with chattering students.
“Here we are.” Ms. Ada sits down across from me and pushes a steaming mug of coffee toward me.
“Thanks.” I grab it and pull it to me. I’m not a huge coffee drinker normally, but I reach for the cream and sugar Ms. Ada sets on the table.
“Are you enjoying your time at Bleakwood?” she asks, eyeing me eagerly, as if it wasn’t clear by my “dorm inspection” that I’m not interested in talking to her more than is absolutely necessary.
I nod my head in response to her question, taking my time as I stir my now-mostly-cream coffee with a tiny silver spoon.
“Yeah, sure,” I say. “It’s school. Not much else to it.”
She nods and stirs her own coffee, which she takes black. “So, you have some friends that you’re meeting today? Tell me about them.”
“Uh.” I pour more cream into my coffee and take my time stirring it again. I consider what will happen if I refuse to answer her. I doubt she’ll leave me alone.
No point in dragging out the matter. Not now, not when the questions are still innocent enough, anyway.
I’ll save my silence for when it’s going to count.
“Well,” I start, after a moment, “Rafael is the first friend I made here. He took me under his wing.”
“How so?” Her tone is one of polite interest, but it makes me uncomfortable somehow. All of her makes me uncomfortable.
It occurs to me suddenly that I don’t know how much these people know about last year. Do they know I was disguised as a boy at all, or even that I lived in the boys’ dorms? Can I just casually mention that Rafael was my roommate? And I probably shouldn’t tell her that Rafael is gay; that’s none of her business, either.
Just like none of this really is.
“Well …” I trail off as I struggle to think of something moderately safe to tell her. “Well, he could see that I’m not used to being around … the sort of people who go to this school.”
“Wealthy people?” Ms. Ada asks, taking a sip from her mug before setting her spoon aside.
I stammer a little.
She sets her mug down and smiles. “No need to be tactful. You’re a scholarship student, after all; Bleakwood’s first. Every s
ingle one of those boys is paying an enormous sum to be here, and it’s just a drop in the bucket to their parents.”
“Okay.” I don’t know what she expects me to say to that. Should I feel proud that I’m poor, or that everyone has a huge advantage over me here?
If she was expecting to find some sort of kindred spirit in me over that, she’ll be sorely mistaken.
“So, this Rafael boy showed you the ropes, then?” she asks, after another moment’s hesitation on my part.
“Yeah.” I pour some sugar into my coffee. For the first time since I arrived, I feel the itch to smoke again. Great, I thought I’d kicked the habit over the summer. After all the smoking, you’d think I’d have developed a taste for bitter things. But no, I just keep heaping more and more sugar into my coffee, but it never quite seems to be enough. “Rafael helped me and warned me about stuff, like the wolves on the hiking trails near the school.”
“Do you have any other friends?”
“Neville,” I say, though he’s not nearly as close to me as Rafael is. I don’t even know if I’d really consider Neville that much of a friend.
I’d say Fox, but … well … I haven’t seen much of him lately, either.
Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any of Rafael’s other friends lately. The thought makes my brow furrow.
I wonder why that is?
Probably, I realize, because everyone knows the investigators are going to be watching my every move. As much as I’ve been hoping no one would draw the connection, most of my classmates—even those I might casually call friends, or something close to it—have every right to blame me for their presence in the first place.
And even to ostracize me for it.
“Well, I’ve seen you around with some other students, as well,” Ms. Ada says, a slight edge in her voice as she puts her spoon back in her coffee. It clinks as she stirs it.
“I know a lot of people. I’ve been here a year, y’know,” I add defensively, not wanting to add that it’s more than a little creepy that she’s basically admitting she’s been watching me.
“Of course.” She smiles. “It’s just … I’ve heard about this, this … what’s it called again?” She mocks an unsure pause before her face dramatically lights up. “Oh, yes. I remember now. This thing called The Brotherhood, have you heard of it? I was wondering if you were friends with anyone who’s a part of it?”
