by Eden Beck
I wish I had more wine to spit out of my mouth.
Instead, I just turn to gape at my friend.
“What?” he says, shrugging. “You really think you can get that close to them and not end up with one of their di—”
“Stop it!” I squeal, lashing out to clamp one hand over his mouth. He, in turn, just tries to bite me until I finally give up.
At least that shuts him up. A bit.
“But really,” I say, after a second, “the last thing I want is to be anywhere near The Brotherhood right now.”
But as always, that was never really up to me.
As determined as the dean seems to push us together, somehow Heath and Beck are even more determined than he is.
I catch them trying to corner me on more than one occasion, knowing at once from the determined looks down the hall or when they’re attempting to catch me coming out of a classroom that those fixed stares are for me.
But I already know what’s on their minds. I know there’s one thing we can’t agree on, one thing so fundamental—the very Brotherhood itself—that there’s no more point talking about it.
Not, anyway, when they are so determined not to change their minds.
It’s on one of these days when I’m dodging into a coatroom near the front to avoid a very avidly hunting Beck that I’m spotted by the only person I’d prefer even less to catch me.
“Ah, Alex, I was hoping I’d get the chance to talk to you again.”
I freeze where I’m crouched halfway behind a bench, my ass still deceptively poking far enough out into the room to dispel any pretense of hiding from the owner of the single most grating voice I’ve come to hear far too often lately.
“Headmistress Robin,” I say, trying not to let my own annoyance seep into my voice as I slowly straighten up.
She’s eying me the way only she can, like she’s a jackal and I’m her prey. Though, it seems that right now … it looks like she plans on toying with me before she makes the fatal swipe.
Just like she’s toying with all of Bleakwood.
I take a moment to take in the headmistress of the girl’s school standing in front of me, and she does the same. Her eyes rake over me with a sort of bored disinterest like the invasive once-over is nothing more than a formality.
I, in turn, scrutinize her carefully.
Despite the way she’s standing, her shoulders pushed back and her foot slightly tapping with impatience, it doesn’t actually look like she’s headed anywhere. Her shoes are scuffed and still dripping from the snow outside, with a chill-borne redness lingering in her cheeks.
She might want to look like she’s got better places to be, but I know better. She’s here just for this.
Just for me.
But I’m not interested.
I mirror her posture but realizing I probably don’t look nearly as impressive in my ill-fitting boy’s uniform, I just end up jutting my chin out and folding my arms across my chest as aggressively as I can manage without looking utterly ridiculous. I’m not sure I’m entirely successful.
Headmistress Robin just looks as carefully disinterested as before.
“I’m not interested in anything you have to tell me,” I say after a moment.
She just looks me over again. “Are you quite sure about that?” she asks, taking one step further into the room. I might be imagining it, but I think I see her glance half over her shoulder and I wonder, just for a moment, if this is another trap.
My eyes narrow up as I take a half step away from the wall myself to peer out the door, expecting to see an investigator standing just outside in some attempt to eavesdrop as Headmistress Robin plies me for more information.
Because that’s what she’s here for … right? Some sort of follow up to her visit over break.
“So I’ve heard you’ll be participating in the school challenges this year,” Headmistress Robin says, carefully herself, as if she’s afraid of scaring me off. “Quite the commitment given everything else going on.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “What do you mean … everything else?”
She makes a flippant gesture with one of her hands, but her tone remains staunchly serious. “Oh, you know,” she starts, “finishing your senior year, applying to university, making up with your teammates.”
That last bit hits me like a brick. “What do you mean? What’s everyone saying?” I say, suddenly breathless. I glance out into the hall again, but I don’t know what else I expected to see.
Headmistress Robin just makes a mock pouting face. “Oh, so it’s true then? Such a shame. Such nice boys, I’ve heard. And well-connected too.”
She’s watching me carefully, so I’m just as careful to keep my face neutral.
“What’s this really about?” I ask, my teeth gritted. “Why are you suddenly playing dumb? I haven’t forgotten what you said over break, you know.”
How could I, after all?
“Nothing, nothing at all,” she says, “just … just thought you’d be trying to focus on other things right now. If you’re not getting along with your classmates at such a vital time, one can only wonder …”
“There’s nothing to wonder,” I interrupt her.
For one second, my head finally clears. I don’t owe her anything, anymore. She’s already ruined enough. I already know everything she’s trying to say.
“I have to go,” I say, brushing past her before she can come up with something else to keep me here.
But I’m too late for that.
“And it would be such a shame if somehow something else came between you. Something that might make it very hard for you and “ Brotherhood to see eye to eye anytime soon … if ever again.”
Or I thought I did.
A shiver runs down my spine as I come to an abrupt halt, still facing away from her.
“Or am I mistaken and you don’t actually know what it is that really keeps The Brotherhood here at Bleakwood?”
The sound of her footsteps clacking on the stone ground makes me want to run, but I remain rooted to the spot as she draws near enough for me to feel her hot breath on my neck.
“Secrets,” Alex, “Secrets hold Heath, Beck, and Jasper here, and I think you know that.”
I swallow once. “So, what? You want me to tell you their secrets?” I let out a dark laugh. “Well, you came to the wrong person. I don’t know any secrets.”
“Ah, but that’s the thing …” she says, taking another step around until she stands directly in front of me. She’s holding something in her hand, which she slowly lifts until it fills the space between us.
It’s a white envelope. I realize with a sinking pit in my stomach that I recognize the seal.
“You might not know their secrets, but I do. And you’re the one who gave it to me.”
I know at this moment that she’s right.
Because that file, that letter, is the one I stole for her last year.
The file I knew would come back to haunt me, somehow.
And here it is.
And it’s worse than I imagined.
She holds it up for a moment as if it’s some sort of priceless gem, not a letter containing a damning secret about one of The Brotherhood’s members.
“It would be such a shame,” she says, carefully, “if this got into the wrong hands.”
“Oh, what do I care,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, keep from betraying myself. “You said it yourself. Even if Bleakwood closes, they’re going to be fine. What’s another secret going to do?”
She fixes me with a stare. “Oh, this secret … this secret would do a great deal of harm. Not to me, mind you. Maybe not even to Bleakwood. But if it got out, it would certainly cause that boy to be expelled.”
“Which boy, then?” I blurt out, reaching momentarily for the letter that is snatched away from my hand. If it’s Jasper …
Her eyes alight then, and in that moment, we both know she’s won.
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” she whisp
ers.
“So that’s the price for my silence, then,” I say, my face blank as I look up at her. “Because that’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You want my guarantee that I won’t go talking about you and your little visit over break to the investigation board?”
Headmistress Robin’s face lights up in a way that makes me sick.
“Oh, see—this is why I wanted you at Bleakwood in the first place! You’re so very bright, Alex.”
She taps the tip of my nose in the most condescending manner imaginable, but it has the intended effect of leaving me stunned as she turns on her heel and leaves me standing alone in the closet.
So much for my only bargaining chip against her.
If I just knew that letter was Jasper’s, and not Heath or Becks …
But I stop myself there. Would I still be able to do it? Ruin Jasper’s life just to ruin the Headmistress’?
Jasper certainly deserves it, but not that way. Not by her hand.
If Jasper’s life is ruined, it should be me who does it.
I’m not certain of much, but of that … I am.
Chapter Nineteen
Just like that, I’m somehow pulled back into Headmistress Robin’s poisoned orbit.
If I had my way, I’d drag my feet through every stage of this competition. If I’m being forced to work together with The Brotherhood, then the very least I could do is make sure to drag it down with me.
But unfortunately for all of us, especially me, it seems that there’s more at stake with these challenges than there were last year.
Where in years before, these challenges were a way for the two schools to mix, it’s now become something more thanks to the ongoing investigation.
Something I find out when I arrive late to our first meeting.
Where last year most of the preparation appeared to be organized by The Brotherhood itself, it seems this year that isn’t going to be allowed. Not now that these little games somehow actually matter.
I hear my name as soon as I push open the double doors into the gymnasium, and it isn’t a pleasant sound.
“Alex!”
I flinch and immediately turn to the source of the noise. I’m not pleased to see the lacrosse coach glaring daggers at me from where he stands by a single set of bleachers pulled away from the wall. Jasper and Heath are seated on the benches beside him, but both of them lurch to their feet as soon as they spot me.
The way Jasper’s piercing gaze zeros in on me immediately is unsettling. It makes the pit placed in my stomach by the coach’s grating voice only grow deeper.
It’s not going to be easy to avoid him now.
“What held you up?” the coach calls as I approach, my backpack slung haphazardly over my shoulder. I’d planned on getting some homework done while Jasper and the rest of The Brotherhood bickered over what kind of approach to take for the first event, but now I realize that’s not going to happen.
Not with the way the coach’s glare might actually stab me to death if I so much as try to crack open a textbook during his precious practice.
It’s all I can do to hold in a massive, frustrated sigh.
So much for keeping up in class. I’m really looking forward to flunking out in my final semester after everything because I’m going to be running relay laps or something.
“Where’s Beck?” the coach asks me once I finally come to stand beside him. I make no move to sit beside where Jasper and Heath still stand awkwardly by the bleachers.
I glance over my shoulder at the doors and just shrug. “Don’t ask me,” I say, “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even be here.”
Somehow Jasper stiffens even further.
“Then go,” he says, gruffly. “We don’t want to force you to do something that so obviously pains you.”
The emphasis he puts on the word “pains” as if he thinks my response to his repeated abuse is somehow overdramatized makes me want to snap back—but I’m not given the chance.
Beside us, the coach stamps his foot. “We do not have time for this. If you three can get it together for just one minute, then I can at least go over the three events we’ve chosen this year …”
But it seems we are not capable of holding it together even long enough for that.
At some point while I’ve been focused on the coach, Heath somehow managed to sidle up behind me and get so close that without any warning, I suddenly feel a pair of strong arms wrap around my middle and proceed to pick me up off the ground and lift me into the air.
His head buries into my neck, his face pressing a secret smile into my skin as he whispers, “See, I knew we’d get you back sooner rather than later.”
I. Lose. My. Shit.
I react by driving my elbow back into his gut, making him double over before I stamp my foot onto the end of his toes. He reels back, spluttering, while I whirl around to stare him down.
“No!” I snap, fully aware of how the coach is gaping at us, frozen, unsure of what to do. “You don’t get to pretend everything just goes back to normal. I meant what I said the other night.”
Heath is looking up at me in shock, as if I’m the one who’s betrayed him instead of the other way around. I can’t stand to see the look of it on his face, the horror in his big, brown eyes or the way his lips form shapes but there’s no air left in his lungs to form the accompanying sounds.
It’s pathetic, and I hate it. I hate that I did this to him.
But more than that, I hate him for betraying me. For picking Jasper over me.
Again.
I pry my attention away from Heath and back to the lacrosse coach, only to discover a new problem.
From the look on his face, he’s not going to let my little attack on his star athlete slide. Not when at the exact moment my elbow made contact with Heath’s gut, it wasn’t just us in the gymnasium anymore.
And as much as I didn’t like the look on Heath’s face, I like the look on Ms. Ada’s face even less.
Dean Withers leans forward across the front of his desk, one hand pressed to cover his eyes as if he can’t bear the thought of looking at us for one more moment. He opens his mouth to say something more, but before he can, the very last of us—Beck—comes barreling loudly through the doorway. He carries with him the scent of pine and treads packed with melting snow, which he kicks off his feet as he stomps obliviously up to stand close beside me.
Much too close beside me.
Dean Withers lets out an exaggerated sigh and finally looks up through his short, silver lashes at the now complete four of us. “Is it really so much to ask you to at least be on time?”
“Oh, come on, Dean,” Beck says, still bouncing on the balls of his soaking feet. “It’s just a little game.”
I feel myself bristle as the pull on one of his jacket zippers grazes my wrist. He must see it because he flashes me a maniacal grin just as Dean Withers’ fist comes down on the top of his desk.
“But it isn’t just a game,” he bellows, much to all of our surprise. I’m not the only one to visibly flinch, even if I am the only one to take a whole step back. A slight pressure on my back tells me that Jasper has reached out a hand to try to steady me, but I jerk away.
Dean Withers shoots a meaningful glance out into the hallway where the coach is still busy talking to the investigator who happened to walk in on us in the gymnasium at the least opportune moment possible.
Satisfied that she’s been kept appropriately occupied, Dean Withers does nothing to hide the look of disgust on his face when he glares back over at us.
“There is so much more at stake here than you realize,” he growls after a second of looking between our apparently very ungrateful faces.
Of course, Beck is in no mood to just concede. He seems determined to push Withers until all three of us end up in detention. Or, more likely, until all three of us are given detention but I’m the only one actually expected to show up.
Fortunately for all of us, it seems that the coach has run out of mate
rial to keep the investigator at bay, because she chooses this moment to knock politely—if a little intrusively—at the door before letting herself in.
“I’m sorry, is there something here I can mediate?” she asks, looking down at the five of us accumulated here as if we’re naughty schoolchildren. Well … most of us are, so she’s not entirely out of place.
Dean Withers, of course, shifts uncomfortably at being grouped with the rest of us, but it does seem to force him back up into a properly straight position behind his desk.
“I’ve got a handle on this,” he says as evenly as he can manage while still coming across stiff enough to let the investigator know she is not welcome here. “I was just explaining to these four why it’s so important that they treat this year’s competition with more care than they’ve been so keen to demonstrate.”
Despite her presence, he can’t help but grit his teeth as he forces out the last of his declaration.
Though Ms. Ada says nothing, just smiles and takes a quick note on her tablet, her continued presence does at least seem to have a calming effect on Withers. When he sets his stare on us again, it’s less rage-filled and more just … defeated.
“The events will not be spread out as they usually are, and attended only by students,” he says, his voice the closest to a normal tone that I’ve heard it in ages. “Instead, we’re doing all three events over the course of three back-to-back weekends. Students, teachers, and more importantly … representatives from all over the continent, nay, the world are going to be in attendance.”
He takes a second to gather his thoughts, his eyes flickering between the three boys for a moment. “So, there’ll be no time for correction, for pulling together between events like there was in years past. And certainly no time for conflict between the four of you.”
This time he fixes just me with his gaze. There’s a look of accusation there that makes me prick with sudden anger. Of course, he would try to blame this on me.
What I did was just a reaction. What Heath did was inappropriate.
