by Eva Chase
As soon as I started working the guitar over, my time would be running out. I hefted it and swung it under my right arm, already plucking the strings to check the tuning.
“Have you ever heard that music speaks from the soul?” I said as I gave one knob and then another a quick twist. “A wise man once told me it’s the highest truth there is.”
“Jenson,” Trix said, looking at me as if I’d broken out in purple polka dots, but I couldn’t afford to wait and discuss this any further.
I might be rusty from more than a year without practice, but I’d played enough before for the chords of the song I’d chosen to spill from my fingers into the strings with only the slightest fumbling. It felt so good to hear the music pouring out, and so awful at the same time to know that in essence this was me saying good-bye to the girl in front of me.
An ache spread behind my ribs. I looked into Trix’s face, wanting to memorize it in case this worked, hoping she could read in mine how much I meant this even if they were someone else’s words. My mouth opened to launch straight into the chorus, because that might be all I had time for.
The song vibrated up my throat.
“And all I can see
Is that you’re out of reach
Meant to go where I can’t follow
So all I can do
Is wish the best to you
And do my best to hide my sorrow
Find your dream out there without me
I’ll give it all up to see you go free.”
Trix stared back at me, frozen in place. She still looked confused, but a hint of a flush had come into her cheeks too.
She was listening—that was all that really mattered. She was giving me this chance despite all the good will I’d already thrown away.
For a second, I thought I might get to dive into one of the verses after all or repeat the chorus for emphasis. Exhilaration tickled up inside me with the strummed melody. I inhaled deeply—
—and pain sliced me open from sternum to gut like a knife wrenched through a fish’s belly.
I sputtered and flinched so hard the guitar slipped from my grasp to bang on the floor. The agony radiated through the rest of me so sharply and swiftly that I didn’t even have the capacity to regret the damage I might have done to that fine instrument.
My knees wobbled, and my arms snapped tight around my belly. I wasn’t actually bleeding, but I felt as if all my innards were about to splatter across the floor.
I’d made my choice, and here was the retribution, swift as always.
Chapter Twenty-One
Trix
Jenson doubled over so abruptly that the smack of the guitar against the floor hit me like a slap to the face. The groan that carried from his lips was the total opposite to the passionately melodic voice he’d poured into his song just moments before. I hadn’t known what to make of his performance—had been standing, still absorbing it and trying to understand how the guy who’d shown so much rancor toward me could be making this apparent statement of devotion. His collapse didn’t answer any of my questions, but it did propel me into action.
“Jenson!” I dashed over to him and knelt down where he’d fallen to his knees, clutching his belly. My hand moved toward his shoulder instinctively and then clenched. Would he even want to be touched in his current state?
He coughed and shuddered at the same time. All the color had leached from his already pale face. I opened my mouth and closed it again against all the questions I wanted to ask that seemed so pointless. He obviously wasn’t okay. I wasn’t sure he could manage to speak to tell me what he needed, if there even was anything I could do that would help.
“Do you want to lie down?” I settled on. “I can get—” I cast around for anything that could serve to make the floor more comfortable, but the music room didn’t offer much along those lines.
Then it didn’t matter anyway, because the door whipped open, and Professor Marsden swept into the room.
The sight of the Tolerance professor, petite and ringlet-haired but with eyes hard as flint as she took us in, brought back an echo of both my queasiness in her class and the headache that had struck me when I’d fled it. I shifted to shield Jenson instinctively, as if she might have come to pour some potion down his throat and mess him up even more.
Marsden didn’t even let on that she’d noticed my maneuvering. She glided around me as if I barely mattered at all and reached for Jenson’s arm.
“You don’t look so well, Mr. Wynter,” she said in that sharply bright voice. “Let’s get you to the infirmary for treatment, shall we?”
Jenson stumbled as she propelled him to his feet. The woman must have been stronger than she looked, because even though he had nearly a foot in height on her, she managed to hold him up through his swaying and walk him to the door.
I stalked after them, not planning on letting Jenson out of my sight until I was sure she wasn’t going to do even more damage to him. But when I stepped into the hall, Dean Wainhouse, Professor Hubert, and Professor Roth were waiting. They stepped neatly between me and Marsden to block my way.
“Let me go with him,” I said, my fingers curling into my palms. “I need to make sure he’s okay.”
A cluster of students drifted toward us. It was just about dinnertime—they must have been heading to the cafeteria when they’d noticed the confrontation. I spotted Elias amid the others, watching with a frown, before I jerked my gaze back to the professors.
“Mr. Wynter will be properly looked after,” Dean Wainhouse said in his gravelly voice. “I believe we have other, more serious matters to discuss.”
More serious than a guy collapsing in a sudden fit? I tried to step between the two professors, but they closed ranks even more tightly. Professor Marsden had already hauled Jenson out of view. I thought I heard a choked breath from the direction they’d gone. Chances were their “looking after” wouldn’t really help him.
“Can we discuss them tomorrow?” I said, craning my neck.
“I’m afraid not.” The dean exchanged a look with Hubert and Roth. Rather than beckoning me over to his office, he launched into his piece right there with the audience we’d already gained.
“The consensus among the staff is that you’re not fitting in well here at Roseborne, Miss Corbyn. Our college does not appear suited for your disposition, nor do you appear to be achieving any goals you had in coming here. We can have someone escort you off campus and arrange suitable transportation to get you home in the morning.”
I stared at him as the words sunk in. I’d thought that if I decided I wanted to leave that it’d be a battle even though I wasn’t their usual sort of student. It’d never occurred to me that they might drop the offer in my lap.
“About time,” someone muttered in the growing crowd of onlookers. I sought out Elias again, but his expression showed nothing but relief. So fucking glad I might be leaving.
My body had already balked. No way, no how. The professors knew I was a threat, that I might uncover more than I had already—
Or was that really it? Jenson’s pained groan resonated through my memory. Delta wasn’t in the crowd—she’d probably retreated back to her bed to lie there as the sickness crept through her. How many other people might my actions have hurt without my even knowing about it?
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t proven I could do a hell of a lot of harm without meaning to before. Had I made anything better for anyone by challenging the status quo here, or only screwed up the situation more?
“Well?” Professor Hubert said imperiously, and I realized they were waiting for an answer. Our audience was too.
“Just go already,” someone else said with a huff. No one said a word to suggest they’d want me to stay. How could I kid myself that I was doing anything for them when all they wanted was to see the back of me?
How could I be sure I was helping Cade rather than increasing his suffering?
My gaze darted back to the hall that led to the infirmary. Jenson h
ad been telling me to go too, but he’d been trying to get across more than that right now. I didn’t understand why he’d felt he needed to express it with a song or what he’d felt was so urgent that it was worth the punishment he must have known he’d face, but it had mattered to him that he make his point. In that brief moment while he’d been singing, he’d looked at me like I was the only person left in the whole world.
“I have to think about it,” I said, shifting my weight to one side to divert the professors’ attention. “I need to talk to Jenson.”
I darted the other way, managing to scoot past them before they recovered from my feint. It was only a short dash down the hall to the infirmary room where I’d been “looked after” following my own painful spell in Archery. But my boots thudded against the floor almost as loud as my heart was pounding in my ears, and they must have alerted Professor Marsden.
She appeared in the doorway, jerking the door shut behind her. “The patient needs his rest.”
Right, I was so sure they were only concerned about Jenson’s well-being, when they were the ones who’d struck him down with whatever dark powers they possessed.
The dean and the other professors were hustling over. My legs locked where I stood. “I’m not making any decisions until I can talk to Jenson. Now or later, if he’s too sick right now. It’s up to you.”
And it was, more than they were likely to admit out loud. If they could turn on the agony in a matter of seconds, presumably they could turn it off too.
Dean Wainhouse folded his arms over his chest with a stern look he aimed down his hooked nose, but then he jerked his head toward the door. “See if he wants to speak to you, then.”
I stepped toward the door. Professor Marsden grimaced, but she eased out of my way. I opened it a crack to peer inside. “Jenson?”
He was lying on his side on the narrow cot, facing away from me, toward the wall. At the sound of my voice, his shoulders stiffened. He didn’t turn around. Uneasiness congealed in my stomach.
“What do you want, Trix?” he asked in a weary voice.
“I— Are you all right? If there’s something more you wanted to say to me—”
“What more could I say at this point? Why are you talking to me when they’ve just given you your way out?”
He must have heard the conversation from the hallway while the infirmary door was open. My hand tightened around the doorknob. “There’s got to be more to it than that. You wouldn’t have—”
“Don’t worry about that,” he snapped, cutting me off. “Just go, Trix. That’s all I’ve been telling you. I don’t want you around. Even your brother doesn’t want you around. Do you really think if he cared half as much about you as you do about him that he wouldn’t have found some way to see you? No one wants you around. So just get the hell out.”
I winced, my hand dropping. The door clicked shut. I looked at it in a daze for a long moment, the queasy churning inside me taking on a sharper edge that pinched my gut.
Did Jenson actually know that Cade was capable of seeing me, talking to me, if he decided to? That he was purposefully avoiding me? Was that what everyone here had been waiting for me to find out—that the guy I’d come to save was too done with me to want my help?
It couldn’t— Cade had always said—
Unless he’d figured out that it was my fault he was here at all. That everything was my fault. I should have been happy for him—I should have wanted him to be happy—and instead I…
I closed my eyes against the swell of horror.
It might not be true. Jenson had been a jerk more often than not. But that didn’t mean he was lying now. And even if Cade didn’t hate me, what had I really done for him or anyone here? There was so much I still couldn’t grasp hold of, and every time I thought I was close to answers, the situation flipped on its head all over again.
Maybe I’d been stupid to think I could tackle this whole problem on my own. If I left, now that I had a better idea what I was facing, I could regroup—call on the police like I’d meant to before, round up whatever other assistance I could get. It wouldn’t be giving up. It’d just be taking a realistic approach.
The thought still made my stomach lurch. I had to grit my teeth for a second before I turned to the dean. The words snagged in my throat before I could force them out.
“All right. I’ll go tomorrow morning.”
Several little whoops went up from our audience of students. I held back another wince. They were outright cheering to hear I was going. That was all I really needed to know, wasn’t it?
“You’ve made the best choice for all involved,” Dean Wainhouse said with a shallow nod, just to rub it in. “We’ll see that you’re on your way in good time.”
He and the professors pulled back. The other students were already wandering away into the cafeteria. I stayed where I was, every part of me so clenched up I might as well have been locked in place.
The thought of trying to choke down one more awful dinner while everyone around me celebrated my impending departure made me even more nauseated. When I finally pushed myself into motion, I passed the cafeteria and headed straight up the stairs to the dorms.
I hadn’t brought much here with me, but I guessed I might as well make sure I had it all packed up. Maybe think about whether there was anything I could grab to take with me to use as proof when I went to the police or whoever. Of course, what could I get away with taking that the professors wouldn’t notice before they saw me off?
What would even convince a bunch of cops that the staff here were torturing their students? Was my word going to be enough?
As I trudged up the stairs, I could already see in the back of my mind how they’d look me over and laugh and tell me to stop wasting their time. When had anyone who’d been supposed to look out for people like us, the discards and the rejects, ever actually come through? Even when I’d been a kid, no teacher or counselor had seen the signs and intervened. They hadn’t wanted to believe anything was wrong, to bring that trouble into their lives.
I’d just—I’d figure it out. I would. Even if I had no idea how. It had to be easier once I’d gotten away from this place and the horrors that pressed in from every side, right?
Delta was curled up under the covers on her bed, as I’d expected. The slow rhythm of her ragged breaths suggested she’d at least managed to fall asleep despite whatever discomfort she was in.
I took one of the changes of clothes out of the chest under my bed and stuffed it back in my knapsack. The other outfit I’d wear tomorrow. I plugged in my phone so I’d have a full charge once I finally had service again.
As I glanced around for other odds and ends, my gaze caught on a small object nestled in the middle of my pillow. I sat down on the bed and picked the thing up with careful fingers.
It was a flower, but not a real one. A makeshift blossom formed out of scraps of metal and wire twisted together into something shockingly delicate. The whole thing could fit in the hollow of my palm.
While people downstairs had been cheering, while Jenson had all but spat in my face, someone had been leaving me a gift.
My fingers closed around it. The edges of the petals dug into my skin, but the pain sharpened my thoughts. Even as a lump filled my throat, a trickle of resolve rose up through the hopelessness that had overwhelmed me.
I’d been looking at this all wrong.
A sudden urgency propelled me to my feet and out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ryo
There was a moment some evenings, right as the sun was just finishing setting, when the clouds started to part before the last sheen of daylight had quite left the sky. Just a glimmer, rosy or gold, but seeing it shored up what strength I had inside me.
Tonight it was just a flicker of lilac-purple before the sky dulled with the falling dusk. I tucked it away in my memory as I sat on the edge of the abandoned pool, leaning back on my hands. The rough, cracked concrete bit into my fingers. I punctuated t
he moment with occasional kicks of my heels against the pool wall, as if those hollow thumps would prove something about my deserving to be here.
I didn’t want to think about anything beyond this moment. Especially not tomorrow morning and what I would lose, or the fact that I was a selfish jerk for hating that I was going to lose it. Whatever gods there were knew plenty of people existed beyond these walls who deserved her and could appreciate her more than I did.
We’d done it. I’d never thought I’d end up allying myself with Elias or Jenson, let alone both of them, but maybe I should have reached out to them sooner. I just hadn’t really wanted to give up this one thing. It’d been easier to believe the situation was hopeless.
At least I’d done the right thing this once before I’d dragged yet another person I cared about down with me.
Footsteps rustled through the grass. Figuring it was a random classmate wandering by, I didn’t bother to look around until they’d almost reached me. At the sight of Trix approaching, my heart skipped a beat.
She hunkered down next to me, letting her legs dangle into the empty pool like mine were. “I checked too many places before it occurred to me to look out here. I should have thought of it sooner.”
“I’ll admit I’m fairly predictable,” I said, mostly to say something other than all the questions and pleas I really ought to shove down inside.
She rested her hand in her lap, palm-up, holding the little flower I’d fashioned from bits I’d found in the carriage house. “Thank you. Was this supposed to be a good-bye gift?”
I swallowed hard. “No. I mean, you can see it as one, but I left it before I knew. I… I didn’t enjoy how our last conversations went, even if I needed to say the things I did. Making that was an admittedly somewhat pathetic attempt at showing I said them because you matter to me, not because you don’t.”
