by Jordan Grant
There’s just his dark visage against the red glow from the emergency exit signs and the soft light from the overhead lights that never completely turn off. He is a black-haired devil carried to Earth with the fires of hell in his heart and on his heels, leashed fury radiating from him.
He is both beautiful and frightening, and I want to look away—I need to look away—but he is the sun, and I am cold on this barren wasteland. Everything about him promises warmth but also devastation and the low boil of a simmering anger ready to erupt.
The swath of his chiseled jaw.
The hard line of his lips pressed together.
The unforgiving entitlement that rolls off his shoulders and litters the floor behind him.
This is Ian Beckett, King of Voclain Academy, in his element.
Dominant.
Impertinent.
Unapologetically omnipotent.
The way he’s looking at me vows more than the end of my world. It assures the annihilation of my entire universe. Part of me wants to try to dart past him or scramble up the stacks. But mostly, I want to stay as he brings perdition to my world of white lies.
The toes of his sneakers kiss my shoes, and I have to tilt my head back to look at him. His eyes are black in this dark corner of the library, and I am carried away in their abyss. He reaches his hand out and runs it from my ear, across my cheek, and down to my bottom lip.
My skin ignites.
My entire body sizzles with the contact.
Fire kindles in my belly and roars to life to blaze low and steady.
It is beautiful agony.
“Next Friday,” he says, the words gruff, “come, or I will find you, Weathersby, and we’ll both wish you had just shown.”
He turns away and leaves me there, wondering why he showed me mercy now and why it feels like a promised punishment for later.
16
Harlow
Molly peeks her head into my room, craning her neck like an emu at a petting zoo. She eyeballs me as I sit at my desk, attempting and failing at catching up on homework. I’d rather run the track for Coach’s gym class than attempt to solve another of Mr. Taylor’s Advanced Calculus problems.
“Ready?” she asks me.
“Yup,” I say with a nod before I try my luck for what’s probably the eighth or ninth time at this point. “Where are we going again?”
Molly grins at me as I stand from my desk, leaving my textbook open and my laptop beside it.
“I didn’t,” she says with a grin.
“Are we ready to do this?” Raven interrupts from somewhere in our apartment.
“Fudge yeah,” Molly replies, disappearing from my doorway.
I follow after her, and we take the elevator down to the lobby and immediately start across campus in the opposite direction of the parking garage.
Huh? Weird.
“We aren’t going to the garage?” I ask, fishing for clues again.
Molly shakes her head in response as she digs inside a giant canvas tote bag that says, “I need two things in my life: chocolate and more chocolate” in pink, glittery letters.
“I can carry that,” I offer.
Her head snaps up from her excursion into bag land. “No way, bae.” She clutches the bag to her chest like it holds her family’s precious jewels. “There are secrets and surprises in here, and I’m guarding them.”
I laugh and look over at Raven for help, who mimes her lips are zipped shut.
“May I have a hint?” I ask. “Just one little….tiny…” I watch Molly’s resolve wavers in her green eyes. “Insignificant…super small…”
“Raven’s idea didn’t work,” Molly blurts, looking around me to tell Raven, “Sorry, Ray. It was a great idea, going to the party and finding a cute, older guy.”
“All of my ideas are great,” Raven says, gifting us a beauty pageant smile.
“Buuut…now we are going to try things my way,” Molly adds.
“You guys really don’t have to do this,” I protest because although I’m grateful, it does feel like they’ve devoted their efforts lately to freeing me from my breakup slump.
“Bitch, please. We want to, and you can’t stop us,” Raven says, snatching the bag from Molly and digging in it until she finds a bottle of water.
“Thank you,” I say, watching as she twists off the lid.
Raven waves my efforts away as Molly says, “You’re most welcome, Harlow.”
I follow them to the performing arts center, and now I am really wondering what’s going on because although Molly can play the piano, and Raven plays an assortment of instruments including the glass harmonica and the organ, I don’t get the feeling they had me get dressed for a music session. We enter the building, walking down the dimly lit main hallway.
We pass Picassos and Rembrandts hanging behind inches of Plexiglas. It’s almost like we are headed toward the main concert hall, but I think that can’t be right. I don’t think there are any performances today, and the building looks deserted except for the three of us. We turn into the concert hall, and I see that the stage is empty except for a white backdrop and a projector shining a blue rectangular square on the screen from the floor above us.
It’s a movie screen, maybe?
“Mols,” Everett calls from somewhere above us, “that you?”
“Me and company,” Molly cheerily answers.
“All right,” we hear after a moment, “I’m coming down.”
His footfalls land soft as he leaves the projector room and descends the stairs to us. He skips the last step and jumps down to the carpeted landing. Molly digs around in her tote bag again before she unearths two cassette tapes from her bag and hands them to Everett.
“Thank you for doing this,” she tells him.
“No problem,” he says, eyeing the tapes warily. “You sure about the VHS tapes though? Can’t you download the movies or something?”
Molly shakes her head quickly, sending her brown hair brushing against her shoulders with the movement. “No way. It’s gotta be the videotapes. They were my aunt’s, and they helped her through her major breakups, and they’ll help Harlow now.”
Oh, I get it.
Everett raises a skeptical eyebrow. “You know they are going to look like crap on that screen, right?” he says, hooking a thumb at the giant screen on the stage before he points at the tapes. “These things are intended for like thirty-inch tube televisions. Also, I’m not sure the VHS player works. I’m pretty sure it’s from like the seventies.”
“Try please,” Molly says politely.
“All right,” he agrees with a shrug, “but don’t be surprised when Molly Ringwald looks like the Loch Ness monster up there.” He eyes the big screen onstage again before he starts back up the stairs toward the projector room.
Molly turns to me as Everett disappears. “Pick a seat! It’s chick flick time!”
Raven eyes Molly’s giant bag. “Please tell me you have snacks in there, M. I’m so hungry. I would literally kill for some Flaming Hot Cheetos at the moment.”
Molly digs blindly into her bag as we take the steps between the rows of seats down to the floor seating. A minute later, she tosses a bag of Hot Cheetos to Raven.
“Oh my god,” Raven squeals. “You are my queen!” She stops walking to give Molly a quick bow. “Thank you, oh royal highness.”
Molly snorts.
“You really didn’t have to do all this,” I tell her. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. It’s okay, you know. Whatever.”
Stop rambling, Harlow…
I send a small smile to Molly and Raven. “You both have already done so much for me. Thank you.”
Raven moans as she stuffs a couple of Cheetos into her mouth.
I follow Molly down a row as she finds seats centerstage and stops, sitting down. She tugs a box of fudge-dipped Oreos out of her bag and hands them to me. I swear, she really knows me.
“Raven helped me cope when Darcy died.” Molly shrugs like all this effort isn�
��t a big deal. “It’s just what friends do.”
“Plus,” Raven says, digging into her Cheeto bag, “don’t flatter yourself, amigo. This isn’t all about you. Movie marathons are just what single ladies do.”
I look over at her, mid-tearing into my Oreos. Molly stops digging in her bag and peeks up at Raven, waiting for her to explain.
“Ok,” she waves a hand at us and rolls her eyes, “don’t go all dramatic on me. Fine, I’m not really single, but I might as well be. Vixson’s parents lost their minds after hearing how the Berkshire shit show played out at my house, so they sent him to Europe to study abroad for the whole freaking semester to protect his fragile chakra or something. It’s ruined our senior plans. We were supposed to go tour Stanford together this fall.”
“I’m so sorry, Raven,” I say with a frown. “I didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry too,” Molly says.
“Don’t worry about it, sisters,” Raven says, returning to her Cheetos. “He’ll come back at Christmas, and they’ll calm down like they always do.”
“It’s ready,” Everett interrupts, hopping over the seat like it’s not a lot of effort to vault over the chair. He settles on the other side of Molly and digs a can of Coke out of her giant bag, popping the lid.
Raven leans up on the edge of her bucket seat and stares at Everett, one laminated eyebrow arched.
“What do you think you’re doing, mister?” she asks him. “This is a girls-only event, all right? Unless you’ve suddenly developed a pair of ovaries or changed your gender identity, get out, broski.”
“Nope,” he declines, sipping his can of Coke as the movie starts on the screen. “No way. Molly invited me, and I did all the work. Least you can do is let me watch the movie.”
“I…didn’t…did?” Molly says as the title for Pretty in Pink flashes on the screen.
From the back of the room I hear, “What’s up, chicks and dicks?”
“Oh, God,” Raven mutters as Archie flies down the steps at warp speed and starts down the aisle toward us.
“I see snacks,” he says like he’s playing a game of I-Spy. “I want snacks. Who has numnums for the tum tums?”
“Kill meeeee,” Raven mutters before she realizes Archie is eyeing her bag of Cheetos.
Raven hugs the bag to her chest. “No way.” She shakes her head emphatically like a broken bobblehead doll. “Over my dead, orange fingers, buddy.”
“Seriously, Molly?” she calls down the row past me. “I thought this was a girls-day thing.”
“Okay,” Molly says, raising her hands in innocence, “I definitely did not invite him.”
She eyes Everett beside her and mouths words I can’t quite make out as Archie settles into the seat on the other side of Raven.
Everett shrugs. “I thought this was like an everyone’s-invited thing.”
Molly digs out another bag of chips and passes it down the row as the movie begins.
“Where’s Chase?” Archie yells at Everett across all of us.
Everett shrugs in response as I grab an Oreo.
“Hashtag rockstar life,” Archie mutters.
The movie begins, and we are lost in eighties teenage glory. Archie doesn’t even check his phone, though at one point he does yell, “Damnit, Molly! I told you! Blaine all the way.”
I’ve eaten way too many chocolate-covered Oreos, and Archie has somehow pilfered Raven’s bag of Cheetos when a door at the back of the concert hall opens. It’s dark, and I don’t even hear it happen over the movie, but I see the flash of light down the aisle. A minute later, Raven says, “Oh, okay,” in a weirdly serious voice I’ve never heard from her before. It sounds like she’s out at sea and just accepted that the next wave is going to tip her boat over.
I follow her gaze and find Ian standing at the end of the aisle, his hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, his back ramrod straight, his lips thinned into a wan line as he surveys us. Light flashes across the screen, illuminating half of his face and making him look like the Phantom of the Opera, standing there and looking down upon us.
“What the fuck,” he says, his eyes scrolling from person to person down the row, stopping briefly on me before landing again on Archie and then Everett.
Betrayal shines red in his irises, or it could be the reflection from Molly Ringwald’s hair. Everett makes no moves to stand. Instead, he pulls something out of his pocket and lifts it above his head. The movie pauses, and the lights come back on, intimate and low.
Archie places the bag of Cheetos back in Raven’s lap and slinks out past Ian, squeezing himself between the chair and his friend, before he sneaks out the back. This time, with the movie stopped, I hear the thud of the door as it closes behind him.
Heat blossoms across my face, and I want to join Archie or hide underneath the chair in front of me. I am so uncomfortable. I never wanted to hurt him, and I certainly didn’t want to pit him against his friends.
Ian continues to glare at Everett.
“You two broke up, man,” Everett says after a long moment and an even longer frown directed back at Ian. He gestures between me and his friend. “We, as a group, didn’t decide that.”
“Oh, shit,” Raven says under her breath, only it’s not so under her breath anymore because it’s quiet in here, and I think I can hear Molly breathing beside me.
One second passes.
Then two.
And three.
I’m amazed and relieved that this hasn’t gone to blows yet. I don’t want it to go to blows. I don’t want anyone to hurt anymore, but Ian doesn’t move, not so much as a raised finger in Everett’s direction. Instead, he just stands there like we aren’t worth the effort.
“You’re right,” he says eventually. “You didn’t decide to break up.” My relief is short lived as he points one accusatory finger at me. “She did.”
Then he spins on his heel and walks away.
Everett hits the play button on the movie, but half a second later, he stops it again and stands, tossing the remote to Molly.
“I need to go find him,” he explains.
No one says a word as he leaves.
17
Harlow
Mr. Collins eyeballs our class from the front of the room. He looks somehow both bored and disgusted, though I think that might be his default facial expression. He’s tough, though in fairness all of my professors at Voclain have been tough. There are no guaranteed As here, but I guess unlike some schools, there are no guaranteed failures either.
I sit at the same lab table at the back of the room Archie and I were assigned to my first semester here, fall of junior year. It’s still polished, clean, shiny, and looking brand new under the vent hood hanging overhead. Unlike my old school, there are no carvings of initials in the plastic or indented pen marks from doodling during class. I’m pretty sure if I doodled in Mr. Collins’ class, I wouldn’t have hands anymore. Well, maybe the punishment wouldn’t reach biblical proportions, but I definitely wouldn’t be part of the Voclain student body for at least a few days.
Mr. Collins exudes a suspension-for-any-small-infraction vibe, and from what I hear, the parents actually tolerate him, even though he’s not calling their little monsters geniuses and writing recommendation letters that will ensure Ivy-league degrees. No, they put up with his crap because he was once nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work in gene modification, so they get bragging rights at all the country club cocktail parties.
In the cruelest twist of fate, Ian sits at the table beside me, my assigned lab partner for the duration of the semester. Every Thursday and Friday from one to four, I am forced to sit next to him and work together. It’s three hours of torment where he ignores my existence except to the extent absolutely necessary to not fail this class while I try to convey through telepathy how sorry I am for everything and how I wish he could understand, while silently begging him to forgive me.
When I die, I don’t think I’ll go to limbo or purgatory, and not because I’
m a good person—which I think I am—but because I’ve already been there. See above. Thursdays and Fridays, one to four o’clock.
Today, he smells the same as he always does, if not more pronounced. Slightly sweet, earthy, and potently male. It’s a jolt of electricity across my skin that remembers the touch of him, his fingers slightly callused from football, and a cattle prod to that craving that lies dormant, down deep in my belly, only to awake when he is near. My heart pitter-patters inside my chest. I am hot and tingly all over, wanting to reach out and touch him.
He sits there beside me, seemingly unaffected by my presence, in his gray uniform slacks and his starched white button-down shirt. He’s left his Academy-issued tie in his dorm room like he normally does. His hair is tousled like he just rolled out of bed, and he gives off a devilish indifference to my existence, this class, and the Academy in general.
My straw heart catches fire and burns beneath his wicked glory.
The final bell rings, and an unfortunate student winces as her stool screeches against the tile floor when she takes her seat. The girl swallows hard then looks at the grout lines between the tile, the dry erase board, and out the row of windows that line the exterior wall, in that order. Mr. Collins rolls his eyes and steams ahead.
“Half of you,” he says, his hands clasped across the front of his checkered polo, “think we are covering the genome today, and if you’re in that half, you are wrong.”
Wait…what?
I am in the half that thinks we will cover the human genome today. I exchange a frantic glance with the girl across the aisle from me, who looks how I imagine I look—shocked and mildly concerned. I glance over at Ian, who doesn’t even do me the favor of returning my glance. He’s in that state that I know too well, where he ignores me, talking only so I don’t set fire to us both or create noxious fumes if I pour something into the wrong flask. It takes me but another moment to realize that half of each lab team has been excluded from this development, each person looking around with wide-eyed, furtive glances, hoping their lab partner will explain. At the table in front of us, the guy gives the girl a stare down as he knocks his fingers against the table top, a little drum roll for whatever Mr. Collins is about to announce.
