The Raven Boys

by Maggie Stiefvater

Page 15

 

  "BLUE!" roared Maura. "I’M NOT SHOUTING AGAIN!"

  "What do you think I should do about it?" Blue asked.

  As Blue had, Persephone ran her fingers over the varying grains of the papers. She realized Persephone was right; if the journal had been hers, she would’ve just copied down the information she needed, rather than all this cutting and pasting. The fragments were intriguing but unnecessary; whoever put that journal together must love the hunt itself, the process of research. The aesthetic properties of the journal couldn’t be accidental; it was an academic piece of art.

  "Well," Persephone said. "First, you might find out whose journal it is. "

  Blue’s shoulders sagged. It was a relentlessly proper answer, and one that she might have expected from Maura or Calla. Of course she knew she had to return it to its rightful owner. But then where would the fun of it go?

  Persephone added, "Then I think you’d better find out if it’s true, don’t you?"

  Chapter 12

  Adam wasn’t waiting by the bank of mailboxes in the morning.

  The first time that Gansey had come to pick up Adam, he’d driven past the entrance to Adam’s neighborhood. Actually, more properly, he’d used it as a place to turn around and head back the way he’d come. The road was two ruts through a field — even driveway was too lofty a word for it — and it was impossible to believe, at first look, that it led to a single house, much less a collection of them. Once Gansey had found the house, things had gone even more poorly. At the sight of Gansey’s Aglionby sweater, Adam’s father had charged out, firing on all cylinders. For weeks after that, Ronan had called Gansey "the S. R. F. ," where the S stood for Soft, the R stood for Rich, and the F for something else.

  Now Adam just met Gansey where the asphalt ended.

  But there was no one waiting by the clustered herd of mailboxes now. It was just empty space, and a lot of it. This part of the valley was endlessly flat in comparison to the other side of Henrietta, and somehow this field was always several degrees drier and more colorless than the rest of the valley, like both the major roads and the rain avoided it. Even at eight in the morning, there were no shadows anywhere in the world.

  Peering down the desiccated drive, Gansey tried the house phone, but it merely rang. His watch said he had eighteen minutes to make the fifteen-minute drive to school.

  He waited. The engine threw the car to and fro as the Pig idled. He watched the gearshift knob rattle. His feet were roasting from proximity to the V-8. The entire cabin was beginning to stink of gasoline.

  He called Monmouth Manufacturing. Noah answered, sounding like he’d been woken.

  "Noah," Gansey said loudly, to be heard over the engine. Noah had let him leave his journal behind at Nino’s after all, and its absence was surprisingly unsettling. "Do you remember Adam saying he had work after school today?"

  On the days that Adam had work, he often rode his bike in so that he’d have it to get to places later.

  Noah grunted to the negative.

  Sixteen minutes until class.

  "Call me if he calls," Gansey said.

  "I won’t be here," Noah replied. "I’m almost gone anyway. "

  Gansey hung up and unsuccessfully tried the house again. Adam’s mother might be there but not answering, but he didn’t really have time to go back into the neighborhood and investigate.

  He could cut class.

  Gansey tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. "Come on, Adam. "

  Of all of the places Gansey had attended boarding school — and he’d attended many in his four years of underage wandering — Aglionby Academy was his father’s favorite, which meant it was the most likely to land its student body in the Ivy League. Or the Senate. It also meant, however, that it was the most difficult school Gansey had ever been to. Before Henrietta, he’d made his search for Glendower his primary activity, and school had been a distant second. Gansey was clever enough and he was good at studying if nothing else, so it hadn’t been a problem to skip classes or push homework to the bottom of the list. But at Aglionby, there were no failing grades. If you dropped below a B average, you were out on your ass. And Dick Gansey II had let his son know that if he couldn’t hack it in a private school, Gansey was cut out of the will.

  He’d said it nicely, though, over a plate of fettuccine.

  Gansey couldn’t cut class. Not after missing school the day before. That was what it came down to. Fourteen minutes to make a fifteen-minute drive to school, and Adam not waiting.

  He felt the old fear creeping slowly out of his lungs.

  Don’t panic. You were wrong about Ronan last night. You have to stop this. Death isn’t as close as you think.

  Dispirited, Gansey tried the home phone one more time. Nothing. He had to go. Adam must’ve taken his bike, he must’ve had work, he must’ve had errands to run and forgotten to tell him. The rutted drive down to the neighborhood was still empty.

  Come on, Adam.

  Wiping his palms on his slacks, he put his hands back on the steering wheel and headed for the school.

  Gansey didn’t get a chance to see if Adam had made it to Aglionby until third period, when they both had Latin. This was, inexplicably, the only class Ronan never missed. Ronan was head of class in Latin. He studied joylessly but relentlessly, as if his life depended on it. Directly behind him was Adam, Aglionby’s star pupil, otherwise at the top of every class that he took. Like Ronan, Adam studied relentlessly, because his future life did depend on it.

  For his part, Gansey preferred French. He told Helen there was very little purpose to a language that couldn’t be used to translate a menu, but really, French was just easier for him to learn; his mother spoke a little. He’d originally resigned himself to taking Latin in order to translate historical texts for Glendower research, but Ronan’s proficiency at the language robbed Gansey’s study of any urgency.

  Latin was held in Borden House, a small frame house on the other side of the Aglionby campus from Welch Hall, the main academic building. As Gansey strode hurriedly across the center green, Ronan appeared, knocking Gansey’s arm. His eyes looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

  Ronan hissed, "Where’s Parrish?"

  "He didn’t come in with me today," Gansey said, mood sinking. Ronan and Adam shared second period. "You haven’t seen him yet?"

  "Wasn’t in class. "

  Behind Gansey, someone punched his shoulder blade and said, Gansey boy! as they trotted by. Gansey halfheartedly lifted three fingers, the signal of the rowing team.

  "I tried calling him at the house," he said.

  Ronan replied, "Well, Poor Boy needs a cell. "

  A few months earlier, Gansey had offered to buy Adam a cell phone, and by so doing had launched the longest fight they’d ever had, a week of silence that had resolved itself only when Ronan did something more offensive than either of them could accomplish.

  "Lynch!"

  Gansey looked in the direction of the voice; Ronan didn’t. The owner of the voice was halfway across the green, difficult to identify in the homogenous Aglionby uniform.

  "Lynch!" the call came again. "I’m going to fuck you up. "

  Ronan still didn’t look up. He adjusted the strap on his shoulder and continued stalking across the grass.

  "What’s that about?" Gansey demanded.

  "Some people don’t take losing very well," Ronan replied.

  "Was that Kavinsky? Don’t tell me you’ve been racing again. "

  "Don’t ask me, then. "

  Gansey contemplated if he could give Ronan a curfew. Or if he should quit rowing to spend more time with him on Fridays — he knew that was when Ronan got into trouble with the BMW. Maybe he could convince Ronan to …

  Ronan adjusted the strap on his shoulder again, and this time, Gansey took a closer look at it. The bag it belonged to was distinctly larger than his usual, and he handled it gingerly, as if it might spill.

  Ga
nsey asked, "Why are you carrying that bag? Oh my God, you have that bird in there, don’t you. "

  "She has to be fed every two hours. "

  "How do you know?"

  "Jesus, the Internet, Gansey. " Ronan pulled open the door to Borden House; as soon as they breached the threshold, everything within sight was covered with navy blue carpet.

  "If you get caught with that thing —" But Gansey couldn’t think of a suitable threat. What was the punishment for smuggling a live bird into classes? He wasn’t certain there was precedent. He finished, instead, "If it dies in your bag, I forbid you to throw it out in a classroom. "

  "She," Ronan corrected. "It’s a she. "

  "I’d buy that if it had any defining sexual characteristics. It had better not have bird flu or something. " But he wasn’t thinking about Ronan’s raven. He was thinking about Adam not being in class.

  Ronan and Gansey took their usual seats in the back of the navy-carpeted classroom. At the front of the room, Whelk was writing verbs on the board.

  When Gansey and Ronan had come in, Whelk had stopped writing mid-word: internec — Though there was no reason to think Whelk cared about their conversation, Gansey had the strange idea that the lifted piece of chalk in Whelk’s hand was because of them, that the Latin teacher had stopped writing merely to listen in. Adam’s suspicion really was beginning to rub off on him.

  Ronan caught Whelk’s eye and held it in an unfriendly sort of way. Despite his interest in Latin, Ronan had declared their Latin teacher a socially awkward shitbird earlier in the year and further clarified that he didn’t like him. Because he despised everyone, Ronan wasn’t a good judge of character, but Gansey had to agree that there was something discomfiting about Whelk. A few times, Gansey had tried to hold a conversation with him about Roman history, knowing full well the effect an enthusiastic academic conversation could have on an otherwise listless grade. But Whelk was too young to be a mentor and too old to be a peer, and Gansey couldn’t find an angle.

  Ronan kept staring at Whelk. He was good at staring. There was something about his stare that took something from the other person.

  The Latin teacher flicked his glance awkwardly away from them. Having dealt with Whelk’s curiosity, Ronan asked, "What are you going to do about Parrish?"

  "I guess I’m going to go by there after class. Right?"

  "He’s probably sick. "

  They looked at each other. We’re already making excuses for him, Gansey thought.

  Ronan peered inside his bag again. In the darkness, Gansey just caught a glimpse of the raven’s beak. Usually, Gansey would’ve basked once more in the odds of Ronan of finding a raven, but at the moment, with Adam missing, his quest didn’t feel like magic; it felt like years spent piecing together coincidences, and all he had made from it was a strange cloth — too heavy to carry, too light to do any good at all.

  "Mr. Gansey, Mr. Lynch?"

  Whelk had managed to suddenly manifest beside their desks. Both boys looked up at him. Gansey, polite. Ronan, hostile.