“He hit me with firespell accidentally,” I said. “He was aiming for Scout. And I’m not going to apologize for actually thinking about what’s happening here, instead of just accepting what you and Daniel say.”
“Great. Go think for yourself. And when I need someone levelheaded to talk to, someone who isn’t trying to screw up my family life, I guess you aren’t the person I should call. You may not even believe a word I say.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“No, I really don’t. I don’t think you’re the girl I thought you were. I do know I can’t handle this right now.”
He put his backpack back on his shoulder and began walking down the corridor.
“Where are you going?”
“Honestly, Lily, I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I get there.”
With that, he disappeared into darkness.
I bit my lip to hold back tears. I didn’t want to cry in the tunnels, I didn’t want to cry over a boy, and I didn’t want to feel bad for thinking things through instead of just buying what everybody told me.
Yeah—it was scary to give up your assumptions and actually think, but wasn’t that the entire point of being an Adept?
The door creaked open, and Scout peeked her head out and looked around. “Where’s Jason?”
“He left.”
Frowning, she walked into the tunnel and closed the door behind her. “He left?”
I wiped at the tears on my cheeks. “Yeah. He’s really mad that I talked to Sebastian. He thinks I’m a traitor.”
“Aw, Lils,” she said, and held out her arms for a hug. I walked into them and sobbed my heart empty of tears.
* * *
Scout went back into the Enclave, grabbed my messenger bag, and got us excused so the other Adepts wouldn’t have to see me standing in a damp, nasty tunnel with tear tracks on my face and raccoon eyeliner eyes.
“I am definitely not going to the dance now,” I said, as Scout put an arm around my shoulder and we began walking back toward the school.
“You never know. He could come to his senses. And even if he doesn’t, do you really have time to worry about a werewolf with a bad attitude? Or a dress? You haven’t even had time to find a dress yet.”
“Do you really think he has a bad attitude?” I stopped short in the hallway. “Scout, am I making a huge mistake by even talking to Sebastian? It’s just information—he’s not going to sway me from one side to another. I’m a smart girl; I can make up my own mind.”
“I know you can. But Jason doesn’t think there’s any choice. In his mind, there’s clearly good and clearly evil and there’s no meeting in the middle. You talking to Sebastian totally crosses his wires, you know? He doesn’t see how you could do that if you were really a good guy . . .”
“Which makes him wonder if I’m really a good guy,” I finished.
“I think so, yeah.”
We started walking again. Feeling totally rejected, I kicked at a rusted chunk of metal on the ground. It skittered away into the dark.
“Do you wonder if I’m a good guy?”
It took her a scary long time to answer. “I want to think you’re a good guy. But you have to make that decision for yourself. And maybe being a good guy isn’t the same for everyone. It’s different for members of the Community than it is for us. So maybe it’s different for some Adepts than others.”
I didn’t exactly like the sound of that. But I knew how I felt. “No one has the right to take something that doesn’t belong to them,” I said. “And that includes stealing souls or energy or whatever Reapers take. But I didn’t grow up with this stuff, Scout. It’s new to me, and the only things I know come from other people. You tell me Reapers are bad, and I believe you. But I also think there’s more going on here than we know. Something more than Reapers-bad, Adepts-good. And I think we need to figure out what that is.”
I think she had a decision to make, too. I’d disrupted her world, made her think about things she probably didn’t want to—the possibility that truths she’d known weren’t entirely truth. That was the risk I took by telling her how I felt about it. I could only hope that she was strong enough to take that leap with me.
“When I first figured out that I could bind spells,” she said, “my parents were appalled. Fortunately, the Enclave found me pretty quickly after my powers popped through. They were nice to me, and what they said made sense, you know? But I was also told Reapers were bad. Always bad. Always self-centered. I don’t want to believe that it’s more complicated than that. I don’t want to believe that the world is this gigantic gray hole and you never really know wrong from right.”
She sighed, and looked back at me. “But that’s not exactly a good way to live, and it can’t be the best way to spend the few years I’ve got this power. If you’re in this, then I am, too. I don’t want to be part of a team just because it’s a team I grew up in. I want to be part of a team because it’s the right team.”
“There’s a risk it won’t be, you know. There’s a risk we’ll find out things we don’t want to.”
She nodded, and that was when I knew she was all in. “Then let’s find out.”
* * *
I knew Jason needed time and space, but that didn’t mean I was thrilled about the fact that he’d walked away. I checked my phone every few seconds, hoping I’d find a text message saying he’d rushed to judgment and was sorry he’d left me crying in the tunnel.
But my phone was silent.
When we made sure the tunnel door was locked up tight, we headed upstairs to bed.
“Long night,” she said after I followed her into her room and locked the door against nosey brat packers.
“It really was.”
“Do you think you’ll hear from Jason?”
“Right now I really don’t know.”
And I was getting so mad at him for walking away, I wasn’t sure I cared.
“You know what we should do?”
“What’s that?” I asked, but she was rifling through her messenger bag. She pulled out a cheap spiral notebook and a pen, then pulled off the cap.
“Are you starting on your novel?”
“Har har har, Parker. And someday, yes, but not today. It’s going to be called The Wicked Witch of the Midwest.”
“Promise me you’re joking.”
The expression on her face said she was dead serious. Which was sad, really, because that title was awful. “It’s, what, like, your memoir or something?”
“It will be,” she said, sitting down on the bed. “But I can’t write it, of course, until people know we actually exist.”
“So they don’t assume it’s just fiction?”
“Precisely,” she said, pointing with her pen. “But that’s not the point. We’re going to do something fun, Parker. We’re going to start a list.”
“That might be the boringest idea I’ve ever heard. A list of what?”
“Just, you know, stuff.” As if to prove her point, Scout flipped open the book and wrote THE LIST in big capital letters at the top of the first page. “It will be like our scrapbook of words. You know, instead of saving ticket stubs and homecoming ribbons and crap like that, we’ll have this list of all our memories, and stuff. You know?”
I didn’t really, but I did kind of like the idea of having a memory book for the two of us. I wasn’t sure there was a lot of my high school experience I’d want to remember—and I was hardly going to forget life as an Adept—but this would just be for Scout and me. Something to look back on in our old age . . . if we made it that long.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try out this list thing. What do you want to put on it?”
She flicked the pen against her chin. “I feel like the first thing that goes on there should be pretty significant, you know? Something we’ll definitely remember later on.”
“Firespell? Brat pack? Reapers?”
“All good words, but so . . . common. For us, I mean. No—we need something cooler. Something better.”
“Werewolf? Sanctuary? Enclave?”
She shook her head. “Too specific.”
“You know, I’ve already named all the stuff we do on a daily basis. Pretty soon I’m just going to be listing off nouns in alphabetical order. Aardvark. Antelope. Architecture. Avalanche. Stop me when I’m close.”
She must have thought of something, because she began to furiously scribble. And when she finally showed me the page, she’d listed down all the things I mentioned. But at the top of the list, in her scrawly handwriting, were a couple of simple words that meant a lot.
Best friends.
I bit my lip to keep my eyes from welling with tears again. “Good choice, Green.”
“I know,” she quietly said. “But that’s what this is all about, right? Now,” she said, tapping the paper, “let’s do the Adepts.”
In twenty minutes, we filled three sheets of paper.
14
Classes were bad when you were happy, when the weather was nice, or you wanted to be outside doing anything other than studying.
But they were even worse when you were depressed. When you wanted only to sit in your room staring at your phone and waiting for a call that probably wasn’t going to come. The more you wanted that phone call, the harder you waited for it, the longer it took. The slower classes became, and the more you wanted to fall down into yourself and just make the time go faster.
But, of course, it didn’t. And Jason didn’t call. He didn’t text. He didn’t contact me at all, not even to confirm that we were definitely off for Sneak.
It was total radio silence, and it drove me crazy.
Scout thought it was a good sign he hadn’t called—that if he’d really wanted a permanent breakup, he would have already told me. I wasn’t sure no news was good news, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do about it. I wasn’t going to text or call him. He’d walked out on me, not vice versa. I’d stuck with him when he told me he was facing down a curse and his family was pressuring him. I could have told him it was too much drama for me, too much risk that I’d get my heart broken later on.
But I didn’t. I stayed.
He’d walked away because I’d gotten information from Sebastian. It’s not like I didn’t get why he was irritated, but what was the difference between me texting Sebastian and Detroit planting a camera? Not much, as far as I could see.
I muscled through the day without crying even though every minute felt twice as long as usual. And by the end of the day, I was ready for a night of pajamas and movies instead of Enclave drama. But since we were in the middle of a magical crisis, there was no way that was going to happen.
I was still a member of the Sneak planning committee (however stupid that idea seemed now), so after class I walked to the gym and helped make fringed garland out of sheets of black crepe paper. Lesley was at cello practice, which left me alone in a nest of brat packers and brat pack wannabes. I could hear their sniping across the room while I cut strips of paper, but I was having enough of a pity party that I hardly cared. There was something kind of Zen about cutting one strip of paper after another. It wasn’t exactly exciting work, but I got into a rhythm that helped clear my brain of everything else.
And sometimes that’s what a girl needed—a clear brain for just a little while.
It didn’t take long for Veronica and the rest of them to take advantage of the fact that I was vastly outnumbered. Veronica and M.K. walked over, leaving Amie and Lisbeth on the other side of the room.
“What’s up, Freak?” M.K. asked.
I ignored her and made eye contact with Veronica. I wondered if she had any idea who’d left the note at her door, or arranged her meeting with Nicu. But if she suspected I was the one, she certainly didn’t look it.
“I’m here to make garland,” I said. “Not talk to you.”
“Like we’d talk to you on purpose,” M.K. said, apparently not realizing that’s exactly what she was doing. “Do you even have a date for the dance?”
Honestly, I had no idea. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. “Of course. And he’s even my age.”
M.K., who tended to date guys old enough to drink and rent cars, rolled her eyes. “Like you could even get an older guy, Parker. What kind of freak would want you?”
A werewolf, I guessed, at least before he thought I’d betrayed him.
They made another snarky comment, then picked up armfuls of the garland and gave me a dirty look before walking back to the rest of the group.
“Freak,” M.K. muttered.
“Totally,” Veronica said, but she glanced back at me and dropped her eyes guiltily. Maybe the girl had a conscience after all, as little good as it did. Next time I had the urge to help her out, I decided to stick a pencil in my eye instead. I’d probably get less trouble out of it.
“Thanks,” I called out. “You’re welcome for the garland.”
They rolled their eyes and offered snorty laughs.
Ugh. I was not a fan of today.
* * *
I got a little pickup after dinner when Scout found a giant box addressed to her outside the suite door. She brought it inside, but didn’t seem the least bit interested in what was in the box. I was plenty interested, so I followed her back to her room.
“Don’t you want to open it?”
She sat down on her bed and rifled through the stuff in her messenger bag. “It’s from my parents. I already have a pretty good idea of what it is.”