I wanted to tell him that I had seen Clementine in the cemetery the other night, looking for the exact same thing I had been looking for, but for some reason I didn’t. Maybe it was because I liked the way Noah was looking at me, as if there were no one else in the world. It reminded me of what I could have with Dante.
“You know I don’t do this kind of thing every night,” I said. “Most of the time I’m in my room alone, wishing I had a different life.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true,” I said. “I’m not doing this for fun.”
“What are you doing it for, then?”
Dante, my heart cried. “A wild dream, I guess.”
I shivered. Noah took off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. “No, please,” I said. “I’m fine.” But he wouldn’t let me refuse. Touching its lapels, I pulled it around me. It was still warm from his body.
“You look good in that,” he said, gazing at me, his eyes like melting chocolate.
“Noah,” I said gently.
Before I could go on, Noah completed my sentence. “You have a boyfriend—I know, I know. But a friend can still give a compliment, no?”
“What about Clementine?”
The smile on Noah’s face faded.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I hadn’t mentioned her. “It’s private; I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No,” he said quickly. “It’s fine. It’s just hard to explain.”
Leaning forward, I hugged my knees. “I know the feeling.”
“When I first met her in class, I knew there was no one like her. She was this amazing sharp wit, and there was something about her that bit into me and wouldn’t let go. She would challenge me when I was wrong; she would always push me to be better, stronger, smarter. She’ll never settle for anything less than what she wants. I loved that about her.”
“Loved? Past tense?”
“I still love her,” he said. “But not in the same way. When we’re together she wants to do couples things. Watch movies, go out for expensive dinners. But she doesn’t want…adventure. She doesn’t want to have fun. That edge that she used to have, I only see glimmers of it now. We’ve been together for a year, and she only wants to work, to be the best.” He paused, picking at his spaghetti. “She always says that everything worth doing is hard.”
“She’s right,” I said, surprising myself.
“But should a relationship be hard?” Noah asked.
Around us, pigeons cooed from the tops of the buildings, but it just sounded like noise. The moonlight filtered through the water of the fountain, but no matter how long I stared at it, I couldn’t see its beauty. And the food that I’d thought I wanted now sat in front of me, untouched. Maybe things would be easier with another boy, but Dante was the only person who understood how delicate life was, how quickly it vanished. He didn’t care if I was the best Monitor in school, or if I was fun enough or wild enough; he just enjoyed my company. He knew how to make a single Latin word sound like poetry, how to make the past come alive and the present feel like it passed far too quickly. He made me feel. Without him, the world was nothing but a paper background.
I felt Noah waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t know how to tell him that I wasn’t looking for adventure; I was looking for a way for me and Dante to grow old together, so we could watch movies together, go out for expensive dinners. I yearned for the same things Clementine did; I just knew I could never have them.
Chapter 9
I DIDN’T REMEMBER GOING HOME THAT NIGHT; I JUST remembered Noah. How he kept finding ways to brush his hand against mine. How our shadows angled together as we walked beneath the streetlamps. How if I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine that he was Dante.
Before I knew it, I was back in the darkness of my room, alone. I took off Noah’s blazer and draped it over the back of my chair. But in the dark it almost felt as though Noah was there, sitting with me. Even though I knew Dante couldn’t see me, I quickly tucked the coat into my closet, ashamed that I even had another boy’s blazer in my room. And pressing my back against the door, I shook Noah out of my head, picked up my towel, and went to the bathroom to take a shower.
But when I turned the knob, the door was locked.
“Occupied,” Clementine called out. Through the door, I heard a chorus of giggles.
I threw my towel on a nearby armchair, and was about to collapse onto my bed when I heard one of them mention Anya’s name.
Crouching by the door, I listened.
“I don’t even understand how she got into this school.” Josie’s voice was full of spite. “You should have seen her the other day, trying to find the dead animal in the river. She had no idea what she was doing.”
Josie chimed in. “She can barely speak French or Latin. She can’t sense a dead thing when it’s on her plate; she can’t dig a proper hole or even build a makeshift pyre; but she still ranked number four. Can you believe that?”
I glared at the door, but the truth was, they were right. If Anya had any talent as a Monitor, I hadn’t witnessed it either, and I had no idea how she’d ranked number four, or how she’d placed into the top Strategy and Prediction class.
Clementine’s voice rose above the others. “I heard she tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Obviously, it didn’t work. How is she going to kill the Undead when she can’t even kill herself?”
At that, I gave the door a firm kick and stormed out of my room, taking my towel with me.
Walking down the hall, I knocked on Anya’s door. I could hear heavy metal blaring from inside. I knocked twice more, louder, and eventually the door opened.
Anya stood before me in an oversized collared shirt, and shorts, a towel draped over her neck. Her hair was held up in all sorts of odd angles with pieces of tinfoil, and smeared with a reddish paste.
“Oh, hi,” she said, looking at me and then my towel.
Her sleeves were rolled up, showing the insides of her arms, which were covered with irregular white scars that looked like burn marks. They appeared to have been there for a while. I had never noticed them before; she always wore long sleeves.
Anya must have caught me staring, because she immediately rolled down the cuffs of her shirt.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” she muttered, and looked down the hall.
“Can I use your shower? Clementine and her friends are in my bathroom.”
While Anya sat on the bed and flipped through a magazine, I shut myself in the bathroom and turned on the spigot, listening to Anya’s music blaring in the background.
Standing under the hot water, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Noah had said. Should relationships be hard? The question didn’t even seem to apply to Dante and me. It didn’t matter if it was easy or hard—with him gone, it felt like a piece of me had been carved away. Did that mean that I didn’t have a choice? Water trickled down my face, collecting on my lashes. What if Dante had lied to me about the cemetery? What if he had been there before, and in all of my visions I’d been seeing him? What would I do then?
As steam clouded the room, I pressed my eyes closed and tried to feel the warmth of the water, but the more I concentrated on it, the more tepid it felt. I turned the temperature up, letting it beat down on my back, and then turned it up again and again, waiting for something to happen as the water pooled about my feet and the skin on my fingers wrinkled.
By the time I emerged, Anya had changed the music to a mellow folk album.
“You were in there for a while,” Anya said as I sat next to her on the couch, the steam following me.
She was sitting cross-legged, stringing something onto a piece of twine. Her hair was still pressed in pieces of foil.
“What are you making?” I said, rubbing my head with my towel.
“A charm necklace,” she said. “For you.”
Beside her, a buzzer went off. She hit the top of it and stood up. “Time to wash the dye out,” she said, and threw the necklace into my lap. “Be right back.”
While she washed her hair out in the sink, I studied the necklace. The frayed twine was strung with dozens of different dried beans, some as small as a pea, some as large as a quarter. Most of them had a white spot in the middle, which made them look like eyes. In the middle of the necklace hung what seemed to be a white rabbit’s foot. I touched it. The fur was delicate and soft.
“So what do you think of it?” Anya said from the doorway.
“It’s—nice,” I said. “What’s it made of?”
“Mung beans, black-eyed peas, fava beans, kidney beans…They’re supposed to bring you health.”
“And the rabbit’s foot?”
“Oh, it’s not a rabbit. It’s a cat.”
Letting the necklace drop into my lap, I said, “What? Why? Where did you—”
“It’s from an herbal store I go to sometimes. It’s for protection. It’s supposed to give you nine lives.”
“Oh,” I said, examining the necklace again, trying not to feel queasy. “Thanks.”
“And here,” she said, picking up a mug from her night-stand and carrying it to me. “This is for you.”
The mug was warm when I took it from her, the liquid inside murky and a brownish-green. “What is it?”
“It’s tea,” she said.
I swirled the cup around, but the contents were so viscous that they barely moved. “Really? What kind?” I said with a grimace.
“Oh, it’s just an herbal thing. Good for the cold season.”
I glanced in her mug. The water inside was a pleasant peach color. A normal tea bag dangled from a string.
“Why aren’t you drinking any?” I asked.
“Oh, I already had some.”
“Right,” I said, taking a sip. It tasted like water from the bottom of a flower vase, and was oddly gritty.