“Indeed.” His lips curve with devilish intent. “I’m going to give you some advice.” Marshall straightens, towering over me in a way that should be intimidating, but somehow he still feels like an equal—in the celestial sense anyway. “For what it’s worth, some equations are worth the extra effort to solve. Even when they seem impossible at first glance.”
I stare at him for a moment, trying to figure out if we’re still talking about math or if this is another one of those conversations wrapped in sexual metaphors, or if it’s advice straight to my heart regarding Gage Oliver. Not that I don’t know the answer.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say finally, heading for the door.
“Ms. Messenger?”
I turn back.
“The most elegant solutions are often the ones that account for all variables. Even the ones that seem contradictory.”
“Everything seems contradictory these days.”
I walk out of that classroom with my head spinning and knowing full well that Marshall just gave me advice that had absolutely nothing to do with algebra.
But as I watch Gage disappear around the corner without so much as a backward glance, I can’t help but think that some variables are far more stubborn than others.
Math never was my strong suit. A part of me wonders if I’m any better at love.
Knowing how everything ends doesn’t make the journey any less painful.
21
Skyla
The fog rolls in through the towering evergreens surrounding West Paragon High like some kind of mystical curtain, turning the world into a dream set in soft focus.
The rain has finally given up its tantrum, leaving behind the rich scent of wet pine needles and damp earth that makes everything smell like hope and inevitable disaster—this is Paragon, after all. Voices echoing from everywhere and nowhere at once, giving Paragon that haunted house vibe it definitely feels like.
That mural of Cerberus painted on the side of the gym looms larger than life through the haze, its three heads watching over the athletic field with the kind of intensity that makes you wonder if it might actually blink. Which, considering everything else that’s been happening lately, wouldn’t even crack my top ten list of oddball things that’s happened this week.
School is out for the day, cheer practice is about to start, and the bitch squad has assembled on the field like a perfectly coordinated army of pom-poms and attitude.
The entire lot of us is dressed in a mishmash of yoga pants, sweats, and shorts so short they’d make our mothers faint and our fathers buy shotguns.
Chloe stands at the center of our little mean girl clique, clipboard in hand, looking as if she’s about to conduct a hostile takeover rather than teach us how to spellvictorywith our bodies.
“Ladies,” she snips, her voice cutting through the fog with the authority of a girl who’s never questioned her right to command a room, “we have exactly forty-five minutes to perfect our routine before I lose what little faith I have left in this squad’s collective intelligence.”
The fact that Chloe thinks there are any signs of intelligent life in front of her makes me wonder if she’s been huffing hairspray. I realize that dig includes me, but let’s face it, Chloe has never thought much of me or any of my brain cells, for that matter.
“Wow, Bishop,” Michelle grunts, pulling her dark ponytail in two in an effort to tighten it. “Way to really boost our confidence.”
“Confidence is earned, not given,” Chloe shoots back without missing a beat. “And based on yesterday’s performance, most of you are operating at a deficit.”
Lexy snorts from her position next to the equipment bag. “Says the girl who face-planted during the last pyramid.”
“That was a strategic dismount,” Chloe replies coolly. “Something you’d understand if you spent less time picking your nose and more time actually learning the choreography.”
Emily, who’s been stretching in silence, looks up. Her locks are wild and free and billowing over her head like a dark, curly cloud. “Are we calling it choreography now? I thought we were just making it up as we went along.”
I bite back a laugh as Chloe’s eyes narrow to dangerous slits. Every move we’ve ever done was thought up by Chloe in her dreams. She’s convinced it’s some subliminal supernatural talent of hers.
“Emily, sweet, sweet, bitchy,witchyEm,” Chloe says with enough spite in her voice to poison a well. “Perhaps you’d like todemonstrate the routine for everyone? Show us all how it’s really done?”
“I would,” Em grunts back, “but I’m still trying to figure out if that move in the second verse is supposed to be a high kick or a call to Dudley that saysmeet me in my bedroom.”
The entire lot of us laughs at that one, and Chloe seethes with the promise to yank our intestines out in our sleep. She would so enjoy it, too.
