Take today, for example.
What he’s wearing is darker than usual verging on theatrical, even for him. He’s wearing smudged, black eyeliner, a vintage looking jacket over his school uniform, and his shirt is untucked, sleeves rolled, a chain just barely visible at his collar. He’s got a ring on almost every finger, and they don’t match, but somehow, they work well with everything else he has on. Even his boots.
They’re chunky, and noisy when he walks.
It’s beautiful, really. I’ve always adored his fashion sense.
I refocus on Adeline, and the way she moves through the lunch hall with quite an apparent limp. It’s then that I also realize the scar that had basically taken over half her face is gone.
Makeup, I guess.
And then she looks at me. Just a flicker of a glance, and I shoot her a smile.
Her eyes catch it for half a heartbeat—too long to be accidental, too short to be anything else—before she looks away. Quickly. As if she’s been burned.
As always.
And that, of course, makes my smile widen.
Across from me, Will is watching with heightened intensity, and I raise an eyebrow at him inquiringly. It’s impossible to tell what goes on in his head, and I realized long ago that asking him even as a friend doesn’t necessarily result in a proper answer, even if what he gives me is considerably more than he would anyone else.
I suppose itwouldbe rather hypocritical of me to expect to know everything when my own friends, who I’ve known almost my entire life, know hardly anything about me at all, beyond what Iallowthem to know.
I gather they wouldn’t want much to do with me if they did.
I sigh out loud, then realize I won’t get an answer out of Will. I glance at Liam instead. “So, Liam, is there something you’d like to share?” I ask, because I’ve been waiting to for a while now. Liam seems genuinely taken aback when I do, his expression hinting at confusion more than anything.
I would have assumed he knew more.
“She said she fell down some stairs.” The words sound even more ridiculous spoken aloud than they did in my head.
Liam’s brows shoot up, his eyes widening. “She just… fell?”
A snort escapes Christian’s lips, but he doesn’t look up from his notebook. “That might be the most idiotic thing I’ve heard all day.”
“Do you think she realizes her arm is bleeding?” Will asks bluntly though it doesn’t sound like a question when he says it, and we all look.
Well, all of us apart from Will, whose attention drifts elsewhere, like he’s searching for something—or someone.
Kym, no doubt. It’s not much of a secret that Will’s attention often orbits around her, his sister. Although he would never admit it.
Will almost never talks about her. But he always looks for her.
I watch as he pulls up his sleeves, leaning his elbows against the table and revealing his heavily inked-up arms. In fact, he’s covered in them.
For more reasons than one.
In that way, I suppose, we are similar.
It’s a permanent kind of armour for him, a considerable upgrade from when we were kids and I used to draw over his skin in pen. But back then, it washed away.
The moment Will turned eighteen, he got them done, layer after layer, again and again, until there was nothing left to see. Nothing left to remind him.
Shifting my attention to Adeline’s arm, I see he’s right, because sure enough, streaks of blood run down her arm, and there are even red marks beginning to form in certain places.
“Well, she didn’t trip.” I say what I had known all along. What we all knew.
She was pushed.
