“A cantaloupe?” Gabriel slides in beside me. “That’s awfully specific. Do you have a lot of practice shoving spherical fruit into forbidden orifices?”
His arm brushes mine, and my skin crawls with heat. I look toward the windows – anywhere to avoid meeting Gabriel’s eyes, because I don’t trust myself around him right now – and see Eli and Noah walking across the quad, surrounded by their popular friends. Cleo hangs off Noah’s arm, but his eyes are fixed on the classroom. On me and Gabriel. And he looksmurderous.
“Your friend doesn’t like me.”
Gabriel looks up and sees his friends. He grins wickedly and flips Noah off. Noah frowns and returns the gesture, but I can tell from the tightness in his shoulders that this isn’t friendly ribbing. Noah doesn’t want Gabriel to hang out with me.
Cleo looks over and sees us. She shakes her head at me as if to say, ‘what will I do with you?’ Great. I’ll pay for this later. Now Eli’s looking, also great. He gives this friendly wave that makes my chest tight. The last time someone waved at me… I can’t even remember. I whirl around to face the experiment again. No point wishing for what can’t be.
“Noah’s got a wicked hate on for you,” Gabriel muses as he makes a table for our results on the back of the worksheet.
I grunt in reply. There’s nothing else to say about it. If I were Noah, I’d hate me too. “Noah’s your friend. You don’t share his hate?”
There’s a darkness in Gabriel’s voice as he says, “I long ago gave up on letting other people dictate my life.”
Gabriel’s lyrics fill my head, the chorus to my favorite Octavia’s Ruin song, ‘Dance Macabre.’
You’re the Senator and I’m the slave.
Watch me dance for your amusement.
We’ll have a royal rave,
While Rome burns all around.
When Gabriel sings that song, there’s a bite to his words, a bitterness that seeps into every note. Suddenly, I have to dig. I need to know if what I feel when I listen to his music is real, or if it’s all an act he creates to sell records.
“So how come you’re here?” Our mixture fizzes, but doesn’t explode. I make a note on Gabriel’s table. “Surely you’d rather be in the studio or on tour rather than at school. It’s not like you need a high school diploma.”
Gabriel’s easy expression doesn’t change, but there’s a prickle in the air that wasn’t there before. “I know you’re a Ruins fan, Mac. You must have heard about Dylan.”
“I did. It’s terrible that he died. He was an amazing drummer, and I know he was your friend. But the band’s still together, right? You’ll find a new drummer and finish the album?”
Gabriel hums under his breath as he lights the Bunsen burner and rearranges the test tubes. “I haven’t decided. That’s why I’m here. Stonehurst is as good a place as any to figure out my next move, certainly better than enduring my parents back in England.”
“The music press is talking like you’re already hunkered down in a studio in Paris.”
“Yes. Well, they don’t know everything about me.” Gabriel rests his chin in his hands and stares into the flame of the Bunsen burner. A shadow hoods his eyes. It’s gone in an instant, but too late – I’ve seen it. I recognize it – the mirror image of a shadow that’s haunted me ever since the night Antony dug me out of my own grave.
It’s the shadow of regret and grief and misery so dark and so deep that it’s impossible to see a way out.
I nod. “I can relate to that.”
More than you can ever guess.
Gabriel flashes me that panty-melting smile, only this time it’s tainted by the melancholy in his eyes. And I see him as he truly is – not Gabriel the rockstar, but Gabriel the human raging over the death of his friend – and I understand just how much of his wildness is a mask.
Something happened the night Dylan died, and whatever it was, Gabriel’s here at Stonehurst trying to escape it.
13
Mackenzie
Ibalance my lunch tray on my knees and struggle to open my mayonnaise packet. It’s Monday of my second week at Stonehurst Prep, and I’ve got my routine down. I arrive at school just as the bell rings, avoid Eli, avoid Noah, peel pornographic stickers off my locker, nod hello to Gabriel in homeroom, go to class, stare blankly at the teachers as they blather on about stuff I don’t understand, eat my lunch in the bathroom, repeat the blathering and blank staring, sneak through the wooded area at the rear of Malloy Manor to escape the attention of press encamped by the gate, curl up with Queen Boudica and stare blankly at homework, try not to think about Eli, Gabriel, and Noah. Rinse, repeat, blah, blah, blah.
When the stupid tab refuses to tear, I hold it in my teeth and yank. My elbow bumps the tray, sending my fork skittering across the tiles.
“Fuck.” I may be the embodiment of pathetic right now, but no way am I eating with a fork that’s fallen on the floor.
