Her face colours a dark crimson while her friends look on with a malicious joy sparkling in their eyes.
“They’re family heirlooms,” she says in a tight voice that identifies her as the ringleader.
“Yikes. Don’t want a pair of hand-me-downs.” I type again. “Could you have a jeweller handcraft them from scratch? K thanks bye.”
I pretend to press send, then tuck the phone away, patting the girl on the arm. “Don’t worry, love. Once I’m finished with him, I’ll drop him back in your lap, promise.” Then I give her a slow head-to-toe eye crawl. “Though if he wasn’t interested before, I doubt he’s going to care after.”
One girl has the misfortune to let a laugh escape and the others round on her, an easier target for their trouble. I haul a smile into place as I leave and walk into the common room, spotting Maddox leaning against a wall, another boy talking intently to him while he barely seems to listen, eyes following my every move.
He has another of those envelopes in his hand, the notes to get me up to speed in English this time. A sign he thinks I’ll be here long enough to do that.
Another grain of anxiety washes away.
“Hey,” he says when I draw close, despite the other boy being mid-sentence. “You didn’t fall in, then.”
“Got trapped for a few minutes, that’s all. The girls’ bathroom is awash with gossip.”
“All of it untrue, I hope.”
“Eh.” I raise my hand and seesaw it. “Bit of both.”
“Thanks, Malcolm,” he says to the boy who’s still standing there, waiting for a space to resume. “I’ll think about it and catch up with you later in the week.”
Malcolm’s face bursts into a dazzling display of gratitude.
“What’s that about?” I ask as he moves away.
“God knows. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sure he’ll catch me up to speed the next time he corners me.”
Maddox takes my hand and whisks me along the corridor, outside and across the quad, then into the assembly hall. “I didn’t show you this, yesterday,” he says, opening a door into a stuffy corridor, then another into an airless staircase, sweltering in the summer heat. “It’s a clubhouse.”
“It better have air-conditioning,” I mumble, and he laughs, turning side on and gesturing for me to scramble past him, something that’s such an exceedingly tight fit that by the time I’m ahead, my breathlessness isn’t entirely connected to the climb.
Once we’re inside the room, it’s a different story. A large bay window is already open, letting the air circulate without getting too breezy. There are piles of old boxes along the right-hand side of the room, and a large screen across the back.
I tilt my head, frowning, then retreat a step. “Is someone there?” I whisper to Maddox, who seems completely unconcerned.
“Yeah. There’s usually one of us up here.” He tilts his head at the clear sounds of two people fucking. He raises his voice. “Let’s go down this end so we don’t disturb them.”
“Real subtle,” Zane calls, showing no sign our arrival is about to hasten his.
Maddox just rolls his eyes and takes a seat on a circular rug, positioning a cushion to protect his arse from the hardwood floor. “We can study here.”
“What are we studying?”
He slaps down the envelopes as he says each one. “Algebra. English. History. Where do you want to start?”
A girl whimpers and I stare at the screen, then at Maddox, who can hear the sounds but doesn’t seem to care. I take a seat on the carpet next to him, opening the History packet and seeing a list of dates and names, quickly stuffing it back inside.
“Opinion duly noted.”
Wilder stomps up the staircase, tosses us one look, and declares, “Losers.”
He snickers while Dahlia pushes him to the side so she can get closer to the breeze from the window. “Don’t insult people for wanting to be smarter than you.”
“Oh, we are definitely smarter than your boyfriend,” Maddox says with a grin. “Whether or not we study.”
Wilder drops onto the carpet near us, snagging the envelope I just discarded. “You know they gave us access to this room sowe could have fun without every minion in the land knowing our business.”
