Her thin lips disappear.
“You weren’t too busy to write,” she says, and her words are softly spoken, almost regretful. “You just chose not to.”
The urge to roll my eyes is strong.
To fight it, I throw my gaze at the papers spread all over the bed.
Some are old articles, some are pages torn out of books, a lot of highlighted text, and scattered notes from my interview.
“The truth is, when you’re back home… inyourworld, we don’t matter anymore, James and I. We never have.”
That strikes me.
I lift my moody gaze to her, but I have no response for her—nothing to say back to that.
Because maybe she’s not wrong.
“Look.” Her clammy hand flattens on mine, but it’s rigid, awkward, and it feels like there’s a bit of oil slicking that palm. “I’m grateful for the interview. I needed this. This article will position me better after graduation. I’ll be taken seriously.”
My insides twist.
James is the superior twin.
His print is respected, coveted, and now he’s shown the whole senior year just how good at it he is.
Courtney, not so much.
It makes sense now, why she has always been pushing for it, for me to spill our secrets, to reveal the unknown behind the veil she’ll never step through.
But worry bites at me, too.
“You have to be careful, Courtney,” I warn her. “You can’t just go around exposing the aristos, the Covens of Europe, not more than this. This article will have consequences—mainly for me. But the next might get you into trouble. Just know your limits.”
Know your place.
Her smile is tight, unconvincing.
Her hand slips away from mine.
Fleetingly, I think to wash my hand before heading to the atrium, because I’m certain that oily sensation is from Courtney rubbing her face so much, then touching me.
“I have a lot to do,” she says, and it’s nothing short of a dismissal.
I consider her.
The sheen on her bumpy forehead, the glisten down her nose, the thinness of her lips. I see a friend of a decade, but a stranger, too.
Courtney might have been around me at Bluestone, but maybe we never were friends.
To her, I might have been a door.
A way in.
Someone to let her peek inside…
For her articles.
A sigh deflates me before I slip out of the curtains and let them fall back in place behind me.
