Outrage widens her eyes and—after a beat—she glances down at my hand, clasped in my brother’s firm grip.
Her beefy face furrows.
I have the fleeting thought that she could do with a bit of preening on those bushy eyebrows of hers, the same way she always seems to perfectly comb her hair back into a stern bun.
Silent, Mildred glowers as we pass through the atrium, her face growing hotter and hotter, and beside her, Melody watches like a stunned fish.
Oliver doesn’t spare a look on them, on anyone. He stalks for the open doors of the mess hall… and I feel the weight of the statement.
He announces our reconciliation, our alliance, a shield thrown in front of me—
But there is no reconciliation.
None that he’s earned.
Behind the closed doors of our home, the bloody crumbs of a lamington tell the truth.
Oliver and I are at odds.
A lump swells in my throat, choking me.
The double doors of the mess hall arch ahead, just steps away from me, but already gazes are latching onto us from all angles.
Why it feels like a thousand arrows, notched and aimed, and my brother’s hand on mine is itching at my skin through the glove, I don’t know. I only know that I am instantly uncomfortable.
Panicked, almost.
A ball lodged in my throat.
Students looking for familiar faces, their friends coming in through the doors, pause when they see us, the Craven twins, hand in hand for the first time in a decade.
The heels of my boots plant on the wooden floorboards.
That itching on my skin cranks into a blaze, like an allergic reaction flaring up.
I yank my hand out of Oliver’s.
Startled, he blinks at me—then understanding hardens his face.
I take the moment to run him over with a pointed look, head to toe, before I scoff and march into the mess hall.
I head straight for the buffet.
If he follows me, I don’t know.
I don’t look back.
My pace is swift, then I’m snatching a tray off the pile. I clatter and clang it along the buffet, then park myself at the empty table I always take.
The one I sit at with Courtney and James. The one closest to the doors, the one that catches a draught from the outside, and so no one else takes it.
It’s the worst table in the hall.
And I sit alone.
Courtney and James aren’t here.
Some of the other students I spot around the hall are from The Home for the Misplaced. So maybe Courtney and James have arrived and gone to the dorms early.
