Immediately Teddy grew shy and tongue-tied.
“Uh, hi. I’m Twelve.”
The boy scowled like he had insulted him. “I don’t have a number.”
“Sorry,” Teddy said quickly. “Did you choose a name already?”
That only made him madder, and he spat another, “No.”
“Soo…you don’t have a name at all? What do people call you?”
“A feral beast that has no manners.”
Laughter burst from Teddy at the unexpected answer, before he choked on it, realizing the boy was being completely serious.
He didn’t seem real.
He reminded Teddy of the characters in the fantasy stories and poems he liked. A myth or folk tale of a mischievous fairy who ran under the stars and swayed with the grass.
“What are you doing out here at night?” Teddy asked.
“What are you doing wandering through the halls at night?” the boy fired back with a superior but slightly childish jut of his chin.
Teddy found his heart fluttering for no reason whatsoever.
“I guess you got me there,” Teddy said. “I lost a bet and didn’t want to do the dare, so I was doing a forfeit.”
The pretty grass fairy frowned. “Why didn’t you just say no?”
“I don’t say no a lot.”
He didn’t know why he was telling this stranger this. It felt mortifying dumping his lame emotional baggage at his feet.
“Maybe you should start,” the boy said simply, like he wasn’t rocking Teddy’s world.
Say no.
It wasn’t that Teddy had never thought it before, he just thought it wasn’t often doable. People needed him to do this or that, instructors trusted him, friends leaned on him, and Teddy found he didn’t mind so much helping them. He was good at it. But looking at someone who seemed to buck the world’s expectations—or at least, their world’s expectations—he felt a sudden yearning for the same sort of freedom.
The boy walked past him into the darkness and away from the window. Away from the rules and the obedience, away from the rows of good little cursebreakers sleeping in their beds like they were told to, and Teddy wanted to call out for him to wait so he could walk by his side.
As if knowing that, the boy called back “You can follow me if you like,” acting like he didn’t care if Teddy did or didn’t. But the way he glanced over his shoulder to check whether Teddy was in fact following made Teddy’s heart skip another beat.
Maybe he wanted someone to walk with him too.
He let the strange boy lead him across the dewy grass, the moon reflecting off of it like a million diamonds, morphing into topaz where the light from the institute spilled out.
The boy led him to a lone tree situated in the middle of one of the fields surrounding the building, one of the few left, and began scaling it expertly like he had done this a thousand times.
Teddy glanced up anxiously before attempting it himself, slipping down to land painfully on his ass on the first attempt.
A head poked over a branch and giggled. “Having trouble, human?”
Teddy frowned up at him, rubbing his sore behind. “You’re a human too.”
A snort was his only answer, and Teddy set his jaw, feeling a sense of competitiveness bringing him back to his feet. This time he wasn’t going to fall.
He scaled the trunk with little grace, using all his strength just to keep himself in place. His arms shook and his toes scrambled for purchase.
