Because it looks bad, he’d said on that first night back at Wickwood.
What could you possibly have done, Thomas?
If Andrew started down a trail of what-ifs and maybes, he’d spiral. He had to stop thinking.
He skipped tutoring and went hunting for Dove. He knew where she’d be.
The Wickwood library had been known to eat students whole. It had its own building beside the school manor, smaller but still built of stone and ivy, and it had been packed with shelves and cozy study nooks. The upper floor had begrudgingly relinquished studios to art students and extracurricular clubs, so the whole building always smelled of books and paint, and sometimes Shakespeare monologues could be heard through the walls.
Since Dove lived to study, and Thomas breathed art, and Andrew craved stories, they all had pledged their hearts to this library.
Andrew wandered between the narrow shelves and ran fingers along the spines of his favorite sections. Leather-bound first editions lined overhead cabinets, and every reference book imaginable could be requested because Wickwood was designed for minds that burned to knoweverything. It was a school for brilliance, for fixating on the stars until you grew tall enough to reach them.
Andrew found Dove and her best friend, Extra CreditAssignments, holed up in a study nook by the window. It had a clear view to the parking lot—perfect, he’d see when Thomas returned.
Andrew slung his satchel onto her table. “That is way too much homework for our first week back.”
“It shouldn’t even be called homework, should it?” Dove had a pencil behind one ear and another jammed through her ponytail. “We live here. It should be homeschoolwork. I’m starting my essay analyzing stereotypical gender roles in fairy tales. You could write this better than me.”
Andrew thumbed through his notes from today’s classes, but he was too agitated to focus. He took out his notebook. “I don’t show people my stories, you know that. They wouldn’t get it.”
They’d had this argument before, but Dove eyeballed him anyway. “Our teachers handle Thomas’s art, and he’s a drama queen of the macabre. You could get extra credit if you wrote for class. Or—hear me out—you could write somethingnice.”
To write something nice, he’d need something nice to say. But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones.
“Have you heard anything about Thomas yet?” Andrew fiddled with the edge of his notebook and glanced at the window. “Should we worry?”
Dove reorganized her already perfectly stacked homework piles, and then straightened her tin of highlighters. “Not yet. Give it till dinner.”
“Then you’ll ask about him?” He hated how thin he sounded. Pathetic.
But Dove said, “Yes, I’ll do the asking,” firm and without judgment.
What were twins, if not one to shout and one to whisper?
She started to ask about his math homework—it was one of his worst classes, and Professor Clemens was a glorified bully—but the library doors burst open and a group of teens clattered in. They were all midconversation and immediately began hushing each other and cracking up because of it. Andrew put his elbow on the table and covertly cupped a hand over one ear to block out some of their noise.
Dove suddenly got to her feet. “I have to go.” She crushed handfuls of papers down among her textbooks while Andrew’s confusion turned to shock. Dove didnotmess up her orderly perfection.
“Who are we avoiding?” He swiveled to look at the incoming group.
Lana Lang strode around the shelves. Her purple combat boots came first, her stabby expression followed, and she had a sack of flags over her shoulder, the edges peeking out to show stripes of various color combinations. The motley crew behind her looked liberated from theatre class—different ages, some still in costume or glittering from drama class residue, and a few with haircuts that barely met Wickwood’s restrictive dress code. They all whispered or linked arms as they headed upstairs.
Only Lana paused. She put one hand on her hip, an eyebrow raised as she surveyed his shoved-aside homework. “Studying alone?”
“No, I’m with…” He looked back, but Dove had cleared out like a puff of smoke.
Was she fighting with Lana, too?
Lana watched the last of her crew disappear upstairs, then readjusted her sack of flags. “Want to come?” Her usual brusque tone had a tentative edge.
“Are you running an art club?” Andrew said.
Lana squinted at him, and he had a flash of panic that he’d said something foolish. He hated talking to people.
“Ms. Poppy runs the GSA club, but we come in early to hang out.”
Andrew wanted to turn himself inside out. “It’s not my… thing.” Did Lana look annoyed? She probably thought him a bigot now instead of someone who was an absolute mess about his sexuality and didn’t want to talk about it with anyone ever.
