Thomas turned and yanked Andrew after him, carving them a path into the auditorium with his jabbing elbows and ferocious scowl.
“What did youdo?” Andrew hissed.
“Nothing. I just got here, same as you.”
They needed to find three seats; Dove would catch up tothem before the announcements started for sure. But Andrew didn’t have time to voice this before Thomas crammed him into one of the back rows. All of the performances and award nights happened in here, and it had the air of an old theatre with the red velvet chairs and moody lighting.
“Are wehiding?” Andrew whispered.
Thomas glared at the row of shiny ponytails in front of them—juniors, all talking with their phones out.
“I’m telling you, she hates me specifically.” Thomas fidgeted, trying to get comfortable. “Those cops are probably here to lecture us about drugs or something.”
“You’d know,” Andrew muttered.
“That wasone time. I have got to corrupt you all the way this year so you can stop being so innocent.”
“I break rules sometimes.”
“Only if I drag you into it.” Thomas knocked his knee against Andrew’s. “You won’t even steal a pencil. You know what we need? You, me, stargazing, and vodka. I’m deeply interested in what you’d say with no filter.”
Andrew was deeply interested in that never happening. He couldn’t risk allowing his mouth to say the things he only dared scream in his head.
He knew he was blushing because Thomas grinned deviously.
One of the junior girls shot a scathing glance over her shoulder. “Excuse me, are you talking about illicit activities?” Her whisper was loud enough for all her friends to hear.
“Yes, we’re going to steal all the pencils in the school,” Thomas said.
“I can report you,” she hissed. “They’re cracking down this year, and whoever has been selling Adderall is so getting caught. Same goes for anyone sneaking off campus into the forest, too. You of all people should respect that.”
Several more of the ponytail girls turned with lips pursed. A few looked pityingly at Andrew.
“Oh my God, are they the ones from that thing that happened last year?” one whispered to her friend. “I’m surprised they came back.”
Thomas started to raise a finger, but Andrew grabbed his hand and slammed it down.
He maintained a neutral expression until the girls turned away, but his heart raced. He didn’t know what that was about. Maybe because of what he’d done to his hand? But it shouldn’t be something the whole school would gossip over. He wasn’t interesting enough to care about like that.
A few rows ahead, Andrew caught sight of the back of Dove’s blazer where she sat with her AP class friends. She laughed at something a friend said before casting a quick glance over her shoulder. She must’ve locked eyes with Thomas, because she frowned and his scowl deepened in response. They looked away at the same time.
A microphone crackled as a professor approached the podium and began the morning announcements. Time for an enthusiastic lecture about giving Wickwood your all, followed by a reminder of all the golden students who’d graduated on to Ivy League colleges. Everyone here was handpicked for excellence. Time to achieve! To thrive!
Except the reality was most of these kids were here thanks totheir parents’ bank accounts. Dove had aced the entrance exams on her own genius, but Andrew clung on by luck—and their father paying the steep tuition, with a little extra for donations when pressed.
Thomas stood squarely in the middle. His parents were artists and wore wealth like disposable plastic, selling a piece worth hundreds of thousands one day and impulsively burning through the money the next. It meant Thomas went to an incredibly expensive school and yet wore his uniforms to threadbare rags before getting new ones. His grades slumped worse than Andrew’s, but at least he had his art.
Thomas was viciously talented. Andrew wrote cruelly beautiful fairy tales, and Thomas could illustrate them with a few slashes from a pen with such macabre beauty even his teachers overlooked his endless attitude problems.
Andrew tried to listen to the professor drone on, but all he could think about were those cops. It couldn’t be about Thomas. It just—no, it couldn’t.
Except one look at Thomas and anyone could see his mouth was crammed full of thorns and lies. If Dove had sat with them, she’d have surgically removed all of Thomas’s bullshit and figured out the truth by now.
Andrew kept his voice low. “You and Dove fought before summer break, right? You never made up?”
Thomas bit his thumbnail. “No.”
That explained it. One of them had to give first, and this time it seemed like their individual stubbornness was winning.
