Hiding in a corner was about to be his best plan, when he rounded a shelf and pulled up short. Dove stood at the end, dust motes dancing above her head in the light like a crown of feathers as her long, elegant fingers trailed over book spines. The pain of their last conversation—theirfight—came back with the brutal swiftness of a knife sliding into his lungs. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to walk away.
She looked up as if she could sense him hovering, anxious and jittery, and the dismissive way she turned away to continue searching for a book made heat flare in his chest.
He hurried over, trying to balance his armful of slipping textbooks and still look stern. In control. But when he opened his mouth to speak, she got in first.
“Do you hear what they’re saying about Thomas?”
Andrew blinked. “No? Who’s saying what?”
Dove gave a dismissive snort, as if of course he couldn’t be relied on to know what was happening around him. “That he killed his parents.” She pulled out a book, inspected it, then slid it back into the shelf. “And Clemens. It’s all over the school.”
A wave of nausea turned over Andrew’s stomach, the pain in his ear suddenly spiking as if the vine had sprouted a fresh tendril to worm deeper into the soft tissue behind his eyes. He pressed a thumb to his temple.
“Maybe you could talk to Thomas…” But he trailed off, ashamed of the feeble attempt.
“Also, here. I went over your story for you. I would suggest rewriting the whole thing.” She unfolded a paper from her pocket and smacked it atop his pile of books.
He flinched in surprise and then frowned as he glanced over the page soaked in red strikes and circled spelling errors. It was unmistakably torn from his notebook, but more than that, he recognized the story. The woodcutter who’d stolen an enchanted tree to burn for his fire and had then been encircled by the rest of the walking forest to be punished for his sins.
But he’d wedged this page in the window for Thomas to find. How could Dove—
“I—” he started, but Dove cut him off.
“I can’t just keep correcting your work again and again,” she said. “Especially when you make the same mistakes. Use a dictionary or, like, your brain.”
Tears rose hot and wild in his eyes, and the battle to hold them in, to hold his voice steady, was nearly lost. She was never like this with him, abrupt and curt, going heavy with a red pen—shealwaysused purple—and she never corrected his stories. These were part of him, sacred and personal and quiet, and to strike out whole lines with a little penned-in comment ofcliché and melodramaticfelt like the cruelest blow she could deliver.
With an abrupt jerk, he twisted away from her and strodeoff between the shelves. Dove had the gall to look annoyed, her arms folding and her mouth pursed in a tense line.
“You’re seriously leaving me again?” she said. “Are you about tocry? You have no right to be—”
He whirled on her. “Justshut up.”
Hurt flashed in her eyes, and he couldn’t take it. He—a coward, not a prince like Thomas—fled around the shelves until he couldn’t see her anymore.
He must have yelled a lot louder than he meant to, because several students looked up as he rushed past their tables, their expressions ranging from annoyed to bewildered. He probably looked unraveled and wild, one of those students already cracking under the weight of senior year.
He was saved when he caught sight of a table at the far end of the hall, shoved tight in a corner and ruled by the vehement presence of Lana Lang stabbing at a laptop while Chloe sat next to her underlining notes with pastel highlighters. Perfect. If Dove followed, she wouldn’t continue the fight in front of a junior she barely knew—though she was acting so erratic and vindictive, maybe she would. Maybe shewantedhim to cry where people could see and snicker and roll their eyes at his uncontrollable emotions.
Punishment for a crime he still didn’t know he’d committed.
He dumped his books on the table and dropped into a chair across from Chloe before remembering he hadn’t asked if they wanted him here, if he was taking someone else’s seat. Chloe looked up in surprise, her highlighter dashing an unintentional line across her page, while Lana paused her argument with the laptop to eye Andrew suspiciously. He busied himself arranging his books and then quickly swiped his sleeve over his eyes.
“Are you okay?” Lana said, cautious.
“Yup.” He snatched for his biology notepad, flipped to a random page, and stared at it. “I’m just waiting on Thomas, then I’ll go.” What else would he say?My sister was mean to me…Sure, and sound like a whining baby.
“You can stay.” Lana exchanged a quick glance with Chloe, who shrugged. “It’s just that someone yelled two seconds ago and it sounded like… you.”
He decided not to answer and then wondered if that made him seem more guilty.
“Also.” Lana dragged out the word as she slowly shut her laptop. “Did Thomas get into afight? Because his face is totally busted. I haven’t noticed anyone else looking like a lowlife brawler, but I can’t imagine he took a punch without swinging back.”
Andrew’s bruised knuckles tightened into a fist under the table, the cut of Thomas’s teeth on his skin hidden from her perceptive eyes. “He didn’t.”
Lana raised one eyebrow, but Andrew didn’t have a lie prepared, his pounding headache liquefying all common sense. He shouldn’t have sat here, he should’ve hidden in the bathrooms or gone to the nurse’s office for painkillers or—
Chloe’s fingers appeared at the top of his biology notepad and she carefully tugged it out of his grip, flipped it, and then slid it back. When he looked up, she gave him a reassuring smile.
