From this distance, he could barely hear them, but Lana gesticulated wildly with her hands, her floppy witch’s hat half obscuring her dramatic stage makeup. She wore a stiff black tulle skirt with bright black-and-purple leggings, and her arms were sheathed in fishnet gloves. Bracelets of tiny plastic skulls hung around her wrists to complete the look. Thomas frowned at whatever she was saying and then shook his head dismissively.
Andrew thought he heard Lana say, “… calling for Dove. You need to make sure he knows.”
Thomas stared at her. “Knows?The hell? He freaking knows, Lana.”
Bryce’s vulture moved his grip to the back of Andrew’sneck and started pedaling him toward the exit. Andrew slipped trying to stay upright, the need to shout for Thomas tangled in the thorns growing up his throat.
“Let’s have a little chat. Specifically about where Bryce is.” He shoved Andrew harder. “He told us about your littlethreat. Was taking it straight to a teacher and then suddenly he’s vanished? What did you do, dipshit?”
More of Bryce’s friends cruised over, all bright eyes and shark teeth in their immaculate suits and perfectly styled hair. The boy holding Andrew let go suddenly and shoved him at one of the others, and they mussed knuckles through his hair before shoving him sideways to the next one. Panic seized Andrew with such violent velocity he couldn’t breathe. They were everywhere at once—shoving him, digging fingers into his skin, spinning him around, cracking knuckles against the back of his skull. He couldn’t keep his balance, but every time he nearly fell someone hauled him upright and shoved him again.
He was not-not-not—
okay
“Did you tell your psycho boyfriend to do something to Bryce?” one of them snarled.
“Get him outside. Behind the school.”
A hand gripped the back of Andrew’s shirt and half lifted him toward the door, and all he could think was how pathetic it was that he could stand against monsters in the forest but here, under swirling bright lights and pulsing music and laughter, he had been reduced to a tremulous, terrified slip of a thing in desperate need of rescue. He was suffocating, he was drowning. Apparently, they all just looked like boys messing around,because not a single teacher walked over, not a single head turned. No one cared. No one noticed.
Except one.
Thomas slammed his shoulder into one of Bryce’s vultures so hard he stumbled. He broke into their knotted circle with eyes blazing and teeth already bared in a snarl. But when he reached out for Andrew, someone blocked him with their arm.
“Stand back, creep. Unless you’re here to confess to murder.”
“Yours? Keep touching Perrault and we’ll find out.” Thomas rammed the next boy with his elbow.
He’d start a fight like this, an all-out brawl. Andrew couldn’t let… he had to stop… His skin was a fevered oil slick and they all held matches.
“Where’s Bryce?” One of his friends took a menacing step forward. “What the hell did you two sickos do?”
Someone grabbed the torn-up drawings from Andrew’s sweaty hands. “Look, Rye is still obsessing over Dove. After everything he did to her.” He flung the pieces at Thomas.
“Stop.” Andrew thought of the box cutter blade in his pocket.
Thomas slowly bent to pick up the shredded paper as it fluttered to the floor, and his face went blank. His eyes caught Andrew’s and for a second they stared at each other as grief hollowed out Thomas’s face. He had become nothing, just an empty box of desolation as his mouth formed the words, “That was all that was left of us.”
His last drawing.
His last piece of Dove.
A vulture shoved Thomas back, hard. “People heard you fight with Dove. You should’ve been expelled and got your asssued to hell and back. She told you not to touch her brother and you went and did just that.”
Time slurred, tilting to the left as Andrew began to slip. He would fall off the edge of the world, and he would never stop falling. His mouth throbbed as if he’d just been hit, blood wetting his lips as if he’d torn open his own tongue. Or maybe that was the fungi digging into the cracks between each tooth.
So Dove had sabotaged him.
A small part of him had known it, really, had known she was angry at the way Thomas and he had grown close. But if she’d told Thomas he couldn’t have Andrew and Thomas had obeyed for so long…
“Wouldn’t be surprised if you hurt her,” the vulture spat right at Thomas’s face.
“For thelast time,” Thomas yelled. “I wasn’t in the forest with her! I wasn’t there! Iwasn’t there.”
People were looking now, teachers taking note. The music seemed to tilt up a notch to cover the disturbance, but it would only take a moment more before everything broke. A teacher intervening. Or Thomas hitting someone.
Andrew had spent all this time wholly believing Thomas, but what if—what if he was just ignoring the evidence? This boy had something monstrous living right under his skin, something that leaked out of his drawings in ink that turned into flesh and bone. Dove had cut him out, had refused to forgive him when usually she would. Why was he siding with Thomas when he should be loyal to his sister? Maybe she didn’t want Andrew with Thomas because Thomas was—
