He wassomething.
missing
On the stairs up to the faculty floor, they had to step aside as one of the junior counselors walked down with arms around Lana Lang’s shoulders. She had tissues pressed to puffy eyes, her breathing barely controlled. When she saw Andrew, she turned her whole body away and started crying harder.
He hadn’t spoken to her often—she was slightly terrifying—but he knew Dove adored her. Her presence always turned Thomas snappy and jealous, a juvenile reaction that Dove shut down because she had no patience for his inability to share. Andrew understood him, though. Thomas was so used to no one liking him, no one caring, that when they did, he was always terrified of the day they’d stop.
Ms. Poppy took Andrew’s hand and squeezed it.
In the principal’s office, they sat him down. Two cops spoke to the principal, and senior teachers came in and out. The roomfelt too small and stuffy for this many people. Andrew thought he’d be sick; he had no idea what he’d done wrong.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the ambulance outside.
The way he hadn’t seen Thomas.
Agony wrapped fingers around his throat and pressed down hard enough to snap cartilage.
The principal perched in the other leather armchair beside him instead of behind her desk, an intimacy that made the situation even more disconcerting.
“Andrew, I have some difficult news, but first I want to assure you that your father is on his way. We would have him on the phone for you, except he decided to get on a plane immediately.”
Andrew picked at the paint crusted on the hem of his shirt. Thomas’s shirt.
“There has been an accident.”
He wondered what Thomas had been painting since he usually gravitated toward ink and charcoal for his monsters.
“Your sister went into the forest. From what we can determine, she was climbing an old oak and a branch broke. She… well, she struck her head on a rock when she fell.”
He said nothing. He thought if he were in one of Thomas’s drawings, they could scrub charcoal over the top of his worried eyes and sad mouth and blot him right out of the world.
“She… passed away. I am so sorry, Andrew.”
Andrew looked steadily at his fingers twisting his shirt. “No, Thomas wouldn’t let that… Thomas Rye would have s-saved her.”
The principal’s voice sounded higher than usual, and she had to pause and clear her throat. “Lana Lang confirmed thatshe saw the two of them down by the tree line. They had some sort of argument, and then Dove went into the forest alone.”
The principal went on speaking. Andrew wished she’d stop. There had to be a finite number of words in the world, and she wasted them going on and on about how students were forbidden from the forest without teacher supervision. How misplaced loyalty meant Lana hadn’t reported Dove missing until after dinner. Then police had been called. A search party sent into the forest.
Thomas had been found, oblivious, in the art room.
Andrew had been searched for, but they missed him the first time under all the blankets, and then Ms. Poppy thought to check again and found him asleep.
His twin had been severed from him, and he hadn’t even been awake to feel it.
They asked if he had questions.
He didn’t.
People kept giving condolences.
He peeled paint from his shirt.
He said, “No,” one more time, just softly, but nobody listened. They had already accepted the truth of this story they’d made up, this dark and treacherous fairy tale worse than anything he’d ever written.
Eventually someone said, “He’s in shock,” and they dithered around about what to do with him before deciding to send him back to the dorms.
Dr. Reul escorted him, making comforting comments about how bright and loved Dove was and how he understood Andrew didn’t feel like talking right now, but when he did, there werepeople who would be there for him. All Andrew noticed, as they passed the empty parking lot, was how the ambulance had left.
