“You lived there?”
“Almost four years. Boarding school for troubled boys.” At my quizzical look, he says, “My dad split when I was thirteen. My parents fought all the time. My dad was never around and my mom was depressed. I started getting into all kinds of trouble, one suspension after another, but by that point, she was already dating someone new and couldn’t be bothered to care. That fall, when my older brother went off to college, she got engaged and dumped me here.” Jack shrugs like it’s no big deal, but the furrows in his brow say otherwise. “That was the last time I was home.”
I stop walking, making him stop, too. “You never went back?”
Without letting go of my hand, he bends to pick up a smooth piece of rock that’s flaked away from an outcropping. He pitches it sideways into a ravine, as if he’s skipping stones on a lake. “She promised every winter break she’d come get me and bring me home for Christmas. But she never came. There was always some excuse. She remarried a year later. Changed our last name from Sommers to Sullivan. I was mad. It felt like she chose him over me.” My heart hurts for him. He says it with a shrug of his shoulders, like it’s no big deal. But he was dumped here. Abandoned by the one woman who could have healed him. “I hated this place,” he says with a slow shake of his head. “I tried like hell to get kicked out so she’d have to come get me. I even got arrested once.”
“You? For what?” I ask as he starts walking again, leading me along the base of the ridge.
Jack’s smile is rakish as he counts off on his fingers. “Underage drinking, destruction of property, resisting arrest—”
I can’t help it. I laugh.
“What?” he asks with feigned indignation, pulling me in close to avoid a rock in our path until our shoulders brush. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, I just have a hard time picturing you as the dangerous rebel.” I think of every time I’ve searched for his name on the screens at the Observatory. How it’s always been top of the ranks, the A student Chronos had pegged for his Guard. And yet here he is, breaking every one of Gaia’s rules. “So what happened?”
“I used my one phone call to call my mom.”
“And?”
“And she didn’t pick up.” He winces as he gazes off into the distance, as if part of him is still waiting for her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was a long time ago,” he says. But in the set of his jaw, I see a hint of that forsaken boy still raging inside him.
We reach the bottom of the ridge and Jack pauses within view of a moonlit pond. He chews his lip as he considers it. “Do you trust me?” he asks with a gleam in his eye.
He tugs me by the sleeve. I pull against him as he drags me closer to the pond. “I’mnotswimming in any more cold water.”
He laughs. “I promise I won’t make you swim.”
I latch onto a root with my mind, determined not to let him dunk me.
Jack steps to the water’s edge. He doesn’t stop.
“Jack, what are you—?”
His running shoe comes down on the water just as the pond freezes beneath it. The frost spreads to his other foot until he’s standing on a platform of ice. “Come on,” he says. “It’s safe. I promise.” I utter a protest as he takes my hand, walking backward with a cocky smile. Suddenly, I’m standing on the ice with him. My feet skim over the surface, and a laugh bubbles up inside me.
“I haven’t skated since I was little.” My voice is thin as I grip his hand for balance. I take an uncertain step and my feet slide out from under me.
“Easy there.” Jack pulls me to him before I fall, until our bodies are pressed together, my hands on his shoulders, our faces close, our fogged breath mingling.
Close enough to kiss.
My breath catches. Jack pulls back slowly, letting my hands fall into his, his thoughts unreadable as he leads me farther out onto the pond. He steers me in slow circles across the ice.
“This is where I met Chill,” he says once I’m steady on my feet, our elbows locked together.
“Where? On the pond?”
“No, about fifteen feet under it. It was winter break of my senior year. I broke out of the dorm with some booze and a few people I thought were friends. We cut through the woods after the resort closed and they’d turned off the lights on the slopes. I ended up with a snapped spine under a couple feet of snow. No one came looking for me. Except Gaia. She told me my survival would depend on my next choice—that I should choose carefully. Next thing I remember, I was wandering the hills barefoot. All I knew was that I was supposed to pick someone towatch over me and protect me, to look out for me—only I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for.” Jack turns to me then with a broken smile. “There’d never been one single person in my life who’d come looking for me if I disappeared. Not one person I could count on to make sure I made it home.”
“And then you found Chill?”
Jack nods. He points to a distant corner of the pond. “A few days later, I was sitting in those trees just outside campus, wondering what would happen if I showed my face there three hours after my own memorial service. And I saw this gangly kid wearing a collared shirt and a clip-on tie. Figured he must have come from my funeral. I was surprised, I guess. I didn’t know much about Chill other than his name—or at least what his name was back then—we didn’t hang around in the same circles. But there he was, getting pushed around at the side of the pond by a couple of guys I knew a little too well from school. They grabbed Chill’s glasses and tossed them out onto the pond. Chill walked out to get them, but the ice was thin. When he fell through, they ran.”
