“I think so.” Pinpricks of color rose into her cheeks. “Aren’t we?”
He wondered what would happen if he broke down and told her the truth. If his bones would cleave in two from the strain. “Sure,” he said. “We can be friends.”
“Good.” She thrust the second paintbrush into his unexpecting grasp. “You can take the left wing.”
He didn’t move. “I’m not an artist.”
“Neither am I.” She toed a tray in his direction. Paint sluiced over the sides in fat red globs. “It’s easy. You just get some color on the brush and slap it on.”
As if in demonstration, she shoved her brush deep into a nearby tray and fanned the bristles along the wall. Gold dripped down like rain. Colton fought a wince.
“Michelangelo just rolled over in his grave.”
Lane bit down on a half smile. “Let’s go, Price. If I’m painting, you’re painting.”
Her words tugged through him like marionette string. Inextricably tangled. Cutting off his circulation. He couldn’t refuse her if he’d wanted to. Scowling, he wet his brush and dragged the barest tip of the bristles along the wall. A thin swath of red appeared like a wound. Glancing over at Lane, he found her beaming up at him. Eyes bright, her face constellated in gold.
“You’re happy with this?”
“Ecstatic,” she assured him.
They worked in silence after that. Focused on their tasks. Comfortable in the quiet. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been inside this room and not felt like he couldn’t breathe.
He’d nearly run out of paint when Lane rounded on him. “Adya saw it, by the way,” she said. “The thing in her head.”
He set his brush in the tray. “Yeah?”
“It was a boy. Or, what was left of a boy. She said he’d been ripped apart.”
His blood went cyanotic in his veins. “That’s rough.”
“It’shorrifying.” Eyeballing him sideways, she asked, “Does it remind you of anyone?”
It dawned on him that this was why she’d come back. Not to paint him butterflies. Not to be his friend. But because she was still digging into that infernal wall of names. He tried to summon the will to be angry. Instead, all he felt was relief.
“Wednesday,” he said evenly, “are you asking me if Ipersonallyknow anyone who’s been ripped apart?”
She grimaced. “Yes?”
“No.” It wasn’t a lie. Guzman’s autopsy report said his injuries were congruous with someone who had been dropped from a terrific height. Peretti looked as though he’d been dragged some great distance. There was no conceivable pattern, because patterns were for humans. And Guzman and Peretti hadn’t been killed by something human.
He didn’t want to think about what Dawoud’s discovery might mean. Not with Schiller’s name yawning between them like a chasm.
He didn’t want to answer all these questions.
He didn’t want to be her friend.
Glancing down at his watch, he rushed to speak before she could continue her interrogation. “It’s getting late. There’s no way you’re making the last train. Let me give you a ride back to campus.”
***
The drive home was quiet. No music. No conversation. Only the rumble of the engine, high beams carving a path through a new moon dark. Beneath his skin, hairline fractures charted a map along his vertebrae. He kept his hands on the wheel and tried not to think about Schiller, and what else he might have whispered in Lane’s ear.
They were minutes from campus when Lane finally broke the silence.
“Will your parents be mad? About the butterfly?”
“I doubt it.”
