When I was still at Beacon, a story went around about one of those gloves-off parties—and how a few kidsdiedbecause someone’s newly activated glim went haywire. Their match was left in a coma for a week.
Even if Cole wouldn’t kill me for messing around with fate, I’ll be waiting until the graduation ball to start looking to spark, thank you very much.
A preteen with anxiety written all over his brown face comes jogging from the junior building, aiming a pointed look at Jesse. Jesse sighs with affectionate resignation. “All right, kiddo. Let’s get on with it.”
He tips his head to me. “Weekend hunting. We’ll make it happen.”
As they head off, I turn away from the school.
A fall of glossy dark brown waves newly streaked with purple draws my gaze and makes me pause. Elodie Devine is striding along the opposite sidewalk—on the Luminary side, alone.
Her expression looks unusually intent. Maybe that’s why I keep watching her, even though I’ve never paid her much more attention than I have any of the other rich girls who buzz around in their circles of friends and wrinkle their noses at me.
The only expressions I can remember seeing on her face in the past are bored disdain and conspiratorial chumminess with her friends.
That is, other than a couple of days ago when she was staring at me on the green. At least, it seemed like it was me she was staring at. I have no idea why she would have been—I checked my uniform for horrific stains or a gaping fly afterward, and I was fine.
I brushed the incident off as a weird happenstance… but something has definitely been a little weird about Elodie all week. Where would she be going on her own, on foot, with all that determination?
I also never let myself think about her looks before, because what’s the point? It’s useless enough crushing onanyonewhen you have no idea who your match—or matches—will turn out to be. Even worse to end up appreciating someone who sees you as dirt.
But right now, with that bold hair and the purposefulness of her stride, I can’t help noticing she’s really incredibly pretty.
Of course, right as I’m thinking that she glances over and catches me doing the staring this time.
I wince inwardly, expecting a sneer, but Elodie simply blinks. I’d swear a flicker of something painful crosses her face, as if I’ve accidentally prodded a bruise.
A second later, she jerks her gaze away and marches onward at an even faster clip than before.
A weird impulse tugs at me to follow her, to find out where she’s going. Tohelpher. As if there’s any chance I could offer the heir to one of lucent society’s top families something she doesn’t already have.
Because I’m not an idiot, I walk in the other direction toward the bus stop instead. When the grumbling vehicle finally shows up, it’s a twenty-minute ride and then a ten-minute walk home.
As I come up on the house Cole rents the first floor and basement of, I can’t help noticing it’s almost as scruffy-looking as Beacon Prep. How long has the paint on the porch railing been peeling? When did anyone last pull the weeds out from between the concrete tiles that lead past the short, dandelion-dotted lawn?
I can’t imagine Elodie Devine seeing this house and doing anything other than grimacing.
Elodie is never going to see it, though, is she? Why am I even thinking about her?
I shake off the lingering memory of her stalking away from school and head inside. My brother stays later at the academy to finish up paperwork and all the other things on a professor’s plate. I don’t want him worrying about anything else after he gets home.
I dig through the fridge’s sparse offerings, making a mental note that I should stop at the grocery store tomorrow. We do have thirty dollars left in this week’s grocery budget.
Finally, I grab the last chunk of cheese, a couple of sweet potatoes, and an onion.
There’s a can of black beans in the cabinet and a few tortillas left in the bag on the counter. Sweet potato and black bean wraps—that’ll be a filling enough dinner, and I can make it taste pretty good too.
I go through the motions of nuking the sweet potatoes to soften them up and then chop them into chunks, speeding theprocess along with a few spurts of collected ephemera. While the diced onion sizzles on the frying pan, I set aside a small portion of sweet potato and rinsed beans, mashing them up a bit.
Cooking always makes me restless, like there’s something more important I should be doing. But if I don’t handle meals, Cole has to. It’s only us. And he already works way too hard for both of us.
Even when I’m gone, I don’t want him to ever believe I didn’t appreciate all the opportunities he made for me. They will make a difference, even if it’s not in the ways he was hoping.
Once the sweet potatoes are frying, I duck out the back door to the alley that cuts past the small parking pad for the car we can’t afford. At the sound of my footsteps, an eager woof carries from farther down the lane.
The shaggy mutt who’s been hanging around this neighborhood for over a year now comes loping over. When I set out the dish, he wolfs down his part of our dinner in a matter of seconds. Then he offers up his chin for scratches until I have to go in to make sure the rest of the food isn’t burning.
Cole would be pissed if he knew I was giving away food to a stray. “You can’t adopt every animal that widens its eyes at you,” he told me once when I was eleven. “If I let you, you’d stuff the whole house full of them. Pets areexpensive.”
