“My parents will wonder what they did wrong, blame themselves, try to fix it when they can’t.”
“And Lior?”
“He’ll remember.”
“Remember what?”
“Whatever I tell him. The words they use. The order they use them in. The names. The doors. Lior remembers everything.”
“So you want him to know what happened to you.”
“I want him to know before anyone decides it should happen to him too.” She said it plainly.
I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked at me then.
“Sit with me again tomorrow.”
“I can do that.”
“We can find a table to ourselves.”
Her eyes moved to the boy with the book.
I looked at his page.
It was upside down. Hedefinitelywasn’t reading.
Delphine said nothing else for the rest of the meal.
Neither did I.
When she stood, she pushed the last piece of bread toward me.
“For later,” she said.
Then she left.
I ate it before I reached the door.
When I left the dining hall, I didn’t go straight back to Room 114.
The thought of my room with its wall-facing window and the basin in the corner felt too small for everything Juno had put in my hands.
So I walked.
I followed the corridor along the dining hall windows until the clock tower came into view at the far end of the quad. From inside, it looked less like a tower and more like a narrow dark door with a clock face above it.
I had taken three steps toward it when Hale’s voice said, “Not that way.”
The leather-warm pull reached me before the voice finished.
I knew who it was before I turned around.
Instructor Hale stood beside the south corridor.
