“I’m not allowed to walk the halls now?”
“You are.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
Hale looked past me to the clock tower door.
“That was not on your tour.”
“That wasn’t a tour. That was a map with most of the useful parts missing.”
“It was the map you were given.”
“And the tower?”
“Off limits.”
“There’s no sign.”
“There isn’t always a sign.”
“Who made the rule?”
“The same people who notice when it’s broken.”
He pushed off the wall.
“Go back to your room, Astra.”
“And if I don’t want to?”
His eyes moved to my wrist.
“Then know who you’re letting see you where you don’t belong.”
Then he walked away.
I stayed where I was for three more breaths, looking at the clock tower door.
Then I went back to Room 114.
Not because Hale had told me to.
But because I remembered what Juno had said about people documenting me, and the corridor had started to feel full of eyes that made my skin crawl.
When I opened the door to my room, an apple was on the bed with a note beside it.
I stopped in the doorway.
There was no one in the room, but thefeelingwas there.
Green apple hit first. Ordinary enough. Then the river stone, warmed by the sun, underneath it.
I grabbed the doorframe until the dizziness passed.
Then I looked at the apple.
Then at the door I was sure I had locked.
