"That's all it was."
"I think you were onto something. I think you were right to feel weird
about Evernight. And I think you ought to listen to that voice inside yourself
and stop listening so much to your parents."
Lucas couldn't be saying these things. If my parents ever heard him talking
like this—No, I couldn't even think about that. "Just because Evernight
sucks doesn't mean my parents are bad parents, and you have a lot of nerve
criticizing them when you hardly know them. You don't know anything about my
family, and I don't understand why you care."
"Because—" He stopped, as if startled by his own words. Slowly,
almost disbelieving, he said, "I care because I care about you."
Oh, why did he have to say that now? Like this?
I shook my head.
"You're not making any sense."
"Hey." One of the construction workers had just punched up some tacky
eighties metal on the jukebox. Now he was strolling toward us, off balance.
"You givin' that little girl trouble?"
"We're okay," I said hastily. This was not the time to discover that
chivalry wasn't dead. "Honestly, it's okay."
Lucas acted like he hadn't even heard me. He glared at the guy and snapped,
"This isn't any of your business."
That was like dropping a match into a pool of gasoline. The construction worker
swaggered closer, and his friends all stood up. "You go treating your
girlfriend like that in public and damn straight it's my business."
"He wasn't giving me trouble!" I was still angry with Lucas, but the
situation was clearly getting out of control. "It's great that you guys
are, uh, looking out for women—seriously, it is—but there's no problem
here."
"Stay out of this," Lucas said, his voice low. There was a note in it
I'd never heard before, an almost unnatural intensity. A shiver went up my
spine. "She's not your concern."
"You think you own her or somethin'? So you can treat her however you
want? You remind me of the pig my sister married." The construction worker
looked angrier than ever. "You think I won't give you what I gave him,
you're dreamin', kid."
In desperation I looked around for a waiter or the store owner. My parents.
Raquel. Basically, I was hoping for somebody, anybody, who might put a stop to
this before the drunk construction guys beat Lucas to a pulp—because they were
huge and there were four of them and by now they were all clearly spoiling for
a fight.
I never imagined that Lucas would strike first.
He moved too fast for me to see. There was a blur of motion, and then the
construction worker was sprawling backward into his friends. Lucas's arm was
extended, his fist clenched, and it took a moment to sink in:
Oh, my God, he
just
hit
somebody.
"What the hell?" One of the other workers came at Lucas, who dodged
him so quickly that it was like he was there, and then he wasn't. Instead he
was at an angle, able to shove his opponent away so hard that I thought he'd
fall down.
"Hey!" A man in his forties, wearing a sauce-stained apron, walked
into the dining area. I didn't care if he was the owner, the chef, or Papa
John—I'd never been so glad to see anybody in my life. "What's going on
here?"
"There's no trouble!" Okay, I was lying, but it didn't matter. I slid
out of the booth and started backing toward the door. "We're going. It's
over."
The construction workers and Lucas kept staring at each other, like they wanted
nothing more than to kick the fight into high gear, but mercifully Lucas
followed me. As the door swung shut behind us, I could hear the owner muttering
something about kids from that damn school.
As soon as we were in the street, Lucas turned to me. "Are you okay?"
"No thanks to you!" I started walking quickly back toward the main
street. "What's gotten into you? You started a fight with that guy for no
reason!"
"He started it!"
"No, he started the
argument
. You started the fight."
"I was protecting you."
"He thought he was, too. Maybe he was drunk and gross about it, but he
didn't mean any harm."
"You don't understand how dangerous a place the world really is,
Bianca."
Every other time Lucas had talked like that—as if he were so much older than I,
and he wanted to teach me and shelter me—it had made me feel all warm and happy
inside. Now it made me angrier. "You act like you know everything, and
then you behave like an idiot and start a fight with four guys! And I saw how
you fight, too. You've done this before."
Lucas had been walking alongside me, but his steps slowed, like he was shocked.
I realized that what had really shocked him was that I'd figured it out. I was
right. Lucas had been in fights like this before now, and more than once.
"Bianca—"
"Save it." I held up my hand, and we walked in silence back to the
rental bus, which already was surrounded by students milling around, most of
them with shopping bags or sodas in hand.
Lucas swung into the seat beside me, like he was still hoping we'd talk, but I folded
my arms across my chest and stared at the window. Vic bounced into the seat in
front of us and crowed, "Yo, guys, what's up?" Then he got a look at
our faces. "Hey, looks like it might be a good time for me to tell one of
my long rambling stories that goes nowhere."
"Great plan," Lucas said shortly.
True to his word, Vic went on and on about surfboards and bands and weird
dreams he'd had once upon a time, and he didn't stop talking until we were back
at school. That saved me from having to talk to Lucas; and, for his part, Lucas
didn't say anything at all.
After the trip to riverton, I felt like A fool who had
thrown Lucas away for nothing.
Those construction workers had been drinking. Plus, there were four of them and
only one of him. Maybe Lucas had needed to show them he meant business to avoid
getting beaten to a pulp. If he'd done the only thing he could, what right did
I have to judge him?
"No way," Raquel said when I confided in her the next day, walking
across the grounds. The leaves had finished changing color, so that the hills
in the distance were no longer green but crimson and gold. "If a guy gets
violent, you get out. Period. Be thankful you saw his temper in action before
you were the one he was angry at."
Her vehemence startled me. "You sound like you know what you're talking
about."
"What, you never watched a Lifetime Original Movie?" Raquel didn't
meet my eyes, just fiddled with the braided leather bracelet on her wrist.
"Everybody knows that. Men who hit are bad men."
"I know he overreacted. But there's no way Lucas could ever hurt me."
Raquel shrugged and pulled her school blazer more tightly around her, as if she
felt a chill, though it wasn't that cold out. For the first time, I wondered
how much of her quiet demeanor and boyish appearance were a means of hiding
herself from attention she didn't want. "Nobody ever thinks that something
bad can happen until it happens. Besides, he kept telling you how much
everybody here sucked and how you shouldn't be friends with your roommate or
just about anybody else, right?"
"Well…yeah, but—"
"But nothing. Lucas was trying to isolate you from everyone else so he'd
have more power over you." Raquel shook her head. "You're better off
without him."
I knew she was wrong about Lucas, but I also knew that I hadn't come close to
figuring him out.
Why had Lucas started criticizing my parents? The only time he'd ever seen us
all together was at the movie theater, and they'd been friendly and welcoming.
He'd claimed that it was about my halfhearted attempt to run away on the first
day of school, but I didn't know if I entirely believed that. If he had a
problem with Mom and Dad, he'd obviously dreamed it up for some bizarre
paranoid reason that I was better off not having to deal with.
Explanations invented themselves in my head. Perhaps he'd had some girlfriend
before me—probably chic and sophisticated, a girl who had traveled all around
the world—and her parents had been snobbish and unfair. They'd shut Lucas out,
maybe had forbidden him to ever see their daughter again, and so now he was
scarred and distrustful.
This imagined story did me absolutely no good whatsoever. First of all, it made
me feel sorry for Lucas, like I understood why he'd behaved so strangely, when
really I didn't. Also, I felt insecure compared to this theoretical
sophisticated previous girlfriend—and how sad is it if you feel threatened by a
person who doesn't even exist?
I don't think I'd realized just how important Lucas had become to me until
then—until we were separated and I had real reasons for staying away from him.
Chemistry class, the only one we shared, was an hour of torture every day; I could
almost feel him near me, the way you can feel a fire's presence in a cold room.
Yet I never spoke to him, and he never spoke to me, respecting the silence I had
demanded and maintained. I didn't see how he could be in more pain than I was.
Logic said I was better off walking away, but logic didn't matter to me. I missed
Lucas all the time, and it seemed like the more I told myself to leave him
alone, the more I longed to be with him.
Did he feel the same way? I couldn't be sure. All I knew for certain was that
he was wrong about my parents.
"How are you feeling, Bianca?" Mom asked softly as we cleared away my
dishes from our Sunday dinner.
I hadn't slept well, hadn't eaten much, and mostly just wanted to pull a
blanket over my head for the next two years or so. But for virtually the first
time in my life, I didn't want to confide in them. They were Lucas's teachers;
it wouldn't be fair to Lucas to tell them about his suspicions. Besides,
talking about the fact that Lucas and I were apparently over before we'd even
started would have made the loss more real. "I'm fine."
Mom and Dad exchanged glances. They could tell I was lying, but they weren't
going to press me. "Tell you what," Dad said, heading toward the
record player. "Don't go back downstairs just yet."
"Really?" Normally, the Sunday dinner rules dictated that I return to
the dorms for studying not long after dinner had ended.
"It's a clear night, and I thought you might want to get in some telescope
time. Besides, I was about to put Frank Sinatra on. I know how you love Ol'
Blue Eyes."
"'Fly Me to the Moon,'" I requested, and within a few seconds, Frank
was singing it to us all. I showed them both the Andromeda galaxy, directing
them to look up from Pegasus, then go northeast until they saw it, the soft
fuzzy glow of a billion stars far away. After that, I spent a long time combing
through the cosmos, each familiar star like a long-lost friend.
* * *
The next day, on my way to history class, I glimpsed Lucas
in the hallway at the very same moment he spotted me. Sunlight from the stained
glass windows painted him the colors of autumn, and it seemed to me that he had
never been more handsome.
When our gazes met, though, the moment lost all its beauty. Lucas looked hurt,
as bewildered and lost as I'd been feeling ever since the argument in the
restaurant—and for a terrible second I felt guilty, because I knew that I'd
hurt him. I could see guilt in his eyes, too. Then he clenched his jaw and
turned from me, shoulders slightly hunched. Within seconds, he was lost in the
crowd of uniforms, one more invisible person at Evernight.
Maybe he was telling himself, once again, that it was best to keep his distance
from people. I remembered how he had acted when we were together—so much
happier and looser, more free—and I hated the idea that I might have forced him
to shut himself off from the world again.
"Lucas's totally dragging ass around the dorm room," Vic informed me
later that day when we ran into each other on the stairwell. For once, Vic was
dressed normally—at least, from the ankles up, because the red Chucks he had on
his feet were definitely not part of the uniform. "He's kind of a moody
guy anyway, but this is beyond moody. This is supermoody. Megamoody. X-treme
moodiness." He made an
X
with his arms to spell out the last.
"Did he send you here to plead his case?" I tried to make it sound
light. I don't think I did very well; my voice was so ragged that anybody could
tell I'd been crying earlier that day—even someone as oblivious as Vic.
"He didn't send me. He's not like that." Vic shrugged. "Just
wondering about the source of the drama."
"There's no drama."
"There's totally drama, and you're not going to tell me about it, but,
hey, that's okay. Because it's not my business."
I felt so disappointed. I would have been angry if Lucas had sent Vic to argue
on his behalf, but it was depressing to realize that Lucas was going to let me
go without a fight. "Okay."
Vic nudged my elbow with his. "You and me are still friends, right? You
guys get joint custody in the divorce. Generous visitation rights."
"Divorce?" Despite myself, I laughed. Only Vic could call the
aftermath of a bad first date a divorce. We hadn't exactly been friends
beforehand, so "still" was an exaggeration, but it would've been mean
to point that out. Besides, I liked Vic. "We're still friends."
"Excellent. The weirdos have to stick together around here."
"Are you calling me a weirdo?"
"Highest honor I can bestow." He held out his hands as we walked
through the corridors, taking it all in with one gesture: the high ceilings,
the dark, scrolling woodwork that framed every hall and door, the shaded light
that filtered through old windows and streaked long, irregular shadows on the
floor. "This place is the capital of weird. So what's weird here is what's
normal anywhere else. That's how I look at it, anyway."
I sighed. "You know, I think you've got a point."
He was definitely right about needing as many friends as I could get in a place
like Evernight Academy. It wasn't as if I'd ever liked it here, but my brief
time with Lucas had taught me how it felt not to be so desperately alone. Now
that he was gone, my isolation stood out in sharper relief. Realizing how much
better it could have been only made it harder to bear how unfriendly and
intimidating this place actually was.
The change in seasons didn't help. The school's Gothic architecture had been
softened slightly by the lush ivy and the sloping green lawn. The narrow
windows and strangely tinted light hadn't been able to fully mask the
brightness of the late-summer sun. Now, however, dusk came earlier, making
Evernight seem more isolated than ever before. As the temperatures cooled, a
lasting chill crept into the classrooms and dormitories, and sometimes it
seemed that the featherings of frost on the windowpanes were etching themselves
permanently into the glass. Even the beautiful autumn leaves rustled in the
wind, a lonely, shivery sort of sound. They'd already started falling, leaving
the first few branches bare, like naked claws scrabbling at the gray-clouded
sky.
I wondered if perhaps the founders of the school had created an Autumn Ball to
cheer the students up at such a melancholy time of year.
"I don't think so," Balthazar said. We were at the same table in the
library; he'd first invited me to study with him a couple of days after the ill-fated
Riverton trip. At my old school, I hadn't studied with anyone, because
"studying" usually turned into "talking and goofing off,"
and then the assignments stretched out even longer. I preferred to get my
homework over and done with. But Balthazar turned out to feel the same way, and
we'd spent a lot of time together in the two weeks since, working side by side,
hardly saying a word for hours. The conversation didn't start until we were
packing up our books. "I suspect the school's founders loved autumn. It
brings out Evernight's true nature, I think."
"That's why they'd need cheering up."
He grinned and slung his leather satchel over one shoulder. "This is not
the most terrible school on the face of the earth, Bianca." Balthazar was
teasing me, but I could tell that he was genuinely concerned. "I wish you
were having more fun here."
"That makes two of us," I said, glancing at the corner where I'd seen
Lucas reading a few minutes before. He was still there, lamplight making his
bronze hair shine, but he didn't so much as turn his eyes in our direction.
"You could like it if you gave it a fair chance." Balthazar held the
library door for me as we went out. "You ought to explore a little more.
Try harder to get to know people."
I shot him a look. "Like Courtney?"
"Correction: Try harder to get to know the
right
people." When
Balthazar said "the right people," he didn't mean the richest or the
most popular; he meant the ones that might be worth getting to know. Thus far,
the only member of the in crowd who seemed remotely worth knowing was Balthazar
himself, so I thought I wasn't doing too badly on that score.
"I don't think Evernight is right for everybody," I confessed.
"I'm positive it's not right for me. I know it serves a purpose, but I'll
be glad when I graduate."
"I will, too, but not for the same reason." Balthazar walked slowly
by my side, carefully measuring his long stride so that I wouldn't fall behind.
Sometimes it hit me how big he was—tall and broad, powerfully built—and a weird
little tingle would start in my belly. "Evernight always makes me feel
like I can understand the whole world. Like I can master it. Every new subject
I study, every innovation I learn about—it's like I can't wait to get out there
and try everything for myself."
His enthusiasm wasn't enough to make me like the school, but it did make me
smile for what felt like the first time in ages. "Well, at least one of us
is happy."
"I hope we'll both be happy before too long," Balthazar said softly.
His dark eyes were studying me intently, and that warm tingly feeling started
again.
We'd reached the archway that led to the girls' dormitory wing, and he stopped
right at the boundary. I could imagine him in the nineteenth century, all
courtly manners, and a smile tugged at my lips as I envisioned him bowing from
the waist.
Balthazar looked like he might be about to say something, but at that moment
Patrice walked up, apparently done with her own schoolwork. "Oh, Bianca,
there you are." Easily, she took my arm as if we were best friends.
"You must explain our latest assignment in Modern Technology to me. I can't
make any sense of it."
"Um—okay." As I was being towed down the hallway, I looked back at
Balthazar and waved. He looked more amused than disappointed. I muttered to Patrice,
"We were talking."
"I realize that," she whispered. "This way he'll keep wishing
he'd gotten a chance to talk to you more. That means he'll return to you more
quickly."
"Really?"
"In my experience, it works rather well. Besides, I really do need you to
explain."
This wasn't the first time I'd had to shepherd Patrice through that particular
course, or the first time I'd wondered why I bothered signing up for it at all.
"Not a problem." I sighed.
Patrice giggled, and for a moment she was almost girlish. "Balthazar's the
most attractive man here, if you ask me. Not precisely my type, but those
shoulders? Those dark eyes? You've done rather well for yourself."
"We're just friends," I protested as we returned to our room.
"Just friends. Hmmm." Patrice's eyes sparkled with amusement. "I
wonder if Courtney would agree."
I held up my hands, trying to cut this conversation off before it got even more
uncomfortable than it already was. "Don't tell Courtney about this, okay?
I don't need the hassle."
She arched one eyebrow. "Don't tell her about what? I thought you said
there was nothing to tell."
"If you want help with your homework, you're going to drop the subject.
Now."
Slightly offended, Patrice shrugged. "Suit yourself. If I were you, I'd be
excited about attracting the attention of a guy like Balthazar. But, by all
means, let's talk about homework instead."
Honestly, I
was
a little proud that Balthazar liked me. I wasn't
convinced that he wanted to be anything more than a friend, but he definitely
flirted with me sometimes. After the mess with Lucas, it felt good to be
flirted with—as if I really were beautiful and fascinating instead of the shy,
awkward girl in the corner.
Balthazar was kind, smart, and he had a sly sense of humor. Everyone liked him,
probably because he seemed to like most people in return. Even Raquel, who
detested virtually all the in crowd, said hello to him in the hallway, and he
always said hello back. He wasn't snobbish or cold. And he really was
devastatingly good-looking.
He was everything a girl could ask for, basically. But he wasn't Lucas.