Weigel Hall is a massive glass-and-brick contraption built by rich, wrinkly alumni who wanted to see their name on something large and impressive before they kicked the bucket. The music majors and People Who Like Death Cab for Cutie Too Much™ hang around here 24-7, and they’re the ones who put this whole thing on. It’s a “battle of the bands” type of deal—handfuls of grungy college kids with aspiring indie bands performing on a stage to a likewise college crowd. Alcohol isn’t allowed, but people sneak it in in soda bottles and flasks, laughing and sloshing about like waterlogged pirates. With trust funds. And essays due the next day. Not that pirates wrote essays. But if they did, they would be about singing parrots and knife-fights and fat booty of the not-woman kind, or possibly simultaneously of the woman kind and the treasure kind, because, well, pirates.
“Hold this for me. Take pictures of me on it. I want to see my own awesome live show in Technicolor.” Yvette shoves a phone into my hand. Diana, looking a little lost but sweetly excited, giggles.
“Are you in a band?” she asks. Yvette looks at her like she’s just seeing her for the first time.
“U-Uh, yeah. Um. Major Rager.”
“It’s not that good of a party,” I correct. “There aren’t nearly enough people getting naked.”
“Major Rager is the band name, dork.” Yvette nudges me. “I’m late—we’re next. If someone had been answering her phone instead of making me run around campus looking for her—”
“I told you! The government is listening to everything I say. I’ve switched to smoke signals.” I pause. “Their texting plan is obscenely cheap. And arson-y.”
Yvette rolls her eyes and wades through people, heading toward backstage. Diana and I watch the current band shred the hearts of the crowd as their lead guitarist rips out an ear-rending solo.
“She’s cute,” Diana shouts to me.
“Not as cute as me!” I shout back. “Wait, who are we talking about again?”
“Your friend. Yvette’s her name?”
“Oh yeah. She’s my roommate. I sort of infect everything I touch like that. She’s going to get even cuter as my spores take over her body and turn her into my willing minion.”
Diana giggles. I pause.
“I’m not actually that evil.”
“I know,” she says. “Evil people don’t cry as much as you do.”
I didn’t used to cry so much, and I want to tell her that, but I realize the story would be too long. You could fit it in, like, at least three books. So instead I contemplate whether Diana meant Yvette’s cute in the general adorable girl way or the hey baby, you’re 2 cute get in my bed way. The sudden vastness of where I am hits me just as the enormous exhaustion of an emotionally draining day decides to punch me. It’s a one-two combo, and I mumble an excuse and stumble through the crowd, finding relief outside, where people smoke and the music isn’t quite as shouty. I hug my knees to my chin and watch the moon rise over the quieting campus. This is my home now, but it doesn’t feel like home. When does it start to feel like home?
“When you start feeling all right,” a voice cuts in. My ears know it before my eyes do, and I suddenly regret coming out here, coming to this school, and living in general.
Nameless smiles down at me, hands hooked casually in his jean pockets. He is tall and wrapped in shadow, and my fingertips go numb. He sits beside me, the paralysis creeping from him in static waves and flooding me up to my eyes.
“But you’ll never feel all right here, will you? Not with me around.” Nameless looks at me, straight in the eyes, and some deep part of me curls in on myself, waiting for the inevitable hurt.
“Why?” I manage through tight lips.
Nameless shrugs, brushing hair from his eyes. “My aunt and uncle—Wren’s parents—are here in Ohio. Dad felt better about sending me here where there’s family. I wanted to go to UCSD, but, you know. You can’t always have everything you want in life. And even if you do get it, you might regret it. But you know that already, huh?”
He smiles at me, all teeth, and I start shaking, my legs and my arms and my neck quivering uncontrollably.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend.” Nameless sighs. “He prodded at my firewalls for the longest time. Annoying bug. What was his name? John? Jake? Whatever, he’s gone now. He hasn’t poked me for months, and your high school’s records showed he stopped going there toward the end.”
“How do you know that?” I swallow.
“How do you think?” He laughs. “When all you’ve got is a laptop and a dad who doesn’t want you around, you learn to make your own fun.”
My nails bite into my palm. Through my panic I remember his dad, a terrifyingly huge man who drank too much and worked on motorcycles. When Nameless’s mom left him, his dad took it out on him. For the briefest of seconds I feel pity—old pity—but it evaporates with his smirk.
“Must’ve sucked, finally finding a boy stupid enough to like you and then having to watch him slip from your fingers.”
“What do you want?” I manage. He sighs.
“I want you to know the truth, Isis. About Jack. About what he did that night.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but my stomach writhes even worse. “That” night. He’s talking about that night in middle school—the one where Sophia lost Tallie. The one Wren caught on tape.
“You—” I swallow hard. “You sent me that screenshot of Jack’s hand on the baseball bat months ago.”
“Correct.”
“How did you get that?”
“Simple. I have a copy of the video. The whole thing.”
I can’t breathe anymore, tiny shallow inhales are all I can manage. “But—”
“You might hate me,” he says. “You might think I’m the lowest of the low, but I know you, Isis. I know how curious you are. If you want to see the tape—and you do—you’ll come to me. You’ll have to, sooner or later. And I look forward to that.”
Nameless laughs, and quickly, too quickly, pats my shoulder. My panic tenses every muscle without my permission and, like it’s being pulled by marionette strings, my knee juts out and hits him square in the side. He makes a winded, coughing noise, and the genial mask he keeps up fractures to shards, the smile turning cruel, the jovial light in his eyes twisting to malicious offense.
“You little—”
His hands reach for me, and I’m ducking, but neither of us gets to move any farther because someone steps between us.
“That’s about enough of that.”
And I recognize this voice, too.
Dark jeans, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Shoulders I know—shoulders I slept against a long time ago. Tawny, gold-brown hair sticking up in the back. It’s an illusion; it has to be.
“And who the fuck are you?” Nameless sneers.
“I’m hurt you don’t recognize me, Will. All that prying into our school records, but no prying into my photos? That’s lazy of you. Lax. I’d almost call it a mistake.”
I see Nameless’s eyes go wide, but he quickly adopts a neutral face, a smirk tugging at his mouth as he stands up, his full height almost level with the newcomer’s.
“We’re all here, then. Fabulous. The party can finally start.” Nameless laughs. He looks at the newcomer, and then me, before turning and walking down the well-lit sidewalk. Like a spell, the paralysis lifts when he’s out of sight, and I gasp for air.
“Shit, shit, rancid shitmonkeys!” I stand and brush myself off, willing the trembling to stop. It’ll take hours. And it’s not just Nameless that’s causing it.
Jack Hunter turns to face me.
It feels like years, but it’s only been months. A few months. He looks so much older—lines around his eyes that didn’t used to be there. His face matured somehow, the sharp angles of pubescence rounded off in a handsome, hawkish way. His eyes are the same frigid, clear blue, brows drawn tight.
“Isis, I—”
I pull my fist back and punch him.
His head
snaps to the side, and the people around us go even quieter. Someone murmurs “fight,” but no one moves. Except Jack. He slowly turns his head to me, a red welt blossoming on his Legolas-high cheekbones. I expect rage to ice over his eyes, but it never does.
“Isis,” he repeats, softer now.
“Who the fuck do you think you are, running off like that?” I demand.
Jack flinches—flinch? Jack? Never—but doesn’t break his gaze from mine.
“You’re shaking,” he says.
“I know I’m fucking shaking! I’m a lot of things right now, and shaking is the least homicidal of them! You left all of us! You just…disappeared! Your mom, Wren, shit—everyone. You left everyone behind!”
Jack’s frown deepens. I catch a glimpse of his hands at his sides—strong and spidery as ever. I want to hold them, I want to hold him, to lunge in and hug him until he can’t breathe or leave again, to tell him it’s okay, to tell him I forgive him, but the fury and Nameless’s words mush together in my head and come out as acid on my lips.
“You left me behind.”
“Isis, please, let me—”
“No!” I interrupt his soft, pleading voice. It’s so unlike him it scares me. Almost as much as Nameless’s hands shooting out to grab me did. Almost. “Did you think a fucking ticket to Paris would make me forgive you? On what fucking planet is a plane ticket a substitute for a proper goddamn good-bye, and how can I avoid said planet for all conceivable time?”
She is fire and rage, all claws extended, her hair swirling around her in the gentle summer night wind and her cinnamon eyes ablaze with light from the hall. She shines in the velvet darkness, a little thinner than I remember, and a little sadder, but burning all the same. Always burning. I warm myself on her fury, embracing the searing hot-sweet feel of her wrath and all the vibrant life behind it.
She is here; she is within reach. I thought I was seeing things when I came upon her there, looking uncomfortable and terrified with Will next to her. But she is real and corporeal and angry with me. Maybe she’s never not been angry with me, and that’s why it feels right. We have always been at odds. We have always clashed. After months of feeling wrong, this, staring down at my hellion—mine? No, I threw away the chance to call her mine—is the only thing that’s felt right. The planets are in place, the last gear snaps into motion, and the world begins to turn again, as is proper and right.
“I thought you were going to Stanford,” I try.
She bristles. “Don’t change the subject, butt-lump.”
“You should’ve gone to Stanford. It would’ve challenged you.”
You would’ve been happier there. You would’ve bent the whole world to your will. You would’ve met smarter, kinder boys there. Boys who aren’t me.
“Wow,” she scoffs. “I didn’t think it was possible, but you’ve somehow gotten even better at pissing me off. Call the pope, because we have a bona fide fucking miracle on our peasant hands.”
Through the anger, I can see her shoulders trembling. I didn’t think it was her at first. She was so quiet, her purple streaks all but faded. I recognized Will Cavanaugh, though. How could I not? I studied his face in the dossier for nights on end, memorizing every line and curve, planning out where and how I would hurt him most. The docile girl talking with Will couldn’t have been Isis. But then came the kick to his spleen, wild and furious and all reaction, no forethought, and I knew instantly it was her. Here, of all places. My heart stuttered, the color and warmth flushing in where months of training and guilt had drained it out to grays and blacks. Fate is a terrible bitch.
“What about you?” she spits when I don’t say anything. “Harvard get too snooty for you? Who am I kidding, the queen of England is less snooty than you.”
“I started here. I never went to Harvard.”
“Then where. The fuck. DID. You go?”
Her words are slow venom, her eyes narrowed. I can’t tell her. She wouldn’t understand. No—she would. She would understand best of all, and that’s why I can’t tell her. It would draw me closer to her. I was thrilled to take this job at first, if only for my planned retribution on Will, but now that she’s here I regret it. This school brings us close. So close. Close enough for me to hurt her all over again, hurt her to the point of no healing, like I did to Sophia.
I savor the cuts her fury makes, the pain letting me know that yes—I’m still alive. Even after trying to kill the old me, the hurtful bastard me, to leave him behind buried in guilt beside Sophia and Tallie, a single flame from Isis’s lips and I’m reminded of our war, our words, our bond. I want to kiss her. I want to kiss her as she turns me to ash.
But she is trembling. So I settle for words.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” I say. She scoffs. Her armor is out in full force, tougher and spikier than ever, thanks to me. Thanks to Will. Thanks to bastards like the two of us.
“Did you get that line from one of Sophia’s trashy romance novels—” She covers her mouth instantly, but it’s too late. Sophia’s name rings in the open, tearing apart the stitching on both our wounds. But where pain stops most mouths, it fuels Isis’s.
“I hate you, Jack Hunter.”
I want to hold her until she can’t stand me anymore, until she runs away to somewhere safer. Somewhere without me.
I nod instead. “I know.”
“No. You don’t know. You think that immature war was hate. But this—this is—” She squeezes her eyes shut. “You left me. You left me like everyone else, and I can’t forgive you for that.”
“You don’t have to,” I offer. “You don’t owe me anything.”
She laughs, the harsh front breaking for just a moment, her old self spilling through the cracks.
“And you don’t owe me anything, obviously. Not even a call. Not even a single goddamn text saying, oh, I don’t know, I’m not actually decomposing in a river somewhere after throwing myself off a bridge, still breathing, don’t wait up for me.”
And that’s when I see it. It’s not anger because I’ve hurt her. Sophia’s anger was always because I’d hurt her. This anger is because I made Isis worry. Because she thought I was dead, or rather, because she didn’t know whether or not I was alive. She is too kind, too motherly for this fury to be anything but a protective instinct denied its full course. I held that sort of anger once, too. I took it out on Isis after I’d caught her in my room looking through my letters—in my mind, trying to get to Sophia.
I’ve known Isis long enough (not quite a year, but it feels like centuries) to know that when she shakes, she is far gone. When she trembles, her past is rearing its head, throwing shadows on her mind. I’d always refrained from touching her, from making it worse, and though I scream at myself to remain that way, I can’t.
I can’t.
I step into her, wrapping my arms around her weakly and resting my head against her neck.
“I can’t do it anymore,” I breathe. “I tried and tried, God—I tried to be the strong one. To do the right thing for everyone.”
Isis goes stiff, and for a split second, I realize what I’m doing and frantically try to pull back. Something desperate and dark is eating away at my core, held back by Gregory’s brutal training and my own dam of denial. And, like the bomb she is, the mere sight of Isis blew cracks in that dam. She’s going to see me through the cracks, the real me. She’s going to see me like no one else has, like I’m pretending not to be, broken and dead inside, and I have to leave, have to compose myself, but she doesn’t let me pull away, wrapping her arms tight around my waist and keeping me pressed against her, against her warmth and smell and her understanding silence.
“I t-tried,” I whisper. “I tried to protect her, and you, and everyone. But all I did was kill her. I failed. I failed and I killed her and hurt you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, hot moisture collecting in them.
“I don’t deserve to live—”
Her arms tighten, squeezing the air from me.
“Stop,” Isis says.
“It’s the truth—”
“News flash: not everything that drops from your gorgeous, dumb mouth is the truth.” There’s a pause. “Ah, shit. I just called you gorgeous. Now I have to commit seppuku.”
“Don’t you dare,” I mumble into her neck.
“See? That’s how it feels. That’s how it feels when you say you don’t deserve to live. New rule: nobody gets to talk suicide ever.”
A tear escapes, and I bury it in her shirt collar. She puts a hand on my head, petting it.
“If you really think you’re so bad,” she says, “then live. Live, and suffer. Live with the memories of all the bad things you’ve done. Don’t take the easy way out.”
There’s a poignant pause. Then she adds, “Numb nuts.”
The name is a tiny injection of reality, of light. The cracks in me relieve the pressure of the last year, of the year before the last, the water flowing through them slowly as my breath deflates in my lungs. I look up and cup either side of her face.
“I’ll only say this one time, so listen carefully.”
Her eyes are wide, her lips parted, and her cheeks flushed. Her eyes, too, I notice, are more than a little tearstained.
“You’re right,” I finish. “You’re right for once, Isis Blake.”
And then she smiles, and everything in the world is right, and bright, and better. We part, my body already missing her warmth.
“One sec!” She whips her head around to me. “So you’re here now? You’re living on campus like the rest of us peons?”
I nod. “Siebert hall. Three fourteen. For a while.”
Her stare is flinty. “You have a lot of explaining to do. Due. A lot of explaining is extremely overdue. And you should call your mom. She’s been really worried about you.”
“I did. A month ago.”
“Good. You still have my number, right? You didn’t chuck your phone in a lake when you went to join the Empire or the seven samurai or the monastery of lame grossness or whatever?”
“I have it.”
She chews her lip. “I still haven’t forgiven you. But I’ve found, through eighteen years of vigorous experimentation, that I’m much more willing to forgive people if they interact with me on this physical plane. Talk to me. Text me. With cute cat pictures or winky faces—”