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Mom played along, putting her fingertips to her temples like a gypsy fortune-teller. “I think Bianca will meet—boys.”
Lucas’s face flashed in my mind, and my heartbeat quickened within an instant. My parents exchanged looks. Could they hear my pulse pounding all the way across the room? Maybe so.
I tried to make a joke of it. “I hope they’re going to be cute.”
“Not too cute,” Dad interjected, and we all laughed. Mom and Dad really thought it was funny; I was trying to cover the fact that I now had butterflies in my stomach.
It felt weird, not telling them about Lucas. I’d always told them almost everything about my life. Lucas was different, though. Talking about him would break the spell. I wanted him to remain a secret for a while longer. That way, I could keep him for myself.
Already I wanted Lucas to belong only to me.
Chapter Three (#ulink_381c919f-7fd5-5678-ab57-1b73d7d8281a)
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE YOUR UNIFORM TAILORED, did you?” Patrice smoothed her skirt as we prepared for the first day of classes.
Why hadn’t I seen it before? Of course all the real Evernight types had sent their uniforms to a tailor—tucked the blouses here and the kilts there so that they were chic and flattering instead of boxy and asexual. Like mine. “No. I didn’t think of it.”
“You really must remember to do that,” Patrice said. “Individual tailoring makes a world of difference. No woman should neglect it.” I could already tell that she liked giving advice, showing off how worldly and smart she was. This would have annoyed me more if she hadn’t been so obviously right. Sighing, I set back to work, trying to get my hair to lie smooth beneath my headband. Surely I’d see Lucas at some point that day, so I wanted to look my best, or as good as I could look in this stupid uniform.
We picked up our class assignments in an enormous line in the great hall, slips of paper handed out to us, just the way it would’ve been done a hundred years ago. The crowds of students were less rowdy than they would have been back at my old school. Everyone here seemed to understand the routine.
Maybe the quiet was only an illusion. My uneasiness seemed to swallow sound, muffling everything, until I wondered if anybody could even hear me if I screamed.
Patrice remained by my side at first, but only because we shared our first class, which was American History, taught by my mother. She was the only parent I would have for a teacher; instead of Dad’s biology class, I’d be taking chemistry with a Professor Iwerebon. I felt awkward walking next to Patrice with nothing to say, but I didn’t really have any alter-native—until I saw Lucas, the sunlight through the frosted glass in the hallways turning his golden-brown hair to bronze. At first I thought he saw Patrice and me, but he kept on walking without breaking his stride.
I began to smile. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” I said to Patrice, already darting away from her. She shrugged as she looked for other friends to walk with. “Lucas?” I called.
He still didn’t seem to hear me. I didn’t want to yell after him, so I jogged a couple of steps to catch up. He was headed in the opposite direction from me—not in Mom’s class, apparently—but I was willing to run the risk of being late. More loudly, I said, “Lucas!”
He turned his head only enough to glimpse me, then glanced around at the students nearby as though he was worried we would be overheard. “Hey, there.”
Where was my protector from the forest? The guy standing in front of me now didn’t act like he wanted to take care of me; he acted like he didn’t know me. But he didn’t know me, did he? We’d talked once in the woods—when he’d tried to save my life, and I’d repaid him by telling him to shut up. Just because I thought that was the start of something didn’t mean he did.
In fact, it looked like he definitely didn’t. For one second, he turned his head, then gave me a quick wave and a nod—the way you would any random acquaintance. After that, Lucas just kept on walking, until he vanished into the crowd.
There it was—the brush-off. I wondered how I could possibly understand guys even less than I’d thought.
The girls’ restroom on that floor was nearby, so I was able to duck into a stall and collect myself instead of bursting into tears. What had I done wrong? Despite how strange our first meeting had been, Lucas and I had ended up having a conversation that was as intimate as any I’d had with my best friends. I didn’t know a lot about guys, maybe, but I’d been sure that the connection between us was real. I had been wrong. I was alone at Evernight again, and it felt even worse than before.
Finally, once I was steady, I hurried to Mom’s classroom, barely avoiding being tardy. She shot me a look, and I shrugged as I sank into a desk in the back row. Mom quickly snapped out of mother mode into teacher mode.
“So, who here can tell me about the American Revolution?” Mom clasped her hands together, looking expectantly around the room. I slumped down in my seat, even though I knew she wouldn’t call on me first. I just wanted to be sure she understood how I felt about it. A guy sitting next to me raised his hand, rescuing the rest of us. Mom smiled a little. “And you are Mr—”
“More. Balthazar More.”
The first thing to understand about him is that he looked like a guy who could actually carry off the name “Balthazar” without being mocked for all time. On him, it looked good. He seemed confident about anything my mother might throw at him but not in an annoying way like most of the guys in the room. Just confident.
“Well, Mr More, if you were going to sum up the causes of the American Revolution for me, how would you put it?”
“The tax burdens imposed by the English Parliament were the last straw.” He spoke easily, almost lazily. Balthazar was big and broad-shouldered, so much so that he barely fitted into the old-fashioned wooden desk. His posture turned difficulty into grace, as though he’d rather lounge like that than sit up straight any day. “Of course, people were concerned about religious and political freedoms as well.”
Mom raised an eyebrow. “So, God and politics are powerful, but as always, money rules the world.” Soft laughter echoed around the room. “Fifty years ago, no American high school teacher would have mentioned the taxes. A hundred years ago, and the entire conversation might’ve been about religion. A hundred and fifty years ago, and the answer would have depended on where you lived. In the North, they’d have taught you about political freedom. In the South, they’d have taught you about economic freedom—which, of course, was impossible without slavery.” Patrice made a rude sound. “Of course, in Great Britain, there were those who would have described the United States of America as a bizarre intellectual experiment that was about to go bust.”
More laughter now, and I realized that Mom already won over the entire class. Even Balthazar was half smiling at her, in a way that almost made me forget about Lucas.
Not really. But he was nice to look at, with his lazy grin.
“And that, more than anything else, is what I want you to understand about history.” Mom pushed up the sleeves of her cardigan as she wrote on the blackboard: Evolving interpretations. “People’s ideas about the past alter just as much as the present does. The scene in the rearview mirror changes every second. To understand history, it’s not enough to know the names and dates and places; a lot of you know all of those already, I’m sure. But you have to understand all the different interpretations that historical events have had over the centuries; that’s the only way to get a perspective that stands the test of time. We’re going to focus a lot of our energy on that this year.”
People leaned forward, opened their notebooks, and looked up at Mom, totally engaged. Then I realized maybe I ought to start taking notes, too. Mom might love me best, but she’d flunk me faster than she would anyone else in her classroom.
The hour flew by, with students asking questions, clearly testing Mom and liking what they found. Their pens scratched out notes faster than I could imagine writing, and more than once, my fingers felt like they would cramp. I hadn’t realized how competitive the students would be. No, that’s not quite right—it was obvious that they were competitive about clothes, and possessions, and romantic interests. That voracity shivered in the air around them. I just hadn’t realized they’d be competitive about schoolwork, too. No matter what it was, at Evernight, every single person wanted to be the best at everything they did.
So, you know, no pressure there.
“Your mother is fantastic,” Patrice gushed as she walked through the hallways after class. “She’s looking at the big picture, you know? Not only her own little window on the world. So few people have that.”
“Yeah. I mean—I’m trying to be like her. Someday.”
Just then, Courtney turned the corner. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail that made her eyebrows arch even more disdainfully. Patrice stiffened; apparently her new acceptance of me didn’t extend as far as defending me in front of Courtney. I braced myself for Courtney’s latest snarky remark. Instead, she sort of smiled at me, and I could tell she thought she was being nicer to me than I deserved. “Party this weekend,” she said. “Saturday. By the lake. One hour after curfew.”
“Sure.” Patrice shrugged just one shoulder, like she couldn’t care less about being invited to what was probably the coolest party at Evernight this fall, at least until the Autumn Ball. Or were formal dances not cool? Mom and Dad had made it sound like the biggest event of the year, but their ideas about Evernight were already suspect.
My curiosity about balls and their coolness or lack thereof had kept me from answering Courtney for myself. She glared at me, clearly annoyed I hadn’t gushed all over her with thanks. “Well?”
If I’d been gutsier, I’d have told her that she was a snob and a bore and that I had better things to do than go to her party. Instead, I only managed to say, “Um, yeah. Great. That’ll be great.”
Patrice nudged me as Courtney sauntered, with her blonde ponytail swinging behind her. “See? I told you. People are going to accept you because you’re—well, you’re their daughter.”
How big a loser do you have to be to coast into high school popularity on your parents? Still, I couldn’t afford to turn my nose up at any acceptance I won, no matter what the reasons were.
“What kind of party is it going to be, though? I mean, in the grounds? At night?”
“You have been to a party before, right?” Sometimes Patrice didn’t sound any nicer than Courtney.
“Of course I have.” I was counting my own birthday parties when I was a kid, but Patrice didn’t have to know that. “I just was wondering if—there wouldn’t be drinking, would there?”
Patrice laughed like I’d said something funny. “Oh, Bianca, grow up.”
She headed off toward the library, and I got the impression that I wasn’t invited to come along. So I walked back to our room alone.
Somehow my parents are cool, I thought. Does it skip a generation?
My parents had said that I would soon settle into a pattern, and that when I did, I’d like Evernight more. Well, after the first week, I knew they were only right about the first half.
Classes were okay, mostly. Mom made one reference to me being her daughter, then said, “Neither Bianca nor I will ever mention this fact again. You shouldn’t either.” Everybody laughed; she had them eating out of the palm of her hand. How did she do that? And why hadn’t she taught me how to do it, too?
Other teachers took some getting used to, and I missed the informality and friendliness of my old school. Here, the professors were imposing and powerful, and it was unthinkable not to meet their high expectations. A lifetime spent hiding from the world in the library had prepared me for the work, and I put more time into my studies than ever. The only class that bothered me was English, because that was the one Mrs Bethany taught. Something about her—just the way she held herself or how she cocked her head before someone answered a question in class—well, she was intimidating.
Still, academics weren’t going to be a problem. That much I’d already figured out. My social life was a different story.
Courtney and the other Evernight types had decided that I wasn’t somebody to despise; my well-liked parents had won me the right to be safely ignored, but that was all. Meanwhile, the “new admissions” kids regarded me with suspicion. I roomed with Patrice, and apparently that was reason enough to assume that I wasn’t going to side against her and her friends. The cliques had formed within a day, and I was caught exactly in the middle.
The only other “outcast” I’d reached out to at all was Raquel Vargas, the girl with the short haircut. One morning we’d griped about the amount of trigonometry homework we had, but that was almost it for social contact. Raquel, I sensed, didn’t make friends easily; she seemed lonely but withdrawn into herself. Not that different from me, really, but somehow even more miserable.
The other students made sure of that.
“Same black sweater, same black pants,” Courtney singsonged one day as she sauntered along, passing near Raquel. “Same stupid bracelet, too. And I bet we see them again tomorrow.”
Raquel shot back, “Not everybody can afford to buy every version of the uniform, you know.”
“No, I guess not,” said Erich, a guy who hung out with Courtney a lot. He had black hair and a thin, pointed face. “Only the people who actually belong here.”
Courtney and all her friends laughed. Raquel’s cheeks flushed dark, but she simply stalked away from them as the laughter got even louder. As she walked past me, our eyes met. I tried to show, without words, that I felt bad for her, but that only seemed to make her angrier. Apparently Raquel didn’t have much use for pity.
I sensed that, if we’d met somewhere else, Raquel and I might have found we had a lot in common. But as bad as I felt for her, I wasn’t sure I needed to spend time with anybody more depressed than I was.
I thought that I wouldn’t have been half as depressed, despite everything, if I’d been able to understand what had happened between me and Lucas.
We were in Professor Iwerebon’s chemistry class together, but sat at opposite ends of the room. Every moment I wasn’t trying to interpret the teacher’s thick Nigerian accent, I was surreptitiously watching Lucas. He didn’t meet my eyes before or after class, and he never spoke to me. The weirdest thing about this was that Lucas wasn’t remotely shy about speaking up to anybody else. He was quick to cut down anybody he thought was being pretentious, snobby, or hurtful—in short, virtually anybody who was the “Evernight type,” at any time at all.
For instance, on the grounds one day, two guys started laughing when a girl—not the Evernight type—dropped her backpack, then half stumbled over it. Lucas, strolling right behind them, said, “That’s ironic.”
“What?” Erich was one of the guys laughing. “That this school lets in total losers now?” The girl who had dropped her bag blushed.
“Even if that were true, it wouldn’t be irony,” Lucas pointed out. “Irony is the contrast between what’s said and what happens.”
Erich made a face. “What are you talking about?”
“You laughed at her for stumbling right before you fell flat on your face.”
I couldn’t see exactly how Lucas tripped Erich, but I knew that he’d done it even before Erich went sprawling into the grass. A few people laughed, but most of Courtney’s friends glared at Lucas, like he’d done something wrong by standing up for that girl.
“See, that’s irony,” Lucas said as kept walking.
If I’d had the chance, I would’ve told Lucas that I thought he’d done the right thing, and I wouldn’t have cared if Erich and Courtney and those guys were watching. I didn’t get the chance, though. Lucas moved past me as if I’d become invisible.
Erich hated Lucas. Courtney hated Lucas. Patrice hated Lucas. So far as I could tell, virtually everyone at Evernight Academy hated Lucas, except the goofy surfer-type guy I’d noticed on the first day—and me. Okay, Lucas was kind of a troublemaker, but I thought he was brave and honest, which were qualities more people at the school could stand to share.
Apparently, though, I would have to admire Lucas from a distance. For now, I was still alone.
“Aren’t you ready yet?” Patrice crouched upon our windowsill. The night outlined her slender body, graceful even as she prepared to make the leap to the nearest tree branch. “The monitors will be back soon.”
Evernight was policed by hall monitors every night. My parents were the only teachers I hadn’t yet seen lurking in a hallway, waiting to pounce upon any rule breakers. This was good reason to get out while we could, but I kept trying to fix my appearance in the mirror.
“Fix” was the operative word. Patrice looked effortlessly chic in slim slacks and a pale pink sweater that made her skin glow. Me, on the other hand—I was trying to make jeans and a black T-shirt look good. Without much success, I might add.
“Bianca, come on.” Patrice’s patience had run out. “I’m going now. Come with me or don’t.”
“I’m coming.” What did it matter how I looked, anyway? I was only going to this party because I hadn’t had the guts to refuse.
Patrice leaped to the tree branch, then to the ground, her landing as controlled as a gymnast descending from the uneven parallel bars. I managed to follow her, bark scraping my palms. The fear of discovery made me acutely aware of the noises around us: laughter from somebody’s room inside, the first fall leaves rustling on the ground, the hooting of another owl on the hunt.
The night air was cool enough to make me shiver as we ran across the grounds into the woods. Patrice could get through the underbrush without making a sound, a talent I envied. Maybe someday I’d be that coordinated, but it was hard to imagine.
At last we saw the firelight. They’d built a bonfire by the edge of the lake, small enough to avoid attracting attention but big enough to give warmth and cast eerie, flickering light. The students were huddled together, here or there, leaning in to talk in whispers or laugh. I wondered if this was the laughter I’d heard the night of the picnic. Superficially, they looked like any other group of teenagers, hanging out—but there was an energy in the air that heightened my senses, added tension to everyone’s movements and cruelty to most of the smiles. I remembered what I’d thought when I’d met Lucas in the woods during our frightening first encounter; sometimes, when you looked at certain people, you could glimpse something a little bit wild beneath the surface. I felt that wildness here.
Music from somebody’s radio played, trancelike and smooth. I didn’t know the singer; the lyrics weren’t in English. Patrice seemed to vanish into a circle of her friends right away, which left me standing alone, wondering what to do with my hands.
Pockets? No, that looks stupid. Hands on hips? What, like I’m angry about something? No. Okay, even thinking about this is lame.
“Hello there,” Balthazar said. I hadn’t seen him coming up behind me. He wore a black suede blazer and held a bottle in one hand. The firelight painted his face in warm light; he had curly hair, a strong jaw, and a heavy brow. He looked like a tough guy, a bruiser, somebody who would be quicker with a punch than a joke. But his eyes made him approachable and even sexy, because there was intelligence there and humor, too. There was no cruelty in his smile. “Want a beer? There’s still some left.”
“That’s okay.” He had to know I was blushing, even in the dark. “I’m, uh, not legal.”
Not legal? Like anyone here cared about that. I should’ve just painted GEEK on my forehead and saved everybody time.
Balthazar smiled, but not like he was laughing at me. “You know, children used to drink wine at the dinner table with their parents. And doctors used to advise women whose babies didn’t nurse well to feed them a little beer as extra food.”
“That was then, this is now.”
“Fair enough.” He didn’t press me, and I realized that he wasn’t drunk in the slightest. I began to relax. Balthazar had a way of putting people at ease, despite his size and his obvious strength. “I’ve been meaning to say hello to you since the first day.”
“Really?” I hope I didn’t squeak.
“I warn you now, I’m up to no good.” Balthazar must have gotten a good look at the expression on my face, because he laughed, a deep, rumbling sound. “Your mother said she’d taught you before, so I wanted a few hints on how to read her. I need to know my teacher’s secrets, right?”
I decided that Mom wouldn’t mind my telling him. “You want to watch for her bouncing on her heels.”
“Bouncing?”
“Yeah. That usually means she’s excited about something, interested in it, you know? And if she’s interested in it, she thinks you should be, too.”
“Which means it’s going to show up on a test.”
“You got it.”
He laughed again; he had a dimple in his chin that made him seem almost playful. I almost felt disloyal to Lucas, noticing how handsome Balthazar looked, but it was impossible not to. After the way Lucas had ignored me this past week, I wasn’t sure he had a right to my loyalty. Besides, it felt good, having a gorgeous guy paying attention to me.
Balthazar stepped a little closer. “I’m going to be glad we met. I can tell.”
I grinned back at him, and for a whole three seconds it looked like the party was going to be fun. That’s when Courtney showed up. She was wearing a black skirt cut really high, and a white blouse open really low in the front. She wasn’t very curvy, but she made up for it by not wearing a bra, which was now very obvious. “Balthazar. I’m so glad we get to catch up.”
“We’re caught up,” Balthazar seemed even less happy to see her than I was. She didn’t get the picture, or she ignored it.
“Seems like ages since we’ve hung out. Too long. We last saw each other in London, right?”
“St Petersburg,” he corrected her. He could rattle off the city’s name like throwing away a paper cup. Apparently he was bold and worldly enough to cross the oceans without a second thought.
