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“That’s a very respectful idea,” I said, nodding gravely. “We should give them their space.”
Jason winked at me, as Scout—oblivious to our jokes at her expense—pushed forward. “I don’t understand why you’re arguing with me. You know you have no chance.”
Michael clutched at his chest dramatically. “You’re killing me, Scout. Really. There’s chest pain—a tightness.” He faked a groan.
Scout rolled her eyes, but you could see the twitch in her smile. “Call a doctor.”
“Come on, Green. Can’t a guy just get out and enjoy the weather? It’s a beautiful fall day in Chicago. My amigo Jason and I were thinking we should get out and enjoy it before the snow gets here.”
“Again, I seriously doubt, Garcia, if you’re all that concerned about the weather.”
“Okay,” Michael said, holding up his hands, “let’s pretend you’re right. Let’s say, hypothetically, that it’s no coincidence that our walk brought us next door to St. Sophia’s. Let’s say we had a personal interest in skipping lunch and showing up on your side of the river.”
Scout rolled her eyes and held up a finger. “Oh, bottle it up. I don’t have the time.”
“You should make time.”
“Guys, eleven o’clock,” Jason whispered.
Scout snorted at Michael. “I’m amused you think you’re important enough to—”
“Eleven o’clock,” Jason whispered again, this time fiercely. Scout and Michael suddenly quieted, and both glanced to where Jason had indicated. I resisted the urge to look, which would have made us all completely obvious, but couldn’t help it.
I gave it a couple of seconds, then stole a glance over my shoulder. There was a gap in the pillars through which we could see the street behind us, the one that ran parallel to Erie, but behind St. Sophia’s. A slim girl in jeans and a snug hoodie, the hood pulled over her head, stood on the sidewalk, her hands tucked into her pockets.
“Who is that?” I whispered.
“No—why is she here?” Jason asked, dimples fading, his gaze on the girl. While her face wasn’t visible, her hair was blond—the curly length of it spilling from her hood and across her shoulders. Veronica was the only Chicago blonde I knew, but that couldn’t be her. I didn’t think she’d be caught dead in jeans and a hoodie, especially not on a uniform day.
Besides, there was something different about this girl. Something unsettling. Something off. She was too still, as if frozen while the city moved around her.
“Is she looking for trouble?” Michael asked. His voice was quiet, just above a whisper, and it carried a hint of concern. Like whether she was looking for trouble or not, he expected it.
“In the middle of the day?” Scout whispered. “And here? She’s blocks away from the nearest enclave. From her enclave.”
“What’s an enclave?” I quietly asked. Not so quietly that they couldn’t hear me, but they ignored me, anyway.
Jason nodded. “Blocks from hers, and much too close to ours.”
In the time it took me to glance at Jason and back at the girl again, she was gone. The sidewalk was as empty as if she’d never been there at all.
I looked back and forth from Scout to Michael to Jason. “Someone want to fill me in?” I was beginning to guess it was pointless for me to ask questions—as pointless as my trying to goad Scout into telling me where she’d gone last night—but I couldn’t stop asking them.
Scout sighed. “This was supposed to be a tour. Not a briefing. I’m exhausted.”
“We’re all tired,” Michael said. “It was a long summer.”
“Long summer for what?”
“You could say we’re part of a community improvement group,” Michael said.
It took me a minute to realize that I’d been added back into the conversation. But the answer wasn’t very satisfying—or informative. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Community improvement? Like, you clean up litter?”
“That’s actually not a bad analogy,” Jason said, his gaze still on the spot where the girl had been.
“I take it she was a litterbug?” I asked, hitching my thumb in that direction.
“In a manner of speaking, yes, she was,” Scout said, then put a hand on my arm and tugged. “All right, that’s enough fond reminiscing and conspiracy theories for the day. We need to get to class. Have fun at school.”
“MA is always fun,” Jason said. “Good luck at St. Sophia’s.”
I nodded as Scout pulled me out of the garden, but I risked a glance back at Michael and Jason. They stood side by side, Michael an inch or two taller, their gazes on us as we headed back to school.
“I have so many questions, I’m not sure where to start,” I said when we were out of their sight and hauling down the alley, “but let’s go for the good, gossipy stuff, first. You say you aren’t dating, but Michael obviously has a thing for you.”
Scout made a snort that sounded a little too dramatic to be honest. “I didn’t just say we aren’t dating. We are, in fact, not dating. It’s an objective, empirical, testable fact. I don’t date MA guys.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. While I didn’t doubt that she subscribed to that rule, there was more to her statement, more to her and Michael, than she was letting on. But I could pry that out of her later. “And your community service involvement?”
“You heard—we clean up litter.”
“Yeah, and I’m totally believing that, too.”
That was the last word out of either of us as we slipped through the gap between the buildings, then back onto the sidewalk, and finally back to St. Sophia’s. In the nick of time, too, as the bells atop the left tower began to ring just as we hit the front stairs. Thinking we needed to hurry, I nearly ran into Scout when she stopped short in front of the door.
“I know this is unsatisfying,” she said, “but you’re going to have to trust me on this one, too.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “Will there come a day when you’ll trust me?”
Her expression fell. “Honestly, Lil, I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Famous last words, those.
There were three more periods to get through—Brit lit, chemistry, and European history—before I completed my first day of classes at St. Sophia’s. Maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t had much of an appetite for lunch, because listening to teachers drone on about kinetic energy, Beowulf, and Thomas Aquinas on a full stomach surely would have put me into a food coma. It was dry enough on an empty stomach.
