Her lips thin.
"Where are you going?" she asks, instead of returning the greeting.
"Rehearsal." I gesture vaguely toward the main campus. "With the judges. For the audition. The thing I've been preparingfor for months? The possible escape from this nightmare?" I'm talking too fast. I know I'm talking too fast. "It's today. Three o'clock. I was just heading over?—"
"You didn't get the news."
Statement, not question.
The dread solidifies into something cold and heavy in my chest.
"What news?"
Please no. Please, please, please?—
Ms. Chen sighs. Her eyes dart around—checking for observers, maybe, or just avoiding my gaze—before she steps closer. Her voice drops to a near-whisper.
"They're trying to postpone the auditions. Cancel them entirely, for some students."
My shoulders sink.
I feel them go—the careful posture I've maintained, the straight spine and lifted chin—collapsing inward like a building whose supports have been knocked out.
"Oh no," I hear myself say. My voice sounds distant. Wrong. Like it's coming from someone else's mouth. "Don't tell me this has to do with being packless."
The silence is answer enough.
"Fuck." The word comes out flat. Defeated. "Fuck."
Of course they're taking this too.
First the letters.
Now the auditions.
What's next?
What else can they possibly strip away until there's nothing left of me but rage and violence and the empty shell of a girl who used to dream of Juilliard?
"Listen to me." Ms. Chen's hand lands on my shoulder—warm, grounding, the first non-violent touch I've experienced indays. "We've rescheduled. A selective few auditions, including yours. It's not cancelled. Just...postponed."
Hope.
Fragile, dangerous, stupid hope.
"When?" I ask. "Where?"
"Three days from now." Her voice is low, urgent. "But the location is... complicated."
"Complicated how?"
"It's between Dead Knot and Savage Knot sectors." She pauses, letting that sink in. "You'll have to go through the forest to get there."
The Dead Forest.
The words echo in my skull like a death knell.
I know about the Dead Forest. Everyone knows about the Dead Forest. It's the buffer zone between sectors—a stretch of woodland where academy rules don't apply. Where the "survive or be killed" mandate of Ruthless looks like fucking tea party etiquette in comparison.
