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“No one’s watching you. No one wouldeverwatch you.” He opens a single eye, the monochrome of his iris as cold as the fog surrounding us.
“How long have you been here, then? Why are you even sitting here in the freezing cold?”
“A lot of questions I don’t need to answer,sassenach.”
If I wasn’t turning red from Rory’s presence alone, I am now.Sassenach. Gods… There’s something about Rory’s tone, like he knows how utterly ridiculous my nickname is, and yet he can’t resist saying it.
And I kind of… like it.
“I need to be strong, resilient,” he murmurs slowly, surprising me. He picks up another stone and tosses it into the loch. It skims across the surface, skipping several times before sinking to the bottom. “I can’t be weak like a girl. I can’t be a whiny little pussy.”
There’s something hollow and rehearsed about his tone, as though he’s quoting something.
My face scrunches up. “Can you not use that word?”
A smirk stretches across his face. “What did I say? Snowflakes are always offended by everything. Even something as universal aslanguage.”
“Pussies and snowflake bitches, right, yeah, I get it. You hate women, like everyone else at this goddamn school.”
He casts a surprised glance over at me. “I don’t hate women. There are some women Ilove.” His expression turns distant and I ignore the flutter in my pulse. I wonder if he’s talking about Li. “I just don’t think you belong here.”
Well… I can’t really argue with that when I’ve been telling myself the same thing for the past two days.
“What’s it going to take?” Rory asks suddenly, chucking another stone across the loch. “How much are we going to have to put you through for you to leave?”
I tilt my head to the side, remembering his threat to get rid of us — and Baxter. “Why are you so determined?”
Rory scowls at me, his gray eyes flashing. “Because you don’t belong here! This is a school forboys. It has been for centuries. It isourspace. And one egomaniac teacher on a power-trip is tearing up everything Lochkelvin has ever stood for.” He shakes his head, looking bitter. The soft morning light turns his dark hair a honey shade of blond.
“A woman taking over has really messed with you, huh?”
“What’s it to you?” Rory snaps, and then it’s as though he centers himself on the rock, breathing in deeply to get his emotions under control.
“I think that makes it personal, then, if you think boys are the only ones allowed to be at the school.” I’m trying to make him see sense, that his way of thinking is backward. “You want to keep the same standards as before, because to you, they’re right. And Baxter’s not giving you that approval.”
“I don’t need the approval ofanyone,” he growls, but his cheeks are pink and it’s not just from the cold. “Baxter will be gone soon enough.” He glances at me, his eyes as frosty as the ground beneath us. “And you’ll be so easy to get rid of, it’s almost cruel.” His lip curls. “Like drowning a poor, defenseless kitten.”
It’s hard to know how much of it is the wild rantings of a deluded mind and an actual threat that will come true. Either way, I turn away from him.
But then Rory surprises me by calling out, “Why were you dancing?”
I glance over my shoulder at him in surprise. I feel like there are two versions of Rory: the one who sneers over snowflakes, and the sun-dappled boy who’s staring at me right now, an innocent curiosity on his aristocratic face.
“You have a limp,” he adds. “And yet you were dancing.” His eyes narrow. “Are you faking the limp?”
I roll my eyes. Like I need to give him more ammo about how untrustworthy girls are. “No, I’m notfaking. Sometimes I just want to dance, even when my body’s crying out in pain.” Maybe if I tell him more about me, he’ll treat girls more like actual human beings instead of alien invaders. I lick my lips and hesitantly explain, “Dancing was my life. It’s something I’ve always loved. But I haven’t danced in a while.”
“You weren’t bad,” Rory declares in a pompous tone, like a king bestowing a gift. To my embarrassment, his words make my heart soar. “You move well,sassenach.”
As he casually tosses out this surprising compliment, the boy on the rock closes his eyes and it makes me wonder why — to shield himself or to not see me? Because I can feel myself grinning, and my thoughts from before filter through my head:they can’t sense weakness if you smile.
I think, in some capacity, Rory is my weakness.
This conversation was almost civil.
The rational part of my brain points out that he also thinks I’m a kitten about to be drowned, so I try to temper my expectations on any kind of mercy.
I return to picking up leaves until the whole bank is cleared of them. Rory heads up to school by himself and I find I can finally relax, my heart no longer pounding like a drum. It’s almost eight, so I gather my equipment and return to school, being careful not to slip on the dewy grass.
The cold air has worked up an appetite in me, and genuinely I can’t think of anything better than planting my face in a hot bowl of oatmeal. Porridge. Whatever it’s called.
It comes sooner than I expect, however. Because when I pull open the door to Lochkelvin, my gleaming statue is no longer quite so gleaming.
The statue drips with fat globs of milky porridge, as though a vat of the stuff has been tossed over it.
