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Rory doesn’t respond, but his eyes have softened and the ghost of a smirk lingers on his lips.
“That was everything,” I state, and from the way Rory’s smirk widens, I know I’m speaking on behalf of us both.
* * *
Despite all that has happened, the night remains young. We find ourselves eschewing the gloss of the student union, with its ice sculptures and dripping chandeliers, for one of the more cozy-looking pubs in the area. The one we’re in is small and cramped, with condensation slicking up the window, but it’s the epitome of rural charm, and filled with locals who aren’t just students.
A log crackles in a fire that can only be described asmerry. Stag heads and ancient rifles line the varnished wooden walls. The chatter is happy, the clientele older, and I finally feel able to breathe.
Danny grabs a table and Rory goes up to the bar to order a round of drinks. I’ve stopped counting how many I’ve had. I don’tfeeldrunk anymore, but my lips are definitely loose and my tongue craves yet more sweetened, sparkling alcohol. The buzz in my head is more pleasant than before. Now that we’re away from the suffocating mob, I feel like maybe I can enjoy my helpless tipsiness again, no matter how many drinks ago I passed the threshold for the innocent state oftipsy.
“What a night,” Danny says, sagging into a plump tartan seat. I lean my exhausted head on my forearms, on a dark wooden table that seems to grow stickier the more I try to adjust my position.
“I don’t know how we solve this,” I mumble, tangling my foot around Danny’s. “Both sides think they’re fighting for freedom and enlightenment and justice and the truth and…”
Danny shrugs. “It’s not on us to solve it.” His foot slides around the back of mine. “Other people are paid to do this. We’re just… spectators of history. So what d’you say we forget about all this politics stuff — just for the rest of the night?”
I shoot him a weak smile. “I don’t know when my whole life turned into the daily politics show.” I also know it won’t end. If this dilemma ever manages to resolve itself, the aftermath will be just as vicious, just as messy. “You never go under,” I marvel, counting the light brown freckles across the bridge of Danny’s nose. It soothes me. “You never care as much as the others. I wish I knew your secret.”
“It’s easy,” Danny says with a short laugh. “Don’t read the news.”
I stare at him. And this perhaps should have been obvious in all the time I’ve known Danny. I’ve never once seen him with a newspaper, other than to steal the supplements or attempt the crossword. But the idea that someone who’s a Lochkelvin student could just…avoid news. I don’t know why, but I break out in a minor sweat as I think about all the stories I wouldn’t hear, the analyses I wouldn’t keep up with, the future I wouldn’t have to predict.
It sounds… calming.
“Oh my God, I’m obsessed,” I suddenly realize. “I’m an addict. I have FOMO.”
Danny laughs. “You have sorta turned into one ofthem.”
“Maybe it’s different when you know the people in the news,” I say, trying to rationalize my obsessive behavior of late.
But Danny just shrugs again. “If you already know the people in the news, then why do you need to read stories about them from writers who don’t? It makes no sense. Judgments are formed on the deeds of the person you know, not second-hand speculation. That’s not news, it’s gossip.”
I’m considering Danny’s words as they penetrate my slow, sluggish brain, my head still leaning comfortably against my forearms. Rory arrives at the table, placing a pint of cider in front of me, a Guinness in front of Danny, and a fat glass of white wine for himself.
“What have you done, Danny-boy? The saint was conscious when I last saw her.”
“I think I blew her mind,” Danny says, a tad apologetically.
“I do that daily,” Rory brags, “but I’ve never seen her quite so comatose.”
After a beat, I raise my head grudgingly from my hands.
Rory smiles at me, his gray eyes calm as they watch me. “Ah, she rises.”
“Have you ever thought,” I begin, leaning forward as though I’m about to impart a great secret, though my words sound quite incoherent and Rory’s looking at me with fond amusement, “ofnotreading the news?”
“I wish,” he says breezily, taking a sip of wine. “Right now, my family and friends contribute the majority of news stories. Lochkelvin students are expected to have a strong understanding of the world we’ve been molded to enter, of all the motivations weaving and wefting, of the political tapestry we’re expected to feature prominently on. You’d have to be a damn fool to ignore all that.” When neither of us speaks, Rory’s eyes narrow in suspicion at Danny. “You’re the damn fool, aren’t you, Hamilton?”
Danny doesn’t take offense to Rory’s words. “We’ll never see eye to eye. But in the grand scheme of things, I find it all rather pointless.”
Rory shrugs. “No doubt you believe a higher power has greater things in store for us than the tedium of governmental paperwork.”
“Don’t you?” Danny returns, and the question seems to throw Rory so much that he slowly places down his glass. “You know you don’t have to enter politics, right? Your fate is in your own hands and you can change it at any time.”
I watch Rory’s dark blond brows descend, as he gazes out the foggy, porthole window beside us. “I couldn’t,” he says with a frown, sounding as though he’s genuinely thinking of a world in which he’s not a politician of some kind. “It’s what I was born to do. There’s no greater high for me than changing minds, fixing things, putting the world to rights. With all the knowledge I’ve been granted, with the education I’ve received, it’s my duty to make something of it and make this world a better place.”
There’s something elemental when Rory speaks these words, like they’re important, spoken deeply from the heart and therefore resoundingly prophetic. As though, in this time and place, Rory Munro has laid claim his intentions for the world, and that the world somehow already knows his contribution will be immense.
