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“You enjoy your showers a lot, do you?” Kyle Henderson asks. He’s already dressed, smoothing gel into his hair. “Think about me while you’re in there?”
“It does make a shower go faster,” Sam says, undaunted. “God, I love the Wall!”
I laugh. Someone whips a towel at Sam.
By the time I’m clean and dressed, I don’t really have enough time for breakfast. I drink some of the coffee our hall master has brewed for himself in the common room, and eat raw one of the Pop Tarts Sam’s mother sent.
Sam gives me a dark look and eats the other.
“We’re off to a good start,” I say. “Fashionably late.”
“Just doing our part to keep their expectations low,” says Sam.
Despite having spent the whole summer going to bed around this time in the morning, I feel pretty good.
My schedule says that my first class today is Probability & Statistics. This semester I also have Developing World Ethics (I thought Daneca would be pleased I chose that for my history requirement, which is why I haven’t told her), English, Physics, Ceramics 2 (laugh if you must), French 4, and Photoshop.
I am studying the slip of paper as I head out of Smythe House and walk into the Finke Academic Center. Probability & Statistics is on the third floor, so I make for the stairs.
Lila Zacharov is walking through the hallway in the Wallingford girl’s uniform: jacket, pleated skirt, and white oxford shirt. Her short blond hair shines like the woven gold of the crest. When she sees me, the expression on her face is some kind of mingled hope and horror.
I can’t even imagine my own face. “Lila?” I say.
She turns away, head down.
In a few quick steps I’ve grabbed hold of her arm, like I’m afraid she’s not real. She freezes at the touch of my gloved hand.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, turning her roughly toward me, which is maybe not an okay way to behave, but I’m too astonished to think straight.
She looks like I slapped her.
Good job, me. I’m a real charmer.
“I knew you’d be mad,” she says. Her face is pale and drawn, all her usual ruthlessness washed from it.
“It’s not about that,” I say. But for the life of me, in that moment, I have no idea what it is about. I know she’s not supposed to be here. And I know I don’t want her to leave.
“I can’t help—,” she says, and her voice breaks. Her face is full of despair. “I tried to stop thinking about you, Cassel. I tried all summer long. I almost came to see you a hundred times. I would sink my nails into my skin until I could stay away.”
I remember sitting on the steps in my mother’s house last March, begging Lila to believe she’d been worked. I remember the slow way the horror spread over her features. I remember her denials, her final defeated agreement that we shouldn’t see each other until the curse ended. I remember everything.
Lila’s a dream worker. I hope that means she’s sleeping better than I am.
“But if you’re here—,” I start, not sure how I can finish.
“It hurts not to be near you,” she says quietly, carefully, like the words cost her something. “You have no idea how much.”
I want to tell her that I have some idea what it feels like to love someone I can’t have. But maybe I don’t. Maybe being in love with me really is worse than I can imagine.
“I couldn’t keep—I wasn’t strong enough.” Her eyes are wet and her mouth is slightly parted.
“It’s been almost six months. Don’t you feel any different?” The curse should have begun to fade, surely.
“Worse,” she says. “I feel worse. What if this never stops?”
“It will. Soon. We have to wait this thing out, and it’s better if—,” I start, but it’s hard to concentrate on the words with her looking at me like that.
“You liked me before,” she says. “And I liked you. I loved you, Cassel. Before the curse. I always loved you. And I don’t mind—”
