AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Bodies?” I echo.
“One of the people that you… changed. I’ve heard there’s ways to tell if an amulet is real and, well, maybe someone—the cops or the Feds—could use that to tell if an object has been worked. I was worried for you.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?” I ask.
She turns to me, eyes blazing. “I want you to love me, you idiot. I thought that if I did something for you, something huge, then you would. I wanted to save you, Cassel, so that you’d have to love me. Get it now? It’s horrible.”
For a moment I don’t know why she’s so angry. Then I realize that it’s because she’s embarrassed. “Gratitude isn’t love,” I say finally.
“I should know that,” she says. “I’m grateful to you and I hate it.”
“You didn’t do me any other favors you haven’t mentioned, right?” I ask, not relenting. “Like murdering my brother?”
“No,” she says sharply.
“You had every reason to want him dead,” I say, thinking of Sam and Daneca’s accusations in the kitchen of Daneca’s fancy house.
“Just because I’m glad he’s dead doesn’t mean I killed him,” she says. “I didn’t order him killed either, if that’s what you’re going to ask next. Is that what those agents wanted? To tell you I murdered your brother?”
I must look blank, because she laughs. “I go to this school too. Everyone knows you got cuffed and thrown into the back of a black car by guys in suits.”
“So, what do most people think?”
“There’s a rumor going around that you’re a narc,” she says, and I groan. “But I think the jury’s still out.”
“I don’t know what the suits want with me any more than the school does,” I say. “I’m sorry I asked you about the cigarette. I just had to know.”
“You’re getting very popular,” she says. “Not enough Cassel to go around.”
I look up. We’ve walked past the library. We’re almost to the woods. I swing around, and she does the same. We walk back together quietly, lost in separate thoughts.
I want to reach out for her hand, but I don’t. It’s not fair. She’d have to take it.
* * *
I’m heading toward Physics when Sam stops me in the hall.
“Did you hear?” he asks. “Greg Harmsford went crazy and trashed his own laptop.”
“When?” I ask, frowning. “At lunch?”
“Last night. Apparently everyone on his hall woke up to him drowning it in a sink. The screen was already cracked like he’d been punching it.” At that, Sam can no longer contain his laughter. “Serious anger management problem.”
I grin.
“He says that he did it in his sleep. Way to steal your excuse,” says Sam. “Besides, everyone could see that his eyes were open.”
“Oh,” I say, the grin sliding off my face. “He was sleepwalking?”
“He was faking,” Sam says.
I wonder where Lila was while I drove around with her father. I wonder if she visited Greg’s room, if he asked her to come in, if she slowly removed her gloves before she ran her hands through his hair.
Sam turns to me to say something else.
Then, thankfully, the bell rings and I have to run to class. I sit down and listen to Dr. Jonahdab. Today she’s talking about the principal of momentum and how hard it is to stop something once it has been set in motion.
* * *
