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So I just let it happen and watch with a mixture of surprise and fear as my sense of self flutters away like leaves falling from a tree in the autumn.
It doesn’t upset me. This is something else I find out about myself: I don’t get upset much anymore.
Sometimes, I wonder if I’m broken, if there’s something wrong with me. Everyone around me is bursting with emotions: anger, frustration, joy, sadness, triumph, love, hatred.
I feel none of those things. Mostly, I feel tired and numb. Sometimes, if I’m reading poetry good enough to move me, I sense the emotions of it, but not directly, not fully. I sense them like ghosts. The emotions are real, but I can only feel their shadows.
Maybe that’s because I’ve become a shadow too.
ThenonedayMrKiehn, my English teacher, changes his seating plan.
After a brisk announcement, he makes us all stand at the front of his classroom, and he points at each desk and calls out students’ names.
When he’s almost done, he points at the front desk by the window. “Theodora and Zachary.”
My heart sinks. The emotion I feel is real, then—not a shadow. It takes me by surprise. I look across the room. Zachary meets my gaze but doesn’t say anything.
I look away first and slink to the desk with my head down, sitting on the side closest to the window.
Zachary Blackwood’s presence in Spearcrest is like the sun. It’s bright and hard to ignore and can’t be directly looked at. Zachary is everywhere on campus: he’s in most of my classes and in my after-school clubs (we’re both captains of our debate club teams).
Worst of all, his name is always printed next to mine whenever exam results are put up on the corridor walls of the Old Manor.
Ignoring him is hard work because Zachary is well-spoken and sharp and intelligent. He always gets involved in school discussions. In maths class, he always volunteers to go to the front and solve the equations on the teacher’s board. He’s always first to get involved in experiments in science class, and he’s always first to arrive at chess club, and I know his debate team like him more than my team like me.
Every time we start a debate and have to shake hands as team captains, I barely sleep the night before because I’m so nervous.
Zachary’s handshake is like him: solemn and just a little bit too intense.
Now, we sit next to each other. I’ve never sat next to him in class before. He smells good—he smells like an adult, like soap and a rich, sophisticated cologne. Unlike all the other boys in school, he doesn’t carry his things in a backpack but in a satchel of leather that makes him look like a Victorian university student. He opens his notebook: his handwriting is a clean, spidery cursive, and all his lines are drawn with a ruler.
His presence radiates heat. Our shoulders and arms don’t quite touch, but the warmth of his body pushes against mine. I’m cold all the time, and I have the sudden urge to place my arm against his to get more of that tempting warmth.
What would it feel like to place my body right against his and let him wrap his arms around me?
The question startles me like sudden thunder. Guilt, shock and shame fill me as if I’ve just thought of something deep and dark and completely forbidden.
Chapter 6
Promethean Myth
Zachary
Foralmostthreeyears,Theodora and I have been building a long line of teetering dominoes. Dominoes of silent tension made out of every moment when our paths crossed, but we said nothing.
Mr Kiehn changing the seating plan is the tiny puff of air that tips the first domino.
After that, they all topple.
ThefirsttimeTheodoraspeaks to me is when she drops a highlighter on the floor in English class. We both look down: it lies in the narrow space between our two chairs. Theodora looks up. Our gazes meet.
Mascara darkens her eyelashes, a rose tint lends her cheeks a slight artificial blush, and her lips have a fine layer of raspberry-pink lip gloss. She’s found ways of disguising her icy pallor, but I know it’s still there. The cold inside her is as palpable as ever, it exudes from her like the wreaths of vapour that swirl from frozen things.
“Excuse me,” she says. “Could I just—?”
She looks pointedly at the highlighter on the floor.
“Of course,” I say, moving my chair away to widen the space between us. “Please, let me.”
