A raven flew overhead and vanished mid-sky.
It’ll be OK, Ronan told his brother. You can live like that. You can just never take it off.
Matthew’s eyes were unafraid in the wide eyeholes. That was the nightmare. That was the nightmare That was the
Declan tore the mask off.
A tree behind him oozed black.
Matthew’s face was lines and dashes. It was not bloody; it was not horrific; it was simply not a face, and so it was terrible. He was not a person, he was just a drawn thing.
Ronan’s chest was shaking in airless, silent sobs. He had not cried like that for so long —
The dream shuddered. And now it was not only Matthew who had fallen apart; everything was undoing. Aurora’s hands were pointed at each other, all fingers bent backwards to her chest – lines, unmade. Behind them, Gansey was on his knees, his eyes dead.
Ronan’s throat was raw. I’ll do anything! I’ll do anything! I’ll do anythi
It was unmaking everything Ronan loved.
Please
In the Aglionby dorms, Matthew Lynch woke. When he stretched, his head hit the wall; he’d rolled right up against it in the night. It was only when his roommate, Stephen Lee, made a noise of grotesque frustration that he realized he was awake because his phone was ringing.
He pawed it to his ear. “Yah?”
There was no reply. He blinked at the screen to see who was calling, then put it back to his ear. Sleepily, he whispered, “Ronan?”
“Where are you? In your room?”
“Dur.”
“I’m serious.”
“Hur.”
“Matthew.”
“Yah, yah, I’m in my room. SL hates you. It’s like two or sumthin’. Whatdya want?”
Ronan didn’t reply right away. Matthew couldn’t see him, but he was curled on his bed back at Monmouth, forehead resting on his knees, one hand gripping the back of his own skull, phone pressed to his ear. “Just to know you’re all right.”
“ ’m all right.”
“Go to sleep, then.”
“Still sleeping now.”
The brothers hung up.
Outside of Henrietta, nestled on the ley line, something dark watched all of this, everything in the Henrietta night, and said, I’m awake I’m awake I’m awake.
The following morning was over-bright and over-hot.
Gansey and Adam stood by the double doors of the Gladys Francine Mollin Wright Memorial Theatre, hands folded neatly. They had pulled usher service – just Adam had, really, but Gansey had volunteered to take Brand’s place as the other usher. Ronan was nowhere in sight. Annoyance simmered inside Gansey.
“Raven Day,” said Headmaster Child, “is more than a day of school pride. Because don’t we have school pride every day?”
He stood on the stage. Everyone was sweating a little, but not him. He was a lean, rugged cowboy in the cattle drive that was life, skin striated like the face of a bleached canyon wall. Gansey had long maintained that Child was wasted here. To put such a survivor into a light-gray suit and tie was to throw away the opportunity of putting him, instead, on the back of a buckskin horse and on the inside of a ten-gallon hat.
Adam shot Gansey a knowing look. He mouthed yee haw. They smirked and had to look away from each other. Gansey’s gaze landed right on Henry Cheng and the Vancouver crowd, all seated together near the back. As if feeling his attention, Henry looked over his shoulder. His eyebrow raced upward. Gansey was uncomfortably reminded of how Henry had seen the Orphan Girl in the back of the SUV. He would, at some point, require an explanation, an evasion, or a lie.
“— for this Raven Day,” Child insisted.
Gansey was ordinarily charmed by Raven Day. It was composed entirely of things that he liked: students assembled smartly in white T-shirts and khaki trousers like extras from a WWI documentary; hoisting of flags; teams pitted against one another with plenty of hurrahing; pomp, circumstance, in-jokes; ravens painted upon everything. This crop of juniors had made ravens for the entire student body to stage a mock conflict on the common while the school photographers captured shining faces for another year’s worth of promotional materials.
Now, everything in Gansey sang urgently for him to spend his time seeking. His quest was a wolf, and it starved.
“Today is the tenth anniversary of Raven Day,” Child said. “Ten years ago, the festivities we enjoy today were proposed by a student who had attended Aglionby for years. Sadly, Noah Czerny cannot be here today to celebrate, but before the rest of us do, we are fortunate enough to have one of his younger sisters here to tell us a little more about Noah and the day’s origins.”
Gansey would have thought he had misheard if Adam hadn’t peered at him and mouthed, Noah?
Yes, Noah, because here was one of the Czerny sisters climbing on to the stage. Even if Gansey had not recognized her from the funeral, he would have recognized Noah’s elfin mouth, the tiny eyes with the cheery bags beneath them, the large ears hidden behind fine hair. It was odd to see Noah’s features on a young woman. It was odder to see them on anyone living. She seemed too old to be Noah’s younger sister, but it was only because Gansey had forgotten how Noah existed in suspension. He would have been twenty-four now if he had been saved instead of Gansey.
A freshman said something that Gansey didn’t catch and got himself promptly escorted from the theatre for his trouble. Noah’s sister leaned into the microphone and said something also too faint to catch, and then said something else that was eaten by a squeal as the sound manager tried to adjust the volume. Finally, she said, “Hi, I’m Adele Czerny. I don’t really have a long speech. I mean, I sat through these things when I was your age, and they’re boring. I’m just going to say a few things about Noah and Raven Day. Did any of you guys know him?”
In unison, Gansey and Adam started to lift their hands and just as quickly dropped them. Yes, they knew him. No, they had not known him. Noah, alive, had been before their time here. Noah, dead, was a phenomenon, not an acquaintance.
“Well, you were missing out,” she said. “My mom always said he was a firecracker, which just meant he was always getting speeding tickets and jumping on tables at family reunions and stuff. He always had so many ideas. He was so hyper.”
Adam and Gansey looked at each other. They had always had the sense that the Noah they knew was not the true Noah. It was just disconcerting to hear how much Noahness death had stripped. It was impossible to not wonder what Noah would have done with himself if he had lived.
“Anyway, I’m here because I was actually the first one he told about his idea for Raven Day. He called me one evening, I guess it would’ve been when he was fourteen, and he told me he’d had this dream about ravens fighting and battling. He said they were all different colours and sizes and shapes, and he was inside them, and they were, like, swirling around him.” She motioned around herself in a whirlwind; she had Noah’s hands, Noah’s elbows. “And he told me, ‘I think it would be a cool art project.’ And I told him, ‘I’ll bet if everybody at the school made one, I bet you’d have enough.’ ”
Gansey was aware that his arm hairs were standing up.
“So they’re swooping and careening and there’s nothing but ravens, nothing but dreams all around you,” Adele said, only Gansey wasn’t sure if she had actually said it, or if he’d heard her wrong and he was just half-remembering something she’d already said. “Anyway, I know he’d like what it is like nowadays. So, um, thanks for remembering one of his crazy dreams.”