Wesley makes a noncommittal sound. “I don’t like boats,” he says, retrieving a slice of pizza from the statue’s outstretched arms, nodding for me to join him.
“The Saint-Marie,” says Cash with a flourish, “isn’t just a boat.”
“So sorry,” says Wes, mimicking the flourish. “I don’t like yachts.”
I can’t tell if they’re joking.
“I see you’ve already begun defacing our poor Alchemist again,” adds Wes, waving the pizza slice at the statue.
“Just be glad Safia hasn’t played dress-up with him,” says a girl’s voice, and my attention shifts to a pair of students sitting on the platform steps: a junior boy sitting cross-legged, and a redheaded senior with her head in his lap.
“Very true,” says Cash as the girl shifts up onto one elbow and looks at me.
“You’ve brought a stray,” she says, but there’s no malice in her voice, and her smile quirks in a teasing way.
“She’s not a stray, Amber,” says the boy she’s been using as a pillow. “She’s a junior.”
He looks up at me then, and my stomach drops. There’s a silver stripe across his uniform, but he looks like he can’t be more than fifteen. He’s small and slim, dark hair curling across his forehead, and between the pair of black-framed glasses perched on his nose and the notes scribbled on the backs of his hands, he looks so much like my brother that it hurts. If Ben had lived—if he had been given five more birthdays—he might have looked just like this.
He looks away and I blink, and the resemblance thins to nearly nothing. Still, it leaves me shaken as I head up the steps and join Wesley by the statue. He grabs a soda from the Alchemist’s feet and gestures toward the other students.
“So you’ve met Cassius,” he says.
“Dear god, please don’t call me that,” says Cash.
“That’s Gavin with the glasses,” continues Wes, “and Amber is in his lap.”
“Amber Kinney,” she corrects. “There are two gold Ambers at Hyde and one silver, and it’s not a name that lends itself to shortened forms, trust me, so if you hear someone use the name Kinney—which I hate, by the way, never do it—that’s me.”
I take a soda. “I’m Mackenzie Bishop. New student.”
“Of course you are,” says Gavin, and I blush until he adds, “Because it’s a small school and we know everybody else.”
“Yeah, well, you can call me Mackenzie or Mac, if you want. Just not Kenzie.” Kenzie was Da’s word; it sounds wrong on everyone else’s lips. “Or M.” M was the name I’d dreamt of being called for years. M was the version of me that didn’t hunt Histories or read memories. M was the person I could have been if I hadn’t joined the Archive. And M was ruined by Owen when he whispered it in my ear like a promise, right before he tried to kill me.
“Well, Mackenzie,” says Gavin, emphasizing each of the three syllables evenly, just the way Ben did, “welcome to Hyde.”
“Mackenzie, will you help me?”
We’re sitting at the table, Ben and I, while Mom hums in the background, making dinner. I’m twirling my silver ring and reading a passage for my freshman English class, and Ben’s trying to do his fourth-grade math, but it’s not his best subject.
“Mackenzie…?”
I’ve always loved the way Ben says my name.
He was never one of those kids who couldn’t speak, who skipped syllables and squeezed words down into sounds. By the time he was four, he prided himself on pronouncing everything. Mom was never Mama, Dad was never Daddy, Da was never Da but Da Antony, and I was never Muh-ken-zee or Mc-kin-zee, and certainly not Kenzie, but always Mah-Ken-Zee, the three beats set like stones in order.
“Will you show me how to do this problem?”
At nine, even his questions are precise. He has this obsession with being a grown-up; not just wearing one of Dad’s ties or holding his knife and fork like Mom, but putting on airs, mimicking posture and attitude and articulation. He has the makings of a Keeper, really. Da didn’t live long enough to see him taking shape, but I can see it.
I know I already took Da’s spot, but I often wonder if the Archive could make a place for Ben, too.
It’s a selfish wish, I know. Some might even call it a wrong wish. I should want to protect him from everything, including—no, especially—the Archive. But as I sit there, turning my silver ring and watching Ben work, I think I might give anything to have him beside me.
I get why Da did it. Why he chose me. I get why everyone chooses someone. It’s not just so that someone takes their place. It’s so that—at least for a little while—they don’t have to be alone. Alone with what they do and who they are. Alone with all those secrets.
It is selfish and it is wrong and it is human, and as I sit there, watching Ben work, I think that I would do it. I would choose him. I would take my little brother with me. If they’d let me.
Of course, I never find out.
In truth, Gavin looks very little like Ben. I know because I’ve been staring at him—and then trying not to stare—for the last fifteen minutes. Luckily, between a long shower and the walk with Wes, fifteen minutes is all I have before the bell rings.
It turns out that even though we’re a grade apart, Amber and I have Physiology together. She tells me on the way how it’s all part of her pre-premed plan, how her grandmother was some incredible war surgeon behind the blood-slicked camp curtains, and how she has steady hands just like her. Between the Court and the science hall—marked by a statue of a snake—I discover my favorite thing about Amber Kinney.
She likes to talk.
She likes to talk even more than Lyndsey, and as far as I can tell it’s not out of a need to fill the quiet so much as a simple lack of filter between her brain and mouth—which is fine with me, because she’s surprisingly interesting. She tells me random facts about the school, and then about each member of the Court: Gavin won’t eat anything green and has a brother who sleepwalks; Cash speaks four languages and tears up at sappy commercials; Safia—because apparently Amber is actually friends with her—used to be so shy she barely spoke, and still hasn’t quite figured out how to speak nicely; Wesley is a sarcastic flirt and allergic to eggplant and…
Amber trails off. “But you already know Wesley,” she says.
“Not as well as you’d think,” I say carefully.
Amber smiles. “Join the club. I’ve known Wes for years, and there are times I still don’t feel like I know him. But I think he likes it that way—an air of mystery—so we all let him have his secrets.”
I wish everybody felt the way Amber Kinney does about secrets. My life would be a lot easier.
“So,” I say, “Wesley’s a flirt?”
Amber rolls her eyes and holds the door open for me. “Let’s just say that air of mystery tends to work in his favor.” I feel the heat creeping into my face as she glances my way. “Don’t tell me you’ve already fallen for it.”
I chuckle. “Hardly.” And that much is true. After all, it’s not Wesley’s secrets that make my pulse climb. It’s the fact that we have the same ones. Or, at least, most of the same ones. I can’t help but wonder, after the shock of seeing him here, what else I don’t know.