The tree, unfortunately, hadn’t been particularly forthcoming with any answers.
And Rian had turned away to make himself trudge back through the trees, climbing the hill up the path and to the school, guided by that lonely burning light in the upstairs window.
He’d stayed up too late making sketches of the tree, committing it to memory, trying different styles and interpretations so he could choose one to put to canvas—and he’d dozed off over his sketchbook, curled up in a corner of the bed in his room in the suite he shared with Walden. In fact, the only reason he woke up just in time to throw on a clean shirt, shove his feet into his sandals, and race to first period was because...because...
Walden...was late?
Rian barely got a glimpse of Lachlan Walden darting from the suite with his tie flying over his shoulder before the door slammed in his wake. Walden was always last to sleep, first to wake, always on the ball, always five minutes early for every day, every meeting, every school event.
So what the hell had that been about...?
Rian didn’t have time to wonder. Not when he had approximately two minutes himself to race upstairs, and he managed to skid into his morning class exactly three inches ahead of the last freshman and four seconds before the last bell chimed to start. Thank God he didn’t have a homeroom session, or he’d have been in trouble.
But he froze behind his desk as he realized...
The entire class of freshmen was staring at him.
Probably because he was gasping from running, leaning hard on the desk, his hair falling into his face and one of the loose, oversized linen tunics he didn’t mind getting dirty slipping off of one of his shoulders.
“What?” He blew his hair out of his face, then straightened and shoved it back, before catching his shirt and tugging it up over his shoulder, sweeping the room with a look. “What are you waiting for? This isn’t a free period, get to work.”
Normally the boys would be reluctant, groaning and grumbling and slogging to obey, especially in the morning when they were both not particularly eager to start the school day and just far enough past homeroom for the energy kick from breakfast to actually wake them up, versus falling asleep over their seats.
But apparently he must look an entire hot mess today, because without much more than a few mutters...
They scrambled to drag their bags off the tables and started digging out their sketchbooks or checking the drawers for the tools for their sculpture projects.
Well then.
Rian cleared his throat, smoothing his clothing and gathering his hair back with one hand, rummaging into his desk drawer with the other for a rubber band.
At least his little slip this morning had had one positive side effect.
He’d managed to gather himself by the end of first period, though—at least, to outward appearances. Inwardly...
Inwardly, his mind kept wandering.
And through first period, second period, third period, fourth, more than once a student had to say his name twice to drag him back on task, leaving him blinking and asking them to repeat the question.
He couldn’t even say why he was so distracted. Maybe because he’d hardly slept, and started his day so off-kilter. Maybe because he couldn’t stop worrying about Chris, and wondering if the boy would be distracted and dispirited in last period again.
Or maybe because his mind kept wandering back to the light in the window.
And the fact that when he’d come back last night, straggling back toward the haunting spires of the school building and tapping in that code on the door...
That lone silhouette had remained in the window high above.
Maybe Damon hadn’t been able to sleep, either.
Rian was nearly dead on his feet by the time the lunch bell rang, and he straggled into the cafeteria to steal a thick wrapped BLT sandwich from the cooler before the boys snagged them all, then checked the coffee pot. Thank God, fresh brewed; sometimes the cafeteria staff didn’t bother putting out fresh after the breakfast rush, but in a school like this half the teachers practically needed the energy injected in their veins twenty-four seven to even function. Rian laced a tall paper cup liberally with sugar, then buried his face in the fresh caffeine infusion and stole a spot against the wall.
He told himself he was helping out. It wasn’t his day on cafeteria duty, watching the boys to make sure they didn’t start a food fight or a brawl, or sneak contraband under the tables, but an extra pair of eyes never hurt.
He wasn’t avoiding the faculty lounge.
Never.
...or too sleepy to drag himself back up to his classroom to eat there.
Alone.
For some reason, right now, he just...really didn’t want to be alone.
He let his mind unfocus as he leaned against the wall and nibbled at his sandwich, washing it down with sips of coffee so hot they nearly scalded his tongue—but at least the caffeine was percolating in his brain, pushing him a bit closer to actual alertness. Maybe that was why he finally wandered toward Chris, at one of the long tables beneath the tall windows with their peaked shapes and tiny segmented panes. Chris was practically holding court; people gravitated to his friendly warmth and magnetism so easily, and many of the boys on the football team and from various other little sub-groups that people always seemed to need to define their identity all clustered around as if the only identity they needed was their admiration for Chris.
He seemed at once gently oblivious to it and cautiously aware of it, and Rian couldn’t help but notice how Chris was careful to pay equal attention to everyone around him, not ignoring a single boy who tried to get his attention. He really was a good kid, Rian thought. Kind. Honest. Forthright.
So seriously, what was he being so sneaky about?
What was he hiding, and why?
Rian still hadn’t thought of any way to get an answer out of Chris without crossing this ridiculous intangible line of What Shall Not Be Spoken, laid out by the Grand Poobah Walden himself. But as his gaze drifted over the table, he found himself caught on the boy sitting at Chris’s right side, just two seats over. His name was Merry; that was what jumped to the forefront of Rian’s mind. Merry. One of those names that he just knew came from having celebrity parents, though Merry apparently attended under a false last name so Rian wasn’t quite sure who had given him that unusual moniker.
What he was sure of, though, was that Merry wasn’t doing particularly well in Rian’s third-period junior class.
Which meant it wouldn’t be suspicious at all if he asked Merry to stay after school one day so he could talk, and try to get to the bottom of what was going on. If there was something Chris was involved in that was distracting him from practice, it could be behind Merry’s inattention and lack of focus, too. Merry and Chris weren’t overly close from what Rian had observed, but if he could recall correctly, fishing back through idle memories of impressions and captured moments...he’d seen Merry in the group of boys who went off-campus with Chris over the weekends, more than once.