The problem on the page was the same as the one Elias had written on the board. I eyed it, taking in the form of the numbers and lines. Math didn’t come super easily to me, but I’d hammered plenty of it into my brain during my last couple of years of high school. I hadn’t been sure I’d even apply to college, but if I wanted a chance at some kind of botany program so I could get paid to commune with plants on a professional level, I needed my math and sciences covered.
When I’d staked out a table in the library, Cade had always found me there. He’d sit across from me with his legs stretched out, his ankle resting against mine, as he studied whatever schematics—cars, appliances, industrial equipment—he was poring over that day. He’d always had a knack for taking mechanical things apart and putting them back together, so he’d figured he might as well get paid for it. Which would have worked out fine if he’d managed not to get into so many arguments with his bosses and customers.
The teacher’s voice broke through my memories. He was explaining something about the specific functions involved in this equation. I forced myself to follow the words, tying them in my head to the problem on the page. One comment he made included a term I didn’t recognize. I hesitated and then raised my hand.
When I lifted my gaze a second later, Elias had turned away to scrawl something on the board. I waited, my skin creeping with each passing moment I kept my arm in the air like a flag for attention, and then decided it wasn’t worth it and jerked it back down. I’d probably be able to figure out what was going on from the context.
At least, I should have been able to. The first few steps of the problem flowed out coherently enough with each student who came up to add their bit. By the third part, I felt confident enough to raise my hand to volunteer—take that, Jenson Jerkface—but Elias’s gaze slipped right over me as if he didn’t even see me. The same thing happened when I offered for the fourth step.
I lowered my hand after he called up a guy from the other side of the room, my skin creeping for a different reason now. His icing me out was starting to feel deliberate. He wasn’t just avoiding acknowledging me when he didn’t need to—he was making an active effort to ignore me. Why wouldn’t he want to check what the new student could do?
Maybe, like Jenson, he’d decided that if I wasn’t an officially verified student, there was no point in treating me like I belonged. A flicker of irritation seared the edges of my discomfort. Shouldn’t the teachers be a little more professional than that?
The guy he’d called up paused when he reached the board, and the numbers there distracted me from my frustration. Wait, that wasn’t the equation we’d started with, was it? I could have sworn there’d been something to the power of three…
I glanced at my textbook, but the figures there reflected the ones on the board. So much for paying attention. I rubbed my eyes as the guy started scraping his chalk across the dark surface.
But it wasn’t just me. Elias considered the board and launched into another explanation of the process that I’d swear didn’t line up with the instructions he’d walked us through to begin with. As if we were suddenly dealing with a different sort of problem than we’d been faced with previously.
He altered a couple of the numbers on the chalkboard with quick swipes of the eraser and filled them in with different ones. There was nothing accusing or critical in his voice, nothing to indicate he thought the students who’d contributed had done anything wrong. I frowned, watching closely—and one of the functions blurred before my eyes. A nine became an eight. A new set of brackets formed around a fraction. What the hell?
This time I didn’t hesitate—my hand shot into the air. Our teacher had to have seen that, right? He’d been staring right at it. Staring at the figures while they’d outright shifted as if they had a life of their own. A shiver ran down my back.
Elias turned back toward us and blindly rambled on with his lecture, his gaze never traveling all the way to me. I gritted my teeth. He couldn’t just pretend everything was okay, no matter what he thought about me.
“Sir,” I said, tired of waiting. “Sir.”
A few of my classmates glanced over. Elias’s jaw tensed as he finally let his eyes rest on me. “Yes?” he said in a terse voice.
“The numbers on the board just changed,” I said. Hell, everyone must have noticed by now.
He blinked at me, schooling his face into mild confusion that I didn’t believe for a second. “I think your mind must have wandered. Or you might want to look into getting glasses. This is what we’ve got to work with.” He motioned toward the board.
No one else said a peep. I sank back into my chair, resisting the urge to throw my textbook at his falsely oblivious head.
So what? One more piece of weirdness in an already incredibly strange place. But the fact that I’d actually been trying to follow along and been foiled by whatever the hell was going on in this class made this particular affront niggle deeper.
If it’d been a different professor, I’d have kept my mouth shut. It was obvious they didn’t give a shit how any of us felt about the paces they put us through. But Elias wasn’t quite like the others, even if he had some specific issue with me. He felt more present—more human. So when class let out, I hurried straight to the front of the class to insist he give me a real answer. I was tired of being left in the dark.
He must have seen me coming or suspected I’d make that move. I was only halfway down the aisle when I spotted his dark hair vanishing past the doorway.
Fuck that. I hustled over as quickly as I could amid the other students, but by the time I reached the halls outside, Elias had slipped out of view.
It wasn’t important anyway, I told myself. What happened in a math class had nothing to do with finding Cade. But how could I know that for sure when nothing here made any sense?
The vibration of my phone against my chest woke me up in the darkened bedroom. Staying flat on the bed, I pulled the phone out from where I’d carefully tucked it inside my camisole pajama top and turned off the silent alarm. I glanced at the signal bars, but just like every other time I’d checked them, I was completely out of service range. At least the device’s other functions still worked.
I sat up carefully and yawned. Three hours wasn’t anywhere near enough sleep. In the darkness, my roommates were little more than vague lumps along the walls. A blanket rustled here; a rough murmur carried from over there.
Beyond the high window, the wavering moan I’d heard by the pool the other day split the air. My skin twitched at it, my senses snapping fully alert. A couple of the other girls turned over, but the sound didn’t appear to have woken anyone up.
Good. I didn’t want any questions about this specific nighttime quest.
I slipped out of the bedroom on my socked feet, pulling a sweater over my camisole as I went. A long time ago, I’d learned the trick of walking down the stairs along the edge of the wall to avoid creaks. I’d just reached the second floor by the girl’s bathroom when a figure came into view over by the classrooms, striding through the shadows.
I froze, my pulse stuttering. My eyes had adjusted to the dimness enough for me to make out broad shoulders on a tall form topped with a bristling of short, thick hair.