Why shouldn’t I, if she was offering that blatantly? I’d enjoy myself at least a little, and she seemed to think she’d enjoy herself a lot, so I’d hardly be using her. No one here expected any encounter to turn into a real relationship.
But.
My thoughts slipped back to a recent and yet distant memory of my hands tracing warm skin, of a perfect little gasp of pleasure by my ear, of a smell like fresh clementines and nutmeg wiping away all traces of roses. Desire twanged through me that had nothing to do with the girl in front of me and snuffed out any interest I might have otherwise felt.
I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get it up with her. I’d only embarrass myself. So no, what would actually happen was neither of us would enjoy ourselves.
You had to know how to let people down easy. “Would you believe this just… isn’t a good time?” I said in a meaningful way that left the meaning itself open to interpretation. She could fill in the blank with whatever she most wanted to believe. “Maybe another day.”
“Sure,” she said, blinking with sudden compassion based on whatever she’d imagined. “I’m sorry.”
I waved off her unnecessary concern. “Think nothing of it.”
The jangle of strummed strings brought both our heads up. We stared at the other student on music-room duty, a kid who didn’t look a day over eighteen who’d turned up only a couple of months ago.
Apparently that hadn’t been long enough for him to have learned the ropes. He’d tucked the banjo he’d been wiping down under his arm and, as we watched, strummed another chord. I cleared my throat in warning, even though it was almost definitely too late already.
None of us were allowed to play. I always left the area with the guitars to someone else to avoid any temptation. And here was this guy shifting his fingers over the frets with a goofy smile on his naïve face—
The smile snapped away an instant later as his entire expression stiffened. He wrenched his hand away from the strings, his fingers splaying rigidly. His thumb stuttered backward with a crack of bone. A cry burst out of him.
Professor Filch swept into the room a moment later to survey the room. He motioned briskly to the new guy. “It seems you forgot our policies about the instruments. Set it in its place, please, carefully. Excellent. Now come along and get that break set before it turns into something worse.”
“Y-y-yes, sir,” the guy stammered, and hurried after the professor when he turned on his heel, clutching his disfigured hand to his chest.
Chapter Four
Trix
I might have been used to having to share a room with no privacy, but that didn’t mean I liked it. In some ways, the dorms in Roseborne College were the worst accommodations I’d dealt with yet. The sheets were scratchy, and the night was punctuated by one girl’s rattling snores and another’s periodic whimpers. At least once an hour, someone sucked in a sharp breath that spoke of wordless pain.
I’d been relieved and kind of disbelieving when Dean Wainhouse had grudgingly agreed to let me stay on as long as I “pulled my weight.” Now I was starting to wonder if my supposed enrollment at the college was more a way of teaching me a lesson about the dangers of getting what you asked for. Did he figure I’d come running to his office to say I’d changed my mind over a few days of discomfort? Not a chance.
Each of the dorm rooms had a tiny bathroom with a single toilet, but the four shower stalls that the nearly thirty of us girls had to share were located in a bathroom at the bottom of the stairs. After the first day I’d learned to be strategic. Since I wasn’t sleeping all that well anyway, I got up while dawn was only just creeping through the window and took my turn under the water that sputtered between hot and cold no matter where I set the dial.
My third morning, I snuck down even earlier than the morning before. The dawn hadn’t even started to glow on the horizon yet. I slipped through the dark past the bathroom and down the next flight of stairs to the main floor.
No one was stirring there either. I’d figured the staff would all still be asleep at this hour too. I went straight to the hall with the portraits and lifted Cade’s off the wall.
This was the only object I’d found here that had any definite connection to him. Maybe it held more answers if I looked carefully enough.
I sat down on the floor and dug my fingers into the back of the frame. With several increasingly forceful tugs, I finally managed to detach the backing that held the painting in place. It came away in my hand.
I squinted at the rectangular piece in the dim light and then turned my attention to the frame and the back of the painting itself. Some part of me had been hoping for a message, a map, a diagram that would chart out the answers I needed. What I got was a whole lot of blank board and a little painted doodle near the top right corner.
A lump filled my throat as I peered closer at the casual sketch. It was a girl, captured in hasty strokes from head to waist, her wayward hair a vivid purple. Like mine had been dyed all those months ago when Cade had left. He’d doodled me.
Knowing that wasn’t going to help me find him, but even if it was selfish, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of relieved satisfaction that he’d been thinking of me even while we were so far apart.
The rest of the board was completely blank. I scanned it for a few minutes longer before fitting the pieces of the frame back together. As I turned it over, meaning to examine the main painting up close in case there was more to it than I’d deciphered before, a door squeaked across the way in the professors’ hall.
My pulse hiccupped. I leapt to my feet, hung the painting in place as quickly as I could, and darted up the stairs. Better if none of them realized I understood that piece of art was connected to my brother.
I ducked into the bathroom, because I did still need my shower. By the time I got back upstairs, the other five girls in my room were just getting out of bed and dressing, just as I’d found them yesterday. They woke up a lot more slowly than I did.
I knew how to school my eyes away from other people’s private business, but I’d still been unable to help noticing yesterday that the one girl’s scars weren’t limited to her face. They ran down her whole side, dappling and puckering her skin from shoulder to mid-calf and halfway down that arm. From the way she held herself as she pulled on her clothes, I had to wonder if she was the one who made those pained gasps in the night.
Shouldn’t the college staff be doing something for her if she had injuries that weren’t fully healed? Even painkillers to help get her through the night? But asking that would mean openly acknowledging that I’d noticed, and sating my curiosity wasn’t worth the additional discomfort I’d probably cause her.
That morning, only three of us were left by the time she finished getting dressed. She stepped into her sneakers, and a breath hissed through her teeth so abruptly that my gaze jerked to her of its own accord.
She straightened herself up just as abruptly and walked out without a glance at me or the girl at the bed next to mine, although it was easy to see she was favoring her foot on her scarred side. Did her wounds extend that far and I just hadn’t looked closely enough to notice? Christ, she had to be made of steel to keep up that stoic front.