Piper’s glare clips all their wings at once. “Where’s Lilia?”
“She—” three of them say together, and then they all go quiet. Finally the prettiest one says, “She fainted—”
“She didn’t faint,” another one breaks in. “She fell. She almost fainted—”
“Close enough,” says the prettiest one. “She was blacking out. So Rosie and Calla took her to the nurse—they practically had to carry her—before the dean started, and they never came back, so—”
“I don’t need a fucking novel,” Piper snaps. She checks her phone and says to me, so the rest of them can’t hear, “Did she text you?”
“She barely knows me. She’s your best friend …” And I leave a little pause with an almost-question hiding in it. “She’d text you first.”
Piper ruffles. “Lili plays mind games,” she says, and then she pushes past the flock-girls and hooks her elbow into Duffy’s. They fall back, the two of them and Duncan.
Mack is right in front of me, with Banks. He holds out his hand and I take it and fold in next to him. Look up into his eyes.
“Get a damn room,” says Banks.
I smirk at him and bring my other hand to Mack’s so both my hands lace together around his. “Are you all right?” I ask—
—and I keep my voice low and warm and red, and I mean more than I say.
“I am now,” says Mack.
Banks snorts out a laugh. “Whatever the hell you two have going—”
But he cuts himself off and his face goes as marble-white as Duffy’s. Then it goes red and he’s laughing harsh and pushing through the doors and grabbing the banner hard enough that the stands it’s tied to crack against the floor.
All the beautiful vain St Andrew’s Preppers have stopped moving again. Started talking again. Banks tears hard at the banner but it won’t rip apart. One lone girl giggles, high and desperate.
Banks whirls. His eyes are rage and his hands are striped with blue. “Move,” he barks out, and they do. Like rats out of a sinking ship.
Across the banner, cutting through Connor’s name, bold blue letters say GUILTY.
“Porter,” Banks shouts, and he grabs his shoulder. Porter spins wide-eyed and so scared I have to bite the inside of my cheek so I don’t smile and ruin everything.
“I didn’t—I’m not—” Porter tries to say. Sweat on his lip and his forehead shining.
“Knife,” Banks says, low, crushing the banner in on itself. The metal stands shriek against the floor.
Porter digs into his bag and holds out a leather-sheathed knife. His hands shake and he drops it and yelps. Banks snatches up the knife before Porter can move. He slashes once—
Hard.
The banner slices in two and crumples down. Two white flags waving.
Banks throws the knife back without its case. Porter barely catches it, handle-first but only by luck, and then he runs.
The door swings open again. Sister María de los Dolores steps out of the chapel with the dean and the detective close behind her. Duffy sees his gun and almost gags. The detective stares too long.
“His teammates,” says the dean, smooth and unbothered.
Duncan nods at the detective. Says, so practiced I can see it in print, “He’ll be missed.”
The detective’s gaze slides over each of us in turn. Holding on until the dean catches his shoulder and eases him away and says, “Well, then, the sister and I will show you out—”
Then it’s just us: Duncan and Duffy and Banks and Mack, and Piper and me with Lilia nowhere, and Connor’s team picture watching, and the banner broken on the floor.
We wait for Duncan to speak. The silence gleams dark blue.
His jaw clenches twice, fast.
He smiles his same slick smile from yesterday’s end-of-the-match good-game line.
“Get rid of it,” he says to Banks. And then, to all of his pack, “See you at practice.”
They leave, all four of them, with Banks ripping the banner off the stands and burying it in a trash can. It’s just Piper and me left behind.
I take down Connor’s portrait. Stare into his dead eyes.
I don’t feel anything now that he’s gone.
“Jade,” says Piper.
I turn.
She swoops to the floor and back in the same nimble little dive the flock-girl did when Lilia let her coffee cup fall. Holds up a bullet-black lipstick tube. Uncaps it and twists it up.
It’s crushed almost to nothing, but we’d both know the color anywhere. The same as the letters scrawled across the banner. The same as the streaks our queen painted on our faces before the game.
Lilia’s war-paint.
Courting
After school I stop in Dr. Farris’s classroom and linger too long with my eyes bright and my chin tipping just-so. Asking questions and not listening to the answers. Waiting for him to ask me about Connor, so I can bring out my innocent-little-flower face for him and for the not-it senior with the electric-blue hair grading quizzes at a lab table. Piper would never give her a single glance, but the story will get back to her in an hour anyway: that new girl, the one who fucks teachers? She’s trying it again.
Once the halls have drained themselves empty and Dr. Farris knows how very sad I am about poor dead Connor, I give the senior girl a zipped-lips wink and make my exit.
Next is Piper.
All day she’s been chained to her phone, double-texting me every chance she gets even though next-in-line Piper never texts first unless it’s to Lilia. But today Lilia was nowhere, and Lilia didn’t text back. So Piper chirped and chirped at me: Did you hear from her, Did anyone say anything, Shut them up, Tell me everything. I texted back often enough to keep her interested, but I waited long enough to make her hate herself for begging.
She’s silent now, finally, as I walk down to the athletics building on the other side of the tennis courts. The plaque over the second door says COMBAT.
I prop the door open and watch without stepping in.
The room is long and half-lit. There are two of them on the strip farthest from the door. They’re white-armored with masks on. Their sabres flash too fast to see.
It’s almost an even match. Piper has her back to me, honey-gold ponytail bouncing with every lunge. She’s shorter than the boy she’s fighting but she attacks first every time. She’s grace and ferocity. Springing and slashing toward the end of the piste. Finally her blade slices across the other fighter’s chest and she shouts a pure wild scream that fills up the narrow room and pushes around me and out the door.
She spins and throws her mask down.
“New girl,” she says, strung tight. She gleams and paces. Behind her, two real sabres—the kind that win blood, not points—hang in an X against the white wall. A trophy from a war where someone’s great-great-grandfather cut other men’s throats and earned medals for it. A warning for anyone who faces St Andrew’s on the piste.
Piper quits pacing. “Are you here to fight?”
I say, “No.”
“Why not?” She presses forward: another attack. Now that I’ve seen her fight, I can see her next word in the air before she says it: “Afraid?”