He waits this time. And then he says, “They made it come true, with Connor.”
I breathe it in. “What do you mean?”
“You were up there on the roof. You didn’t see him with his phone out, either, did you? He didn’t post anything.”
Pride swells up in me, dark and glowing. “You think it wasn’t him?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You think it was those girls, and not him, and you let Duncan—”
“Stop,” he says, stranglingly urgent. “You can’t say it.”
I stand up, all wings, looking back up the hill to the school. The sun throws my shadow so long that I don’t look like just a girl at all. And I laugh for him, a stinging whetted laugh he won’t understand. He’s innocent, innocent, innocent without even trying, except he isn’t—he just thinks he is.
I know better.
I touch down on the metal seat, so close my rolled-short skirt pleats over his leg and I can feel his heartbeat through his skin. “I’m not scared of Duncan,” I say.
“You should be.”
I kiss him, to stop the warning I don’t need. To stop the spinning white and the good-king’s voice, that little whore with the jade-green eyes—
And I pull away and whisper, “You’re scared enough for both of us.”
He says, out of breath, “I’m not scared.”
I say, “Yes, you are.”
He says, “I’m not scared. I just don’t want them hearing you say that—I don’t want them thinking you want something to happen to Dunc, too—”
I laugh him blind and snake my arm around him and up his neck, into his hair. “God, no, that’s not what I meant.”
“I know,” he says, and he doesn’t. Not at all. Golden-boy Mack with his faith in fate. “But you know how far Dunc will go—”
“Duncan is nothing,” I say, just air.
“I’m not scared,” says Mack.
“Prove it.”
He kisses me the way he kissed me when Connor fell. Everything fades and it’s only Mack and me high up above the field, above everything, flying into the sun, shadowing St Andrew’s and LA and the whole fucking world to nothing under my wings.
Nightfall
Dark comes faster today.
Yesterday it was sunset forever, hanging on until the very end. Tonight one minute Mack is climbing the bleachers to sit with me and then—
before I can even blink—
—it’s night. The sky is clearer than I’ve ever seen it: true black, not dirty and buzzing. The stars shine diamond-bright on the empty field.
It’s just us, Mack and me, at the top of the bleachers and on top of the world. Talking about everything and nothing. Lies and truths and the line between is blurred so gray I’m not sure which is which.
I told him, Everything’s different for me here.
(Truth.)
I told him, It’s because of you.
(Lie.)
I told him, I’ve never met anybody like you.
(Truth. I think.)
We’re curled together now, leaning against the railing, looking up.
“Are you sure we never met before?” says Mack.
I say, “Never.”
He says, “It feels like I’ve known you for so much longer than a day.”
“It was a day that mattered.”
“Yeah.” He pulls us closer. “But it’s more than that. It’s like you already knew me, too. Better than anybody. Better than Banks, and we’ve been best friends since we were kids.”
“Maybe I did,” I say.
(Truth.)
“Maybe it’s because we’re the same,” he says.
“Maybe,” I say.
(Lie.)
“I know what I want,” he says. “So do you. Together we could be great.”
“We will be,” I tell him.
(Truth. Truer than anything I’ve told him all night.)
“Partners in greatness,” he says, so bold and stupid and right that I grin into the starlight.
“We’ll take what’s ours,” I say.
Now that it’s dark, he doesn’t blink it away. “Yesterday,” he says, “when you said Connor didn’t deserve what he had—”
“He didn’t. You did.”
“You think—” He hesitates. “Do you think I deserve what Duncan has, too?”
“What does he have?” I ask, and I trace a C for captain over his heart. “A letter on his jersey? Duffy kissing his ass?”
“It’s not just that,” he says. “It’s power. He decides what’s right and wrong. He decides who they are—who we are.”
He leaves it there on the line, raw and too honest.
“You deserve it,” I tell him. “More than anyone.”
His eyes stay uncertain.
“I don’t know why it isn’t already yours,” I say. “I don’t know why you weren’t one of them before, or why all of it’s even his at all—”
“They do terrible things. Dunc and Duff and Connor and even Banks, and everybody knows.”
“Like what?” I ask.
He looks away.
“What do they do?”
He shakes his head, and he’s a coward, and I hate him for it. Everybody knows, he said, and he knows, too. But instead of the truth, he says, “You saw what Dunc did to Connor.”
“Connor deserved it.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right.”
I watch him. “You let him do it.”
“Nothing I said would’ve stopped him.”
“You let him do it, and he let you in.”
It’s the truth. I know it and he knows it.
“You could’ve stopped him,” I say, and the dead-dark sky skips bright.
It digs into him, the thing he still won’t say out loud, but he swallows it back. “You can’t just kill someone because they have dirt on you.”
I let my head rest against his chest. His heart beats steady and strong. “If he didn’t kill Connor, Connor would’ve ruined him.”
Mack’s face flickers darker. “He ruined himself,” he says. “They all did. They think they can get away with anything—I mean, they can, that’s the thing.”
“So can you.”
“But I don’t,” he says, and I see it again, like I did yesterday. A little shift—
a twist nobody else would notice—
—another glimpse of the king he’ll be once I’ve finished whispering everything to him. Pouring the fearless ruthless spirit he needs straight into his ears and his blood.
“I’d never do what they do. I want a future, Jade. Not just the things we were already going to get because of our parents. I want to earn it. Be better than any of this. Not just use it to get away with—”
He stops.
“Get away with what?” I say, and I sweeten every syllable. Honey and light.
Mack is still staring at the sky. Like it’s not just me that knows everything about him. Like it’s the stars, too.
My fangs scrape against each other and prick my lips. I taste blood again. “What happened on Friday?”