Welcome home, Seven of Branches, it said, and then everything went black.
PART THREE
THE CRUSADER
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Since she’d arrived in Four Paths, Violet had felt as if she had been slowly trusting people to hold parts of her. Harper had seen her long-buried grief for her father; Justin had seen her loneliness; Juniper had seen her grief for Rosie.
But Isaac had seen all three of them, and now at last she knew why he had understood it all so well. Violet had no illusions about the tragedy that had lurked around the edges of her life like some specter she could not name, even before she had come to Four Paths and realized it was a real monster, not just a run of bad luck—she knew it was not normal to have so little family left at seventeen. But Isaac’s loss was something else entirely. It was frighteningly large; grief not just for those who had died that night, but for everything he’d believed, everything he’d been.
They were in a place beyond blame now, a place beyond words. So she had held him and waited until he was ready to leave the woods. They did not let go of each other the whole walk home, but their clasped hands didn’t feel like a promise. They felt like a necessity, like the forest would swallow them whole if either of them let go.
The sun had risen by the time they reached the front door of his apartment in the town hall. Violet knew her mother would be furious that she hadn’t come home. She turned to go face her wrath, but Isaac made a soft, scared noise in the back of his throat and whispered, “Stay?”
So she did.
Isaac’s bedroom was cramped and cluttered. Books were strewn across the night table and the floor, mixed with clothes that spilled out of the small closet tucked into the corner. Isaac curled up on the twin mattress, eyes staring blankly across the room. Unsure of what else to do, Violet perched on the edge of his crumpled blue bedspread.
She sat on something strange and shifted to the side, frowning as she pulled out a copy of The Hobbit from beneath her. “How can you sleep with these in your bed?”
Isaac pulled his pillow aside, revealing a small library of paperbacks shoved beneath them. “I used to hide them here as a kid so I could read after lights-out. Now it’s just a habit, I guess. Like how you carry around your binder full of sheet music.”
Violet gaped at him. “You noticed that?”
“You spent the first few weeks of school staring at it instead of taking notes. There are, like, fifty people in our grade—it was tough not to notice.”
Violet snorted. They fell silent for a moment, and she glanced around the rest of the room, trying to match up the pieces of Isaac that were here with the ones she’d already gathered. A few raggedy posters had been haphazardly tacked up on the walls, for the kind of indie bands Rosie had cheerfully called “sad-boy music,” and beside them was a blown-up cover of The Great Gatsby, the famous blue one with a face in the center, with the eyes crossed out and JUSTICE FOR ZELDA written at the bottom.
Getting to know someone was something she was still adjusting to. Rosie had always been there—knowing her had been like breathing. But choosing to let someone into your life, letting them see the places where you were weak and the ones where you were strong—it was complicated. And exhausting. And rewarding, too. Because she and Rosie had never really had a choice. But here people did, and they had chosen her.
Violet’s eyes fell on the photos taped just above the bed, next to the small nightstand lamp that was definitely a fire hazard. They looked like a photo-booth spread—Isaac was shoved between May’s feathery blond hair and Justin’s wide grin, looking progressively less miserable in every picture.
The photo at the very end captured most of Violet’s attention, and made something drop in her stomach. Isaac was looking at Justin while Justin stared at the camera. The longing on Isaac’s face was so transparent, so raw, that Violet turned her gaze away.
“Ugh,” Isaac said quietly. “I should take those down.”
Violet turned back toward him. She knew Isaac had fought with Justin. She also knew that Isaac was extremely into him. She had found out from the Four Paths rumor mill that Isaac had come out as bi in homeroom last spring, very casually, with a confidence Violet wished she could convey when discussing her own sexuality.
“We’ve already talked about enough tonight,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about you and Justin.”
Isaac snorted. “There’s nothing to talk about, anyway. I’m just a big bisexual disaster.”
“Oh, same,” Violet said, before she could think it all the way through.
Isaac’s eyes widened, and Violet realized that she could walk this back or see it through. She thought about the conversation they had just had, about how good it had felt to tell Juniper the truth, and decided to commit. It was an exhausting feeling, to realize that she would have to come out to everyone in her life like this. She understood more now why Isaac had done it so publicly.
“Yeah, I’m bi, too,” she said. “And I’ve totally had crushes on straight girls before. It sucks, liking someone who can’t like you back.”
“It really does,” Isaac said. “But… hey. Thank you for telling me. I hope you know I would never out you or anything.”
“I know,” Violet said. “Especially since you did just unload a lot of stuff on me. I’ve got dirt on you, Sullivan.”
“My life’s a nightmare, I know.”
“All of our lives are.”
Isaac’s laugh sounded like a cough. “Justin always said it was dangerous to try to play ‘who’s more messed up’ with the founder kids. Everyone always loses.”
“Is that game at least a little less dangerous than that drinking game we all played?”
“Monster in the Gray isn’t dangerous,” Isaac said, grinning a little. “Sure, you have to handle a hammer—”
“While chugging death juice!”
“It’s a game of great skill, okay?” He paused. “You’re distracting me, aren’t you? That’s what this is?”
“Depends,” Violet said. “Is it working?”
“Maybe a little bit.” Isaac was curled up on his side, his hair flopping across his forehead. The shaved part of the back of his head was growing back in, a messy, endearing thatch of dark brown hair. He looked vulnerable like this, younger, not like a boy who could disintegrate half the forest if he wanted to.
“I think the part I hate the most about the Justin thing,” he said finally, “is that Justin understood when I told him. It hurt him, but like—he’s not a homophobic jackass. He respected the boundary I set. He’s listening to me.”
Violet raised an eyebrow. “You’re mad the guy you have a crush on treated you with respect?”
“Had a crush on,” he said.
Her eyes met his, and she said, too carefully, “Had? As in past tense?”
“I mean, I’ll always care about him,” Isaac said. “But… it feels different now that I’ve taken a step back. I can see things I couldn’t before. He found me right after everything happened, and I felt for so long like I was always trying to catch up to that moment. Like if I saved him enough times, we’d be even.”