“That’s never happened before,” he said.
Luce got to her feet. It was humiliating, lying there alone. Plus, it was like he hadn’t even heard what she said.
“What’s never happened? Before what?”
He turned to her and cupped her cheeks in his hands. She held her breath. He was so close. His lips were so close to hers. Luce gave her thigh a pinch to make sure this time she wasn’t dreaming. She was wide awake.
Then he almost forcibly pulled himself away. He stood before her, breathing quickly, his arms stiff at his sides.
“Tell me again what you saw.”
Luce turned away to face the lake. The clear blue water lapped softly at the bank, and she considered diving in. That was what Daniel had done the last time things had gotten too intense for him. Why couldn’t she do it, too?
“It may surprise you to know this,” she said. “But it’s no thrill for me to sit here and talk about how thoroughly insane I am.” Especially to you.
Daniel didn’t answer, but she could feel his eyes on her. When she finally got the courage to glance at him, he was giving her a strange, disturbing, mournful look—one in which his eyes turned down at the corners and their particular gray was the saddest thing Luce had ever seen. She felt as if she’d let him down somehow. But this was her awful confession. Why should Daniel be the one to look so shattered?
He stepped toward her and leaned down until his eyes were gazing directly into hers. Luce almost couldn’t take it. But she couldn’t make herself budge, either. Whatever happened to break this trance would have to be up to Daniel—who was moving closer still, tilting his head toward hers and closing his eyes. His lips parted. Luce’s breath caught in her throat.
She closed her eyes, too. She tilted her head toward his, too. She parted her lips, too.
And waited.
The kiss she had been dying for didn’t come. She opened her eyes because nothing had happened, except for the rustling sound of a tree branch. Daniel was gone. She sighed, crestfallen but not surprised.
What was strange was that she could almost see the path he’d taken back through the forest. As if she were some kind of hunter who could pinpoint the rotation of a leaf and let it lead her back to Daniel. Except she was nothing of the sort, and the kind of trail that Daniel left in his wake was somehow bigger, clearer, and at the same time, even more elusive. It was as if a violet glow illuminated his path back through the forest.
Like the violet glow she’d seen during the library fire. She was seeing things. She steadied herself on the rock and looked away for a moment, rubbing her eyes. But when she looked back, it was just the same: In just one plane of her vision—as if she were looking through bi focals with a wild prescription—the live oaks, and the mulch beneath them, and even the songs of the birds in the branches—all of it seemed to wobble out of focus. And it didn’t just wobble, bathed in that faintest purple light, but seemed to emit a barely audible low-pitched hum.
She spun back around, terrified to face it, terrified of what it meant. Something was happening to her, and she could tell no one about it. She tried to focus on the lake, but even it was growing darker and difficult to see.
She was alone. Daniel had left her. And in his place, this path she didn’t know how—or want—to navigate. When the sun sank behind the mountains and the lake became a charcoal gray, Luce dared another glance back at the forest. She sucked in her breath, not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. It was a forest like any other, no quivering light or violet hum. No sign of Daniel’s ever having been there at all.
THIRTEEN
TOUCHED AT THE ROOTS
Luce could hear her Converse sneakers beating hard against the pavement. She could feel the humid wind tugging on her black T-shirt. She could practically taste the hot tar from a freshly paved portion of the parking lot. But when she flung her arms around the two huddled creatures near the entrance to Sword & Cross on Saturday morning, all of that was forgotten.
She had never been so glad to hug her parents in her life.
For days, she’d been regretting how cold and distant things had been at the hospital, and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
They both stumbled as she plowed into them. Her mother started giggling and her dad thwacked her back in his tough-guy way with his palm. He had his enormous camera strapped around his neck. They straightened up and held their daughter at arm’s length. They seemed to want a good look at her face, but as soon as they got it, their own faces fell. Luce was crying.
“Sweetheart, what’s the matter?” her father asked, resting his hand on her head.
Her mom fished through her giant blue pocketbook for her stash of tissues. Eyes wide, she dangled one in front of Luce’s nose and asked, “We’re here now. Everything’s fine, isn’t it?”
No, everything was not fine.
“Why didn’t you take me home the other day?” Luce asked, feeling angry and hurt all over again. “Why did you let them bring me back here?”
Her father blanched. “Every time we spoke to the headmaster, he said you were doing great, back in classes, like the trouper we raised. A sore throat from the smoke and a little bump on the head. We thought that was all.” He licked his lips.
“Was there more?” her mom asked.
One look between her parents told that they’d had this fight already. Mom would have begged to visit again sooner. Luce’s tough-love dad would have put his foot down.
There was no way to explain to them what had happened that night or what she’d been going through since then. She had gone straight back to classes, though not by her own choice. And physically, she was fine. It was just that in every other way—emotionally, psychologically, romantically—she couldn’t have felt more broken.
“We’re just trying to follow the rules,” Luce’s father explained, moving his big hand to squeeze her neck. The weight of it shifted her whole posture and made it uncomfortable to stand still, but it had been so long since she’d been this close to people she loved, she didn’t dare move away. “Because we only want what’s best for you,” her dad added. “We have to take it on faith that these people”—he gestured at the formidable buildings around campus, as if they represented Randy and Headmaster Udell and the rest of them—“that they know what they’re talking about.”
“They don’t,” Luce said, glancing at the shoddy buildings and the empty commons. So far, nothing at this school made any sense to her.
Case in point, what they called Parents’ Day. They’d made such a big deal about how lucky the students were to get the privilege of seeing their own flesh and blood. And yet it was ten minutes until lunchtime and Luce’s parents’ car was the only one in the parking lot.
“This place is an absolute joke,” she said, sounding cynical enough that her parents shared a troubled look.
“Luce, honey,” her mom said, stroking her hair. Luce could tell she wasn’t used to its short length. Her fingers had a maternal instinct to follow the ghost of Luce’s former hair all the way down her back. “We just want one nice day with you. Your father brought all your favorite foods.”