Luce groaned and pressed her face into the pillow, calling up the deep pain at the back of her head again.
“If you don’t want to see them …”
But Luce wasn’t groaning about her parents. She was dying to see her parents. She was remembering the library, the fire, and the new breed of shadows that grew more terrifying every time they found her. They’d always been dark and unsightly, they’d always made her nervous, but last night, it had almost seemed as if the shadows wanted something from her. And then there was that other thing, the levitating force that had set her free.
“What’s that look?” Gabbe asked, cocking her head and waving her hand in the air in front of Luce’s face. “What are you thinking about?”
Luce didn’t know what to make of Gabbe’s sudden kindness toward her. Nurse’s assistant didn’t exactly seem like the kind of gig Gabbe would volunteer for, and it wasn’t like there were any guys around whose attention she could monopolize. Gabbe didn’t even seem to like Luce. She wouldn’t just show up here of her own accord, would she?
But even as nice as Gabbe was being, there was no way to explain what had happened last night. The grisly, unspeakable gathering in the hallway. The surreal sensation of being propelled forward through that blackness. The strange, compelling figure of light.
“Where’s Todd?” Luce asked, remembering the boy’s fearful eyes. She’d lost her grip on him, gone flying, and then …
The paper curtain was suddenly slung back, and there was Arriane, wearing in-line skates and a red-and-white candy striper uniform. Her short black hair was twisted up in a series of knots on top of her head. She rolled in, carrying a tray on which sat three coconut shells topped with neon-colored umbrella party straws.
“Now lemme get this straight,” she said in a throaty, nasal voice. “You put the lime in the coconut and drink ’em both up—whoa, long faces. What am I interrupting?”
Arriane wheeled to a stop at the foot of Luce’s bed. She extended a coconut with a bobbing pink umbrella.
Gabbe jumped up and seized the coconut first, giving its contents a sniff. “Arriane, she has just been through a trauma,” she scolded. “And for your information, what you interrupted was the topic of Todd.”
Arriane tossed her shoulders back. “Precisely why she needs something with a kick,” she argued, holding the tray possessively while she and Gabbe engaged in a stare-down.
“Fine,” Arriane said, looking away from Gabbe. “I’ll give her your boring old drink.” She gave Luce the coconut with the blue straw.
Luce must have been in some kind of post-traumatic daze. Where would they have gotten any of this stuff? Coconut shells? Drink umbrellas? It was like she’d been conked out at reform school and woken up at Club Med.
“Where did you guys get all this stuff?” she asked. “I mean, thank you, but—”
“We pool our resources when we need to,” Arriane said. “Roland helped.”
The three of them sat slurping the frosty, sweet drinks for a moment, until Luce couldn’t take it anymore. “So back to Todd …?”
“Todd,” Gabbe said, clearing her throat. “Thing is … he just inhaled a lot more of that smoke than you did, honey—”
“He did not,” Arriane spat. “He broke his neck.”
Luce gasped, and Gabbe hit Arriane with her drink umbrella.
“What?” Arriane said. “Luce can handle it. If she’s going to find out eventually, why sugarcoat it?”
“The evidence is still inconclusive,” Gabbe said, stressing the words.
Arriane shrugged. “Luce was there, she must have seen—”
“I didn’t see what happened to him,” Luce said. “We were together and then somehow we were thrown apart. I had a bad feeling, but I didn’t know,” she whispered. “So he’s …”
“Gone from this world,” Gabbe said softly.
Luce closed her eyes. A chill spread through her that had nothing to do with the drink. She remembered Todd’s frenzied banging on the walls, his sweaty hand squeezing hers when the shadows roared down on them, the awful moment when the two of them had been split apart and she’d been too overcome to go to him.
He’d seen the shadows. Luce was certain of it now. And he’d died.
After Trevor died, not a week had gone by without a hate letter finding its way to Luce. Her parents started trying to vet the mail before she could read the poisonous stuff, but too much still reached her. Some letters were handwritten, some were typed, one had even been cut from magazine letters, ransom-note style. Murderer. Witch. They’d called her enough cruel names to fill a scrapbook, caused enough agony to keep her locked inside the house all summer.
She thought she’d done so much to move on from that nightmare: leaving her past behind when she came to Sword & Cross, focusing on her classes, making friends … oh God. She sucked in her breath. “What about Penn?” she asked, biting her lip.
“Penn’s fine,” Arriane said. “She’s all front-page-story, eyewitness-to-the-fire. She and Miss Sophia both got out, smelling like an East Georgia smoke pit, but no worse for the wear.”
Luce let out her breath. At least there was one piece of good news. But under the paper-thin infirmary sheets, she was trembling. Soon, surely the same types of people who’d come to her after Trevor’s death would come to her again. Not just the ones who wrote the angry letters. Dr. Sanford. Her parole officer. The police.
Just like before, she’d be expected to have the whole story pieced together. To remember every single detail. But of course, just like before, she wouldn’t be able to. One minute, he’d been at her side, just the two of them. The next—
“Luce!” Penn barged into the room, holding a big brown helium balloon. It was shaped like a Band-Aid and said Stick It Out in blue cursive letters. “What is this?” she asked, looking at the other three girls critically. “Some sort of slumber party?”
Arriane had unlaced her skates and climbed onto the tiny bed next to Luce. She was double-fisting the coconut drinks and laying her head on Luce’s shoulder. Gabbe was painting clear nail polish on Luce’s coconut-free hand.
“Yeah,” Arriane cackled. “Join us, Pennyloafer. We were just about to play Truth or Dare. We’ll let you go first.”
Gabbe tried to cover up her laugh with a dainty fake sneeze.
Penn put her hands on her hips. Luce felt bad for her, and was also a little scared. Penn looked pretty fierce.
“One of our classmates died last night,” Penn carefully enunciated. “And Luce could have been really hurt.” She shook her head. “How can you two play around at a time like this?” She sniffed. “Is that alcohol?”
“Ohhh,” Arriane said, looking at Penn, her face serious. “You liked him, didn’t you?”
Penn picked up a pillow from the chair behind her and chucked it at Arriane. The thing was, Penn was right. It was strange that Arriane and Gabbe were taking Todd’s death … almost lightly. Like they saw this kind of thing happen all the time. Like it didn’t affect them the way it affected Luce. But they couldn’t know what Luce knew about Todd’s last moments. They couldn’t know why she felt so sick right now. She patted the foot of the bed for Penn and handed her what was left in her frosty coconut.