Chapter 4 #3
Relief leaves my knees watery, my lungs shivery with relief.
“What the hell,” I say, slapping his shoulder. Fighting against his contagious, idiot giggling, I force my twitching mouth flat, fixing him with a glare. “You were supposed to be my lookout.”
But Sebastian just grins at me.
“Oh, I was looking,” he says. His low whisper—the way he stares at me, like he’s memorizing me in that moment—does weird fluttery things inside my rib cage.
I swallow hard, face heating. My soul shivers, loose in its socket as Sebastian thumbs the wheel of my ancient MP3 player, picking a song at random, his eyes never dipping from mine to the blue-lit screen. “Well, Jenny? Shall we?”
If this is a leap, I’ll take it. If it’s a crossroads, I’ll run whatever road he’s on.
Hands locked together, heads bent to keep our cord from pulling, we break into a jog.
I mean to take us around the back side of the building, shotgun around the corner and down the winding drive, but halfway around, Sebastian tugs me off course.
“Not that way,” he says. Snatching up a metal trash can as we pass it, he directs us toward the iron fencing. “They’ll expect us to go through the front gate.”
“That fence is seven feet high, Sebastian. I can’t climb that,” I protest. “And by the way, that’s not my name.”
“You’ll do fine. I’ll help you.” Like flipping a water bottle, in one smooth motion he tosses the trash can, and it lands smack on its open mouth. “And mine’s not Sebastian. It’s Bas.”
I laugh. “No way your parents named you that.”
“I’m not convinced I have parents. Pretty sure the guy I live with stole me out of a shopping cart.”
He smiles, but somehow, I don’t think he’s joking.
Bas hands me back my earbud with a fluttery bow and explodes into motion, vaulting up the trash can and onto the fence.
It slants outward at the top, making it impossible for people to climb into the school grounds from outside.
But exiting from this direction, it provides enough of a lip for Bas to perch like a smug little goblin, wiggling his fingers at me from the highest point of the fence.
“Throw me your bag, then come on up. I’ll catch you.”
My stomach tightens. My face burns. Suddenly, the music in my ear sounds like a party I wasn’t invited to.
I’d rather pull my teeth out, but I can’t see a way around it.
“I’m heavy,” I admit. “And anyway, that’s a hell of a drop.”
Bas shrugs.
“I promise I’ll catch you. As many times as you need.”
And I—
I’ve been cannonball sunk to the bottom of a swimming pool for so long, the lights and laughter dappled, distant echoes from another world.
But the way he looks at me—all my deflections and wounded pride evaporate.
Life rips through me like an inhale. My head breaks water for the first time I can remember, and I breathe, greedy, gasping—a drowning woman with two fists clenched on a second chance.
Belatedly, mouth dry, I manage, “Do you ever talk without flirting?”
Bas grins. “What, and waste the opportunity? Come on.” He crooks his fingers again. “You trust me?”
I don’t know this boy. I met him under a library table less than four hours ago. I didn’t even know the name he went by until just now. I don’t make friends. I barely even make acquaintances. Trust? Never met her.
Yet, he flattens to his belly, reaching down so I can toss him my bag. With a deft catch, he swings it behind him, to the ground beneath the fence. He grins, thrilled.
“No turning back now, Jenny.”
I swallow hard.
“It’s Persephone,” I admit, cheeks heating. God, I hate that stupid, nerdy, dead god name. Hate my own clumsy legs, wobbling my way to the top of the trash can. But Bas just dangles up there, grinning at me, his wildness so stark against a gravity-certain, absolute conviction.
He asks, “It’s not, though, is it?”
His question lights a fire in me. Dangling up there, all the possibility in the world glitters on his reaching fingertips like an endless sea of stars.
And I know better—in a week or two, he’ll get bored, find other friends that laugh at my retreating back from the cafeteria line. Two months from now, he’ll be one of the boys snapping the Addams Family theme song every time I pass by. Three months from now, I’ll be gone.
But I’ll be a different girl by then.
Shucking the person my mother made, I choose my name.
I ball up my stolen electricity in my thighs and leap.
Bas’s hands snap around my wrists. My combat boots hit the bars.
Wedging myself between them, muscles shaking, I drag myself up.
His hands climb my forearms, my elbows, his strength seeping into me.
I’ve never been good at pull-ups, take any excuse to skip PE, but today I struggle my body up and over, gasping, laughing.
Bas hauls me up by the armpits, gathers me up so I’m sitting against his side, our legs dangling over the ground below.
“Ready?” he asks me.
Picking up the headphone cord dangling between us, I slot it back into his ear.
“Now I am.”