35 Students Remaining #2
“Ezra figured he lost it,” Ian’s saying when he catches me looking at the key card. “Made us spend an entire Saturday scouring the dorm.” He smiles like this is a happy memory and pushes the door open.
“I bet your dormmates love you.”
Ian gives me a quizzical look. “Don’t be silly, Michaels. Everyone loves me.” He nods into the dark room. “After you.”
The kitchens are shockingly big, with brick walls and soaring ceilings and an entire wall lined with stainless-steel fridges. Ian pulls open the door of the nearest fridge and removes a tray of food.
“We’re going to have to eat it cold,” he says, putting the tray on the counter between us.
“What is it?” I ask, leaning against the counter beside him.
“You ever had Peking duck?” He hands me a fork and peels the foil back, revealing half a tray of food that I recognize from dinner.
I hesitate before digging in. I’m not so sure I need food after all.
The cold, panicky feeling I’ve had since we stumbled out of the burning room has eased up, and now I feel wired and weird.
I can’t stop replaying that explosion. I saw the smoke machines, I saw that the room wasn’t destroyed, and yet I’m still having a hard time believing it wasn’t real.
I swear I felt heat on my skin; I felt the room tremble.
Ian suddenly waves a hand in front of my face. “Hey? Are you still in there? The explosion didn’t give you brain damage, did it?” He tilts his head. “Do you smell burning feathers?”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. This is the Ian I’ve come to know and loathe over the past few weeks.
“I’m fine,” I say, swatting his hand away. “And the only thing I smell is whatever toxic, super-strength hair gel you’re using.”
He sighs. “I was wondering when you were going to go back to being nasty to me.”
“Why fight the inevitable? Our hatred for each other is the one thing we have in common.”
Ian’s lip twitches, and I’m sure he’s going to shoot back something equally mean. But instead, he says, “I don’t hate you.”
“Yes, you do.” I frown at him. I don’t know why he’s pretending we don’t absolutely detest each other. “You’ve hated me and Scar since the first time we met.”
Ian glowers at me. “You sprayed me with bleach the first time we met. You ruined a perfectly good tie.”
“That tie was hideous,” I tell him. “And I obviously did that because of Scarlett.”
Ian gives me a puzzled look. “What about Scarlett?”
“Oh, come on. You know,” I say. But Ian’s still staring at me, looking more confused than ever, so I give in and elaborate.
“You rub it in whenever you beat her in some stupid school thing, you tell her she doesn’t belong in places like this, you say rude things to her.
” I shake out my shoulders, annoyance rising inside me at the memories.
“Scarlett’s the nicest person on the planet, and you’re a complete jerk to her. ”
Ian’s eyes go distant, like he’s replaying every interaction he’s ever had with Scarlett. After a moment he says, sounding mystified, “I really never thought that bothered her.”
“Oh, please. You’re a smart guy, how could you not know?”
Ian shrugs. “People at my school rib one another like that. It’s not intended to be mean. It’s like…a rite of passage.”
“A rite of passage?” I repeat.
“It’s a ceremony or event marking an important stage in a human’s life,” Ian says, like he’s reciting the dictionary definition. Then, because God knows he can’t resist, he adds, “You were raised with humans, weren’t you?”
“Okay, now what’s your excuse for being rude to me?” I shoot back. “This can’t all be because I ruined some hideous tie.”
Ian levels his gaze at me. “Don’t get me wrong, that was not my favorite moment ever. But no, I’m not rude to you because of the tie.”
“Okay, then why?”
He swallows, and I’m momentarily distracted by his jawline. It’s one of those really good, straight jaws. The kind some actor would pay a plastic surgeon obscene amounts of money for.
“You’re asking the wrong questions,” he says, and I snap my gaze back up to his face. “What you should be asking is why it bothers you that I say rude things.”
I frown. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re rude to everyone,” Ian points out. “So why does it bother you when someone else is rude to you? This can’t be the first time this has happened to you.”
For some reason, I feel heat flooding my cheeks. He’s right, this isn’t the first time someone’s been an asshat to me. Usually, I just shrug it off. But there’s something about Ian. The way he insults me, it gets under my skin.
Of course, I can’t let him know that, so I blurt, “It doesn’t bother me.”
To my surprise, the corner of his mouth twitches. Is he smiling? He shifts his gaze back down to the tray and scoops a bite of duck onto his fork. “If you say so.”
I squirm as the silence between us thickens.
It doesn’t bother me. I could care less if Ian freaking St. Clair doesn’t like me.
In fact, I care so little that I spend the next thirty seconds replaying that moment over and over again, trying to figure out exactly what to say to make it clear that his words have absolutely no effect on me whatsoever.
But I can’t come up with the perfect thing, so in the end, I settle for changing the subject.
“How do you know the guy who operates the trolley? Carl?” I ask. “Do you sneak out of the dorm a lot?”
Ian shrugs. “What’s a lot?”
“More than some.”
“I suppose. I’m surprised you don’t.”
I feel a strange dart of shame move through me.
He’s right, I haven’t snuck out. In fact, I haven’t broken any of Luminary’s rules since I got here, the longest stretch I’ve ever gone on the right side of the law.
I feel like I’ve earned a reward. One of those chips they give out in AA meetings, maybe.
It’s been one hundred days since I last climbed out a window.
But the truth is, the reason I haven’t broken any rules isn’t because I’ve reformed, it’s because I’m afraid.
For the first time in my life, I really don’t want to get kicked out of school.
It’s not just the promise of paid tuition and admittance to Blackwood, either.
Exploding escape rooms notwithstanding, I love it here.
I love my shower and my bed and the library where Scarlett and I study.
I love that the librarian brings us tea and that my teachers actually seem to care whether or not we learn. I love all of it.
“That’s the old me,” I tell Ian eventually. “I don’t break the rules anymore. I’ve reformed.”
Ian raises his eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but I’m not too anxious to give all this up.” I use my fork to motion around the room, trying to indicate not just the Luminary kitchens, but all of the opulence of this place. Everything.
Ian goes still. “Why wouldn’t I understand?”
“Just…you know. You go to West Central. Didn’t you grow up like this? Nice things, nice schools, nice food…”
Ian stares at me for another beat. Even in the darkness, his eyes seem preternaturally light.
They remind me of animals’ eyes, how they seem to glow in the dark.
It’s unsettling. After a moment, he turns back to his food.
“Yeah, West Central’s nice. When I’m there, things are okay.
But I only started freshman year. Before that, I was at Cass. ”
I jerk my head up, certain I misheard. “But Cass is a group home.”
Ian raises his eyebrows: So? But I still don’t get it. There’s only one reason people get sent to a place like Cass. It’s because they don’t have anywhere else. Because they don’t have anyone else.
“Sorry,” I say, moving my eyes back to the duck so he doesn’t think I’m openly gawking at him. “I didn’t realize you were in foster care.”
Ian nods, but doesn’t elaborate.
I should change the subject. Talk about the food or the escape room, anything else. But I can’t help it. I’m curious now. “Were you adopted as a freshman?”
That would be unusual. After kids turn around twelve, their chances of being officially adopted dwindle to almost zero. But how else would Ian get from Cass to West Central?
“Not exactly.” Ian says the words carefully, staring down at his duck like he doesn’t want to meet my eyes. “It’s more like I got a benefactor. They’ve made sure my education was well funded.”
“Oh,” I say. But I still have so many questions.
West Central isn’t a boarding school. Ian would’ve had to live in the right neighborhood to be accepted.
Did this benefactor set him up with a host family?
An apartment? And what about all the clothes?
The pajamas he’s wearing look like they cost more than Tammy’s Lexus.
Before I can ask, Ian says, “And you? What’s the deal with your parents?”
I know this move well. He’s done talking about his past and now he’s trying to distract me by getting me to talk about myself. I’ve done the same thing.
But I want to keep pushing. If he grew up just like I did, why does he act the way he does? He seemed to dislike me on sight. There’s something there, something he isn’t telling me. All this time I’d assumed it was because I’d tripped him, or because he could tell I was poor. Now I’m not so sure.
I open my mouth. Then close it again. After a moment, I say, “My dad bombed a school.”