Chapter Two
TWO
Andrew should be forgotten. That was what happened to the quiet ones, the wallflowers. When people like him made a friend like Thomas, there should be nowhere to stand in the wake of glory and chaos that Thomas left behind.
But Thomas always looked over his shoulder before turning a corner, always reached back to tug Andrew after him.
It seemed as natural to him as breathing, that need to check that Andrew hadn’t been left behind.
He dreaded the day Thomas would drop the habit, but he still hadn’t.
Even after they detoured past the dorms to dump luggage and joined the stream of students pouring into the halls of Wickwood Academy, Thomas still reached back to stop them from being separated in the crush.
Andrew was drunk with relief. Let this be one thing that never changed.
Dove was already changing everything else. She should be here with them, bickering with Thomas about something inane until he shot back a quip that startled her into a laugh.
Instead, Dove’s icy war must be extending to Thomas, too.
Andrew knew they’d had some massive blowup before school let out for the summer—he’d decided to stay out of it this time—but they usually smoothed things over by pretending it never happened.
Andrew couldn’t live like that; if one thing went wrong, it festered in his chest until he couldn’t bear it, and then someone would have to fix it for him before he spiraled.
Dove could be just catching up with friends.
She had a dramatic academic rivalry with her roommate, Lana Lang.
The kind where they battled for top of the class all day, but then as soon as 4:00 p.m. hit, they were sharing Sour Skittles and snorting over inside jokes.
Dove-plus-Lana did not drift into Dove-plus-Thomas-plus-Andrew, though.
They orbited separate suns. Possibly because Thomas had no time, interest, or tolerance for most people, and he let them know it, too.
Other people existed only in Thomas’s periphery, but the Perrault twins eclipsed his entire galaxy.
There was something intoxicating about meaning that much to one person.
Addictive.
But Andrew would never admit it out loud.
“I have to tell you something,” Thomas said, his words half-lost in the rising chatter of other students. “Tonight when we sneak out to stargaze—Oh. Should we still do that?” He shot Andrew a worried look. “We shouldn’t, right?”
Why, because they were seniors now? Thomas had a chronic need to fight every rule ever, so worrying wasn’t like him.
“I still want to,” Andrew said.
Lines smoothed on Thomas’s forehead. “I’ll tell you everything tonight, but you have to swear to believe me.”
“Well, that’s cryptic—” Andrew started, but Thomas’s fingers dug into his sleeve hard enough for him to forget what he was saying.
Thomas stared over Andrew’s shoulder, his eyes gone waxy with fear. Nothing ever scared him. Confused, Andrew twisted to look, but all he saw were Wickwood uniforms and bright faces.
Then a knot of students cleared and Andrew understood.
Principal Adelaide Grant stood in the foyer with arms folded and a stony expression.
She looked as if she had been pulled from a black-and-white photograph—crisp pantsuit, white skin against whiter hair, piercing eyes that noticed everything.
Thomas collected reprimands and suspensions from her like confetti.
It meant they knew each other well, Thomas and the principal. Their eyes locked across the room and a frown darkened her face.
“Isn’t it too early for you to be in trouble?” Andrew said, but then he noticed who the principal had been talking to.
Two cops stood at her side, stances casual as they glanced around.
Wickwood did take a moment to absorb: the heavy Victorian drapes and dark carpets, the chandeliers and oil paintings and gilded cornices, the smell of mothballs and old books, of ambition and timeless traditions.
One of the cops wore a cream trench coat and had just finished flashing a detective badge. She followed the principal’s gaze.
Thomas turned and yanked Andrew after him, carving them a path into the auditorium with his jabbing elbows and ferocious scowl.
“What did you do?” Andrew hissed.
“Nothing. I just got here, same as you.”
They needed to find three seats; Dove would catch up to them before the announcements started for sure.
But Andrew didn’t have time to voice this before Thomas crammed him into one of the back rows.
All of the performances and award nights happened in here, and it had the air of an old theatre with the red velvet chairs and moody lighting.
“Are we hiding?” Andrew whispered.
Thomas glared at the row of shiny ponytails in front of them—juniors, all talking with their phones out.
“I’m telling you, she hates me specifically.” Thomas fidgeted, trying to get comfortable. “Those cops are probably here to lecture us about drugs or something.”
“You’d know,” Andrew muttered.
“That was one time. I have got to corrupt you all the way this year so you can stop being so innocent.”
“I break rules sometimes.”
“Only if I drag you into it.” Thomas knocked his knee against Andrew’s. “You won’t even steal a pencil. You know what we need? You, me, stargazing, and vodka. I’m deeply interested in what you’d say with no filter.”
Andrew was deeply interested in that never happening. He couldn’t risk allowing his mouth to say the things he only dared scream in his head.
He knew he was blushing because Thomas grinned deviously.
One of the junior girls shot a scathing glance over her shoulder. “Excuse me, are you talking about illicit activities?” Her whisper was loud enough for all her friends to hear.
“Yes, we’re going to steal all the pencils in the school,” Thomas said.
“I can report you,” she hissed. “They’re cracking down this year, and whoever has been selling Adderall is so getting caught. Same goes for anyone sneaking off campus into the forest, too. You of all people should respect that.”
Several more of the ponytail girls turned with lips pursed. A few looked pityingly at Andrew.
“Oh my God, are they the ones from that thing that happened last year?” one whispered to her friend. “I’m surprised they came back.”
Thomas started to raise a finger, but Andrew grabbed his hand and slammed it down.
He maintained a neutral expression until the girls turned away, but his heart raced. He didn’t know what that was about. Maybe because of what he’d done to his hand? But it shouldn’t be something the whole school would gossip over. He wasn’t interesting enough to care about like that.
A few rows ahead, Andrew caught sight of the back of Dove’s blazer where she sat with her AP class friends.
She laughed at something a friend said before casting a quick glance over her shoulder.
She must’ve locked eyes with Thomas, because she frowned and his scowl deepened in response. They looked away at the same time.
A microphone crackled as a professor approached the podium and began the morning announcements.
Time for an enthusiastic lecture about giving Wickwood your all, followed by a reminder of all the golden students who’d graduated on to Ivy League colleges.
Everyone here was handpicked for excellence. Time to achieve! To thrive!
Except the reality was most of these kids were here thanks to their parents’ bank accounts. Dove had aced the entrance exams on her own genius, but Andrew clung on by luck—and their father paying the steep tuition, with a little extra for donations when pressed.
Thomas stood squarely in the middle. His parents were artists and wore wealth like disposable plastic, selling a piece worth hundreds of thousands one day and impulsively burning through the money the next.
It meant Thomas went to an incredibly expensive school and yet wore his uniforms to threadbare rags before getting new ones.
His grades slumped worse than Andrew’s, but at least he had his art.
Thomas was viciously talented. Andrew wrote cruelly beautiful fairy tales, and Thomas could illustrate them with a few slashes from a pen with such macabre beauty even his teachers overlooked his endless attitude problems.
Andrew tried to listen to the professor drone on, but all he could think about were those cops. It couldn’t be about Thomas. It just—no, it couldn’t.
Except one look at Thomas and anyone could see his mouth was crammed full of thorns and lies. If Dove had sat with them, she’d have surgically removed all of Thomas’s bullshit and figured out the truth by now.
Andrew kept his voice low. “You and Dove fought before summer break, right? You never made up?”
Thomas bit his thumbnail. “No.”
That explained it. One of them had to give first, and this time it seemed like their individual stubbornness was winning.
The principal took over the microphone next for a motivational speech about exams and excellence—and subtle threats about zero tolerance for substance abuse or prank wars. No police lurked by. Maybe they’d left.
Andrew realized he was still pinning Thomas’s hand to the seat, his fingers with their web of delicate scars resting over Thomas’s charcoal-smudged knuckles.
He snatched his hand away.
Thomas didn’t look at him, just folded his arms and slouched deeper.
Andrew had to get Thomas and Dove to make up …
but later. He was too tired right now. Summer at his father’s Australian house had left him thinned, and the flight back to America was always brutal, jet lag leaving his eyes bruised.
He fantasized about dissolving into his blankets back in the dorm while Thomas went off on a rant about how math was offensive, or how he belonged to the forest like some sort of fae child who planned to run away to the trees and never look back.