Chapter Four
FOUR
Their story had begun in the forest, a collision both violent and beautiful.
It had been Andrew and Dove’s first year at Wickwood, both of them twelve years old with awkward limbs and amorphous personalities.
If the Perraults’ father wasn’t traveling, he was chained to offices and meetings in the States while his business grew faster than he could hold on to it.
He couldn’t leave them in Australia, and his unpredictable hours meant boarding school was the logical choice.
It meant the twins arrived in Wickwood midyear, when the other students had already settled into their cliques.
Andrew and Dove stood out painfully with their Australian accents and strange phrases and the way their edges melted together.
They weren’t used to wealth, to listening to kids talk about their opulent homes and extravagant vacations and famous parents.
But Dove could be tossed into anything and she’d bounce.
Andrew was a glass figurine. Drop him and he shattered.
While Dove made spreadsheets of who she’d befriend and planned how to hit top of every class, Andrew started getting horrible stomachaches. The worst part was how Dove loved it here. Andrew was ruining everything, like always.
“We just need to make friends,” Dove had said firmly.
“Do it, then. Stop hanging around me.” Andrew was in tears but firm. She didn’t have to drown with him.
Except she chose him every time. She sat with him instead of other girls, and she pulled him into games and did his assignments when he was too stressed to concentrate.
Outside, at least, it was easier to breathe. Wickwood Academy sprouted between thorny rose gardens and wide, manicured lawns, and it prided itself on an enthusiastic sports curriculum that included supervised hikes and nature walks in the surrounding forest.
The class would walk the compacted dirt paths, a teacher up front and another behind to herd the stragglers, and everyone had to finish a nature sketch or trace a leaf while listening to a lesson on ecosystems. The other kids mucked around, but Andrew fell in love with the woods.
It was quiet there, and the trees seemed like they could keep secrets.
But there was one boy who obviously loved the forest more than Andrew, a freckled kid with a reckless mouth and hair kissed by the devil. Once Andrew started watching him, he couldn’t look away.
Thomas Rye was a wild thing. He was everywhere at once, climbing trees and throwing rocks, racing ahead and exploring off the path.
The entire forest rang with his name because a teacher was always shouting for him.
Only Andrew saw Thomas kiss the tree. It wasn’t a performance.
This boy did what he wanted on impulse and regretted nothing.
Andrew wanted that—to be so full of fierce life it spilled over his edges.
Instead, he’d walk next to Dove, who already had seven pages of leaf tracings, perfectly labeled and colored, and kept putting up her hand to ask complicated questions. Her enthusiasm was only dampened by the boys behind them mimicking her accent.
“Teach us some bad Australian words.” Bryce Kane had bright eyes and a bright smile, a white all-American golden boy.
“They’re the same as yours,” Dove said, exasperated. “Can you stop stepping on our heels?”
They didn’t stop; they found it hilarious. Then they discovered it was even more hilarious to trip Andrew.
The first time could have been an accident. The second time, Andrew’s knees hit the dirt and he got up bruised and muddied. Dove snapped at the boys, but they didn’t care. Teachers never got mad at Bryce Kane, and his little posse shared the immunity.
The third time, Bryce hooked his foot around Andrew’s ankle, and he went down hard enough to shred his knees. He climbed to his feet, bloodied and shaky, wanting a teacher to step in but also embarrassed that he still needed that. He was too old to be so delicate.
“Oops!” Bryce said. Then the others made fake-crying noises between snickers because it was obvious Andrew was on the edge of tears.
Then Thomas Rye appeared.
He came out of nowhere, dirt on his face and his pockets distended from collecting seedpods and pebbles.
He tucked his sketchbook under one arm and wedged himself between Andrew and Dove without invitation.
The three of them barely fit shoulder to shoulder on the narrow path.
He was half a head shorter than both of them, which surprised Andrew, because from a distance Thomas seemed like he could fill up the whole world.
Thomas didn’t seem to care about their arms bumping together. “You’re the Australians, right?”
“Who are you?” Dove snapped, in case he was one of Bryce’s vultures.
“I’m Thomas. Whenever I’m annoying, my mom says I’m a little shit and she’s shipping me to Australia.” He sounded unfazed. “I think it sounds fun. What stuff do you like?”
Bryce Kane and the others backed off, as if Thomas was something to be wary of, and Dove relaxed.
“I like running,” she said—she’d recently added “conquer track and field” to her spreadsheet. “I read a lot, adult books, too.”
Thomas picked up a stick and dragged it in the dirt as they walked. “We should race and see who’s fastest. I think I am, but”—he sounded factual—“you might be because you’re taller.” He turned to Andrew. “What about you? What do you like?”
Andrew’s eyes went wide. People would clock Dove as the friendly one and assume Andrew was rude, not shy. No one bothered with him.
“I like to write,” he said quietly.
“He writes amazing books,” Dove added, forever his one-person hype team. “I’m researching how we can publish them and become millionaires, but I got stuck designing a cover.”
“I could draw you a cover,” Thomas said. “But I only draw monsters, so you probably couldn’t handle that.”
He looked at Andrew as he said it, his mouth a serious line with a challenge tucked into one corner.
“I can handle you,” Andrew said.
He’d meant to say I can handle it.
A smile broke across Thomas’s face, all sharp edges and cleverness. Andrew loved it.
Then a hand shoved Andrew’s shoulder and he stumbled. “Excuse me! Trying to get past!” Bryce shouted, and his friends cracked up, because of course he wasn’t. He reached out to shove Andrew again.
Dove whipped around in fury, but Thomas was faster. He leveled his stick right at Bryce’s chest.
“Touch him again like that,” he said mildly, “and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
Bryce towered over them with a mocking smirk. “Is this even your class, runt? I think the preschoolers went the other way.” He began to reach toward Andrew again. “We’re just messing around. Didn’t mean to make Andy cry like a little—”
Thomas slammed the stick down so hard the forest echoed with the crack of wood against skin. Bryce’s howl was of both shock and rage as he doubled over, a vicious red welt on his hand.
A horribly delicious feeling flooded Andrew’s chest. He could taste pain in the air and for once it wasn’t his, and he loved that.
The teacher stormed toward them.
Thomas casually tossed his stick into the trees and didn’t look concerned. “He won’t touch you again,” he said.
Andrew could hardly breathe. “You’ll be in trouble.”
The light in Thomas’s eyes was bold and ferocious. “But he won’t touch you again.”