Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
Andrew threw another pillow at Thomas. “Sound off if you’re alive.”
Thomas gave a muffled groan but didn’t get up.
“I’ll bribe you.” Andrew messed around with his tie and frowned at the place where the mirror used to hang on the inner side of his wardrobe door.
It was for the best that he couldn’t see the too-sharp cheekbones and dark circles under his eyes.
“We’re buying art supplies. You can draw again. ” He paused. “We’ll get coffee.”
Thomas dragged a pillow over his head. “Kill me.”
A fist thumped on their door, their counselor’s voice far too cheerful. “Thirty-minute warning!”
Andrew took the edge of Thomas’s quilt and flipped it off him.
“I refuse to feel sorry for you when you chose to be a jackass martyr. Get up.” He gently picked at the bandage on Thomas’s back to check the wounds.
“It’s not too bad.” He winced only because Thomas had his face buried and wouldn’t see.
The bites had turned bright red, some scabbed over and others now swollen bumps, feverishly hot to the touch. He was riddled with them, and the pain had to be excruciating.
Thomas’s voice came muffled from the pillows. “I feel like a pincushion.”
“That’s because you are. But you have to come. I don’t know what art stuff to get, and I’ll come back with crayons or something.” He ran fingers over Thomas’s shoulder blades before realizing what he was doing. He snatched his hand away. “Get up.” He kept his voice light.
Thomas slithered boneless to the floor, but it was sort of progress.
Andrew left for the bathroom. He desperately needed Dove to tell him what to do.
If they told her the truth about the monsters …
well, she’d explode, furious and frantic.
Thomas clearly did not want her to know, and Andrew understood that now.
They could give Dove this, protection from things most foul and malevolent.
Though he wasn’t sure if he most wanted to hide the monsters’ existence or how the nights belonged to him and Thomas alone now.
He didn’t want her to know he liked that.
He missed his phone and their constant stream of texts. He was a rotten brother these days, but Thomas needed him. Andrew hadn’t meant to choose between them, but he had.
He checked on Thomas, who had put one leg in his pants with his eyes closed while mumbling something about coffee. Andrew grabbed his backpack and slipped outside.
He hurried down the garden path to the girls’ dorm, but couldn’t work up the courage to ask the girls lingering out front to get Dove for him. Apparently he could hunt monsters in the woods, but still not talk to people without his words cramping in his mouth.
One of the girls noticed him lurking and started to wave, but her friend knocked her hand down and began whispering. Smiles disappeared. Pity filled their expressions. His breakdown in the bathroom had not helped his reputation of being that highly strung boy who smashed his own hand last year.
Andrew fled.
Students already crowded the marble front steps of Wickwood as the bus pulled in. Andrew hung back, dread gnawing an acidic hole in his stomach. What if Thomas didn’t arrive in time? What if he had blood poisoning or an infection or—
Stop. He needed to just—stop.
Bryce Kane and his vultures were harassing the girls boarding the bus, but they cut it out as soon as Ms. Poppy appeared with a huge thermos and a dreamy smile.
The art teacher wore a patchwork skirt the size of a small country and golden bangles against her dark skin.
Every year the student council unanimously awarded her Most Lovely Teacher.
Andrew started to relax knowing she’d be in charge of this trip, until he saw Professor Clemens stroll off the bus with his smarmy smile.
He’d ensured both boys served a lengthy detention after Andrew had yanked Thomas from class to quell his panic attack, and even the sight of the professor made anxiety ripple through Andrew’s stomach.
“Why do you look like you swallowed a frog?”
Andrew’s heart punched into his throat as he whirled, but only Thomas stood there, yawning and scrubbing a hand through his matted curls.
He looked like a cat that had been put through the dryer—pants wrinkled, collar popped, tie draped like a scarf, blazer missing, shirt untucked and flecked with old paint.
He had sleepy eyes and a disgruntled mouth, and he kept scowling at the growing crowd of boisterous seniors like they existed just to spite him.
“Clemens is driving the bus,” Andrew whispered.
Thomas made a face. “He can eat nails. What’s in your backpack? Snacks? I need snacks. Sugar, specifically.”
“What you need is to be ironed.”
Thomas slumped his forehead against Andrew’s shoulder. “I need to be treated softly, like a delicate egg.”
Andrew gave a wry smile, but it slipped as soon as he saw Lana Lang thundering toward them. Her boots seemed to grow more violently purple every time he saw her.
Lana halted before them, her glare hard on Thomas. “Are you hungover? Because, wow.”
Thomas jerked his head off Andrew’s shoulder and put space between them. Andrew tried not to read anything into that.
“I am not,” he muttered. “Take your judgmental self somewhere else.”
“Right, well, once Mister Bad Decisions gets kicked off the trip”—Lana turned to Andrew—“feel free to come sit with us.”
“He’s not hungover,” Andrew said quickly.
A muscle ticked in Thomas’s jaw. “And he doesn’t need you fussing over him.”
Lana crossed her arms, attitude simmering toward a boil. “Dove asked me to watch out for him, so I am. She told me everything about you, Thomas Rye, and I mean everything. Especially about you and—”
“You know what? I don’t need this.” Thomas turned, tugging Andrew after him.
But Andrew stayed rooted. How had these two gone from zero to war in a matter of seconds?
And did this mean Dove wasn’t coming on the trip?
Now that he knew she and Thomas hadn’t made up and weren’t having clandestine make-out sessions in the forest, he’d reverted back to guessing they were still in a fight.
He needed to talk to her. He always needed Dove.
“Tell Andrew the truth, then,” Lana snapped. “Dove said you were a coward and she was right.”
Panic crept into Andrew’s voice. “What truth?”
Thomas whirled back and got in Lana’s face, but she didn’t move an inch. The way her eyebrows rose was equal parts scathing and condescending, and Thomas’s attempt at looking formidable was lost due to them being the same height.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he said, low and venomous.
“And you know less about Andrew if you think he’s some delicate wallflower that you need to ball up in cotton wool.
He could cut me to bloody pieces if he wanted.
I couldn’t stop him even if I tried. So can you stop pretending he needs saving from me? Back up and leave us alone.”
There was something so raw about being known this intimately, being understood down to his darkest parts. Andrew’s heart felt swollen to twice its normal size.
Lana looked like she wanted to eviscerate Thomas. Instead, she gave him the finger. Then she turned to Andrew and eyed him with a ferocity that seemed more concerned than anything else. “Invitation to hang out with me always stands. Have fun with this toothache incarnate.” She stormed off.
Andrew stared at Thomas. “What was that?”
“Forget it. She has a problem with me.”
“Is this about your fight with Dove?” Andrew said.
Thomas’s teeth clenched. “Leave it alone.”
Andrew did not know how to swallow all of this. He hadn’t realized Thomas and Lana hated each other this much—or maybe both only meant to protect another. Lana on Dove’s side, Thomas on Andrew’s.
Andrew didn’t have time to gather his scattered thoughts before Clemens’s voice boomed through a megaphone telling everyone to board the bus.
But then he looked straight at Andrew and Thomas and added, “This is a public event, and students are to conduct themselves with the respect and decorum befitting Wickwood Academy. Anyone not in full uniform will be left behind. Anyone with an attitude problem will be left behind. Anyone unable to comply to the rules will be left behind.”
Andrew winced as he looked at Thomas, who had already failed that entire checklist. Thomas glanced down at his missing tie and blazer, and red flushed across his freckled cheeks.
“He’s doing this to stop me coming,” Thomas said. “Because failing us in class wasn’t enough.”
“I can’t go alone.” Andrew tried to keep the growing anxiety out of his voice. “Turn your shirt inside out. It’ll hide the paint stains.”
“But the buttons—”
“Button it inside out. Just do it.”
Everyone else began filing onto the bus.
Thomas started unbuttoning his shirt. Students behind them started whispering and made a wide arc around their disaster zone. Thomas stripped his shirt and fought with the tangled sleeves.
Ahead, Bryce Kane wolf-whistled. “God, Rye. No one asked for a striptease.”
His friends jeered, and Andrew quickly stood in front of Thomas to hide all the bandages and tape covering his torso while he wrestled his shirt back on and fumbled with the backward buttons.
He still had no blazer, but Andrew snatched the limp tie and redid it, jerking the knot a little too tight.
The collar wouldn’t sit flat inside out, but it had to do.
Thomas tucked in his shirt, agitated and frenetic, as they lined up to board.
His eyes locked on Clemens. “I’m dead without the blazer. He’ll ban me.”
Lana, about to board the bus, had turned to watch their disorganized wardrobe shuffle.
Her eyes met Andrew’s for half a second before she turned and bumped into Ms. Poppy, who in turn spilled her thermos on Clemens’s shoes.
He leaped backward with a barely stifled curse while Ms. Poppy twirled around in a flurry of apologies, her enormous skirt only adding to the confusion.
Andrew grabbed Thomas’s wrist and dragged him aboard the bus while no one was watching.
It didn’t make sense, Lana gifting them this distraction after her vehement verbal collision with Thomas earlier, but maybe Dove had put her up to it.
Andrew followed Thomas down the aisle. “That was way too close.”
They packed themselves into seats, Thomas wincing as his abused skin pressed against the bus upholstery.
“Are you okay?” Andrew whispered.
“All I care about right now is you and dealing with the”—Thomas’s voice dropped low—“monsters. Nothing else matters.”
Andrew looked out the window until he’d forced his expression neutral.
A strange heat blossomed in his chest, and it was taking too long to pack it back into a manageable corner.
All I care about right now is you. He was liked by the boy who liked no one at all, and he wanted it to stay that way so much it hurt.
Thomas’s face darkened as he watched Clemens settling into the driver’s seat. “I’d drag Clemens into the forest and let the monsters have him if I could. I’d sit back and watch.” He slouched in his seat with a glower.
Andrew didn’t disagree.
The bus pulled out of Wickwood and the world blurred through all shades of dark green as the forests whipped past their windows. Thomas fell asleep on Andrew’s shoulder, his mouth open and the angry lines of his face softening in a way that made Andrew ache.
He put in earbuds, but didn’t listen to anything.
Everyone was rowdy and talkative, and a few kids kept swapping seats with whispered giggles until Clemens ordered an end to it.
But Dove slid into the empty row in front of Andrew and he felt breathless with relief that she had come after all.
He had this odd, suffocating need to be sure she was all right, never hurt, never in danger.
This time, he would be the twin made protector.
Thomas was still asleep, so Andrew leaned forward so his chin rested on the back of her seat before he tapped her shoulder. “Why aren’t you sitting with Lana?”
“Checking up on you.” Dove lightly flicked his nose, so his face wrinkled. “Also I called you, but you didn’t answer?”
An image of the forest devouring his phone flashed in Andrew’s mind. “I need to charge my phone.” He needed to find it. Fast.
“Well, you have to answer when I’m calling you. I need to know you’re coping.” She said it in a fussy way, as if he were a child who would wander off and get lost before starting to cry.
It burrowed between his ribs, the frustration of it. Everyone saw Andrew as shattered and fragile, and maybe he was to them. But when Thomas looked at Andrew’s sharp edges, he thought them dangerous and beautiful—not weak.
He could cut me to bloody pieces if he wanted.
Andrew hated the way he loved those words.