Chapter Thirty-Three
“I really don’t want to ride to the ball with Evan’s parents,”
Sonia was saying as they exited the cafeteria on Wednesday.
“But there’s not a lot of time to get ready otherwise. Do you think we’ll be done setting up by four?”
Chrysanthemum must have been correct that the reason she and Lily hadn’t previously been asked to assist with the Halloween ball was because they’d been busy painting. Now that their punishment was complete, they’d been asked to volunteer by Ms. LaPlant. (They’d been voluntold, really, but whatever.) Lily had gotten herself on decorating duty, but no matter how much she’d tried to get Chrysanthemum there, too, Chrysanthemum had been stuck helping collect tickets. It was infuriating, but Chrysanthemum had promised she’d leave as soon as she could, and Lily planned to spend extra time hanging around the check-in table.
To be fair, over the past one and a half weeks, she had been spending plenty of time with Chrysanthemum already. At least, she had outside of regular school. During regular school was a different story. The past weekend’s outing with Sonia and Anushka aside, the only person who seemed truly comfortable moving between friend groups was Luke. Everyone else had too much history not to feel like an intruder.
This was fine, or so Lily told herself. She didn’t want to be clingy or one of those people who drifted apart from their friends when they began a new relationship. She and Chrysanthemum texted constantly, and although not everyone at witch school seemed ready to welcome Chrysanthemum (Bethany among them), Lily and Sonia had made their feelings on the matter clear.
Chrysanthemum, Lily knew, didn’t entirely trust everyone’s friendliness yet, and Lily couldn’t blame her. Over time, though, she hoped Chrysanthemum would forgive the others for not making more of an effort, much the way Chrysanthemum had forgiven Lily for her rudeness.
And really, it made sense not to be too absorbed with each other at regular school. The curse had sucked time away from Lily’s academics, and she needed to refocus. Just because she liked Chrysanthemum and they were together (whatever that meant exactly, which was something they’d never discussed), it didn’t mean that Lily was ready to abandon all plans for becoming valedictorian. She would just be less bitter if she lost to the one person who deserved it as much as she did.
“We have what—four days to the ball?”
Lily asked, adjusting her backpack.
“We’ll figure it out.”
She and Sonia parted ways, and Lily slipped into physics class, eager for the day to be over. AP Physics wasn’t just her most challenging class; it was her least favorite.
Lily waved to Luke, who took the seat next to her as usual. Not feeling like she needed to force herself into liking him was nice. She could enjoy his company as a friend and not worry about anything else. Thank goodness she’d never attempted to flirt with him.
“Hey.”
Luke smiled back, but his face was strained.
In fact, the classroom mood was quiet and tense, and Lily was beginning to worry. But when Mr. Gevry entered the room with a pile of papers, a memory clicked in the back of Lily’s brain, and it was so much worse than she could ever have imagined.
She’d completely forgotten they had a quiz today.
Cold numbness washed over her as Mr. Gevry called the class to order and handed out the tests. This was her worst subject, and she was totally unprepared. Last night, when she should have been studying, she’d been texting nonsense back and forth with Chrysanthemum. Saturday, when she should have been reviewing the principles of motion, she’d been out picking pumpkins and kissing.
There was no question she was going to fail. Even a B would ruin her GPA beyond redemption. No valedictorian for her. No college acceptance letters. She was failing herself, and, once again, she was failing her family.
Tears, sharp and prickly, stabbed her eyes. Lily glanced left to where Luke was writing furiously, his blond hair curling around his ear.
Her Knight of Wands.
Her tarot reading.
How could she be so stupid? She had no romantic feelings toward Luke, which meant if she’d just pursued him like the cards had suggested, she would never have been distracted from her schoolwork. He was the ideal boyfriend in that way—nice to talk to, cute for pictures, and unable to impede her focus.
But Chrysanthemum? She was never supposed to fall for Chrysanthemum.
Chrysanthemum was her conflict. The cards didn’t lie. She was the distraction Lily couldn’t afford.
She closed her eyes, forcing the tears down. An Allerton witch did not cry in public.
Lily knew what she had to do to salvage any hope of good grades for the year. But it only made the threat of tears stronger.
Something was wrong. Lily ignored her at lunch. They didn’t talk before class. They hadn’t texted at any point over the last few hours.
Chrys refused to show her anxiety, so she’d kept her distance, taking her cues from Lily’s behavior, but her gut twisted all the same. Lily had arrived at witch school right before class started (late, by her standards), and she’d done nothing more than mumble “hi”
before dropping into her usual seat.
Then she’d proceeded to not look Chrys’s way once during class.
Half of Chrys wanted to pull her close and make sure she was okay. The other half—the half that had played with fire before and been burned—recoiled at the idea of showing concern and exposing feelings. Chrys spent the entire class internally debating what to do.
Had she misread everything between them?
Was she disappointing Lily by not taking the initiative and reaching out?
Should she back off and assume that if Lily wanted to talk to her, she would?
Chrys had no experience with relationships, but her experience with other people told her one thing clearly—to brace for the worst.
Was it pessimistic? Probably. But that expectation was why Chrys wasn’t blindsided when Lily approached her after class.
“Can we talk?”
She wanted to be hopeful as Lily gestured her into the library, but she wasn’t.
“What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do?”
The expression Lily turned on her was miserable.
“Kind of? I think …”
Lily struggled for words, and Chrys waited, gnawing on her sense of dread.
“I think we shouldn’t go to the ball together. We can’t keep doing whatever it is we’re doing. It needs to stop.”
Expecting it hadn’t dulled the slap those words gave her. But it did help her recover more quickly than she might have otherwise.
“Stop what—texting, making plans? Being …”
Being what? “Friends?”
“Yes, all of it.”
Lily closed her eyes.
“I don’t want to be enemies, but I can’t do anything more than that.”
From within the hollow pain inside Chrys’s chest, a spark of anger ignited.
“So we pretend nothing ever happened?”
Never mind the kissing. Chrys was supposed to forget the coffee and the teasing and the doing homework together? The late nights texting? The sunflower pin Lily had bought her and that she’d stuck to her black backpack, completely ruining her aesthetic for the sake of a girl?
“Yes.”
Lily still wouldn’t look at her.
“Obviously, we saved the town together, and that was wonderful … but everything else was a mistake. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
She rushed out of the library before Chrys could say anything else.
So that was what she was to Lily—a mistake.
She should have known, but there she’d gone, giving someone the benefit of the doubt and having her heart stomped all over. Chrys had thought that maybe she’d misjudged Lily, but no. Lily was exactly who she’d shown herself to be in ninth grade. She thought she was too good for Chrys.
Chrys felt cursed, as she so often had, but worse than usual. Maybe there was a curse inside her, wormy and pulsing and full of negativity and pain and vileness, turning her blood black and foul, poisoning her heart with bitterness.
When was she going to learn: Never drop your armor? Why did she so stupidly want people in her life at all? If only she had Lily’s talent, maybe she could give up on this need for human companionship.
Chrys dug her nails into her palms, willing down tears. Like hell was she going to let any of these Thornhaven snobs see her upset. Chrys would make sure Lily saw that she would never even think about her again unless she was forced to.
She just needed a moment to compose herself. Lily would be long gone if she took enough of them.
How long she took, Chrys wasn’t sure, but approaching footfalls warned her to get it together. Chrys adjusted her backpack and turned to leave, surprised to see Sonia in the doorway wearing a tentative smile.
“Excuse me,”
Chrys said, trying to push by her. Her plan to make Lily believe she didn’t care was off to a wonderful start.
“Wait, Chrys!”
She stopped. Nothing Sonia could say would make tonight any better. Chrys knew this, and yet her curiosity was too strong. Carefully fitting her mask of indifference back in place, Chrys faced her.
“I don’t know what Lily told you,”
Sonia said, glancing behind, as though searching for the girl herself.
“but I know that she’s really upset. I think something happened at school.”
And she wanted to make Chrys’s day bad, too? What was Sonia’s point?
“So?”
Chrys asked, glad she’d stuck to monosyllables. It made her voice sound steadier.
Sonia winced.
“What I mean is that she’s not thinking clearly, and I’m sure she didn’t mean whatever she said. You know how Lily gets when she’s stressed.”
She paused. “Right?”
Yes, Chrys had gotten to see more than one Lily freak-out over the past few weeks, but that changed nothing. If Lily was stressed about something, then she should have come to Chrys for advice or comfort. Not pushed her away. Lily had made her priorities clear, and Chrys wasn’t one of them. She’d called their whatever-it-was a mistake.
“She really does like you,”
Sonia continued, and Chrys was certain that there was no type of armor she could don that would protect against such a direct attack.
“A lot. She talks about you all the time. Like … constantly.”
“Bullshit,”
Chrys said, fighting to keep all traces of hurt from her tone. Her words would sound far worse if she didn’t appear to care.
“Look, Lily isn’t my problem anymore. She just made that very clear.”
Then she spun around and hurried away.
Outside, the frosty night air was cleansing. But the breeze, sweetly tinged with woodsmoke and biting with the ocean’s brine, was only a momentary respite. No wind could carry away the pain. No fire could burn it, nor water drown it, and she couldn’t bury it in the earth.
Yet, ironically, as much as this sucked, she knew this territory well. This pushed-to-the-outside territory, this alone-again territory, this angry-at-the-world territory. The uncertainty of happiness with Lily had always been a little uncomfortable, or so Chrys consoled herself. Now she once more knew what to expect from life and how to act. That had to count for something. She was morbid, just as Lily had said, but what people like Lily never understood was that they were the cause.
Her phone vibrated, and Chrys silently cursed the flash of hope that sprang to life with it. Even if it was Lily saying she’d made a mistake, Chrys wasn’t going to respond.
It wasn’t Lily, though. It was Luke.
Hey, can we talk? I want to ask you something about the Halloween ball.