Chapter 23 Teddy
Teddy
“Psst!”
Teddy groaned and rolled over in his single bed.
“Hey, Twelve. Wake up.”
Teddy blinked his bleary eyes open and caught sight of Four crouching near his bed, his curly brown hair frizzed beyond saving and his dark eyes wide awake.
Teddy’s brain fumbled for a moment, grasping at a faraway thought that he shouldn’t be here before it melted away, locked behind a door in his mind.
He had escaped here, and he didn’t know why, but he knew it was necessary.
He shouldn’t go back.
Something terrifying waited on the other side.
He shivered.
“Twelve.” He got a shove in the arm. “Stop daydreaming.”
“It’s called sleeping because it’s the middle of the night.
” His voice cracked halfway through the words and he gripped his throat in embarrassment, puberty really doing a number on him even though he was already fifteen.
Shouldn’t he be over this with the influx of new hair growth? “What do you want?”
“Don’t play dumb. Our dare! You lost, dude.”
“We were just messing around,” Teddy grumbled, trying to roll over.
He got shoved out of bed instead. “No breaking the code. You know the rules.”
“What rules? They change every day,” Teddy grumbled.
“That’s because you talk your way around them!” Four complained. “But not this time. You have to go and post that sticky note on Instructor Kellan’s room or you have to do the forfeit.”
Teddy immediately started shaking at the mention of the name, his brain fighting to shut down the panicked, blurry images and pain that were trying to sneak through the cracks of the door before he could shore it up again.
No. We can’t go back there. We have to stay far away.
Four frowned. “What’s up with you? It’s like I mentioned a ghost or something.”
“It’s nothing,” Teddy said. “I’ll do the stupid forfeit.”
“You’d rather go and tag old Gwen’s door than stick a note on Kellan’s?” Four was incredulous.
“Just give me the marker.”
Teddy moved along the dark hallways with the pen clutched in his fist, swearing internally to himself.
Since when did he give in to peer pressure?
This was so freaking stupid.
He sighed. Whatever. He’d do the stupid thing and then Four would get off his case and he’d never make another bet with him again.
The corridors from the sleeping quarters to the main building had never seemed so large before.
Were the ceilings always so vaulted and shadowy?
Were the windows that lined one side always so looming?
Even the cogs and mechanisms gave off an ominous aura in the dark, like they weren’t there to help, and instead were waiting for Teddy to come close.
Ghost stories would get passed down from older cursebreakers to all the new ones, making them scared to leave their beds. Teddy had never believed them until now. They didn’t seem so farfetched all alone in the dark.
It didn’t help that that feeling of menace was following him; a tall figure tracing his every step like a duplicitous shadow.
He felt like he was running away from something.
He tried to shake the feeling off as he turned the corner.
He froze.
A patrolling Nexus instructor farther down had his heart stopping. He quickly ducked into a shadowy alcove, but he knew it wasn’t going to shield him for long.
“Hey!” a voice whispered. “Over here.”
Teddy blinked and looked across at the window.
It was cracked slightly, and on the other side, looking in, was a boy Teddy had never seen before.
He had a mop of unruly, inky hair sticking every which way and coming down to his chin like it was in an awkward stage of growing out.
A single lock at the front near his temple was colored white, and Teddy had to wonder if he had gotten his hands on some bleach, and where.
He must have been younger, the fat on his cheeks still stubbornly lingering. But the most arresting detail to Teddy was the cursemark around his eye. It was perfectly centered and glowing faintly, making the blue of his eye appear like a cerulean sea.
“You just going to stare all day and get caught?” the boy asked.
Teddy flushed red at being called out, glancing up the hallway to where the instructor had stopped to tie his shoelace.
Teddy bolted across the hall toward the window, climbing through to the other side.
When he dropped down he realized the boy had been hanging on the edge, and standing, he only reached Teddy’s shoulder. Instinctively he knew that he couldn’t have been far off Teddy’s age even if he was smaller. His demeanor was bigger than his stature.
He was wearing no shoes, feet covered in mud all the way up to his ankles and toes wiggling in the grass like they were old friends. His mud-splattered Nexus pajamas were green, which let Teddy know he was an animal cursebreaker.
That piece of information slotted into place in his mind as just right—an undeniable truth, like the sky being blue.
This close, he was struck by the realization that this boy was incredibly pretty.
Underneath the dirt and muck was probably the prettiest thing Teddy had seen in his young life.
Angled eyes with spiky lashes, a mouth that sat in a naturally doll-like pout, and a small, sharp nose with a streak of dirt across the bridge that sat perfectly in the middle of his creamy complexion.
Immediately Teddy grew shy and tongue-tied.
“Uh, hi. I’m Twelve.”
The boy scowled like he had insulted him. “I don’t have a number.”
“Sorry,” Teddy said quickly. “Did you choose a name already?”
That only made him madder, and he spat another, “No.”
“Soo…you don’t have a name at all? What do people call you?”
“A feral beast that has no manners.”
Laughter burst from Teddy at the unexpected answer, before he choked on it, realizing the boy was being completely serious.
He didn’t seem real.
He reminded Teddy of the characters in the fantasy stories and poems he liked. A myth or folk tale of a mischievous fairy who ran under the stars and swayed with the grass.
“What are you doing out here at night?” Teddy asked.
“What are you doing wandering through the halls at night?” the boy fired back with a superior but slightly childish jut of his chin.
Teddy found his heart fluttering for no reason whatsoever.
“I guess you got me there,” Teddy said. “I lost a bet and didn’t want to do the dare, so I was doing a forfeit.”
The pretty grass fairy frowned. “Why didn’t you just say no?”
“I don’t say no a lot.”
He didn’t know why he was telling this stranger this. It felt mortifying dumping his lame emotional baggage at his feet.
“Maybe you should start,” the boy said simply, like he wasn’t rocking Teddy’s world.
Say no.
It wasn’t that Teddy had never thought it before, he just thought it wasn’t often doable.
People needed him to do this or that, instructors trusted him, friends leaned on him, and Teddy found he didn’t mind so much helping them.
He was good at it. But looking at someone who seemed to buck the world’s expectations—or at least, their world’s expectations—he felt a sudden yearning for the same sort of freedom.
The boy walked past him into the darkness and away from the window. Away from the rules and the obedience, away from the rows of good little cursebreakers sleeping in their beds like they were told to, and Teddy wanted to call out for him to wait so he could walk by his side.
As if knowing that, the boy called back “You can follow me if you like,” acting like he didn’t care if Teddy did or didn’t. But the way he glanced over his shoulder to check whether Teddy was in fact following made Teddy’s heart skip another beat.
Maybe he wanted someone to walk with him too.
He let the strange boy lead him across the dewy grass, the moon reflecting off of it like a million diamonds, morphing into topaz where the light from the institute spilled out.
The boy led him to a lone tree situated in the middle of one of the fields surrounding the building, one of the few left, and began scaling it expertly like he had done this a thousand times.
Teddy glanced up anxiously before attempting it himself, slipping down to land painfully on his ass on the first attempt.
A head poked over a branch and giggled. “Having trouble, human?”
Teddy frowned up at him, rubbing his sore behind. “You’re a human too.”
A snort was his only answer, and Teddy set his jaw, feeling a sense of competitiveness bringing him back to his feet. This time he wasn’t going to fall.
He scaled the trunk with little grace, using all his strength just to keep himself in place. His arms shook and his toes scrambled for purchase.
A hand appeared in his vision.
“You need a lot of saving,” the boy mused.
“I’m fine,” he wheezed, sliding down an inch.
The boy laughed, the sound like tinkling bells. “You look like a bear hugging a tree.”
“Bears are good at climbing,” he grunted, shimmying up.
“Only some. You’re more like a teddy bear than a real bear. Too soft.”
“Are you just going to mock me the whole time?” Teddy asked.
“My hand is still there.”
Teddy swallowed his pride and took it, allowing the boy to help him the rest of the way up into the canopy. He realized the boy had made a makeshift nest up here, using branches to crisscross the distance between two sturdy limbs of the tree to make a platform just big enough for two to sit.
“Is this going to break under our weight?” Teddy asked dubiously.
The boy seemed offended. “I’m great at building nests!”
“Are you a bird?”
“What?”
“You said you’re not a human and I’m a bear, so are you a bird, then?”
“Maybe.” Wren shrugged and picked at his dirty fingers. “Better than being a cursebreaker.”
Teddy frowned. He’d never heard anyone say that before. “You don’t like it?”
“Do you?”
Teddy wasn’t prepared for the question to be turned around on him and didn’t have an immediate answer prepared. “Well…it’s what we were born to do. If I didn’t like it then I wouldn’t really like myself.”
“But you didn’t choose it.”
“We were born with the mark.”