Chapter Thirty. When You’re Metal Tested
CHAPTER THIRTY
WHEN YOU’RE METAL TESTED
FARREN
Everything hurts the next morning. My eyes from crying. My heart from breaking open. I crawl out of bed and to the kitchen. Normalcy overwhelms the space. Dad reads the paper. Mom scribbles out a food order while drinking coffee. I join in, cracking eggs and whipping their yolks.
“Unlike James to sleep in,” Mom notes. “Missing Monday morning eggs too.”
From the stove I grunt my answer. Somehow, I know James isn’t sleeping.
That he probably feels like me, aching all over.
Or maybe even worse. I’m the one that called it off.
Who said no. As soon as I fell into bed, I cried myself to sleep.
I can’t imagine James Murphy crying. But a month ago I couldn’t imagine his smile, his kindness, the way his lips felt against mine either.
The phone rings and Dad pops up from the table to answer.
Mom stares at me hard. “Did you hurt yourself at the tournament? Did anyone check you out after you saved Colm?”
“I’m fine.”
“Did something happen between you and James?”
“Yeah. He’s upset a Revers recruiter talked to me yesterday instead of him.
” I busy myself with the eggs. “Arrogant jerk,” I add.
But my eyes burn with tears. For the first time in my life I can’t pull them back.
It’s like my feelings have opened the floodgates of every other emotion I own.
Some so old and tattered I can’t even identify them.
“Oh, honey.” She gathers me up in her arms. “I know it’s hard when you like someone who doesn’t like you back. But right now, we have to keep our heads low.”
I still. That’s what she thinks? She thinks James rejected me? “I don’t like him. I hate him.” The lie has only weakened, rusted and tarnished. I don’t even know why I try it. But then again, I do. If I don’t have this, if I can’t even pretend, everything will feel worse. I’ll unravel.
She squeezes me tighter as if she’s trying to break me of my denial. The fact that she has it all wrong almost does.
“What’s the matter?” Dad interrupts, worry woven in the words.
I wipe my face. “Nothing.”
“Farren’s a little worn out from the tournament yesterday.”
Dad only frowns deeper. “I’d say stay home, but I have a bad case at the Murphy tracks. And Mr. Murphy just made it clear he wants James and Farren to come.”
My parents both look at me pointedly. “Do you know why he’d make that request?” Dad asks.
All my anxiety from last night, the very reason I turned James down, seeps back into me. The pain pounds. I wasn’t convincing enough and now my parents have their theories and worse, Mr. Murphy knows.
He knows.
“Farren, fetch James for us,” Dad instructs as we tumble onto the front porch.
“Dad, please. I can’t.” I can’t face him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to face him again.
Dad twists with a question in his eyes, until he spots something over my shoulder. “James,” he yells, arm beckoning. “We have a case.”
I’m thrown off-kilter the moment I turn. Physically, nothing has changed in the last eight hours, but my heart cries out seeing the circles under his eyes. As many times as I’ve seen James awake before the dawn, never have I seen him tired.
He slides on a black jacket not even glancing at me. “A case? What dragon? What number?” James asks with real curiosity. He’s become such a staple to our operations, so at home here, and I almost start crying again.
“It’s Bex. Your father is insinuating it’s a nine-nine-two,” Dad says quietly like even he can’t fathom it. “But I believe it’s more of a four-nine-two.”
“A four-nine-two?” I feel sick. Never. Never has Mr. Murphy reported over a five. Hendrix was paralyzed and they diagnosed him as a one.
“Yes, it’s serious. Bex has hurt a trainer, badly. And after what happened with Colm Ditters he’s considering putting her down or selling her off unless we can explain her aggression with an illness.”
“So, cure her immediately, or she’s gone.” My teeth grind together I bite so hard.
“But I came in third yesterday. I thought I proved Bex’s capabilities. I … I thought I did enough.” James’s voice is breakably thin, and I almost break along with it.
My dad squeezes James’s shoulders. “You raced well. This isn’t your fault.” He moves toward the truck. “We should get going though.”
Finally, James’s eyes find mine. I open my mouth and choke on a dozen responses. I shouldn’t have kissed him. I shouldn’t have begun this thing, opened my feelings, when I knew we couldn’t be together. That’s on me. I need to admit that, apologize.
Without a word, James turns toward the truck, so uncaring, so cold. His hating me has never been so convincing. Real, his action screams at me. He hates me for real. Our relationship has slid backward, maybe even over a cliff. I wonder if he’ll leave, cut the summer short and take Hort with him.
“Wait. Hort,” I call out.
Dad stashes his medical kit in the back of the truck and looks up at me. “What?”
I stumble down the stairs. “I think we should bring Hort. First Hort leaves, then Hendrix dies. Bex probably assumes both of her babies are gone. I think a reunion would help. Yesterday, I went to her. Checked on her. She’s mad and she’s grieving. I’m almost positive that’s what this is.”
Dad nods. “Great idea.”
James obviously doesn’t think so because he stares at the barn. “He’ll take him back. If he knows Hort can fly, he’ll take him back.”
I don’t understand. I don’t want Hort to leave either, but he is healed. Wasn’t he supposed to return eventually?
“Then I’ll bandage his wing and put him in the trailer,” Dad says as if deception is normal around here, as if he’s never scolded me for lying, especially to a client.
James and Dad jump into action as I stand there dumbfounded. I don’t think my dad has ever faked a dragon injury before.
“My father isn’t getting him back,” James says like a statement, a promise.
As the two of them head to the barn to fetch Hort and dress him in a bandaged disguise, I don’t immediately follow.
He won’t be the only one who needs to fake it, I tell myself. Take all the pain and direct it toward James Murphy. Act like you hate him. That’s the directive, the mission, because I can’t hurt anyone else wanting more than that.
I think even my dad can sense the tension in the car. Like weeks ago, James and I are plastered together and leaning away, trying and failing not to touch. Last time it was out of avoidance and awkwardness. This time I can’t look at him for an entirely different reason.
“You kids have to talk to me. I know something is going on,” Dad says after ten minutes of uncomfortable silence.
The worry flows out of me in a quick current. “I think Mr. Murphy knows I can craft bronze.”
My dad’s knuckles on the steering wheel go white. “How?”
“Because I saved Colm Ditters while spotting at the tournament.” The more I think about it the more I wish I never volunteered or had let Colm fall into the water, exposed back and all.
“No,” James counters. “I’ve thought about it all last night. There’s no way. There’s no way my father would suspect and not ask me about it. He’d confront me first.”
Dad exhales slowly. “Okay. Is that it? Is that everything?”
I cut a glance at James as he does the same. I lean away even farther. There are certain things I may tell my dad, but not squeezed next to the boy who is my first crush, my first real kiss.
“Dr. Burke might suspect as well,” I add.
“That’s my fault,” James says.
“Did anything go right yesterday?”
A flush radiates into my face and I know I must be red. One thing went right. That kiss was right until I destroyed it.
“Farren got offered a full ride to Revers Academy,” James says casually.
I snap toward him, but he’s looking out the window, avoiding me.
“One I can’t take. It’s for riding,” I clarify before Dad gets too happy for me.
Dad squeezes my forearm in sympathy. “Oh, kiddo, is that why you were crying this morning?”
I flush in embarrassment and shame. I can sense James’s attention on the side of my face, Dad’s reassuring pressure on the other.
I wish to escape every part of this situation, especially my thigh glued to James and the hum of warmth it provides.
My body is putting up one hell of a fight for what it wants. James, it wants James.
“Yes, that’s why,” I answer Dad, wishing I had my own window to look out to avoid them both.
“I need you to promise me to not craft bronze or silver, Farren. No matter what happens with Bex. We can’t give them any proof.”
I clench my hands into fists. “I won’t.”
“James, you’ll be my primary assistant today. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” He sounds self-assured. Like a jerk, I feel the sharp pain of being replaced.
Months ago, this exact scenario was center stage to my nightmares.
Feeling like I’ve outed my entire family?
Check. Worrying James Murphy would be better than me in the one skill set I’ve cultivated to win the scholarship?
Check. Fearing a dragon’s life would be on the line because of my mistakes? Check.
The scariest thing, though, is knowing this day can get so much worse.
For the rest of the car ride, Dad reviews every basic evaluation exam with James.
An agonizing forty minutes later, we pull up to the racing tracks less than twelve hours since I was here, messing up my life.
James explodes out of the car when the truck halts in the dirt.
How in the world did I ever think he hated me before?
Because this level of I-can’t-even-be-near-you-another-second is achingly obvious.
In front of us on the same patch of ground we witnessed Hendrix suffer, Bex is tied down with silver-lined rope. This is serious. Rope like that is only used in the direst of situations.
“The tranquilizer wore off twenty minutes ago,” a trainer informs us. He’s the same tall man who held Bex’s harness when she charged James and me. Rohan, I believe is his name.
“Good,” my father says. When the trainer’s face blanches, he continues with, “I need to see what’s going on with her.”