Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
ONE MINUTE THERE’S NOTHING, AND the next I’m staring into crystal-blue eyes framed by lashes the color of midnight.
“Ack!” I screech, scrambling back. “What the—”
His curly black hair fans out around his ears, and his lips pull across perfectly straight, blindingly white teeth, dimples tucked into either side of his light brown face.
Details that I know as well as I know my own reflection despite the fact that he’s all shadow and the room has been plunged into darkness. “It’s good to see you too, Harps.”
Memories flash of hands soft against my hips, hesitant and questioning. Of lips barely brushing before being torn apart. Of blood splashed across my face like rain, and guilt thick enough to choke on.
“Where—why—how did you—” I stammer, my chest fluttering as I look at him, torn between relief and anger and the residual, gentle pangs of something sweeter than that.
“I think what you’re looking for is, ‘Hi, Lucas, so glad to see you again. Sorry I ghosted you all year and then enrolled in your school without telling you.’ ” There it is.
That glittering light bouncing behind his eyes.
His voice rumbles, the words curving at the end from a lifetime in Appalachia.
In a school full of Northern transplants, he sounds like home.
Still, my first feeling is indignation. I am not the one who ghosted them, they ghosted me. The second feeling is that I hate that I can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips. How am I supposed to stay mad at him when he looks at me like that?
“Ha, ha,” I groan, reaching to touch a tender spot throbbing at the back of my head.
“Are you bleeding?” someone asks.
I turn, ignoring the pain shooting down my neck as I see Daisy standing above me.
Confused, I shake my head no and place my hand in Lucas’s large, warm palm. I try to pull myself up, but the world is spinning beneath me. I don’t think about the familiarity of his touch. I don’t think about how I have been trying not to think about this for over a year now.
“You should probably stay lying down for a minute,” Daisy says, squatting to my eye level before patting my shoulder. “Give yourself some time to come to.”
Come to?
Curious glances warm my cheeks as I realize I’m on the floor. In the cafeteria. In front of the whole school.
Awesome.
“What the hell? What happened?”
“It was wild!” Daisy says. “You were talking to Missy, and then lightning must have hit a breaker or something ’cause the lights went all crazy, and then you fainted right as they went out?
Probably unrelated, but it looked like you got zapped by lightning!
” A panicked giggle escapes her as her hand flies to her mouth.
“Sorry, I know it’s not funny, and you clearly didn’t get hit by lightning because you’re not dead, so…
” She coughs. “But it was very cinematic.”
“Yeah, you totally bit it,” Lucas says. “Brit started screaming and dragged Missy out by her elbow. Said something about you being smited by God.”
I cringe. “That’s… weird.”
Daisy and Lucas share a glance, his cheeks darkening as he clears his throat and stands.
“Well, you probably need some space, and I don’t want to, like, hover over you or whatever, so…
I’m just gonna—” He makes a popping noise with his mouth, flicking his thumb over his shoulder.
He’s still smiling, but his eyes are clouded with something I can’t place.
“Oh, uh… yeah… okay,” I say as I watch him turn and disappear into the crowd, leaving my heart hammering in my chest.
Lucas and I were never supposed to be endgame.
In fact, I hadn’t ever thought about him that way at all.
But then last summer Lucas was suddenly single after being dumped by his senior boyfriend, and Malachi was gone—without warning, he up and left for football camp.
Flung a rock at my window at six a.m., and when I came sleepy eyed through the front door, he shrugged off my hug and told me he was leaving.
Didn’t even look back when I ran after him, bare feet sinking into the dew-soft grass.
I knew then that everything had somehow already changed between us.
There had been signs all summer. Something about him was different.
Something about us was, too.
And somehow, despite the hurt that clouded the long days that followed, slowly the fog started to lift, and before I knew it, there was Lucas.
Steady, just as he’d always been. And we were fresh off a back-to-back two-dollar movie marathon down at the Mulberry Theater and his lips were stained blood red with slushie juice and suddenly I wanted to taste him.
But that desire was the tipping point, and everything that followed is still too painful to think about. Which is why I’m confused when I realize he’s left me a little breathless.
This time when I meet Daisy’s eyes, she’s giving me an uncertain look.
“You… know Lucas?” she asks, her mouth a flat line.
Guilt sours my stomach. “Yeah, from the summers and stuff, you know? Small town.”
“You could have mentioned that during the tour,” she mumbles. “Wait, don’t tell me you know Malachi, too?”
I lower my eyes to the ground.
“Harper!”
“I’m sorry,” I cry before shifting forward and preparing to stand.
When I finally notice the person peeking out from behind Daisy, I laugh a little at their expression.
They’re tall and brown-skinned with bleached-blond hair and dark brown eyes shielded by wire-rimmed glasses.
Their navy cardigan is slipping off their shoulder, one straight eyebrow lifted in suspicion.
“Who are you?” I ask.
They give me a small, hesitant smile. “Name’s Sam. Sam Salas”
I nod once. “Well,” I sigh, “sorry we’re meeting like this, Sam.”
A hand presses against my back as I slowly rise to my feet. “Maybe you should get checked out by the infirmary?”
I look over my shoulder and find Kate the DA standing behind me, her face pinched with concern.
“I’m fine. Really.”
Holding on to my elbow, she helps me as I brush off my pants and adjust my shirt.
“I don’t know, Harper. That was kind of terrifying.”
I politely refuse, on edge as I wait for her to bring up what happened with that girl, Missy.
This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in the aftermath of an argument with an entitled, popular brat, and I’m sure I’ll be sent in for some kind of disciplinary action.
Somehow it is always my fault, no matter what the other girl has said or done.
I might not know Headmaster Matsoukas that well, but I can’t stomach the thought of showing up in his office like this mere hours after he’s welcomed me to campus.
Thankfully, Kate doesn’t bring it up. She just makes me put her school number in my phone in case I start to feel unwell and then heads off to continue monitoring the cafeteria.
When she’s out of earshot, I turn to Daisy and Sam. “I’m starving.”
As we start making our way toward the pizza, the lights come back on, and a smattering of whoops and applause rings out around the room.
Once we’ve filled our plates, I spot a free table by one of the ginormous windows that overlooks the forest, the peak of Black Mountain rising in the distance.
Though the storm has lessened, the sky is still a sweeping gray, casting us all in an awful blue hue like we’re extras in a badly shot paranormal romance adaptation.
I stare out the window while Daisy fills Sam in.
She tells them about how I grew up in Earnest with “those Matsoukas douche canoes.” I laugh in jest but have to bite back some residual instinct to defend them.
Malachi’s a douche for sure, but Lucas? Maybe there are things about him I still don’t know.
Maybe the version of him outside of summer is different.
When she’s done, I try to change the subject, but it’s useless.
“Sam, where are you from?” I ask.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll get to that,” they say. “First: What’s your deal? You know, beyond the summers here?”
A flood of things come to mind—dead grandma, part-time shitty mom, deadbeat dad, a string of toxic ex-situationships. “I don’t know,” I say instead, taking a bite of pizza and chewing quickly, my hand hovering over my mouth. “I’m new.”
I eye Sam, glancing down at their wrist. A rubber bracelet with blue, white, and pink stripes wraps around it. They stare back at me, squinting their eyes slightly.
A knowing silence fills the space between us. Sometimes there’s a radar for this sort of thing.
“Oh!” I say, pointing at myself. “Bi.”
Sam grins, pointing to themself. “Nonbinary. They/them.”
A wide smile cracks on my face.
Three drops of blood in the snow.
Relieved, I laugh before lifting an eyebrow. “So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way—”
“Wait! What about me? I’m a lesbian!” Daisy cuts in.
“We know!” Sam and I say at the same time before dissolving into a fit of giggles.
“So. Missy,” I say, planting my hands on the table. “That’s her name, right? The girl I was talking to before… well, whatever that was.”
Daisy sighs. “She’s so hot.”
Sam and I nod in agreement.
“But she’s evil,” Daisy adds. “Can’t forget that part.”
“I noticed,” I snort. “She was talking about that girl from—”
“Ugh,” Daisy says, slamming down her cup playfully. “I don’t want to talk about that potato with eyes! The most interesting thing about Missy is… well… nothing. But what about you? What made you want to transfer here as a junior?”
“Oh, uh, I just needed a change of pace. Pine Grove was lame and boring, and then I got a scholarship here for the art program, and I needed to boost my portfolio for college apps anyway, so I was like, ‘why not?’ ”
Sam nods sagely, but Daisy’s brow furrows.
“So it had nothing to do with Malachi and Lucas?”
“What?! No! I mean, I knew they went here, but I didn’t come here for them. I’d prefer if I never saw them again, actually. Especially Malachi.”
Sam and Daisy share a look.
“Bad blood?”