Chapter 28. In Which a Star Gets Too Close to a Supermassive Black Hole and Is Ripped Apart Into Subatomic Components an
IN WHICH A STAR GETS TOO CLOSE TO A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE AND IS RIPPED APART INTO SUBATOMIC COMPONENTS AND BLOWN UP
Clothing is strewn about our cabin floor. Notebooks full of brainstorming for the Medal of Victory contest are ripped apart and destroyed. All our belongings from the cubbies are missing.
I stand alongside Luca and Benedict in the doorway, frozen in a state of shock.
The only person in the cabin except for us is Christiana. She’s rummaging through the cabinets like she’s hunting for something she misplaced.
Or that, most likely, was stolen.
“Christiana,” I call toward her.
She startles. “Rory? When did you get here?”
“Benedict’s samples got destroyed. We came here to check on the cabin.” I take in a broken tripod by my foot. Must belong to Benedict. Next to it, one of Jade’s handmade candles is snapped in half, like it’s been stepped on. “Seems like we were right.”
“Have you seen anyone lurking around who could be a suspect?” Luca asks her.
The moment Christiana clocks Luca beside me, her frazzled state rewrites as something more standoffish. She shakes her head.
Chatter comes from behind us on the main path. Foster and Adalyn from Cabin Epsilon.
“Hey,” I call toward them. “Did you see anyone come into our cabin?”
They offer a few unhelpful head shakes.
“How about anyone passing you from the opposite direction, walking away from the cabins?” Luca presses further.
“Just Gamma,” Adalyn says. “They were carrying boxes.”
“My cabin?” Luca’s brow furrows. “Where were they heading?”
“Toward the lake, it looked like.”
With a quick thankful wave, Luca is off, wasting no time.
Benedict and I share a troubled glance before following him.
When we reach the concrete promenade, the vendor trucks from the Campfire-works Celebration are long gone. The only proof of their past existence is a rogue takeout lid and a couple of napkins that managed to dodge janitorial staff.
A noise pops in the distance, loud and hollow.
We follow the sound toward Samuel and Eleanor and Cindy, laughing by the shore. Samuel holds a tall PVC pipe. Cardboard boxes are set at their feet.
Samuel reaches into the box and pulls out a notebook.
My notebook, the one that holds the equations I’ve been developing to help with Luca’s slap shot.
Samuel stuffs it into the PVC pipe—no, there are two of them, connected by aluminum foil and some sort of burst valve, turning the pipes into a makeshift cannon.
Panic surges through me. “Don’t!”
There’s another pop, and the notebook shoots off into the lake. Steam fizzles from the cannon’s mouth in its absence—dry ice and water used as a pressure builder.
A coldness settles through me as waves roll over the notebook, pulling it below the surface.
“You probably don’t want to be hanging out with them, Luca,” Cindy says. Her tone is as sharp as her eyeliner, and the side slits of her tailored maxi dress flutter in the breeze. “They might whip out a gun and shoot you in the head.”
“What are you talking about?” Luca asks. He points at the boxes, anger and confusion building in his voice. “Is that Rory’s stuff?”
Samuel shrugs, the pretentious cardigan tied over his shoulders moving in sync. “Some of it. It’s all of Cabin Omega’s.”
Luca stares wildly at him. “Why would you—”
“They’re the ones who set our cabin on fire.”
My heart stops.
“How would you even know that?” I shout out. My panic and shock make me step forward, but I should be running the other way. Far, far away.
“Correct,” Benedict says, joining my side. “You don’t have evidence.”
“I personally think that video of Rory throwing a drink at your head should be enough proof on its own,” Samuel says.
My stomach drops.
The video is back to haunt me.
It was only a matter of time. My logic knew, no matter how much my heart denied it.
“That’s not proof,” Luca says, his voice subdued. Almost cautious.
Cindy’s mouth twists bitterly. “I’m sorry, Luca. We also have a witness.”
His face falls. It’s gradual, like every fiber of his being is still desperately searching for a way to deny what he’s hearing. He turns to me, a conflicting mixture of dread and optimism knitted between his brows, a question written along his face. Can you prove her wrong?
I want to answer his question the way he hopes I will. Somehow, I want to prove her wrong.
I filter through my memories of that night.
No one else was around when we set the cabin on fire.
It took several minutes for anyone to run over from the skate night, and only because they noticed smoke billowing from the treetops.
We ran from the scene as quickly as we could.
The only people who should know what we did took part in the crime itself.
Someone in our own cabin turned on us.
But I get along with all of them. Except—
I stare at Benedict, crossing my arms firmly.
That stare alone must be enough to convey my thought process, because Benedict’s brow line soars. “Why are you looking to me?”
“I mean.” I scratch my temple. “You despise me, Benedict. You’ve made that clear since day one.”
Benedict’s face washes into something empty, almost hollow. A low, acidic laugh trickles from his lips, and then he hangs his head, shaking it softly, his light hair swishing back and forth. “Right. That’s what you think.”
“It’s not what I think. It’s what I know—”
“You don’t know anything, Rory.” His voice rises louder than I thought his gentle baritone was capable of.
The emptiness on his face is gone now, wiped away by a taut jaw and icy glare that stun me into silence.
“You don’t know anything because you’re too busy trying to control how people see you.
So much that you never notice how people actually see you—”
“I told them!” Christiana’s voice interrupts us.
Everyone’s attention turns.
“I’m the witness,” she repeats, standing before us now.
“I never signed up to actually hurt people. Benedict told me after the test that Cabin Gamma never stole our bedsheets. We were in the wrong.” She fixes her gaze on me.
“Especially you, Rory. What you did … it was cruel. Making Luca believe you like him isn’t a silly prank. It’s not right.”
My mouth hangs open. I go numb, bit by bit.
I look to Luca.
Who is already staring back at me.
There isn’t a readable emotion on his face. He’s firm and closed off. Waiting for an explanation.
I step closer toward him. Slowly. “It was an accident,” I say.
I can barely think. My brain is spinning, and there’s an audience listening, ready to dissect my every word and eager to rip apart my image.
“It—we were just trying to make your walls glow in the dark to keep you up at night. It was glow stick solution—”
“So, all this time, you’ve been getting closer to me to ruin me,” Luca says.
His tone is calm. Too calm. Terrifyingly so.
I’m losing.
When it comes to Luca, I always lose.
Luca presses his lips together. He nods a couple of times in finality, then shoves his hands into his jeans pockets.
He starts to walk away, back toward the promenade entrance.
But if there’s one time in history when I don’t lose to Luca, then I want it to be now. Not the Medal of Victory contest. Not any competition. I chase after him, even though I’m sure he doesn’t want me to, and everyone is still watching.
“Wait,” I say, grabbing his wrist once I catch up to him on the sidewalk.
Luca studies my hand. He doesn’t rip himself away, but he easily could with 1 percent of his strength.
“I swear, Luca, I’ve genuinely started to like you,” I say.
A burning pressure builds behind my eyes, and my rapidly beating heart feels so heavy that I may fall right through the ground.
“I’ll admit, in the past, I didn’t. You beat me at every competition.
That was hard, and I couldn’t think of you as anything but an enemy.
But all the moments we’ve spent together here have been real. ”
“You’ve basically hated me? For years.”
“I … Yes,” I say honestly, flicking away my gaze. I can’t bear to look him in the eye while admitting to a past that feels so far away now. And I don’t want to know his expression in the aftermath.
“You really did all this? Burned down my cabin? Tried to sabotage me? Ruin my chances of winning? Even after I told you why I need this so badly?”
I could argue that I only realized his true reason later. That, by then, I didn’t want to sabotage him anymore. But excuses aren’t what he deserves.
I nod.
“Why?” Luca asks, barely a whisper.
“Well, when I realized you were the one who put the bunk bed on the roof—”
“What?”
“That first night at camp. We talked about it, but it seemed like you were lying—”
“I wasn’t lying.” Luca’s gaze narrows. “That wasn’t me.”
“But I saw you that night. When I was on the porch, I saw you lurking around Cabin Delta, right next to ours. Other people saw you in the parking lot that night, too. But on the courts, you told me you arrived the next day. That was a lie.”
Luca rubs the back of his head. “I, uh, was there that night. And I had stopped by your cabin, I guess.”
The justice tastes bittersweet. “See?”
“Because I saw you.”
“What?”
Luca’s hand drops from his curls, plummeting at his side.
“After JSHS, we were never supposed to see each other again. But then I saw you on that porch. I couldn’t believe it.
So, yeah, I was standing there for a while.
Then when you asked me about it, I was so embarrassed that I lied about when I’d gotten here.
But I wasn’t lying about the bed. That wasn’t me. ”
Understanding clicks within me.
Luca was watching me.
Butterflies erupt through my stomach and up into my head.
“If you have nothing else to say,” Luca says, crossing his arms and glancing back toward the cabins, “can I go now?”
“I—I do,” I say, stuttering over my words. “Please.”
“Then?”
There’s too much I want to say. That planning to break Luca’s heart was a bigger mistake than throwing that smoothie and tanking my entire future.
That I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I acted selfishly and horribly, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.
This summer has backfired so terribly that all I want to do is discover the nearest wormhole so I can warp space-time and send us back to DECA’s regional business competition, where we first met, so we can start over.
But how could I? Even if I found it in myself to go against Mom and Dad’s rules someday and fall in love, it wouldn’t matter. I couldn’t be with Luca. He’s fallen for a lie. He has no clue who I really am.
No one does.
“I’m sorry,” I say, wishing more than anything, for the first time in my life, that my last name weren’t Prince. “I know you may not believe me. But I promise, I never meant for things to go this far.”
Luca stares at me, waiting for more words that I don’t have. Once he realizes that’s all he’s getting, a short, sour laugh leaves him, cutting through the air like his slap shots on the ice. “Okay, Rory. Thanks, I guess.”
With that, he starts to walk away.
But then, unexpectedly, he stops in his tracks. Looks over his shoulder.
“Rory,” he says quietly.
So much hope bursts through me that my legs nearly crumble beneath my weight. I step forward, my stomach clenching as the silence stretches between us. “What?”
“I know, with your parents, that you feel like you’re programmed. But lately, you’ve seemed like you don’t care what they think anymore.” He sighs. “I guess I was wrong.”