24 Students Remaining #2
How many other Luminary students have been subject to this punishment before me? I wonder. How many made it through the pain? How many gave up and went home?
I can’t type quickly anymore. My fingers are numb and throbbing, and nausea has filled my stomach. I think I might be sick.
T…h…e…r…e…
“You can stop,” Lynn announces. Her voice startles me, and I flinch, yanking my hands back like it’s the first time they’ve been burned.
I’ve been staring at the lit-up computer screen for so long that when I look anywhere else, all I see are bright white stars and fuzzy darkness.
I’m vaguely aware that the sun outside my window has nearly set. I’ve been here all day.
Lynn’s heels clip clip clip on the floor and then she’s beside me. She takes my hand in hers, her skin rough and papery.
My eyesight begins to clear as I stare down at my own hands and see what she’s seeing. My fingertips are a bright, angry red, bits of skin peeling away like curls of paint. Fresh blisters crawl down the lengths of my fingers. It hurts to look at. My stomach churns again.
Lynn, at least, seems satisfied. She examines my fingers in a detached way, without any emotion. After a moment she drops my hand and says casually, “That’s sufficient. You’re free to go back to your dorm.”
Ian is waiting in the hallway, leaning against the wall with one leg kicked up for balance, looking like a Ralph Lauren ad from the ’90s: oversized khakis, button-up shirt, arms of a sweater thrown over his shoulders.
I didn’t know there were people who wore sweaters like that in real life. How does he keep it from falling off?
He straightens when I come through the door, almost like he was waiting for me, and I see that he’s holding something small and silver.
“Ian.” Lynn’s voice comes from directly behind me, closer than I expected. Ian nods at her. She gives him a long look before continuing down the hall.
“How do you know her?” I ask, once Lynn has rounded the corner.
“I’ve been in trouble before,” Ian explains, like this is obvious. “Salve,” he adds, holding out a small silver pot. “For your fingers.”
I consider him for a moment instead of reaching for the salve. He booked it before I got caught, was probably tucked up safe in his dorm while I was being frog-marched back to my own. Why is he even here?
“How did you know where I’d be?” I ask.
In response, Ian holds up his own hand, wiggles his fingers at me. The tips aren’t raw and peeling, like mine, but they’re still bright red.
“I got caught right before Ashlyn found you,” he explains. “I heard footsteps. Kevin was lurking around Sullivan, so I went to see if I could distract him. Didn’t realize Ashlyn would be there, too. Anyway, I figured they’d give us the same punishment.”
“Oh,” I say. So he didn’t abandon me. He was helping. I try to ignore the bubble of relief just below my breastbone, but it doesn’t go away. Maybe it wasn’t so delusional to think we could be friends. I clear my throat and add, “You got caught? That must be so embarrassing for you.”
Ian raises his eyes without lifting his head, flashing me a deeply annoyed look. “We wouldn’t have been caught at all if we’d left when I told you I heard something.” He unscrews the top of the pot angrily, as though it’s also to blame for his punishment.
Annoyance curls through me, though I can’t say for sure whether it’s because he felt the need to call me out, or because I can’t stop thinking of running my hands through his hair.
“If you’d stayed with me, you could’ve watched the hall and let me know someone was coming. Then we both might’ve gotten away.”
Ian stares at me a moment longer, blinking, and I get the feeling he wants to keep arguing.
He doesn’t strike me as the kind of person comfortable with ceding a disagreement or letting someone else have the last word.
It takes him a moment to wipe the expression from his face, and then he’s all calm indifference again.
He says, like the thought had never occurred to him before, “I suppose that’s…fair.”
My shoulders drop away from my ears. I hadn’t expected him to fold so easily.
It’s a strange feeling, winning an argument with him.
He somehow manages to take the loss gracefully.
A little too gracefully, to be honest. Almost as if he’s doing me a favor by admitting that I’m right.
I’m not sure I like this, actually. I’m much more comfortable with him when we’re lobbing insults at each other.
Ian grabs my hand and begins dabbing the salve onto my fingertips. The salve instantly sends something flickering through my skin. It still feels like heat, but this time it isn’t painful.
“So,” I say as he works on my fingers, “they made you type out the code of conduct, too?”
“Four hundred and twenty-two times.”
“God, you counted?”
He makes a grunting sound in the back of his throat. “It helps distract from the pain.”
The pain. A shiver goes through me at the memory. I lower my voice. “About that. How is this legal? Schools aren’t allowed to torture kids.”
Ian stiffens. “You’d think, right? But the waivers are ironclad. We’ve pretty much signed away all our rights.”
I frown at him. “How do you know that?”
“I read it,” he says simply.
“Oh,” I say. But I’m not sure I buy that. It seems like he’s holding something back. “I still don’t see how signing a waiver could give a school permission to torture us.”
Ian goes back to dabbing salve on my fingers. “You chose to stay.”
The salve feels medicinal, cool to the touch, not like ice but sort of…minty. It causes a tender, prickling sensation in my skin, and then it’s like the pain is leached right out of my fingers. The relief is incredible.
“Better?” Ian asks, lifting his eyes to my face again. His voice sounds deeper than it was a second ago. It hits me low in the stomach, and in an instant, I’m right back against that tree, Ian’s hands beneath my shirt, his lips on my neck—
I flinch, cheeks burning. I can’t think of a more inappropriate time for a sexy fantasy. And when I look back at Ian’s face, I see that he’s studying me, lip twitching like he’s trying not to laugh. Almost like he knows exactly what’s going on in my head.
I shift my eyes down to my hand so I don’t have to look at his smirking face.
The skin on my fingertips is still red, but the angriness has gone out of them, and the blisters have mostly gone away.
Now they’re pink and tender as new skin.
I press my thumb to my forefinger, and I’m rewarded with only the slightest hint of pain, like a burn you might get from touching a candle flame.
“That stuff helped,” I tell Ian. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” he murmurs. His voice sounds different than it did just a second ago. He clears his throat, adding, “Lia, I have to tell—”
“Oh,” says a familiar voice from behind us. “Sorry, I…”
Rani’s at the other end of the hall, holding a tray from the cafeteria. His eyes are glued to Ian’s hands, both of which are still wrapped around my hands.
I yank my hands back and take a quick step away from Ian out of some instinct that I have no desire to examine too closely. Probably I’m just startled. Yup, we’re going to go with that.
“Hey,” I say, swallowing. I tuck my hands behind my back, like there’s something shameful about them. “What are you doing here?”
Rani blinks, eyes moving from me to Ian. He looks like he wants to punch him. But after a moment, he shakes his head and motions to the tray he’s holding. “You weren’t in the cafeteria, and Ashlyn said you had to come here, and…well, I thought you might be hungry.”
Oh God, he’s brought me dinner. A disproportionate amount of embarrassment flares through me. He was being sweet, probably to apologize for how he reacted when I tried to talk to him yesterday.
Rani’s still staring at Ian. He’s clearly confused about what he just walked in on.
I can see the question written all over his face.
It’s a fair question, too. Rani and I have had a…
I don’t even know what to call it. A thing?
A sexy, kind of flirty thing where we go on walks and he tells me I should get a tattoo?
And now he shows up, he brings me food, and here I am holding another guy’s hands.
And not just any other guy, but Ian St. Clair. Who we all hate.
I probably owe him an explanation. But the funny thing about explanations is you can only give them away when you have them in the first place, and I don’t.
I have no idea what was going through my mind just now.
When it comes to Ian, it’s like I can’t think clearly.
I mean, he has a sweater thrown over his shoulders.
How was I just holding the hand of a guy with a sweater thrown over his shoulders? And, God, he’s blond.
And yet, I can’t stop thinking about how we kissed.
I can’t stop imagining running my hands through his hair, touching his face.
I’ve only ever kissed guys who were in the middle of sad attempts at facial hair before, but Ian’s clean-shaven, his skin smooth and just a little rough to the touch. I bet it tastes salty and…
Oh God. What’s wrong with me?
I quickly walk over to Rani, take the tray from his hands. “Thank you,” I say, meaning it. “I’m starved.”
Rani still looks a little confused, but he manages to offer me a small smile. “Not a problem,” he says easily. “Want to take it back to the cafeteria?”
“Yup, definitely.” I glance back at Ian before following Rani down the hall and say, doing my best to keep my voice steady, “Hey, thanks for the salve.”
Ian isn’t looking at me, but staring at the floor, an impossible-to-distinguish look on his face. I’d say he looks disappointed, but that’s impossible. We’re barely friends. In fact, we hate each other. Hate.
“Anytime,” he murmurs.