Chapter Twelve Kiss My Fanny
I’m still working on swallowing down a tidal wave of grief as I walk into the classroom…only to find Jude sitting at my usual desk.
Grief turns to rage in an instant. Because fuck this. And fuck him. Fuck all of them.
I square my shoulders and march over to him. He’s the one who stopped talking to me, and after I got over that trauma, I swore that if we ever spoke again, he’d have to be the one to break the silence.
I’ve kept that vow, and there’s no way I’m going to break it now…over a desk.
I slide into the desk beside him and keep my head down, but I can feel the weight of his eyes on me the whole time. Who cares? Let him look.
The angry part of me wants to stare back. But my grief over Serena is too fresh for me to be playing power games with Jude, no matter how much he deserves it.
I also notice Jean-Luc staring at me from across the room. He’s wearing the same shit-eating grin he had on when I caught him burning ants under a magnifying glass freshman year. My stomach clenches, because I’ve dealt with him long enough to know that it’s never good if he thinks you’re one of those ants. Too bad I don’t have enough fight left in me today to disabuse him of the notion.
Whatever’s up with him, Jude seems to notice it, too. He keeps glancing warily between Jean-Luc and me.
Ms. Aguilar flits to the front of the room, yellow hair bouncing and skin glittering with pixie dust. “‘I find I cannot exist without poetry.’”
She clutches her hands to her chest, whirling around and coming to a stop right in front of my new desk before continuing, “‘I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen!’”
She gives another spin…only to get a fist full of Hot Tamales flung at her face.
They bounce off with an audible thump, causing the Jean-Jerks to snicker. “Hey, teach!” Jean-Luc starts, but before he can get very far, Izzy slides into the desk next to mine.
She toys with the ends of her long, red hair as she leans over to me and says—loud enough for the entire class to hear—“So what’s the penalty in this place for slicing off the fingers of fellow students?”
Her gaze slides over to the Jean-Jerks as she says it.
“Pretty sure that’d count toward your community service hours,” I tell her as my anger over Serena—my anger over all of this—continues to build inside me.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.” Her fangs flash in what I’m pretty sure is her version of a smile.
“You really think you can take us?” Jean-Luc snarls. Seconds later, a handful of Hot Tamales hits Izzy in the face, too. “Come at us.”
She fades across the room and back so fast that barely a second goes by. But as she settles back into her desk, Jean-Luc lets out a screech. Both his hands are now spread on his desk, and there are daggers jammed into the desk between each of his fingers and another two longer knives bent and wrapped around his wrists like cuffs, pinning him to the desk.
“What the fuck?” he snarls as he tries to lift his hands and fails.
Izzy shrugs as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Next time, I won’t be so careful.”
“You’ll pay for this, vamp!” Jean-Jacques threatens. “Do you know who our fathers are?”
Izzy yawns. “Here’s a tip. No one ever sounds threatening when they feel the need to bring their daddy into the conversation. If you want to be taken seriously, what you should ask is, Do you know who I am?”
The answer to that is clearly someone not to be fucked with. Which is why everyone in the class is currently busy looking anywhere but at Izzy. Well, everyone but Jude, who gives her a little chin nod of respect. Izzy turns back to Ms. Aguilar and says, “Go on.”
Ms. Aguilar doesn’t answer for a few seconds, just stares at Izzy with her mouth agape. I can see her mind working behind her big blue eyes, trying to decide if she needs to report Izzy for bringing contraband knives into the classroom and then using them against another student.
She’s either too scared or too impressed to do it, though, because in the end, she doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, she just clears her throat and says, “So, with no further ado, here are your Keats poetry assignments.”
She grabs the ends of the pink cloth that’s covering the front board and yanks it off to reveal our groups written out in exaggerated script, a poem listed next to each one. “There are questions in the back of the packet. This portion of the assignment must be finished today or you’ll fall behind, since we have more to do next class.” She claps her hands. “So get to work! And have fun!”
Fun, my ass. To stall, I stare at the list of questions—but all I can think about is Serena.
Still, once I get my brain to actually process them, they’re fairly straightforward, and a person can only read questions about rhyme schemes and meter so many times before they end up looking ridiculous. Though not as ridiculous as the Jean-Jerks, who are currently grunting and sweating as they work to free Jean-Luc from Izzy’s little knife trick.
Apparently fae don’t have the same upper body strength as vampires. What a pity.
I flip to our poem—“To Fanny”—and then, with no further excuses as to why I can’t look at Jude, I turn around. And end up staring straight at his very broad, very muscly chest.
Not that it matters, because it absolutely, positively, does not. None of it does.
Not his carved-out jaw.
Not his perfectly chiseled cheekbones.
And definitely not the ridiculously long eyelashes that frame the most interesting and arresting eyes I’ve ever seen.
Nope, none of it matters at all. Because what does matter is that he’s a total jackass who used to be my best friend until he kissed me out of the blue—which I refuse to think about anymore—and then unceremoniously cut me out of his life with no explanation. That’s what I need to focus on right now and not how good he looks…or smells.
Seconds roll into minutes, and my stomach churns as I wait for Jude to say something. Anything.
Not that there’s anything he can say to justify what he did, but I am curious about how he’ll start. An apology? An explanation? Just because there’s no explanation good enough doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear one.
Several more seconds pass before Jude clears his throat, and I brace myself for anything. Anything, that is, except, “Keats was in love with Fanny for most of his adult life.”
“Excuse me?” I try to bite the exclamation back, but I’m so shocked it practically falls out of my mouth. Jude hasn’t spoken to me in three years, and that’s what he leads with?
“The poem, Clementine,” he prompts after a second, and his use of my real name feels like a low blow.
He doesn’t seem to recognize the gut punch, as he continues, “It’s called ‘To Fanny.’ He fell in love with her soon after they met when he was twenty-two.” Jude holds up his phone—open to a literature site—like it’s his knowledge of John Keats I’m questioning and not the giant elephant in the room.
But fine. Just…fine. Two can play at this game. He’s not the only one who can google, so I take a moment to do just that before holding up my own phone to him. “And she was seventeen, which is a little gross if you ask me.”
I know it was a different time, one where people routinely died at twenty-five, like Keats. But if arguing about a dead Romantic’s problematic love life keeps us from actually discussing the disgustingly sappy love poem, I’m all for it.
Except Jude doesn’t seem to be in the mood to argue. “Agreed,” he answers, raking a casual hand through his chin-length black hair.
I try really hard not to notice the way it falls perfectly to one side, like it has a mind of its own—one that’s determined to make him look as good as paranormally possible. I also ignore the way the razor-cut tips of it brush against his chin, accenting the ridiculously perfect light-brown skin that he inherited from his Korean dad.
Then again, most oneiroi are gorgeous, I remind myself. Jude’s not special. It’s just that being a dream daimon makes him a member of the most beautiful paranormal species in existence. Which is totally not fair.
Despite being a manticore, I feel downright boring in comparison—everyone is when they’re sitting next to him. Even Izzy looks a little blah, and she’s the most striking vampire I’ve ever seen.
But it doesn’t matter what he looks like. Because Jude may look like a dream on the outside, but he’s an absolute nightmare on the inside. I didn’t know that when we became friends all those years ago, but I know it now, and there’s no way I’m forgetting it.
“John Keats was complicated,” he continues in that deep, musical voice that I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. When we were friends, his voice hadn’t yet become this dark, rhythmic thing that fills the air around me.
An unwitting shiver slides down my spine, but I ignore it. It must be the air-conditioning vent I’m sitting under.
“And by complicated, you mean an asshole, right?” I snark, gesturing to the poem in front of me. “What gave it away? The fact that he abandoned the self-proclaimed love of his life to die alone and penniless in Italy?”
“You think that makes him an asshole?” He looks outraged. “Even though he had to leave?”
“He didn’t have to do anything but die,” I snap. “It’s awful that he left her when they needed each other most. Nearly as awful as her just letting him leave without a fight.”
He lifts one dark brow, taps his pen against the edge of the desk. “You wouldn’t have?”
“If I loved him the way she says she did in this letter?” It’s my turn to wave my phone. “I would never have let him run off to basically die alone. And if he loved her, he wouldn’t have just walked away and left her wondering.”
“Maybe he thought distancing himself would keep her safe.” His pen is tapping faster now.
“From what? Tuberculosis? He didn’t seem to mind infecting everyone else. It says here Fanny wrote letters to him almost daily. But he didn’t even open them because he couldn’t ‘bear to read them.’ So he never wrote back. He didn’t leave to keep her safe. He left for his own vanity. That’s fucking selfish.”
“You don’t know that. She could have moved on, forgotten all about him—”
“Yeah, because all of those letters she wrote scream, ‘I’ve moved on.’” I roll my eyes.
“He was probably trying to help her move on—”
“By leaving her wondering if he ever thought about her the way she thought about him?” My voice is getting louder now, indignation tearing through me as I throw up my hands. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“What’s bullshit is expecting him to stick around and ruin her life,” he shoots back, sounding almost as annoyed as I feel. “Especially when he knew things could only end one way.”
And just like that, I’ve had enough. Of Jude. Of this poem. Of this school that sends its graduates out to die like lambs to the paranormal slaughter. “Are we really going to do this?”
The words practically explode out of me, so loud that Ms. Aguilar lets out a little squeak from the front of the room.
I ignore her, and so does Jude.
To his very small credit, he doesn’t try to pretend my question is about the assignment. But he doesn’t answer, either. He just watches me out of eyes that seem much older than his years, eyes that have always seen way more than I want to show.
But this time, I stare back. I’ve spent too many months—too many years—looking away, trying to hide the maelstrom of emotions inside of me. But Serena’s death, my mom’s betrayal, and Jude’s latest bullshit have collided to make me feel as volatile as the storm that’s building outside. Screw keeping a low profile. I’m done pretending.
“Is everything okay over here?” Ms. Aguilar asks nervously, and I glance up only to realize that Jude and I have been staring at each other long enough for her to cross the whole room.
“Everything’s okay,” Jude tells her, but his intense gaze never leaves mine.
I don’t even try to disguise the harsh laugh that comes from my throat. Because nothing is okay. Not with Jude. Not with Serena. Not with anyone or anything in this whole messed-up school.
“Are you—” She breaks off as the classroom door opens. She pivots, clearly grateful for the distraction.
“How can I help you, young man?”
“My schedule changed, and I just got transferred to this class,” answers a voice with a slow, thick New Orleans accent that has my blood freezing in my veins.
No. Just no.
Because there is only one person in the whole of Calder Academy who has that accent—and I’ve done my best to stay as far away from it, and him, as I can since he showed up here a few weeks ago.
But apparently the universe has other plans for me today. First Serena, then Jude, and now this?
Ms. Aguilar walks to the front of the classroom and takes the slip of paper from the office that he holds out to her. “Remy Villanova Boudreax. Welcome to Brit Lit. We’re currently working on analyzing one of the greatest poets of all time.”
Her eyes scan the classroom, quickly darting past the Jean-Jerks before coming to rest on Jude and me. “Why don’t you go join Clementine and Jude’s group? I’m sure they’d love the…help.”