XI
By fourth period, the cafeteria was a riot of cheers and slamming plastic. I slid into our usual corner table, my thoughts still snagged on second period—the way the air had tightened when Heaton said he’d take the project. The way he looked at me like he had already seen the end of this story.
Julian was already there, hunched over a carton of chocolate milk like it owed him money.
“I’m just saying,” he muttered, stabbing his fork into a baked potato. “New guy skips half his first day, barely says three words, and somehow lands the best assignment. With you.”
I set my tray down. “It’s just a project, Julian.”
He looked up, and for a second, the frustration in his eyes flickered into something softer.
“Just a project? Madeline, Baker never lets people go off-syllabus. People wait years for that kind of freedom.”
“Pretty sure nobody is waiting for that,” Penny said, dropping into the seat beside me with the force of a small weather event. “You’re the only person on Earth who cares about a syllabus, Jules.”
Julian looked wounded. “The syllabus exists for a reason.”
“Yeah,” Penny said dryly. “As a suggestion. Like speed limits and male podcasts.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but Penny steamrolled right over him, angling toward me with theatrical suspicion.
“And again, speaking of waiting—are you still pretending you’re too busy for dinner on Sunday?”
I groaned. “I’m not pretending. I am busy.”
“Doing what? Brooding all alone in that haunted house of yours? That counts as light cardio at best, Maddie.”
I didn’t answer.
My eyes drifted past the athletes at the vending machines and stalled on the far wall.
Heaton sat alone, tray untouched. He leaned back in a loose slouch, but his focus was a laser drilling through the window, aimed at something miles away.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, dragging my attention back to the table.
“Mm-hmm. That’s code for yes,” Penny nudged my knee. “I’m making you a place card.”
Julian perked up. “Hey, if you’ve got an extra place card—”
“No,” Penny said without looking at him.
Julian deflated.
Then rallied.
“Fine. Then come to this instead.”
He dug into his jacket and slid a folded flyer across the table.
“Thursday nights. Not technically a school club, but it’s a big deal. History, exploration, community outreach. We’ve got chapters all over the state.”
Penny snorted. “Community outreach? Is that what we’re calling it now?”
Julian shot her a look, then turned to me with the desperate seriousness of a salesman.
The flyer was printed on thin, grainy paper, the toner fading into a charcoal blur. Across the top, The Lantern Society curled in gothic script above a stylized miner’s lamp—iron, angular, the kind you would take underground and pray never went out.
I skimmed the bullet points:
Guest speakers.
Night tours.
Restricted historical sites.
Members-only field investigations.
“This looks . . . intense.”
“It’s not.” Julian leaned in. “I mean, it’s serious, but it’s not what you think. The Winter Solstice is a celebration. For people like us. If you join, you’d be part of the festival this year.”
His voice lowered.
“You’d definitely find your family there.”
Penny elbowed me. “Aw. He’s recruiting. How cute.”
Julian ignored her, eyes locked on mine.
“Just think about it. Okay?”
I pushed the paper back with two fingers.
“Sure. I’ll think about it.”
“Meaning no,” Penny translated.
I smothered a smile and glanced toward the far table.
Heaton’s chair was empty.
My eyes swept across the cafeteria. No sign of him in the food line. No dark hair threading through the crowd.
Then a flicker of movement near the far exit.
A shadow detaching from the wall.
Before I could process it, the door swung shut.
Penny kept talking—something about a ceramics project exploding in slow motion—while Julian muttered about project integrity between angry bites of potato.
But I was already gone, my mind snagged on the black scrawl of WINTER QUARTERS on Coach Baker’s whiteboard.
Gym passed in a feverish blur.
Run. Jump. Breathe. Repeat.
I kept my eyes down, avoiding the glossy, perfect arc of Sasha’s ponytail at the edge of my vision. I didn’t want to be seen. I just wanted to get to my last class.
I welcomed the walk across the fields.
The sky was an impossible, open blue, and the air carried the crisp bite of freshly cut grass—sharp enough to clear my head, gentle enough to loosen the anxious knot in my chest.
The greenhouse glinted ahead like a sheet of water.
It was a reprieve, a way to peel back the stale weight of the day.
Inside, the world turned emerald.
Sunlight spilled through the glass ceiling, gilding every leaf and twisting vine. I slipped onto an empty stool near the back, my bag thumping softly against the stone floor.
For the first time since second period, the quiet felt like something I could breathe.
Ventilation fans.
Rustling leaves.
The soft drip behind the ferns.
I exhaled slowly, letting the moisture settle over me like a balm.
Then a shadow spilled across my notebook, swallowing the white of the page.
Heaton stood across the table; one hand hooked through the strap of his bag. He caught the stool with the toe of his boot and dragged it across the stone floor. The scrape sliced through the greenhouse quiet hard enough to turn heads.
His eyes stayed on mine.
Then he sat, elbows on his knees, loose and coiled at once.
The greenhouse was all damp heat and green light. His cold pushed through it anyway, as if someone had cracked a cellar door in winter. The fine hairs along my arms lifted. I stared at my notebook, pencil motionless in my hand, the page blank and accusing.
“You really said it out loud.”
My grip tightened. “What?”
“Winter Quarters.”
The name dropped between us like a stone into deep water.
I kept my eyes on the page. “I didn’t realize I needed your permission for a history assignment.”
“You did.”
I looked up.
Heaton didn’t blink.
“I told you to leave it alone.”
“And I don’t even know you.”
A flicker moved through his expression. Annoyance, maybe. Or something colder.
“You have no idea what you just did.”
I lifted my chin. “Then explain it.”
“No.”
The word landed flat and final.
His gaze sharpened on my face.
“I’m here to stop you from doing it twice.”
For a second, all I could hear was the hum of the fans and the soft drip of water somewhere in the green.
“Then what do you think I’m looking for, Heaton?”
His eyes dropped to my mouth for the briefest second, then came back to mine.
“Trouble.”
“That’s all?”
“For now.”
I folded my arms. “This is a school. Not your kingdom.”
“The school isn’t.”
He didn’t look away.
“But Winter Quarters is.”
Something in the way he said it made my stomach tighten.
“That’s funny,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Because word around school is that you’re just a transfer from Scofield. That’s the next town over. A little far to commute for someone so . . . territorial.”
Heaton stilled.
The pen he had been twirling stopped mid-rotation, pinned beneath his thumb.
“You’ve been asking about me, October?”
He didn’t look away, but the silver in his eyes flashed—a sudden lightning strike of genuine surprise.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, though heat was already prickling at my neck. “I wanted to know who was tied to half my grade.”
A slow, dangerous curve tugged at the corner of his mouth.
The first real smile I had seen.
“That’s a tidy bit of logic,” he said. “One problem, though.”
“What’s that?”
“The timing.”
He swayed into my space, voice a low vibration against my ear.
“Did you go looking before or after second period?”
Heat flared in my cheeks, sharp and traitorous.
He didn’t pull back.
He watched me scramble for a defense I no longer had.
“Scofield is a courtesy,” he said. “A clean answer for people who need one.”
He leaned closer.
“If you were smart enough to go looking, be smart enough to recognize a dead end when you hit one.”
Before I could come up with something sharp enough to throw back, two brisk claps split the air.
“Alright, class—time to meet your babies for the semester!”
Mrs. Ellwood’s voice crashed through the moment. Chairs scraped. Trays shifted. Clay pots and seed packets started moving down the rows. The warm, damp smell of potting soil rose between us.
I dragged a worksheet toward me, the paper sliding over the stone table like a shield.
“Measure, water, and serenade,” Mrs. Ellwood chirped. “A little Mozart never hurt a seedling, and it certainly won’t hurt you.”
The class laughed.
Heaton didn’t.
“Listen carefully,” he said.
His voice was quiet enough that I had to lean in to hear it.
“Winter Quarters isn’t empty. It isn’t abandoned. And it isn’t safe.”
He nudged the planter toward me with two fingers, as if the conversation and the assignment were the same problem.
“If you go there without me—”
“Without you?” I cut in. “I told you. I don’t even know—”
His eyes flashed.
“You know enough.”
The words came rougher now, edged.
“You overheard something you weren’t meant to. And you need to stay away. That isn’t a suggestion.”
I pressed the pencil to the worksheet hard enough to score the paper.
“Good to know.”
His gaze dropped to the dent I was carving into the page.
“Why is Harvey here?”
I didn’t answer.
“An October doesn’t come back to Mapleton for the scenery.”
Something in me went still.
“Tell me,” he said. “Why now?”
I met his gaze and forced my expression flat, even with my pulse climbing under my skin.
“We’re not staying,” I said. “We never do. Mapleton was supposed to be a pit stop. A place to regroup before he moved us somewhere else.”
My thumb smoothed the edge of the planter tray.
“My dad treats geography like a checklist. I never know when he’s reaching for the next box.”
That landed. I saw it in the way his hand tightened around the water pitcher before he loosened his grip. For the first time since he had sat down, he looked less certain of what I was.
“ . . . So, you really don’t believe any of it.”
“In ghosts? Haunted towns? Whispers in the dark?” I gave a small, dry laugh. “No. I believe in things I can measure. I don’t believe in things that go bump in the night because someone forgot to oil a hinge.”
He studied me for a long moment, eyes traveling over my face as if the answer had been written there and I was the only one who couldn’t read it.
“That’s convenient.”
“It’s called critical thinking,” I countered. “You should try it sometime.”
“Oh, I’m thinking critically.”
He looked down at the soil between us and dragged one finger through it in a slow line.
“But it’s an interesting defense mechanism.”
A draft skimmed across the table, pulling moisture from the air.
“Most people spend their lives trying to put down roots. You use that critical thinking of yours like a paddle, just trying to keep your head above water.”
The observation glued me to the seat.
“It’s not clarity, October. It’s called drowning.”
I looked toward the greenhouse glass, where the world outside felt blurry and unreachable.
“Well, at least here people notice when you’re gone,” I whispered.
“Since when is being noticed the same as being seen?”
My pencil started tapping against the stone tabletop before I realized I was doing it.
His hand came down lightly on the eraser, stopping the rhythm.
He didn’t touch my skin. The cold from him poured through the space anyway.
“You’re not as invisible as you think.”
Then he nodded toward the planter.
“Tell me you’re better at keeping things alive than your family is.”
“Plants?” I asked. “Sure. As long as they’re not as temperamental as the locals.”
“Good.”
His eyes held mine.
“Try applying that survival instinct to yourself.”
I tried for lightness and missed by a mile.
“I’m not exactly out here courting death, Heaton.”
He brushed his thumb over the scar on his knuckle and let out a breath that might have been a laugh.
“You could’ve fooled me.”