Chapter Three. When the Boy You Hate Comes to Live with You #2
I smile, letting relief drown out my anxiety.
Judging by the jovial scene, this could be good news packaged in metallic silver.
I’m far too much of a worrier, as Mom keeps reminding me.
Though no use wondering where I obtained that particular trait as she eyes the grass stains and dirt on my billowy white blouse.
I look half-run-over. The embarrassment rushes back.
A dragon hasn’t thrown me in a very long time.
And I need to prove my skills if I’m to continue to care for Hort.
“Good. James somehow persuaded you to get off that dragon. Come.” Dad waves toward the little love seat, the only chair left unoccupied.
No way am I sitting there next to James, squished together tight.
Plus, Mom would kill me for ruining the upholstery.
I can’t tell if the commotion of visitors devoured Dad’s awareness or if he’s just that used to me being a literal mess on two legs.
Though at our entrance, everyone stands anyway. Crisis averted.
“Sorry, I’m a little mud—”
Before my mom can agree and direct me to change, James’s mom hugs me tight, no consideration for her fluttering robin’s-egg blue skirts, silver threaded at every seam.
“You remember Farren, our daughter,” Dad says, unworried that I might have destroyed an article of clothing worth more than a custom dragon saddle. Mom looks ready to apologize for the brown stain, but Mrs. Murphy is so unbothered it becomes a game. Whoever points it out first loses.
“How could I ever forget the girl who saved my boy’s life.” She reaches for me again and squeezes.
Not to stereotype, but I always found Aine Murphy a bit cold, the picture of how the wealthy of Hardsill dress and look, with metal embedded in every fiber of their coordinated outfits and noses held just high enough to gaze down on everyone else.
But it seems when it comes to her son gratitude thaws her intensity.
This is another weird consequence of saving your rival’s life.
Gratefulness and warmth from the Murphys.
In doing my job as spotter, I’ve single-handedly hurled our family relationship from colleagues to … acquaintances.
Over James’s mother’s shoulder I catch his dad glowering, that same pained look of disdain James has inherited. Though while James’s face reads aloof, his dad’s reads cruel. James may annoy me, but his dad scares me.
Mrs. Murphy finally pulls away and cups my shoulders. “I know you and James will get along well,” she whispers. “This will be good. So good.”
“What…?” I don’t know what to ask first. What are you doing here seems a tad rude. And yet, I’m about to risk it when Dad continues.
“James Murphy is going to be our new intern.”
The sentence clangs, off-key and sending wild vibrations down my spine.
“Intern?” If there were any intern position, I should know about it, what with me being his daughter and the only “intern” we’ve ever had.
Unless he means James is taking the summer hand position?
We’ve hung up help wanted ads around town.
I even pinned the flyer to the communal school board because I had this silly dream that’s how I’d gain a best friend and real confidant.
It’s finally happening and in result I get …
a Murphy. I cut to James who’s watching me intently, awaiting a reaction.
This is why I’ll have to get used to talking to him.
Oh my god. Is this my fault? Did he only learn about the job because of my loneliness?
No, this can’t be happening. James couldn’t possibly want this.
He doesn’t need the paycheck. James’s fame as a rider is only escalating.
Plus, with each passing semester it looks more like James will win the one all-around scholarship position to Revers Academy, as Colm so rudely pointed out. So, how does this make sense for him?
Wait. Don’t think you can ever beat me in medical just by watching, that’s what I’d said to him.
And James had answered he knew. He knew!
In a few months the culmination of our rivalry for the Revers Academy scholarship ends.
Come early fall we will perform before the head crafting teacher, Mr. Moore, and other recruiters.
So, I know what this is—a ploy to finally win.
I don’t have many nightmares. This situation just catapulted into my darkest horrors.
“Yes, intern. We need the help.” Dad glances in the direction of the barn and then to the Murphys.
“I know James is looking forward to it.” James’s mother prods her son, wanting a response. Good luck with that. The first time I met James, we were twelve and a Sprinter broke their leg on his father’s dragon tracks and James stood stone-faced, watching. He’s at least part psychopath.
“We’re looking forward to it as well. We have a few breeds here that can be quite the handful.” Dad laughs in easygoing optimism. As if those dragons couldn’t kill an ignorant person.
“All copper, tin, and iron plated though,” James’s dad utters in disdain.
Everyone quiets. Though not wrong—we don’t have any upper-metaled dragons on the sanctuary—those words drip with condescension.
While most of the world is constructed in iron, tin, and copper, it’s only bronze and silver metals that have proven health benefits.
Simply put, why protect anything not worth their weight on the open market?
Maybe an even bigger question—why trust Hort’s care to us, and access to his silver, when we are but worthless copper-crafters who sacrifice our time to save insignificant dragons?
Tension crackles through the room. This is the main reason I despise the Murphys.
They always make sure we remember our status two stations below them.
Another piece slots into place. This wasn’t a choice.
This wasn’t an “oh we forgot to tell you, Farren.” I look back to the Murphys.
This was silver-crafters telling someone lower than them to do what they’re told.
The unsaid rings as if it were shouted. Be thankful we even work with you.
And for our own peace of mind, let our son onto your land every day so he can make sure you don’t do anything illegal, like bonding with our dragon, touching our silver, trying to climb to our level.
My blood boils. And for the millionth time I want to scream the truth.
“That’s right,” Mom inserts. “Only copper, tin, and iron. And yet still hunted down for mere sport and stripped of their metal.”
I whip my attention to Mom, shocked at her cutting tone. She notices me and wipes her hands with a loose cloth she always has hanging from her belt. I can tell she wants to throw it at me. Here the Murphys are insinuating we’re beneath them, and I’m covered in mud—playing into the part.
Damn it.
“I’d be happy to give you all a tour,” Dad says in perfect diffusion. “It’s been a while.”
Yeah, a while since Mr. Murphy and a horde of trainers and scalers traipsed through the fields, plotting out what each square foot was worth, what they were willing to offer. I still remember their faces falling one by one when my parents said no.
“Another time,” Mr. Murphy grumbles. Mom just insinuated his business is as bad as poaching, so yeah, I don’t see them wanting to stay for dinner. “If this is all settled, we should get going. Aine.” He pulls his wife toward the door. “James, come get your bags.”
I watch them leave, my head bloating like it’s being airlifted. It’s done and decided? Bags? I spin, taking the moment without the Murphys’ direct presence to get to the bottom of this. “Please tell me this is a joke?”
Dad’s cheery demeanor deflates. “We always knew taking in Hort meant someone from the Murphy tracks would check in on us. The Murphys think it makes more sense to have James stay with us while he’s healing. So, they asked that James intern all summer.”
“And by asked, you mean Aine mentioned the idea last week and then just showed up unannounced,” Mom says, not exactly bitter. Mom doesn’t do bitter, as she likes to remind me. But this has to be a close relative because that tone was at the very least acidic.
I was right. They forced us into this. But as my dad’s words echo in my head, I snag on another phrase.
“Stay with us?” I sputter. That wasn’t in the ad’s job description. “Where exactly will he be staying?”
While we’ve been talking, we’ve been making our way outside to say goodbye to the Murphys. As we spill onto the porch Dad jerks a thumb at the barn. “He’s going to live in the loft.”
Time liquefies. All normalcy deteriorates.
Live. In. The. Loft. At each word I pinch my arm. Bad news, I’m very much awake.
The loft is my favorite place, the gorgeous rustic apartment-like rooms atop the barn Jeffrey lives in, the room I can see from here.
So close. So very close. Which means in some capacity I have to live with James Murphy.
Not for days or weeks either, but months.
Three months. This is worst-case-scenario bad.
Out of the corner of my eye, James awkwardly and one-handedly lugs a warm brown trunk out of the back of the metallic silver car.
No one would put in this much effort for a prank.
And James Murphy is not the joking type.
His smiles only know arrogance. I can’t even imagine his laugh because after five years of knowing him, I’ve never heard it.
He’s truly chosen to give up his summer, to live here, in order to beat me. My dislike escalates into hatred.
“What about Jeffrey?” I wave a hand forcefully enough to fling some mud toward the man himself, who has been way too quiet about being evicted. “You’re casting him out after what, twelve years?”
Jeffrey, the best dragon trainer a girl could ask for, laughs, some secret embedded in the sound. “I’m not being cast out, Farren.” His eyes twinkle as he continues with, “Shelly said yes.”
My mind stills. “You mean—?”
“We’re getting married. Moving in together up the road into Mr. Flynn’s old place.”