Gypsy (The Cavy Files Book 1) (17 page)

“Reaper, we’re friends. We lived together for the first sixteen years of our lives. I know you’re having a hard time, and I know you think it’s easier for me, but the attacks make it pretty clear that this isn’t easy for any of us. We need to stick together. Everyone misses you.”

The fight bleeds out of her and her shoulders slump, the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes smoothing out. Tears well in her eyes but she looks away, blowing out a breath that goes on forever. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to do this, and you make it look easy. Like you don’t even care that we’ve lost everything.”

“Please. There are mornings when I wake up missing the silence, the way the sunlight dripped through the oaks on the front drive. The way we couldn’t sleep because of Mole’s snoring from the next cabin.” I pull my cardigan sleeves over my fingers and cover her hand with mine. “But you don’t have to look at it in terms of loss. Look at what we’ve gained.”

She gives me a look. “So help me, if you say the awesome cool kids at Charleston Academy I’m going to pull your platelets out through your nose.”

Pleasant, and not an idle threat. We’d all learned not to get attached to any animals the Philosopher brought out to the plantation once they began testing Reaper’s limits.

I shake away the darker memories, the ones none of us should be sorry to leave in our rearview mirrors, then manage to smile as if her threat doesn’t scare me even a little. “No. I’m going to say something cheesy like a chance to know your biological family. To find out where you come from, to maybe figure out how to be something other than what you can do. That’s all that mattered to the people at Darley—our mutations. No one knows about them out here.”

Her fingers touch the tiny red speck on her neck. “Someone knows.”

The reminder shoves a shiver down my spine.
Someone knows.
The thought pushes more pressing issues to the forefront of my mind. “Speaking of changes, did Dane Kim show you around when you first got here?”

“The hot Korean guy? Yeah. Principal Jacobs had him walk me through my schedule, and he’s insisted on eating lunch with me a few times. Why?”

“What do you think of him? Aside from hot?” I don’t want to cloud her opinions with mine, and her first assessment of “hot”
suggests our impressions differ.

Although he is. Hot. Maybe it’s not a matter of opinion.

“I don’t know. I’m not really looking for a new friend, but I like him well enough. He’s not pushy and he never asks about Darley. Why?”

I pause, for some reason, instead of telling her he doesn’t have a number. Maybe because it kills me to admit to a failure.

She gives me a sly smile, more like the old her. “Maybe it’s because you’re all googly-eyed over that basketball player.”

“Who?”

“Oh, come on. The blond-haired, puppy-dog-eyed Boy Scout who came over to innocently check on you after your needle incident.”

“Jude?” My face feels hot, so I turn it into the brisk wind. “He’s friends with Maya.”

“Hmm.”

Our easy friendship pulls me into a comforting embrace. Even though she’s been awful, and even though she was quiet the last time we were in the Clubhouse, she listened. She knows the reason that Jude’s a problem for me: I touched him and saw him die.

She
doesn’t
know he’s going to die this year. Another thing I’m not ready to say.

Between the two, I can only bear hearing one aloud. “Dane touched me, and I didn’t see anything. No number at all.”

“What?” Her face turns white. “Before or after the attacks?”

“Before.”

It’s hard admitting that I’m even more
inconsequential than ever, at least when it comes to Dane.

“But you said when you touched Jude, you saw
more.
” I nod, and Reaper bites her lip until it goes as colorless as her face. “I haven’t noticed anything weird about Dane, but I’ll pay closer attention.”

“It’s probably a dumb thing to worry about with everything else going on.” I blow shaky nerves out through my nose. That my strange quirk doesn’t work on Dane isn’t as worrisome as the people lurking out there who might be like us but who definitely
know
about us.

It doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy his company or be his friend. Maybe it’s even more of a reason to continue spending time with him—no risk.

“You’re probably right. We’ve been in a pretty controlled environment all this time. It could be that people with complementary or opposite genetic material aren’t affected by us.”

Relief cools my overheated skin. “Yeah, I guessed the same thing. Listen, I’ve got to go. I agreed to tutor Jude in Latin and I was supposed to meet him ten minutes ago.” I pause, wishing again for a way to make Reaper more comfortable here. “We’re going to the basketball game tonight. Maya and Savannah and me. You should come.”

A massive gust bats dried leaves and bright-pink camellia petals across the uneven gray stones of the courtyard. They swirl in little tornadoes, catch in the sharp branches of the forsythia bushes that form an extra layer of privacy.

“I’ll think about it, Norah. Okay?”

The use of my proper name doesn’t escape me, but making a big deal out of it would be the surest way to make her retreat. “Let me know, Eve.”

She huffs, but we share a smile as I ease off the uncomfortable cold bench and head back into the school.

Being late might be rude, but it can’t be helped. Discovering who wants to prevent the Cavies from settling into our lives takes precedence over pretending everything’s fine, and making sure Reaper’s not about to lose her shit counts as part of that. Cavies first. Everyone else second.

The look on Jude’s face betrays nothing except delight at seeing me, and maybe that he’s not thrilled about being tutored in Latin.

“Hey,” he says as I approach, and the common area feels too warm.

“Hi. Sorry I’m late. I had to stop in the bathroom.”

“Long stop,” he comments with a grin, then squints at me. “Are you okay? You look a little off.”

“I’m fine. I just…” My mind spasms, upset at how easily he reads me, then stumbles trying to come up with a response. What bothers people? Normal people? “You’re going to think it’s silly.”

“Try me.” Concern soaks his dark gaze, locked on my face.

I force a hollow laugh, partially to help with my story and partially to erase the wrinkle of worry between his eyebrows. I hate that I put it there. “I thought I saw a ghost. In the bathroom mirror. Stupid.”

His cheeks stretch wider and his hair flops onto his forehead. “That’d be our Catherine, though I can’t say I’ve ever heard of her haunting the toilet. She usually sticks to the courtyard, where she died. Sometimes the library or the theatre.”

It shouldn’t surprise me that Charleston Academy—or CA, as everyone refers to it—has a resident spirit. Catherine’s existence lets me off the hook, so I send her a quick, silent thank-you as my adrenaline levels recede. “Well, when you gotta go you gotta go. Lucky me, on the same potty schedule with a ghost.”

“Potty? Do all you Darley Hall kids talk like you’re still in preschool?” His teasing tone softens the crack about Darley, one obviously not meant to be cruel.

Jude doesn’t seem to have a cruel bone in his entire body.

“Well, this is mixed company. I’m not sure about your vocabulary level, is all.”

“Is that right? If you’re interested in knowing more about me, all you have to do is ask.”

The shift in his tone, from playful to husky, strums my nerves, then engulfs them with heat. It gushes everywhere—my chest, down my abdomen, into my legs. My knees turn to goop. “I was just being a smart-ass, that’s all. It’s a problem.”

“I can see that,” he murmurs.

The rest of the common area is empty. The chairs are hard, and no amount of shifting makes them comfortable, which explains the students’ lack of interest. “Okay, so where do you want to start? Vocabulary, or maybe we could go over your last page of translation?”

He shrugs, closing off in the beat of a heart. There’s nothing to clue me in as to what he’s thinking, something I’m learning isn’t typical for Jude. Instead of telling me, he pulls two stapled pages from his backpack and slides them across the table before settling back in his chair.

Most people would pull out their phone or tablet, maybe read something, but it appears he’s going to sit and watch. I try to act as though his perusal doesn’t make my heart race to the point where reading Ovid feels nearly impossible. We’ve only got about a half hour, and it takes me twenty minutes to make it through a read that should have taken half that time.

He raises his eyebrows when I put the paper down, covered in red pen now. “Well? How dumb am I?”

A pattern stuck out to me about halfway through the page, and I’m sure of what I saw, but not sure whether or not bringing it up is appropriate. There’s no way to learn how to navigate normal friendships without trial and error, though, and I want to figure Jude out.

“You’re not dumb at all. In fact, the errors you made seem like they were on purpose. Wrong conjugations, but just by a single declension. Every time.”

The pause keeps expanding until it shoves us so far apart it’s as if our chairs have scooted to opposite sides of the room. Jude runs his fingers through his hair, avoiding my gaze, until he doesn’t. There’s anger when he looks at me, and frustration. Nothing that’s been there before today.

“You’re too smart for your own good, Norah.”

“You don’t have to tell me why you do it if you don’t want to, but don’t try to convince me it’s an accident.”

“Do you know why I’ve been hanging out with you?” His voice flutters toward detached, the question near his lips but not belonging to him.

As though he’s only considering laying claim to what he’s about to say.

My heart drops into my stomach and my skin goes cold. It would be best, maybe, to walk away before he says something I’m sure I don’t want to hear. But I don’t. “Why?”

His gaze burns into mine, lit with some kind of mysterious challenge. “Because my dad asked me to. So I could get information out of you about Darley.”

The soft words lodge in my throat and throb. Maybe I should have known all along that popular, handsome, top athletes don’t go for the freakish new girl, but as hard as my face begs to burn with embarrassment, it’s anger that bubbles past my lips. “So you’ve been spying on me? The concern and friendliness, it was all an act?”

Jude shrugs, and stuffs his papers back into his backpack as though he’s going to get up and leave me wondering what prompted this, and why he’d rather hurt my feelings than talk about Latin.

I swallow the fire, grit my teeth. “Why does your dad care so much about Darley, anyway?”

“He’s the reporter who exposed the place, and he claims to have seen things that haven’t been talked about on the television or in any of the public reports.” His gaze fuses with mine, still burning with smothered ire. “And he’s been to every local jail, trying to talk to the men arrested as your caretakers, but they’ve all disappeared.”

I cross my arms, trying not to let my dismay show. The Philosopher and Professor are gone, and the information dulls my response to Jude’s betrayal. Maybe
I
should be the one pretending to be friends with
him,
if his dad can find out stuff like that.

At the moment, spending time with him at all makes me feel gross.

“So, what are you saying? Your dad has some crazy ideas about what went on at Darley? Tell him to join the club, Jude, but you’re not going to uncover anything juicy from me. I’m just trying to fit in here.”

Tears sting my eyes. The sight of them turns his face pale, clenches his jaw as something close to shame floods his face, and the fight in his face slinks away.

“I know.” Jude runs a hand through his sandy hair, leaving it mussed. “God, Norah, I know you are. Please don’t cry. I don’t know why I said that, I mean… I would have been friends with you anyway, and I couldn’t care less whether we ever talk about Darley Hall at all.”

It’s hard to know what to say. He didn’t apologize for lying, and I don’t know that I would accept it, anyway. The last thing my life needs is one more person I can’t be sure of.

The longer I stay quiet, the redder his cheeks get, and when his maple eyes find the courage to meet my accusing stare, they’re brimming with desperation.

“I don’t want to be your friend because my father suggested it. I’ve been spending time with you because we get along, and I love making you smile because it’s not easy, and you’re interesting.” His eyes slide to my paper. “Because you actually care about my shitty Latin grade.”

Confusion wrinkles my face, which is good because what he said first makes it hard to concentrate. “Why
are
you fake-failing Latin?”

“That’s all you have to say, after I just tossed my heart on the table for you? Do you want to be friends with me, too, Norah Crespo?” He’s joking, but only on the surface.

The fact that he’s handing me the ability to hurt his feelings in return takes my breath away, and the hope in his eyes tries to pick at the resistance around my heart. And though my uncertainty doesn’t diminish, there’s no way to avoid the question.