The Candidates (10 page)

“You ready to run?” Esther asked. She leaned forward and rested her hands on one knee and stretched her calf. “I’m going to do a whole mile today. Seriously.”

I sighed. “Any chance I can skip?”

I’d burned up my hour of free time studying with Jack, and in that time the gray clouds that had covered the sky when I came over from the Main Hall had opened up, and buckets of rain were now dropping from the sky. Besides, Allie ran with the cross-country team, and I wasn’t sure I could look her in the face after what I’d heard.

Hennie’s eyes got wide. “Are you kidding? You’d be in so much trouble. Mr. Yerkinly said you can’t skip unless you’re in the nurse’s office puking. And even then he wants you to run when you’re finished.”

“I should go,” Jack said.

“No, no,” Esther said. “We shouldn’t have interrupted.” She gave me a huge fake wink. “Dancia, if you’re not feeling well, you shouldn’t run.”

“No, you’re right,” I said. I closed my book and stood. “I can’t skip practice.”

“I should get back to the room anyway,” Jack replied. “Yashir wanted to sketch my tattoo for some project.”

“Yashir?” Hennie repeated, failing to sound casual.

“Maybe we’ll stop by later,” I suggested. I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before to try to get Hennie and Yashir together through Jack. I guess because Jack and Yashir were barely ever in the same room, except after lights-out.

Jack nodded. “Sure. Stop by.” He sauntered off, books under his arm.

“He seems nicer today than usual,” Esther observed.

“He is nice,” I said. “Well, maybe not exactly
nice
, but he’s a good person.”

Hennie studied the empty doorway he had just walked through. “There’s something sad about him,” she observed. “I bet he’s relieved to have a friend like you, Dancia.”

“How do you know that?” I asked in surprise.

“Hennie can always tell that sort of thing about people,” Esther said. “She’s practically a mind reader.”

Hennie flushed. “I just get a feeling sometimes when I talk to someone. Like they’re speaking with a second voice. I can hear the things they want to say but can’t. But it doesn’t always happen. And I’m not always right. My mom says I’m just good at reading people’s faces. She says my dad’s the same way, and that’s what makes him a good negotiator.”

This revelation shouldn’t have surprised me. I had already sensed that Hennie understood me far better than I would have liked. But suddenly it raised a strange and frightening new suspicion.

“Esther, you’re into acting, right?” I asked. “There isn’t anything weird about that, is there? Nothing unusual, no strange coincidences after you act out a scene?”

Esther looked at me as if I were losing my mind. “Weird about acting?” she asked. “I don’t think so. I mean, sometimes when I impersonate someone, I actually feel like I’m getting inside of them. Like, the other day I did Mr. Yerkinly, and I swear, my pants got looser.” She giggled. “I guess that’s weird good, though. Not weird bad.”

I had to close my eyes because a wave of dizziness passed over me. For the first time I wondered if maybe I’d been thinking about Delcroix all wrong. I’d been assuming everyone else at the school was different from me because I was the one without a talent. But I had a talent, didn’t I? I hid it, suppressed it, and tried to ignore it, hoping it would go away. But it was still there, inside of me. I had a talent to make things happen. Strange, unbelievable things. It wasn’t a talent for math or science; it was a different sort of talent.

And it suddenly occurred to me: what if everyone else at Delcroix had a talent like that too?

WHEN I
got to practice, I avoided looking at Allie, but she made a point of coming over and asking if we could run together. Hennie and Esther usually ended up jogging and walking for half the workout, so I rarely stayed with them, but Allie and I had never run together. I said okay—what else could I do? Luckily, we were doing a speed workout, and running sprints had us both panting so hard we could barely talk. We were a good match, though, and if I didn’t hear her laughter at Catherine’s horrible words ringing in my ears, I would have enjoyed it.

Or I should say, I would have enjoyed it if I hadn’t been gnawing on my new fear, like Mrs. Burker’s dog on one of Grandma’s soup bones. Eventually I convinced myself I must have been wrong. After all, if other people at Delcroix had talents like mine, surely someone would have figured it out by now. It wasn’t like they could cover up something like that. Not these days. It would be on the Internet before you knew it. The kids would brag about it, and the parents would try to make money off it somehow. That’s just how things worked.

But even after I dismissed the idea as silly, the unease and fear lingered, like a cold stone in the pit of my stomach, and I kept looking around me at all the other students, wondering what their secret powers might be.

After practice I hit the showers and then collected my books and went to the library, skipping dinner altogether. The Delcroix library was pretty much like my middle school library, except three times as big, and instead of a grumpy part-time volunteer, there was a very helpful librarian.

In the center of the room there were two rows of long tables, and around them, individual desk cubicles. If you wanted to do serious studying, you tried to get a cube. The long tables were good for working in groups, or screwing around when you were supposed to be studying.

I couldn’t deal with the possibility that I’d have to see Catherine or any of the other girls from pottery at dinner, so I took a cube and pulled out my algebra.

Study hours had begun, and the library had filled in around me, by the time I closed my math book and pulled out my English. A shadow fell over my cube as I started turning the pages of a story that I didn’t even have to read until next week. I looked up, expecting to see Catherine scowling at me, or even Jack.

It was Cam.

I straightened in my chair. “Hey, how are you?” I said casually. Catherine might think I was as stupid as a fifth grader, but for once I was going to act like I was in high school.

“How are
you
?” he asked. A little wrinkle formed across his forehead. “Trevor and I looked for you at dinner. Is everything okay?”

I squirmed with pleasure at the thought of him looking for me. “Yeah, I just wasn’t hungry tonight.”

He grabbed a chair from the long table nearby and sat down next to me. “Not hungry? I can’t believe that. How are you going to keep up your strength for practice tomorrow if you don’t eat?”

I shrugged. “I’ll be okay. I had a lot of studying to do.”

Cam shook his head, sending his hair into his eyes. He leaned forward. “Are you done now?”

My heart fluttered when he got close enough for his shirt to brush against my arm, but I shook off the surge of excitement. I’d been excited before by Cam seeming to want to get close to me. I should have known by now not to take it too seriously. “Just about. Why?”

He stood up and indicated with his head toward the back door of the library. “You want to find something to eat?”

I narrowed my gaze. “It’s study hours, Cam. Besides, the kitchen is closed.”

Cam held out his hand. “Come with me.”

We made our way out of the library, my hand tucked inside Cam’s. I ran through a hundred different reasons why he might be holding my hand, none of which involved his everlasting love and devotion. He could have felt sorry for me. I could have looked so pathetic, as I sat there in the library all by myself, that he felt compelled to intervene. He could have somehow found out what Catherine had said. This seemed far-fetched, but then again, he was holding my hand, so clearly miracles were possible. He could have been trying to make some other girl jealous. This seemed similarly farfetched, because I had a feeling Cam could get any girl he wanted. But still, it was possible.

He could also be the sweetest guy in the world, and he thought I needed something to eat and was just holding my hand to be nice.

Unfortunately, this very simple explanation was likely the truth.

He led me through a corridor on the first floor and around the back of the cafeteria. We stopped at a big steel door with a window on the top that looked into what I assumed was the kitchen. Then, to my utter dismay, he let go of me and punched a code into the keypad.

I stepped back, hesitant, as he pulled the door open. “Won’t they catch us?” I asked.

“It’s okay, I have special permission,” Cam said, “because I work for Mr. Judan.”

I nodded. “Right. Of course.” Cam wouldn’t have done anything that was against the rules. He was practically a teacher. What was I thinking?

He gave me an encouraging smile. “That’s good, that you’re worried about it. They are really serious here about the rules. But you don’t have to worry about it when you’re with me.”

Cam hit a switch just inside the door, and the room filled with light. There was a rectangular table, a stainless-steel freezer, and two standing refrigerators. A row of sinks stood at the far end of the room, next to a huge stove with eight burners.

Cam opened the fridge and grabbed a carton of eggs. Then he reached under the counter and pulled out a large bowl.

“You like eggs?” he asked.

As if I would have said no. “Are you sure this is okay?”

He waved off my concern. “No problem. As long as I clean up after myself, they’re cool with it.” He cracked three eggs into the bowl and pulled a gallon of milk from the fridge and added a splash. He pulled out a fork from a drawer behind him, and mixed the whole thing.

“You do this sort of thing often?”

“Not during the school year. But I lived here over part of the summer, and they didn’t have a chef then. I got to know the kitchen pretty well.”

“Can I help?” I asked.

“Sure. There’s bread in the pantry to the left. Can you grab a few pieces and throw them into the toaster?”

I nodded. When the bread was toasting and the eggs were in a pan, I shook my head. “I can’t believe you’re cooking for me. I didn’t know guys cooked.”

He scrambled the eggs perfectly, leaving not a trace of the brown stuff on the bottom, which Grandma always served. “My dad wasn’t around much in the evenings. I had to learn to cook or I would have starved.”

“He left you by yourself?” I said. “When you were in middle school?”

Cam buttered the toast and then handed me the pan. He flashed a smile. “Sorry, no plates back here. They keep those in the other room. Besides, it’s less to clean. Do you mind?”

I shook my head and set the pan down on the counter in front of me. The smell of the warm toast and eggs was so good, my mouth watered. I dug in, forgetting I was supposed to be pretending I wasn’t hungry.

“Anyway, to answer your question,” Cam continued, “he didn’t have a choice. My folks split when I was little; my mom moved to Florida, got remarried, and had other kids. We never had any other family in Seattle, and my dad never made enough money to send me to any after-school programs. We lived in an apartment building, so there were always people around if I had an emergency. It was okay.

But I got tired of eating cereal and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for dinner.”

Somehow I’d forgotten that Cam was on scholarship at Delcroix, like me. “I had the opposite experience,” I said. “Grandma was always home. It drove me crazy. I used to dream about having the house to myself, just for an afternoon. Just so I could prove that I could handle it.”

“Everyone wants what they don’t have, right?” Cam said.

“I guess.”

I slowed down my eating, realizing I had to prolong this moment as much as I could, because Cam and I were actually hanging out together, just the two of us, and who knew if this time would ever come around again.

“Coach Yerkinly says you’re doing great on the cross-country team.”

“The first meet pretty much sucked,” I admitted. “I had no idea that hill at the end would be so hard. I had nothing left for the finish. I practically had to walk it.”

“My freshman year on the soccer team was a disaster. I don’t think I scored a single goal,” he said. “But I got better. It just took some time. Have you run with Anna? I bet she’d take you out sometime and give you pointers. If you wanted a little extra coaching, I mean.”

Anna was the captain of the girls’ team. She had long brown hair and huge eyes surrounded by thick lashes. Her hairline came to a little point in the front, so her face was shaped like a heart. I knew Cam and Anna were friends, but I tried not to think about it. She was gorgeous, super fast, and ate lunch every day with Cam. In short, she was everything I aspired to be.

“That would be great.” I bit my lip. I was dying to ask him why he’d asked the coach about me, but I didn’t. I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth. I guess I didn’t want him to say that Mr. Judan had asked him, for some recruiting thing, so he’d had to find out. I wanted to believe that he liked me.

We stayed in the kitchen for about an hour, just talking. Cam decided my eggs looked so good, he had to have some too, so he made himself a meal as well. Then we stood by the counter, drinking glasses of milk and talking about running, our friends at Delcroix, and how we liked our classes. I almost told him what had happened that afternoon with Catherine, but I didn’t. I just said that I didn’t love my roommate, and he nodded. He said he hadn’t gotten along with his freshman roommate either.

I wasn’t sure, but I had the feeling when he said it, he knew what a jerk Catherine was, and he was telling me that he sympathized with me and what I was going through.

He didn’t hold my hand again, but he did touch me on the shoulder as we walked back to the Res in the dark, and I had a moment of panic as the thought occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, he would actually try to kiss me.

When we got to the door we stopped and faced each other. My breath caught in my chest, and my vision blurred a little, even as I fought to remain calm.

He’s not going to kiss you, I told myself sternly. Stop getting so excited. It’s not going to happen.

After an interminable, painful pause, Cam said quietly, “I’m sure it’s hard sometimes, but I’m looking out for you. You know that, right?”

I didn’t, or hadn’t. I couldn’t speak or even believe what I’d heard. But I nodded, dumbstruck.

“Good. I want you to tell me if there’s ever anything that’s bothering you. I’m here for you, Dancia. I don’t want you to forget that.”

I stood there for another moment, barely breathing, before I realized that I was supposed to acknowledge what he’d said. “Um … that’s really … nice of you. Thanks. And thanks again for the eggs.”

Cursing myself for not being able to think of anything even slightly more interesting to say, I waved good-bye and ran up the stairs to my room. Catherine, who was leaning over her calculus book and frowning at a page of symbols and numbers, sniffed when I walked in.

“You missed dinner,” she said. “And I found some of your clothes on my side of the closet. I put them over there to get them out of my way.” She pointed to a clump of fabric she had wadded into a ball in the corner of the room, under my desk. “Don’t let it happen again.”

At that moment I knew exactly how Jack felt about having a roommate.

But it didn’t matter. I was glowing. Catherine and all her mean, nasty words didn’t matter.

Cam and I had a connection, a real connection. He was looking out for me. I didn’t know why, and I hardly dared to hope for what it might mean. But there it was. Amazing.

Who cared about old Catherine Arkane anyway?