‘Into what?’ Allie was perplexed. ‘I’m not in anything.’
‘You’re in a muddle,’ Jo said, and her familiar cut-glass accent made Allie smile. ‘You don’t know what you want.’
Allie flinched. That was what Sylvain had said to her before she left Cimmeria.
Jo wasn’t finished yet. ‘You have to choose the one you love.’
‘I know that.’ Frustration made Allie’s voice sharp.
Jo’s eyebrows went up and Allie raised her hands in an apologetic gesture.
‘Soz, Jo. It’s just … Let me try and explain.’
But how could she explain what she didn’t understand? That she cared for two boys and didn’t want to hurt either of them. That her relationships with both of them were loaded with the baggage of past mistakes.
That when your own family didn’t seem to love you it was hard to love anyone else.
‘I guess … I wouldn’t recognise true love if it walked up to me on the street and bit me on the leg. So how can I say I’m in love with Sylvain? Or I’m in love with Carter? I love them both. But I don’t know what “in love” even is.’
Jo reached over and took her hand. Her fingers felt like nothing against Allie’s skin. As insubstantial as a cloud.
‘I can only tell you what I know,’ Jo said. ‘Love is I care about you. I trust you. I understand you. I want you near me. In love …’ Jo looked wistful, her gaze fixed on some point far away, just beneath the red sky. ‘In love is: I would give up everything. Even myself. You, I can’t live without.’ She turned her wide blue eyes back to Allie; they were filled with tears that glistened like stars. ‘Do you understand?’
The bedroom door flew open with a crash, flooding the room with light.
Startled, Allie scrambled back in bed, arms in front of her torso protectively.
Where am I?
‘It’s true. You’re really back.’ Zoe’s flat, familiar voice steadied her.
Squinting into the glare, she could see the girl’s small frame hovering in the doorway like a shadow.
Her gaze skittered around the room.
Desk, bookcase, whitewashed floor … Cimmeria. My bedroom. Home.
It all came to her in a rush. Zoe was right. She really was here.
‘Hi, Zoe,’ she said, her voice hoarse with exhaustion. ‘Long time no see.’
It had been after four in the morning when they’d finally reached the school. Allie had fallen asleep in the car, her head against Rachel’s shoulder. Sylvain woke them both when the car stopped at the end of the drive.
Everything had felt dreamlike. The damp and chilly English night. The Victorian, gothic school building towering over them. It was all darker than she’d remembered. More intimidating.
Groggy, she’d blinked up at the school, wondering why no lights were on at all. No teachers came out to greet them.
They’d stumbled up the steps to the front door, but, before they could open the door, a guard had opened it from inside.
Where did he come from? Allie had wondered as the black-clad man stood back to let them pass.
They’d parted at the grand staircase, Sylvain heading to the boys’ dorm, she and Rachel to the girls’ rooms.
It was so quiet every footstep seemed to echo.
Even though it was the middle of the night, Allie couldn’t help but feel disappointed that Isabelle le Fanult, Cimmeria’s headmistress, hadn’t come to greet them after so long away.
But when she’d walked into her old bedroom she found that someone had made up the bed with crisp, fresh sheets and turned back the duvet. A set of pyjamas with the Cimmeria crest had been left on the pillow. The desk lamp cast a warm glow over it all.
It was all she’d had time to notice before weariness took over. Stripping off her travel clothes, more appropriate to a warm night in the south of France than a cool English summer, she’d fallen into bed.
‘You must have got back late,’ Zoe said now. ‘Isabelle told me to let you sleep but I had to see if it was true.’ She looked to one side as if trying to remember something she was supposed to say. Then it came to her. ‘Sorry.’
Zoe’s odd verbal cadence and her lack of social skills were so familiar Allie felt a rush of affection for her as warm as sunlight.
‘I don’t want to sleep,’ she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes. ‘What time is it?’
‘Nine,’ Zoe said. ‘It’s Saturday so there are no classes. You missed breakfast. There’s a meeting. Isabelle says you don’t have to be there.’ She paused blinking at Allie. ‘You should be there.’
Nine o’clock. She’d only slept a few hours. But she was wide awake now.
‘I have to get cleaned up,’ she said. ‘See you downstairs in ten minutes?’
‘Hurry,’ Zoe suggested, before flitting away like a bird.
Night School: Resistance (Night School 4)
C.J. Daugherty's books
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