“Shit,” I muttered. Chills ran down my neck. I reached down and slid the cards back into the deck, passing it off as an accident. I was too tired to be doing this.
But when I slid into bed and turned off the light, my cards tucked beneath my pillow, all I could see behind my closed eyes were those two cards. The inverted World: a woman twined in fabric, falling upside down. The Tower: a great obelisk destroyed by lightning, figures leaping from its heights. Apart, they were important, almost cosmic—great shifts, catastrophic turns of events. Together, in that combination, they felt like a curse.
The world on fire. The world crumbling like the tower. Everything falling like feathers in the snow, like blood on the tiles.
The gods walk, something inside me whispered. And hell if it didn’t sound like Brad.
Elisa was, unsurprisingly, up before me. She plodded silently to the bathroom, but that slight rustle of covers was enough to wake me. I blinked and rolled over, glaring at the alarm clock on her shelf. Six thirty. I closed my eyes. I really, really didn’t want to be awake. I didn’t want to face whatever was going to happen today. Surely, we’d have some sort of assembly. Classes would be canceled, and I hated to admit that that would be one of the worst parts of all this—work always helped me get through things. If we just had a day to sit around and think about what happened, I’d go insane.
Ethan found me at breakfast. I was sitting at the far end of the cafeteria, by the windows overlooking the woods and the iced-over lake. The mood of the room was as gray and heavy as the world outside. No one seemed to be talking, and if they were, it was in muted tones. He saw me, saw the look on my face, and immediately slipped into a side of himself I saw only in dire circumstances.
“How are you?” he asked, setting his tray beside mine. There was only a banana and half-filled bowl of oatmeal. Looked like I wasn’t the only one without an appetite.
“I . . .” I was about to lie, to say I was okay. But Ethan’s eyes were on mine and right then, I didn’t want to pretend anymore. Not with him. I’d been pretending with Elisa all morning. “I’m feeling pretty fucked up.”
He gave me a half grin, the sad, consoling sort, and put a hand on my arm.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
He nodded like he understood. And maybe he did understand, at least partly. He’d once admitted it took him two years to come out to his parents. Some secrets were hard to hide, and even harder to share. His, at least, had nothing to do with blood or ex-boyfriends.
“Well, I’m here when you’re ready,” he said, breaking me from my thoughts of the past. Tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. I knew he meant it. I just didn’t know if he’d still mean it if I told him the truth.
We ate our breakfast in silence, the cafeteria’s mood getting both of us down. Elisa sat beside us a while later. She didn’t even bother with the facade of food: She had a mug of coffee and a handful of grapes. I couldn’t blame her for losing her usually voracious appetite.
“We’re having an assembly at nine,” she said. “Maria told me when I left.”
Ethan and I both sighed, staring down at our plates. There really wasn’t anything to say to that. Even when Oliver—usually the bright spot in any conversation—came over and sat down, the mood didn’t shift from morose. It felt wrong to even try to be cheery. Mandy had killed herself, and none of us had done anything to prevent it. We hadn’t even known there was a problem. You knew something would happen, whispered Brad. But you were too scared to do anything about it. I shook my head and shoved down his voice and focused on getting what little food I had down. I felt like I was floating, not really there. And everyone else in the cafeteria had the same dissociated air. No laughter, no loud chatter. Everyone moved and spoke like they were in a daydream, one they were terrified of rupturing. Some small part of me hoped I’d wake up to a morning that didn’t involve old nightmares and a dead classmate. Brad’s whispers told me that wouldn’t be the case.
Outside, it began to snow again.
“Do you guys want to go for a walk?” Elisa asked quietly, when it was clear everyone was done picking at their breakfast.