Every Friday, Mr. Jenkins passed out a problem set to a chorus of pre-planned moaning. He challenged us on purpose. The problem sets were always based on the material he’d gone over earlier in the week and usually it took the whole period to complete them. I’d forgotten to warn Lilah to bring her graphing calculator with her to class, but by the time I’d pulled out mine for us both to share, she’d already slid a piece of paper across the table. It was the problem set, completed with all of her work shown step by step.
“How’d you do it so fast?” Connor asked with wide eyes.
She bent down to retrieve a textbook from her backpack. “He posted the questions on the class website last night.”
“Sweet,” Connor said, grabbing his pencil so he could start copying down her answers without hesitation.
“You know we’re supposed to work on them together,” I said, daring a glance in her direction.
She was flipping through her physics book, turning to the section on electricity and magnetism that we weren’t due to start for another two weeks.
“Yeah, well, I’m not really a group project kind of girl, especially when I can solve them all on my own.”
I smirked and shook my head. “Almost all of them...”
Her pale eyes slid to me as she tried to gauge whether or not I was bluffing.
“You got number one wrong. It’s okay to ask for help—”
Her brows furrowed as she reached across the table and yanked the problem set out of Connor’s hand.
“Hey! I was copyi—er, reviewing that!”
“It’s not wrong,” she protested, scanning over her work.
“You forgot to count the energy lost to friction. It said we could neglect air resistance, not friction.”
She scanned the word problem, groaned, and then reached for her pencil so she could start erasing her work. Connor followed suit, and soon Lilah and I were working together to tackle the problems. I would read the problem, figure out which equation to use, and Lilah would confirm my guess or argue her point. Connor offered overenthusiastic encouragement and copied down whatever we wrote. Even without his help, we were the first group to finish.
Mr. Jenkins studied us over the rim of his glasses as we dropped the papers on his desk.
“Stay quiet while the other students finish,” he said before going back to grading.
Lilah returned to her textbook as soon as we reached our seats, but I was too anxious to keep working; there were only fifteen minutes until the weekend.
Apparently Connor felt the same way because he leaned forward and tried to get Lilah’s attention across the table.
“Psst, Lilah.”
She ignored him and flipped to the next page in her textbook.
“Lilah, I have two questions for you.”
She finally glanced up.
“What’s your favorite color?”
She smirked. “The color of avidly anticipating your second question.”
I laughed under my breath, but Connor pushed on full steam ahead.
“That’s not a color. Why did you leave Blackwater?”
Idiot. I kicked him under the table. He’d been begging me for details about Lilah all week. He’d felt like everyone was in on a secret but him. I would have told him had I known he’d try and go straight to the source. I turned to Lilah, expecting to find her completely shut down, but she shrugged off his question like it meant nothing at all.
“It’s a shame,” she said, tapping the physics textbook with her pencil. “A part of me hoped you would be better at asking questions than you are at answering them.”
The bell rang and before I could try to smooth over Connor’s mistake, Lilah stuffed her textbook into her bag and walked out without looking back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lilah
Connor had a lot to learn. He wanted to know the secret every student was whispering about in the hallways, but he wouldn’t be learning it from me. Secrets aren’t projected over loud speakers; they’re whispered in the hallways between classes like a commodity. A secret for a secret. Had he approached me in the hallway before class with a good trade, maybe I would have told him. I could have regaled him with the whole wretched tale, but I knew he didn’t have any good secrets. It’d be a waste of memories. He’d have to just ask someone else.
As soon as I walked out of physics, I headed for the closest exit and pulled my headphones out of my backpack.
“Lilah!”
Chase’s voice boomed over the chatter near the parking lot. Students were waiting for their rides to pick them up at the curb, but I cut through without stopping.
“Lilah!”