“If I tell you, you have to swear to keep your mouth shut.”
“Why?”
“Because, unlike you,” he said, loftily, “I don’t kiss and make sure the whole school knows about it.”
Half curious and half annoyed, I said, “Who were you with, jackass?”
He turned away from me, with a smug little smile on his mouth. “Colin.”
“Colin? I didn’t think he liked guys.”
Alexander’s smile broadened just enough to show his sharp canine teeth. “Neither did he.”
I laughed, grudgingly, which would have seemed impossible two minutes before. “Call up the right master constable—we have here recovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth!”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Fucksake,” I said, “she started it.”
“Obviously. No offense, Oliver, but starting things isn’t exactly your MO.”
I shook my head, my amusement dampened by the lingering bitterness of my conversation with Meredith. “I am so stupid.”
Alexander: “If it makes you feel any better, I’d have done exactly the same thing.”
Me: “What are you?”
Alexander: “Sexually amphibious.”
Me: “That’s the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Alexander: “You should try it.”
Me: “I’ve had enough sexual misadventures for one year, thanks.”
I sighed and looked down at my own reflection on the surface of the water. My face seemed somehow unfamiliar, and I squinted, trying to work out what was different. The realization hit me like a blow to the stomach: with my dark hair a little wilder than usual and my blue eyes hollowed out by the weak starlight, I almost resembled Richard. For one sickening moment he stared back at me from the bottom of the lake. I looked up sharply.
“You okay?” Alexander asked. “For a second there it looked like you were going to throw yourself in.”
“Oh. No.”
“Good. Don’t.” He climbed to his feet. “C’mon. It’s fucking freezing and I’m not leaving you out here alone.”
“All right.” I stood, brushing little bits of ash out of my lap.
Alexander buried his hands deep in his pockets, searching the darkness that shrouded the opposite shore. “I was on my way back from Colin’s room,” he said, and it seemed random until he added, “when I found him. Wandered down here for a smoke and … there he was. I didn’t even think to check if he was alive, he seemed so totally dead. Must not have heard me.”
I didn’t know why he was telling me. Perhaps he relived that terrible moment of discovery every morning, the same way I felt my stomach drop and found myself neck-deep in memory almost every time I closed my eyes.
“Know what’s weird, though?” he said.
“What?”
“There was blood in the water, but not on the dock.”
I glanced down at my feet. The wood was clean and dry, bleached like bone by years of wind and sun and water. Not a speck of red. Not a stainèd spot.
“So?”
“So his face was smashed in. If he hit his head and fell in the water … what the hell did he hit?”
The stub of our spliff smoldered on the very edge of the dock. Alexander nudged it off with the toe of his shoe. Ripples moved outward from the point of impact, warping the reflection of the sky so the stars wobbled and winked in and out of existence.
“I keep thinking of the bird.” I didn’t even want to say it. It was a tic, a compulsion, as though I might get the image out of my head if I got the words out of my mouth.
He looked sideways at me, completely nonplussed. “What bird?”
“From Hamlet. That’s what he reminded me of.”
“Oh,” he said. “Not sure I can see him as a sparrow. Too … delicate.”
“So what sort of bird would he be?”
“Dunno. The sort that smacked into a window trying to have a go at its own reflection.”
It was my turn to look at him strangely, but as soon as our eyes met, I wanted to laugh. I was horrified until I realized he was fighting it, too.
“Oh my God,” I said, shaking my head. Alexander let the breath he was holding burst out, chuckled softly. “When did we become such terrible people?”
“Maybe we’ve always been terrible.” He shrugged and watched the white cloud of his laughter shimmer and fade. His good humor seemed to vanish with it, and when he spoke again his voice was brittle. “Or maybe we learned from Richard,” he said.
That scared me more than Colborne did.
SCENE 13
A week later, we arrived in the refectory for breakfast and found it humming with holiday excitement. At every table people were tearing invitations open and chattering about the Christmas masque—which was to go forward as usual, in defiance of recent events. The commotion was surprisingly refreshing after weeks of bowed heads and stiff, unsmiling faces.
“Who wants to gather the mail?” Alexander asked, digging into a pile of hash browns with characteristic relish. (Filippa had bullied him out of bed for breakfast, insisting that if he skipped any more meals he’d simply vanish into thin air.)
“Why bother?” I asked. “We know what it says.”
Filippa blew steam off her coffee and said, “You don’t think it might be a little different this year?”
“I don’t know. Sort of seems like they’re trying to get back to normal.”
“And thank God,” Alexander said. “I’m sick of being stared at.”
“It could be worse.” Wren pushed eggs around on her plate, not eating. She looked thin and wan, as if she hadn’t eaten anything for days. “People keep looking around me and through me like I don’t exist.”
We sat in tongue-tied silence—avoiding one another’s eyes and Richard’s empty chair—while the other students continued to jabber at one another about the masque, what they’d wear, and how spectacular the ballroom would be. The spell of isolation broke when Colin appeared at the edge of our table, one hand alighting (unnoticed by everyone but me) on the back of Alexander’s chair.