“Do you want to leave her bag here? I could lock it up with my equipment.”
I clutch it to my body. I’ve had it with me all morning, and it’s like I can’t get enough of the smell of the canvas and the hand lotion inside. It’s like holding a piece of my mother.
I shake my head. “No.” My voice is husky. “Thanks. At lunch, maybe?”
He winces. “Faculty meeting. I’m free after the final bell. Do you want to do it then?”
All day. I have to wait all day. I wasn’t prepared for this.
My subconscious whispers that I’ve waited four months; another six hours shouldn’t make a difference. My head bobs up and down.
“But come in for a minute.” Mr. Gerardi flicks the lights. “I ran a few prints of that shot we want to use for the wrap. I wanted to show you.”
The print is on glossy, legal-sized paper. He’s cropped the original photograph for height so it would wrap around a yearbook well, but from what I can tell, he hasn’t done any other editing.
“I know you might want to do some touch-ups, enhance the sky a bit,” he says, “but honestly, I don’t think it needs much. I just needed a mock-up so we could get approval from the vice principal.”
I stare down at the photograph. He’s right—it doesn’t need much. The sky is a vivid blue, with sparse clouds. Sunlight beams in from the left. Declan and Rev are visible with enough detail to see the expressions on their faces, though their clothes are turned dark by the light behind them. On the opposite side, the cheerleaders are a bright contrast in red and white, hair and skirts flaring dramatically. It’s a great shot.
I want to feel pride, but compared with the horrifying shots Rowan, Brandon, and I were scanning through last night, this photograph is worthless.
Mr. Gerardi’s eyes search my face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I hand it back to him.
“You can keep that. I made a few.”
“Oh. Okay.” I don’t know if I want to, but I roll it into a tube and put it in the side pocket of my backpack. I’m so off balance today, waiting to see what happens when the world stops spinning so wildly.
A hand knocks on the door frame, and a girl I don’t know is standing there. She must be the other student he’s expecting. I duck out of the room.
As soon as I’m down the hallway a bit, I fish the phone out of my pocket again. The Dark’s name is still missing, and another email comes back unread. Why would he do this? What happened? What changed?
I go back and read through our stored chats.
I read them a second time.
I realize he never directly answered my question.
I need to find Declan Murphy.
We don’t have any classes together, so I don’t find him until lunch. He’s sitting at the back of the cafeteria at the exact same table where I found him yesterday, and Rev has a near-identical spread of plastic containers.
After yesterday, brazen Juliet is gone, and I hover by their table like a nervous groupie.
Rev glances my way first. Today’s sweatshirt is a very dark rust color, and the hood is larger, shadowing his face.
“Hey,” he says.
Declan barely spares me a glance. He stabs his fork into a piece of cucumber. “Want to scream at me some more?”
I swallow. I didn’t expect this kind of reaction. I don’t know why not—he’s right. I did go postal yesterday. For some reason I thought I’d walk up and he’d say, “Oh. Hey. You figured me out. Sorry I deleted my secret email account.”
Instead, he bites the cucumber off the fork and glares at me. “So far we’ve covered drunk and murderer. Any other accusations you want to throw my way?”
Rev glances across at him but doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell if they’re still fighting, or if the atmosphere is only tense because I’ve showed up.
The strap of my mother’s bag is thick and damp under my sweating fingers. “I didn’t call you a murderer.”
“Close enough.”
This isn’t going anything like what I expected. “Could you please stop being such a jerk and talk to me?”
“Why?” He stands up from the table and approaches me. “What do you want to talk about, Juliet?”
He looks so predatory. The moments of vulnerability I’ve glimpsed in the past are locked down, nowhere to be found. This is the Declan Murphy everyone sees.
“What do you want?” he says.
I want to know if you’re The Dark.
But I can’t say it. I don’t want to know, not right now. I can’t bare myself in front of this Declan, especially if I’m wrong.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly.
He leans in, his expression incredulous. “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.” I study him. His eyes are dark, like he didn’t sleep much last night, and his skin is rough with stubble. He never bothered to find a razor this morning. A small part of me wants to touch him, to put a hand against his cheek and feel his warmth—or share my own. I shift closer. “I’m sorry for what I said.”
His walls don’t crack. “What do you want from me?”
“What?”
“I said, what do you want from me? Your car runs. You don’t need me. What are you even doing here? Slumming it with the rejects?”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“I think it’s exactly what you’re doing.”
“Dec.” Rev’s quiet voice speaks from behind him. “Don’t take it out on her.”
Declan stares down at me, his breathing a little quick. I stare back at him. Despite all the anger, the aggression, electricity sparks between us. Once again, I wish so badly for him to be The Dark—but at the same time, the thought terrifies me. My hand almost aches to touch his, as if skin against skin will somehow solve the mystery.
“Here,” I say quietly. “I brought you something.”
He blinks. That throws him.
I pull the rolled photograph out of my backpack and hold it out.
He unrolls it, and blue sky on paper stretches between us. Declan is very still, his eyes on the photograph.
After a minute, he lets go, and it furls back into my hand. “If Rev wants it there, it’s fine.”