George’s embarrassment still lingers, heating the air around us. It infuriates me that we’re both being batted back and forth between Eliza and Chase like pathetic little mice.
“Actually, Will prefers to pour cocktails while I teach him how to French . . .” I say. Chase’s mouth drops open. “Braid,” I add sweetly. I send Eliza a look that I hope says You do not scare me.
Chase lets out a short whistle. “This one’s got some moxie, doesn’t she?”
Eliza narrows her eyes and looks me up and down. As if she’s miscalculated and is now reevaluating me.
Chase’s hand drops a degree lower on my back.
“So, Aila,” Eliza says eventually, cocking her head, “there was no one else willing to take you in but the Clifftons?” Her voice takes on an exaggerated incredulity. She tuts. “Isn’t it sad how history repeats itself.”
My breath comes a bit faster, and I stop myself just in time from tripping over Chase’s feet. I’m not quite sure what Eliza is getting at. Which gives me a growing sense of dread.
“Whatever do you mean?” Chase plays along.
“Hey Eliza—” George says, valiantly trying to change the subject.
Eliza ignores him. “Don’t you know?” she says to Chase. It’s as if George and I aren’t even there. “Her mother was an orphan. She didn’t have anywhere else to go, either, so Eleanor Cummings took her in.”
Eliza’s words land like stingers, throbbing on their marks.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I answer sharply. I falter on the dance steps again and push Chase’s hand away. “My mother wasn’t an orphan.”
Eliza’s jade eyes widen. A short laugh of disbelief cracks her perfect rosy lips.
“She didn’t tell you?” She seems genuinely surprised. She’s lying, I think. My mother would have told me something that important about herself.
A cruel voice inside my head mocks: Like she did about everything else?
“Next thing you know, she’ll say she’s never heard her mother was the Catalyst,” Eliza says under her breath.
“All right—” George says at the same time that Chase says, “Bold words from a Patton,” but Mrs. Percy has stopped the music and is walking toward us.
“Wasn’t that helpful?” she chirps. “Let’s thank the upperclassmen for joining us today. We can learn so much from those who have gone before us.”
“It’s always such a pleasure,” Eliza says, raising an eyebrow. “I love teaching people things they never knew before.” With a final wave, she and Chase leave, buoyed by the applause of the class.
Something acidic is rising in my throat. I gulp down a breath, trying to pull out the seeds Eliza has left scattered behind her.
But I can already feel them sprouting as I practice steps with George for the rest of class. “Don’t listen to her,” George says, attempting to cheer me with spot-on impressions of Principal Cleary. I smile weakly at him, but by the time gym is over, Eliza’s seeds have sprouted roots and split into branches: one of doubt, the other of bitterness. For Mother. For Eliza.
For me and my endless na?veté.
I am standing in front of the tournament sheet when George catches up to me. He wisely doesn’t say anything about the tears running down my cheeks. I dab at them angrily with the heels of my hands.
Aila Quinn, I write at the bottom of the list under “Stars.”
Chapter Fourteen
That night at dinner Miles and I are both quiet. We push the food around on our plates and give such halfhearted answers that soon Mrs. Cliffton stops attempting to draw us out. Will stayed late at the library to work on a group project, so he is not there to fill our gaping silences. I find myself wondering when he will be back. And if Eliza is there, too.
“Well, I have some work to catch up on anyway,” Dr. Cliffton says in response to our silence. “Maybe we’ll hold game night tomorrow.” So we each retire to our rooms as soon as dinner is over.
I brush my teeth in front of the blank wall, thinking about Miles’s silence at dinner and wondering if someone at school has gotten to him, too. I throw on my bathrobe, tie the sash firmly around my waist, and head down the hallway to rap on his door.
“Who is it?” he calls.
“It’s me. Can I come in?” When he doesn’t answer, I push the door open anyway.
He is sitting on the floor, drawing.
“Is . . . everything okay?” I close the door behind me.
“Yeah.”
The tip of his pencil is flaming orange, but the lines that appear beneath it are nothing but a sooty gray. He keeps drawing more lines, as if the color will start seeping out after a rusty start.
He tosses the orange and pulls out a deep teal, the one he always uses for the ocean or mixes with gray when he’s drawing my eyes. It leaves a smear down the page as dingy as old, dirty snow. The red pencil yields something more like smoke.
“Those aren’t the ones Will bought for you at the Marketplace, are they?”
He shakes his head. “No. These are from home.” He reaches his hand under the bed and retrieves a wooden box. “These are the new ones.” He opens them and pulls out a red. He uses his old pencils to draw the stick figure of a girl, then opens the new one and gives her deep red hair. Mother’s hair. The Variant pencils are brighter than I ever remember the original colors being.
“You want to talk?” I ask.
He shakes his head again.
“Okay. Come find me if you change your mind.”
He doesn’t look up. “’Night.” He’s returned to his old pencils, drawing streaks of gray over and over across the page.
But it’s Miles’s knocking that wakes me in the morning.
“Come in,” I call groggily, not moving from the warmth of my bed.
He slips through the door, then stands next to it, squirming.
I squint toward him. “Do you need to go to the bathroom or something?”
He ignores this. “Do I have to go to school today?”
“Of course. Don’t be silly.” I flip the pillow over to find the side not heated by my skin. But I look up at the sound of his sigh and catch the flicker of something in his face.
“Come here, Miles.” I sit up and pat the bed beside me. “Why don’t you want to go to school today?”
He sighs again, his small shoulders raising and falling. Sleep is crusted at the edge of his eyelashes. “Some kids say things about Mother,” he says, scowling. “That she was a witch and she’s the reason things are bad here.”
I pull my hair up into a knot, not bothering to hide my ear from Miles. “Yes,” I finally admit. “People say things to me, too. But you know it’s not true, right, Miles?”
I think of Eliza’s confident smugness about Mother being an orphan.
At least probably not everything they say is true.
He shrugs, but his shoulders lose some of their angled stiffness.
“That’s all that matters,” I continue. “We knew her. They didn’t. So what they say doesn’t count. Not even a little bit.”
He does something strange with his mouth, twisting his tongue all around while he considers this. There’s a gap where a tooth should be.
“Heya!” I say. “Did you lose something?”
He reaches into his pocket, and then the white stump of a tooth is nestled in his palm.