The following morning was over-bright and over-hot.
Gansey and Adam stood by the double doors of the Gladys Francine Mollin Wright Memorial Theatre, hands folded neatly. They had pulled usher service – just Adam had, really, but Gansey had volunteered to take Brand’s place as the other usher. Ronan was nowhere in sight. Annoyance simmered inside Gansey.
“Raven Day,” said Headmaster Child, “is more than a day of school pride. Because don’t we have school pride every day?”
He stood on the stage. Everyone was sweating a little, but not him. He was a lean, rugged cowboy in the cattle drive that was life, skin striated like the face of a bleached canyon wall. Gansey had long maintained that Child was wasted here. To put such a survivor into a light-gray suit and tie was to throw away the opportunity of putting him, instead, on the back of a buckskin horse and on the inside of a ten-gallon hat.
Adam shot Gansey a knowing look. He mouthed yee haw. They smirked and had to look away from each other. Gansey’s gaze landed right on Henry Cheng and the Vancouver crowd, all seated together near the back. As if feeling his attention, Henry looked over his shoulder. His eyebrow raced upward. Gansey was uncomfortably reminded of how Henry had seen the Orphan Girl in the back of the SUV. He would, at some point, require an explanation, an evasion, or a lie.
“— for this Raven Day,” Child insisted.
Gansey was ordinarily charmed by Raven Day. It was composed entirely of things that he liked: students assembled smartly in white T-shirts and khaki trousers like extras from a WWI documentary; hoisting of flags; teams pitted against one another with plenty of hurrahing; pomp, circumstance, in-jokes; ravens painted upon everything. This crop of juniors had made ravens for the entire student body to stage a mock conflict on the common while the school photographers captured shining faces for another year’s worth of promotional materials.
Now, everything in Gansey sang urgently for him to spend his time seeking. His quest was a wolf, and it starved.
“Today is the tenth anniversary of Raven Day,” Child said. “Ten years ago, the festivities we enjoy today were proposed by a student who had attended Aglionby for years. Sadly, Noah Czerny cannot be here today to celebrate, but before the rest of us do, we are fortunate enough to have one of his younger sisters here to tell us a little more about Noah and the day’s origins.”
Gansey would have thought he had misheard if Adam hadn’t peered at him and mouthed, Noah?
Yes, Noah, because here was one of the Czerny sisters climbing on to the stage. Even if Gansey had not recognized her from the funeral, he would have recognized Noah’s elfin mouth, the tiny eyes with the cheery bags beneath them, the large ears hidden behind fine hair. It was odd to see Noah’s features on a young woman. It was odder to see them on anyone living. She seemed too old to be Noah’s younger sister, but it was only because Gansey had forgotten how Noah existed in suspension. He would have been twenty-four now if he had been saved instead of Gansey.
A freshman said something that Gansey didn’t catch and got himself promptly escorted from the theatre for his trouble. Noah’s sister leaned into the microphone and said something also too faint to catch, and then said something else that was eaten by a squeal as the sound manager tried to adjust the volume. Finally, she said, “Hi, I’m Adele Czerny. I don’t really have a long speech. I mean, I sat through these things when I was your age, and they’re boring. I’m just going to say a few things about Noah and Raven Day. Did any of you guys know him?”
In unison, Gansey and Adam started to lift their hands and just as quickly dropped them. Yes, they knew him. No, they had not known him. Noah, alive, had been before their time here. Noah, dead, was a phenomenon, not an acquaintance.
“Well, you were missing out,” she said. “My mom always said he was a firecracker, which just meant he was always getting speeding tickets and jumping on tables at family reunions and stuff. He always had so many ideas. He was so hyper.”
Adam and Gansey looked at each other. They had always had the sense that the Noah they knew was not the true Noah. It was just disconcerting to hear how much Noahness death had stripped. It was impossible to not wonder what Noah would have done with himself if he had lived.