“My mom would skin me,” said Sam, ignoring the impersonation.
“Not if a Corsai did it first,” teased Alex. Sam gave him a horrified look and punched him in the shoulder.
“Ow!”
“I just think,” said Colin, leaning across the table, “that life is short, you know?” His tone was soft, conspiratorial. He had a way of making August feel like he wasn’t new, like he’d been there all along. “You can’t spend it afraid.”
August found himself nodding, even though he spent most of his time afraid. Afraid of what he was, afraid of what he wasn’t, afraid of unraveling, becoming something else, becoming nothing.
“Yeah,” cut in Alex, “life is short, and it will be a hell of a lot shorter if you go wandering at night . . .”
Colin’s mouth quirked. “Freddie’s not afraid of monsters, are you?”
August didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t have to.
“I totally saw one once,” added Colin.
“You are so full of it . . .”
“What did you do?”
“I obviously ran like hell.”
August laughed. It felt good.
And then, between one bite of apple and the next, the hunger started.
It began as nothing.
Or almost nothing, like the moment before a cold starts, that split second of wooziness that warns you a fever is coming. Dwelling on it—Is that a tickle? Is my throat getting scratchy? How long have I been sniffling?—only made it worse faster, and he tried to smother the spike of panic even as it shot through him.
Ignore it, he told himself. Mind over body—which would work right up until the hunger spread from body to mind, and then he’d be in trouble. He focused on his breathing, forced air down his throat and through his lungs.
“Hey, Freddie, you okay?” asked Colin, and August realized he was gripping the table. “You look a little sick.”
“Yeah,” he said, pushing to his feet, nearly tripping as his legs tangled in the chair. “I just . . . I’m going to grab some fresh air.”
August swung his bag onto his shoulder, trashed what was left of his lunch, and pushed through the cafeteria doors, not caring where they led, so long as they led out.
He was behind the school, the trees a green line in the distance. The air was cool, and he gulped it in, muttering, “you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” to himself before realizing he wasn’t alone.
Someone cleared her throat, and August turned to find Katherine Harker leaning against the building, a cigarette dangling from her fingers.
“Bad day?”
Kate just wanted a moment of peace. A moment to breathe, and think, and not be on display. Charlotte’s words were still lodged under her skin.
I heard her mother went crazy. Tried to drive them off a bridge.
The words brought back not one memory but two. Two different worlds. Two different Kates. One lying in a field. The other stretched on the pavement. One surrounded by rustling quiet of the country. The other surrounded by ringing silence.
She brought her fingers absently to the scar beneath her hair, traced a metallic nail around the curve of her ear. Disconcerting, to be able to feel but not hear the drag of nail on flesh.
Just then the doors burst open, and a boy stumbled through. Kate’s hand dropped away from her ear. The boy looked a little lost and a little ill, and she couldn’t really blame him. He’d come from the cafeteria, and that place was enough to set anyone off balance.
“Bad day?”
He looked up, startled, and she recognized him.
Frederick Gallagher. The new junior. Up close, he looked more like a stray dog than a student. He had wide gray eyes beneath a mop of messy black hair, and a starved look about him, bones pressing against his skin.
She watched him open his mouth, close it, open it again, only to offer a single word. “Yeah.”
Kate tapped ash off the cigarette and pushed herself up to her full height. “You’re the new kid, right?”
One black brow lifted, just a fraction. “So are you,” he shot back.
The answer caught her off guard. She’d expected him to be a mumbler, or maybe a groveler. Instead he looked straight at her when he spoke, and his voice, though soft, was steady. Maybe not a stray dog, then.
“It’s Katherine, right?”
“Kate,” she said. “Frederick?”
“Freddie,” he corrected.
She took a drag on her cigarette. Frowned. “You don’t look like a Freddie.”
He shrugged, and for a second they stood there, sizing each other up, the moment stretching, the gaze growing uncomfortable until his gray eyes finally broke free, escaping to the ground. Kate smiled, victorious. She gestured to the patch of pavement, the border of grass. “What brings you to my office?”
He looked around, confused, as if he’d actually intruded. Then he looked up and said, “The view.”
Kate flashed a crooked grin. “Oh really?”
His face went red. “I didn’t mean you,” he said quickly. “I was talking about the trees.”