Academy of the Forgotten

by Eva Chase

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elias

  I’d thought this moment through with all the consideration I’d given my business plans back in the day, but my pulse still hitched when I spotted Trix walking out of her classroom. I ambled over to join her, aiming to look casual more for the benefit of anyone watching than hers. She hadn’t spoken to me since the day she’d confronted me on the lawn, hadn’t appeared to pay me any attention at all, so I assumed she’d written me off as a lost cause.

  How much could I blame her after the way I’d acted?

  “Beatrix,” I said, pitching my voice just loud enough to carry over the murmurs in the hall as other students meandered toward their next destinations, but not so loud as to draw excessive attention.

  She looked back and stopped when she saw me, her fingers curling around the sleeves of her leather jacket. I couldn’t read anything in her expression other than suspicion. I supposed I deserved that too.

  “Yes, Elias?” she said as I caught up with her, with a tightness to her tone that suggested she still felt a little awkward calling any supposed teacher by their first name.

  My hands were halfway to the lapels of my suit jacket before I caught the nervous impulse to tug it straight, as if it could get much straighter. “I was hoping you’d take a quick walk with me,” I said. “We didn’t end our last conversation on the best note. I’d like to try to make up for that.”

  Her skepticism warred with curiosity on her face. I could tell curiosity had won when a gleam came into her light green eyes. “Fine,” she said. “Where are we walking?”

  I motioned for her to follow me down the stairs. It was as gloomy as ever outside, but I felt less observed out there rather than inside, constricted by the school building’s walls.

  The damp breeze penetrated my suit in an instant. Trix zipped up her jacket and tucked her hair behind her ears. She was wearing her skirt today, paired with those combat boots in the perfect picture of defiance. When the pleats fluttered in the breeze, I had to make a conscious effort not to admire her leggings-clad thighs.

  I drifted on a diagonal course toward the spot where the wall disappeared into the woods. “You wanted me to tell you what I know. I’m afraid there isn’t a lot I can say, but I should have been more willing to help before. I’m sorry about that.”

  She slung her hands in the pockets of her jacket and looked at me with half a smile. “You admit that you were going out of your way to avoid me, then? What was that all about? I wouldn’t have badgered you at all if you’d just treated me like all the other students.”

  As I probably should have realized. But it was better that I’d fucked up, because my fuck-up and her calling me on it had forced me to see that steering clear of her wasn’t the right approach after all. Not for the man I wanted to be now.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “Can we leave it at that?”

  “No, I don’t think so. What’s so complicated? You hardly even know me.”

  “Well, I…” I groped for a suitable answer. “You remind me of someone else. Someone with whom I regret my past interactions. If I’m being honest, I was worried I’d end up falling into the same pattern.”

  “So, you blamed me for your past mistakes. Very nice.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “What kind of ‘pattern’ are we—”

  The breeze shifted with a sudden gust, and she had to swipe at her skirt to stop it from flipping upward. I jerked my gaze from there to her face, but the look of consternation she’d made was so familiar it sent a twinge through my chest too.

  She glanced back at me a second too soon and must have caught some of that emotion in my expression. I yanked my attention away, to the trees ahead of us, but I couldn’t contain a hard swallow that might have been audible.

  Trix tsked under her breath. “Have you been fraternizing with the students more than you’re supposed to?”

  Yes and no. “I’m not really— It’s not the same,” I said. “I ended up here the same way as pretty much everyone else.”

  “Then why do they have you teaching a class?”

  “Because…” Answering that question was even harder.

  But Trix must have seen and heard enough by now to fill in the blanks, especially with my hesitation. Her eyes widened with understanding. “Is that your punishment? Teaching a bizarro math class? I’d give you my sympathies, but from what I’ve seen, it could be a lot worse.”

  “It is,” I found I was able to say, perhaps more momentously than I’d have preferred to if I’d known the words would actually come out. When I made myself turn to Trix again, she was studying me with that gaze that saw so much more than I should have wanted it to.

  “That’s not all they’re doing to you,” she filled in.

  I didn’t answer, which was probably answer enough. She sucked her lower lip under her teeth to worry at it, and my eyes were automatically drawn to the movement. She caught that slip too.

  “I remind you of a girl you liked,” she said, stopping and peering up at me. “Enough that it scared you. Am I less scary now that you’ve seen I’m not her? Is that why we’re having this talk?”

  I hesitated. “You remind me of her because of the ways you’re the same. And what scares me is thinking that you could meet the same fate she did. I’m still scared of that. If I can stop it from happening, I’ll do whatever I can.”

  “This is about seeing me as some pathetic thing in need of saving, then.”

  A laugh sputtered out of me. “No. Not at all. Pathetic is the last word I’d use to describe you.”

  She considered me a moment longer. Then she stepped closer, setting her hand on my arm. Letting her fingers trail over the smooth fabric of the suit’s sleeve. Watching my reaction with absolute intentness. The pressure of her touch only seeped faintly through my clothes, but that contact combined with her closeness was enough to spark a tingling that shot straight to my groin.

  “Trix,” I said, my voice abruptly hoarse.

  She couldn’t know what she was doing to me, but she must have been able to observe enough. She cocked her head, mischief and bemusement dancing together in her eyes. “So that’s what it takes for you to say my name properly. You need to stop getting crushes on your students, Elias. Even if you’re only sort of a teacher, it doesn’t really seem appropriate.”

  “I’m not acting on it,” I pointed out. We wouldn’t get into how much I might want to, or how much I had or hadn’t in the past.

  “Would you if I wanted you to?”

  Her tone was sly, but her body tensed, just slightly, at the same time, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear my answer, whatever it might be. A different sort of twinge ran through me, tenderness rather than lust. I couldn’t forget that under the defiant front, she had plenty of her own vulnerabilities.

  I set my hand over hers where it was still resting on my arm and eased it away from me, but kept a gentle hold on it. “If circumstances were different,” I said. “But they’re not. You shouldn’t be here at all, Trix. Your life is waiting for you out there.” I nodded toward the other side of the wall.

  Her jaw clenched in an instant. “My God. Is that the only thing anyone can think of to say to me? ‘You don’t belong here.’ ‘Just leave already.’ ‘Do it for your own good.’ How selfish do you all think I am?”

  Not hardly selfish enough. “That’s not what I’m saying. You told me before that I couldn’t do anything for you because I wasn’t trying to, and that was true. I’m trying now. I can do this. The worst thing you could do is chain yourself to Roseborne if you have the option of getting out.”

  “Because no one else can ever leave and there’s no hope for any of you and blah blah blah.” She backed up, pulling her hand from mine. “I’ve heard the whole spiel. I’m starting to think it’s part of the game here. Are the staff pulling your strings, making you all parrot this shit to stir up doubts in my head? It’s not working.”

  I shook my head. “This is just me. If you’re hearing it f
rom other people, will you consider that it might be because we all know what we’re talking about?”

  “Right.” She let out a rough chuckle. “What did you do that was so horrible, exactly, Elias? Somehow I don’t think you were setting off any bombs or pummeling people in the street.”

  She wanted to know, did she? Why the hell shouldn’t I tell her? Soon enough it wouldn’t matter, one way or another.

  “You want to know what I was like before I came here?” I said, because I could answer that question if not the one she’d actually asked.

  “Yeah. Convince me of how irredeemable you are.” She folded her arms over her chest.

  I stared right back at her, not letting my gaze waver. “I was an unrepentant prick. I thought I was better than everyone around me, that I was going to do better things, and that because of that, I was justified in stepping on anyone who was even partly in my way to boost myself up. I tossed aside people who’d been real friends to me. I fucked people over when it came to school and jobs they needed and a hell of a lot more. Collateral damage. And if that doesn’t sound bad enough, the last time I shoved someone aside, they died because of it. And for a hell of a long time I managed to convince myself it was their own fault for being a victim.”

  Trix hadn’t looked away, but she winced toward the end of my tirade. “What did you think you were going to do that was so great while you were screwing up everyone else’s lives?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I had plenty of business plans. Launch a start-up, change the world. I was on my way. But it wasn’t worth shit in the end, because here I am.”

  I could have pointed the finger at my grandfather and blamed a hell of a lot of it on him, but how would that help Trix—or me? The anger was there, the prickling sense of betrayal toward the man who’d raised me in his image, but ultimately the decisions I’d made had been mine. The fact that I could own that now might be the only reason I was still anywhere at all.

  “You had a lot bigger plans than I did.” Trix tugged at her hair again, her gaze sliding away from me. I had the sudden impression that I was losing her, as much as I’d had her attention at all. That any second she might walk away assuming everything I’d said to try to help her was bullshit.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Whatever plans you had, they’re still yours. You can’t— The longer you stay here— Come with me.”

  I swung around with a beckoning gesture, half afraid she wouldn’t follow. But she did, keeping a small but careful distance, the rest of the way across the lawn to the wall with its covering of dark leaves and thorns. I let my hand hover by the rose blooming there, its petals still fully vibrant and unblemished.

  “Lean in,” I said. “Look at it, smell it, absorb everything you can about it. And tell me who it makes you think of.”

  She gave me an odd look as I stepped back to give her room, but she did as I’d suggested. Resting her fingers lightly on the outer petals, she lowered her head to the flower. As she breathed in deeply, she closed her eyes. Then she opened them again, studying its structure. With another deep inhalation, her brow knit.

  “I—I don’t know why—Jenson Wynter just popped into my head.”

  “Let’s try another.” I motioned her farther along the wall, all the way to the next rose. This one was starting to fade and crinkle along the edges of its petals. Trix leaned in again. This time she lingered over the blossom for a little longer.

  “I don’t know his name,” she said quietly when she straightened up. “But there’s this guy who was sitting in front of me in Tolerance class…”

  I nodded. She stared at the rose a moment longer and then started forward. “Okay, let’s see the next one.”

  We passed into the shadows of the forest. Roses still bloomed along the wall there at random intervals where enough hazy sunlight reached them through both the clouds and the trees. The fresh blossom she encountered next made her mention a girl in her composition class.

  She slowed as we came up on the fourth in this experiment, the one I’d been leading her to all along. The petals had wilted in on themselves, the whole flower drooping under the weight of its decline. A brown brittleness was seeping through it. It looked as though one sharp gust of wind might be enough to scatter those petals completely.

  Trix balked for a second before she forced herself to approach it. Her shoulders stayed rigid as she brought her nose to the blossom. They stiffened even more a few moments later as the impression must have filtered through her senses. She drew back with an expression so haunted I had the impulse to take this all back somehow, as if I could.

  “That’s Delta,” she murmured. “She’s— The rose— Is it hurting her, or just reflecting, or—” She glanced at me. “You can’t tell me, can you? If you even know. You just figured out whatever this is by stumbling on it like you’re showing me now.”

  I spread my hands in a vaguely helpless gesture.

  She released a huff of breath and looked around. “Do I have one, then? Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, which answered both questions at once.

  Her gaze returned to me. “But you’re worried it’ll happen. What will that mean for me?”

  “I don’t know,” I had to admit again. Other than I’d watched over a dozen of those roses shrivel up in the time since I’d recognized that they were more than roses, and I’d yet to see any re-bloom.

  “This is ridiculous. They’re roses. It shouldn’t— Fuck.” She raked a hand back through her hair. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

  It would have felt too cruel to repeat the same refrain. “That’s up to you,” I said instead.

  From her choked guffaw, that answer hadn’t done much of anything to reassure her. All I could do was hope she understood why this mattered so much—why she should get the hell out of here before her life was tied to a single fragile flower blooming on the wall that shut in all the rest of us.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Trix

  Early morning light looked even more anemic when delivered through the layer of gray cloud that I was starting to realize always hung over the college, except maybe at night. The feeble glow turned the rose I was examining faded in turn, even though the texture of the petals showed no sign of withering yet.

  It’d taken me most of yesterday to wrap my head around what Elias had shown me. After dinner, I’d come out on my own and walked the wall in both directions until I came to stretches where there appeared to be no more roses ahead at all. The campus spread out for so many acres I was leery of trying to follow the full circuit. Even after I turned around, the uneasy sense lingered that I could wander for hours and never emerge on the other side of the woods.

  Every rose I stopped and inspected held a faint echo of a presence. I doubted I’d have even noticed if Elias hadn’t made a point of telling me to watch for it. With a casual glance and sniff, the impression would have darted by without clicking in my mind.

  But because I was looking for it, I knew when I’d found Ryo’s rose, deeply red and just starting to crinkle along the edges of the petals. An image flitted through my head of green-streaked hair and dark brown eyes, the relaxed tones of his voice, the warm smell of him like sunbaked sand. In combination with the way he’d pushed me away the day before, the sensations had brought an uncomfortable lump into my throat.

  I’d found Elias’s rose too, off past the carriage house and the rusting posts of the badminton court. His had sent a prickle of uneasiness through me for a different reason: the petals were curling with age, splotched with brown here and there. Nowhere near as sickly as Delta’s blossom, but clearly heading in that direction.

  What would happen to him when it withered more? How long did the students here get before they met the fate he’d said he was trying to save me from? Violet had said she’d been here more than two years, and her rose had looked nearly as healthy as Jenson’s, just a tiny bit dimpled with age.

  I hadn’t come across a ros
e that felt like me. But late in the evening, following the wall along the edge of the campus woods, I’d reached a fresh bloom with a brownish vein seeping through one outer petal that sent Cade’s presence singing through me. That was the one I’d come back to this morning.

  The discolored vein seemed ominous, but nothing else about the rose appeared to be deteriorating. What exactly that meant, I wasn’t sure. Would the rose linger on if he wasn’t on campus anymore?

  At the very least, I thought I could assume he was alive and reasonably well. As well as anyone could be staying at Roseborne College.

  I’d thought seeing the flower a second time in a different light might shake some new revelations loose, but it gave off only the same gauzy impressions as before. I didn’t dare touch the petals in case I damaged them somehow and that hurt Cade. With the limited supplies I had here, I couldn’t think of any strategy that would definitely make any of them healthier. If I experimented, there was a whole lot more at stake than when I’d tended to the Monroes’ garden.

  How were the students and the roses bound together? Was it a one-way relationship, what happened to the flower affecting the person or vice versa, or did the energy flow both ways?

  Studying the bloom in front of me, a whisper of Cade’s voice trickled up not from the rose but from my memories. We didn’t need silly things like flowers to know how much we matter to each other, right, Baby Bea? We’re better than that.

  And then that day when I’d gone out back to find half the roses on the bush I’d been so carefully encouraging back into health chopped off. Cade bundling them in a cone of paper at the kitchen counter. I figured you wouldn’t mind. They last so much longer fresh. Gotta treat this girl right.

  He’d given me a wink and a peck to my cheek when I hadn’t protested. You’re the best, Trix. And off he’d gone to his car to pick her up for their six-month anniversary date.