by S. Massery
I crack my neck and drag my mind back to the present. “Lost what?”
“My virginity.” She sighs. “It shouldn’t matter, but it does.”
“I—” I can’t speak.
Instead, I focus on recalling the smell of burning flesh.
“I don’t feel sad,” she continues. “That I shoved him off me and he cracked his head open. That’s the sort of thing normal people feel, right? Sadness? Guilt?”
“What do you feel?”
She pauses for a moment. “Rage.”
I find myself nodding. “Normal.”
“For us.” She scoffs. “Not normal normal.”
“Fine.” We don’t talk about what makes us not normal. The things we’ve seen—or done—to open our souls to demons. Never have. Maybe we will eventually, but that would suck us in.
We’ve been in orbit too long. The magnetism that drags us toward each other also repels if we get too close. It’s why we both shy away from liking each other.
Hating is better.
Anger is better.
“College is filled with dicks like that one,” I say suddenly. My foot leans harder on the gas pedal. The open highway stretches before us, a freedom like no other. “Don’t let a friendly face fool you.”
Lux is silent.
“And avoid the parties,” I advise. “Drinking, drugs—”
“Sounds like a good time.” She leans toward me. “You like to get high, don’t you?”
Sometimes weed is the only thing that can quiet my mind.
I sure as hell don’t admit that, though.
“Roommates. Sometimes you can trust them, but everyone—”
“Has an agenda,” she finishes. “Even you. Even me.”
“Especially us,” I correct.
“So, why are you bringing me to LBU, Theo? What’s your agenda?”
I really wish she hadn’t asked me that. It’s not like I’m in the habit of spilling all my secrets—even to beautiful girls who ask politely.
Today has thrown me off. I didn’t expect her parents’ solution to be to put us together, or for my mother to pull strings and get Lux into Lenox Bluff University. She’s about to be in my space, and the overwhelming emotion circulating through me is… panic.
“I don’t have an agenda.” And it’s the truth.
Keeping Lux at a distance works for me—until it won’t.
I flash back to the conversation with my mother this morning. My room smelled like smoke, I’m sure of it. Even just a trace would’ve given her a hint. I was only home for a few weeks, then right back to school.
Mom told me what happened, and neither of us were surprised.
“You’re on the football team,” she says suddenly.
I press my lips together and nod. “It’s inconsequential.”
“To what, murder?” She laughs. “Maybe I’ll follow in my sister’s footsteps and become a cheerleader. Put a little pep in your step.”
“No.” A growl slips from my throat.
I can picture her in the skimpy uniform for the whole damn world to see—and I hate it.
She grins. Her teeth flash out of the corner of my eye, and I shake my head. No one presses my buttons quite like she does. From fine to irritated in a split second. Irritated to mad even quicker.
This is why distance is best. When she’s around, I’m volatile. Look what happened last night. I lost control.
“Theo…”
Can she sense the tide within me turning?
“We’re almost there,” I force out. “I’m done talking.”
5
Lux
The campus is basically a castle.
Okay, not really. I doubt actual castles got built anywhere near Boston. But the architecture is reminiscent of old Europe. The gray stone exteriors, the tall spires, stained-glass windows. If this collection of buildings weren’t clearly part of a larger university, I would assume we had stepped back in time. As it is, the West Campus seems oddly secluded from the rest of the school. Five buildings huddle around a small quad. It has its own dining hall, a dorm, and classrooms. Even a little one-stop-shopping convenience store.
I learn all of this in the first fifteen minutes of being here.
The resident assistant leads the way down the dorm—ah, residence hall, apparently—and tells me everything I need to know about LBU’s West Campus. LBU West, as she keeps referring to it.
“Here you are.” Felicity stops at a door halfway down and pushes it open.
We step inside, and my jaw drops. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The room is huge. There seem to be two very clear sides to it, though, like the old residents drew a line down the middle. Two desks, two chairs, two beds and dressers. Two closets, even. But the space allows everything to be spread out, and it’s not as claustrophobic as I would’ve expected.
Because you live in a castle now, Lux.
It has tall, arched ceilings, and the windows seem straight out of a movie. We’re on the opposite side of the quad, facing a forest. It’s so different from New York City, and from what I expected of a Boston school. The fact that I can leave this little campus and walk ten minutes to a T stop is a bit mind-boggling.
“It’s a conservation area,” Felicity says behind me. “It has nice walking paths.”
Pass.
“That’s good to know.” I swallow the spike of fear.
“Your roommate is Ruby Devereux.” Felicity pauses. “I think you’ll like her.”
I raise my eyebrow but ignore the clear hesitation. Whether or not I’ll actually like her isn’t something Felicity can predict. My RA has known me for less than an hour, and I haven’t said all that much. What could she know about me, other than strings—a lot of them, I’m starting to imagine—were pulled to get me here?
Beth Alistair, Theo’s mother, always struck me as a nice woman. But I think she might have a steel spine, since she raised Theo and dealt with whatever antics he was always getting into.
“When do students arrive?” I ask.
“Tomorrow morning.” Felicity smiles. “If you want to be roped into manual labor, we’re always looking for volunteers for our move-in crew.”
I grimace, and her expression falls.
“Maybe,” I hedge.
“Well, I’ll leave you to unpack,” she says.
“I just have this.” I pat my bag slung over my shoulder. “I should’ve probably grabbed bedding…”
She eyes me. “Your stuff was delivered just an hour before you arrived. It’s there.”
I follow her finger to a stack of boxes by one of the beds. I had assumed that was my new roommate’s side, but apparently, it’s mine.
“Thank you,” I say softly.
She hesitates and raps her knuckles on the doorframe. “It can get lonely at night. Especially your first night at college. My friends and I are getting dinner, and we’ll probably go to one of the frat parties…”
Drinking seems like a great idea to forget the last twenty-four hours. “I’d like that.”
She grins. “Okay. I’ll swing by to grab you around six.”
Felicity presses two keys into my hand—one for the outside door and one for my room—then disappears. Keys. We haven’t even graduated to swiping cards.
A step back in time, indeed.
My phone chirps. This is the first time it’s made noise all day, and I scramble for it. Over the summer, my friends from high school seemed to flake away. It wasn’t anything I actively did, but not seeing them, or trying to see them, every day just… loosened my hold on them.
The text is from my sister. Shocker.
Ames: Excuse me, you left for COLLEGE and didn’t think to tell me you were even going???
I wince.
Me: It was last-minute. Mom and Dad didn’t want to distract you from engaged bliss.
I imagine she would snort at that.
Ames: I’ll miss you.
My heart gives a weird sort of twist. It i
sn’t that I don’t believe her, because I should. But… she didn’t seem to miss me when we weren’t living together. When I spent a good chunk of my childhood living with our grandparents in Beacon Hill and the only times I saw her were holidays.
If it weren’t for the past two years, we wouldn’t have any sort of relationship at all.
So I lie and tell her I’ll miss her, too.
I turn to the boxes and open them. Bedding, a pillow, extra clothes. It’s all straight from the stores, tags still on everything. A receipt lingers at the bottom of one box, and out of sheer curiosity I scan it. The bottom, where the credit card was processed, isn’t Page—it’s Alistair.
I frown.
My parents couldn’t even think to get me bedding.
All at once, my anger overtakes me. I grab the closest box and chuck it. It crashes into the wall, but it isn’t enough. I kick over the chair, the other boxes. My rage sweeps through me like a tornado, and I’m just a vessel for the destruction. The Alistairs didn’t give me anything breakable. Nothing worth my anger. It’s all just fabric and pillows. Soft things that flutter around me.
And just as fast, I stop.
I sink to my knees in the wreckage and rub my chest. It’s difficult to take a deep breath.
“This is your life, Lux,” I say to myself. “Deal with it.”
A murder, a new school, no one who gives a shit.
Sounds about right.
Voices rush over me. I’m a rock stuck in a stream. Immobile.
No, that isn’t quite right.
I’ve come loose, carried away by the water.
Yes.
My new friends have given me alcohol, and I’ve drunk. A lot. Anything to stop the memory of that man’s hands on my thighs, his blood on my hands. The way his skin squished under mine as I dragged him.
Now we’re dancing.
Or maybe I’m the only one?
“She’s fun,” someone calls. “Freshman?”
“Moved in early,” Felicity answers. “Seemed lonely.”
Lonely, indeed. I close my eyes and fling my body around, wishing the music was louder. After dinner, we walked to the main campus, cut through it, and found ourselves on Frat Row. Only one of the houses was lit up, music crashing through it, and there weren’t as many people as I was expecting.
Still, they had music and liquor, and now I can’t control my impulses.
Maybe the man I killed had a similar process.
Someone taps my shoulder, and I immediately stop. Well, I try to immediately stop. My limbs don’t get the memo. I open my eyes and face the new person, and butterflies erupt in my belly. Tall, dark, and handsome. The opposite of dangerous, judging from his open smile.
He pushes his dark hair off his face and grins at me. “Sebastian,” he introduces. “Want to dance?”
It’s hard to hear him over the music—I rely more on the movement of his lips than anything. And then I realize I’m staring at his full lips, and my cheeks get hot. If that was his intention, it totally worked.
Two can play that game.
I laugh and put my lips by his ear. “I’m already dancing.”
He steps forward and puts his hand on my hip. I don’t mind it—part of me craves contact in any form. Theo tries so hard not to touch me, and I haven’t seen him since he dropped me off earlier today. I shove thoughts of him down and focus on the boy in front of me.
Sebastian moves with me, much more graceful than I expected. He takes my other hand and guides me around the space, navigating other dancing couples. “Your friends were staring,” he says in my ear.
A shiver goes through me.
“Well, not sure if I’d call them friends just yet,” I quip. “I only just met them.”
He spins me out and snaps me back to him, suddenly a whole hell of a lot closer than he was a minute ago. Now is when the song should change to something slow, right? The lights will dim, and we’ll be cast in the perfect spotlight, frozen in slow-dance time. Just like a movie.
But it doesn’t.
The song ends, and a faster one picks up—but I’m out of breath. The room tilts a bit, and I realize I lost my drink.
“Thank you for the dance.” I step back and try to regain my clarity.
His fingers tighten on mine for a moment, then he releases me.
“See you around, Sebastian.”
“Wait—”
I slip through the crowd, out the back door. There are more people outside, the backyard decorated in a Hawaiian theme. Tiki torches burn along the fence lines, there’s an inflatable pool in one corner, and a makeshift bar in another. They’ve strung up lights from the roof of the house across to the trees, giving the whole yard a warm glow.
And I can hear myself think out here.
Some of the girls I came with are over by the pool. I head for them, but something snags my attention. Nothing more than a creeping sensation that ghosts over my skin, but I skid to a halt nonetheless. I glance around, but no one looks twice at me.
Weird.
“Lucy!” one of the girls yells, waving me over. Charlotte, I think. “You were dancing with Sebastian?”
I frown. “Did you see us?”
“Oh my gosh. He’s the kicker for our football team. He’s being scouted by the NFL.” She grabs my hand. “Tell us everything.”
I force a laugh. I’m not the popular one. Not a cheerleader—although didn’t I threaten that to Theo? Definitely not anyone a football player should be talking to, let alone dancing with. Insecurities that surfaced in high school, maintained by the popular girls who cast snide remarks about me behind my back, come crawling back.
I’m not that person.
The one who gives a shit.
“He was nice.” I shrug. “We danced and then I left.”
“Oh.” She seems disappointed.
Nothing kills a fake friendship faster than lack of gossip.
I lift my shoulder again. “Sorry. If I had known who he was, I definitely would’ve tried to remember more.”
They relax, and I settle in with them. Their conversation switches from football to classes, to that hot teacher’s assistant, to… well, I’m not sure. I focus back in, but they seem to be talking in code.
“We shouldn’t,” Charlotte says.
“Some secrets are meant to be kept—”
“All I’m saying is, we’re about to receive the incoming freshmen, and the parties always get more secretive—”
“Charlotte,” Miranda warns. Her gaze flicks to me. “You’ll ruin the fun for her.”
She stiffens and rises suddenly, striding away from us.
“I…” I don’t know why I feel the need to apologize, when none of that made sense to me. But it’s tugged at my curiosity. I do love secrets… “Is she okay?”
“She’ll be fine.” She smiles. “Are you excited to start at LBU?”
Am I? “It doesn’t feel real,” I admit. “Everything was a whirlwind.”
Up until Theo whisked me away, I thought my life for the next two to three years would be unbearably boring. Certainly because my parents offered no assistance on getting into a good college. I kept my grades up at Lion’s Head, the private high school I attended in Beacon Hill, and the school paper kept me sane.
Plus, it brought me into close proximity with Theo.
“What are you going to major in?”
I’m sure my expression is less than excited. “No idea.”
She laughs, unbothered by my indecision. “You’ll figure it out.”
Am I even enrolled in classes? I should look into that.
She motions for me to follow her. Some boys are setting up a bonfire, squirting the chopped pieces of wood with gasoline. They’ve stacked broken pallets on top of each other for the base, creating a tent shape.
“Bash isn’t a bad guy,” Miranda says suddenly. “He’s just… a wild child.”
“Oh?”
“It earns him a reputation. Half the guys on the football team h
ave a rep.” She snorts. “It’s best to stay away from them entirely, unless you’re looking for a quick hookup. One and done sort of thing. They have rules about it, even.”
Theo’s on the team. I open my mouth to ask about him, then slam my lips closed. Giving away all my secrets—what had she just told Charlotte? That some secrets are better kept.
It makes me wonder if he has a reputation, and what sort of perception they have of him. I know how I think of him, but someone new? A whole school full of strangers? Maybe they think he’s something he’s not.
Maybe I’m the one whose idea of him is wrong.
Sebastian catches my eye across the unlit bonfire and grins. I shift on my feet, frowning back at him. His grin widens at my expression. But then his attention turns to the matchbook in his hands.
“Who’s ready?” he calls.
A cheer goes up around us.
He lights a match and tosses it onto the wood. There’s a split second of suspension in the air, and then the whole thing goes up in a tower of flames. Heat drives us all back, and I imagine a body under the pallets.
Miranda pulls me away, laughing. “You okay?”
I tear my gaze away from the flames. I need to stop thinking about the DeSantis man. And burning. And other unsavory things.
“All good,” I say.
“You have a fire trauma or something?” She squints at me. “Maybe your childhood house burned down, or—”
I jerk away from her. “My childhood trauma has nothing to do with fire.”
Just cracked-open skulls and too much blood.
“And it’s an off-limits topic,” I warn. Who even asks that? Callous people, that’s who. “Unless you want to spill all of your trauma secrets.”
She laughs. “I don’t have any.”
Right.
Sebastian chooses that moment to saunter toward us, stopping beside me. “Off-limit topic? Miranda knows no such boundaries.”
She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks’ redness betrays her.
“Psych major,” he tells me. “And, excuse me, I didn’t catch your name earlier.”
I lift my chin. “If I wanted you to know my name, you’d know it.”
He smirks. “Fine. I like a challenge.”
“It’s not a challenge,” I say. “It’s just a fact.”