I stared at the wood of the desk for a long time, knowing that it was solid but expecting it to melt away and indicate that this had all been a dream, before answering.
“Could you ... could you walk me back to my residence?”
He stared at me for a moment at the odd request, but then pushed his chair back from the desk and showed me out the building without asking for an explanation. His light footsteps barely crunched in the snow as we walked through the silence. When he bid me goodnight and withdrew into the darkness, I turned and went inside. I had only made it halfway up the stairs when my face finally broke from the subdued expression I had been trying so hard to maintain, and I sank down onto the steps to bury my face in my hands.
Everything that she had been that I had so desperately been holding onto had been shattered. The memories of her were tainted and uglied with the words, and the music that came down on me was harsh and uncoordinated like ringing in my ears. Who she had been was someone different than who I had known, and everything that did and didn’t make sense slammed against each other to rebound off of me again and again. And yet worse than anything was the knowledge that the only person who had truly understood me was gone, and the only other person who was drawing close was paid to do so, yet otherwise would not have cared about me at all.
Ch. 16
I hobbled to the mailroom to retrieve the package from Karl between classes the next Wednesday and didn’t bother to wait before opening it and taking the boat shoes out. Quickly changing into them, I dumped the ruined loafers into the trash before making my way back out into the cold.
Though I had taken Jack’s advice to skip my classes on Friday and work through the weekend, I was still behind on all of my assignments. Even after hurriedly doing my history essay during Physics and spending Latin skimming a few chapters of Jane Eyre, I was no closer to finishing anything, and the impending lecture that I knew I would be receiving from both my teachers and Karl had provoked a pounding headache in my skull. Despite knowing that my grades couldn’t slip any further without a suspension, none of the assignments seemed to matter.
I made my way back across the campus and paused in the Center Garden to rest my foot. The air was so cold beneath the bright white sky that my bones ached beneath my skin, and the stillness all around was only broken by the slight rustling of trees in the wind. The sky seemed to have dropped lower and the air was tight all around me as though the world was squeezing me in. As I shut my eyes, the familiar sound of music drifted over to me from the ocean. I wondered vaguely if it would ever go away.
“Enim.”
I opened my eyes at the voice before immediately narrowing them: Porter was standing a few feet from me with a look of surprise on his face.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Sitting.”
“No, I meant ... here. In school.”
“I still go to school here, Thomas.” He was evidently under the impression that I had been expelled after the incident with Julian, perhaps misinterpreting my absence the previous week as further confirmation. “Don’t worry: you still have someone to write down answers for you.”
He gave a slight scoff. I raised my eyebrows questioningly.
“What?” I said. “You’d rather I didn’t?”
“I don’t really need you to anymore.”
“Really? You replaced me that quickly? Who’d you have to blackmail for that?”
“For your information, no one. A friend is helping me study.”
“A friend?”
I didn’t bother to hide the disbelief in my voice. Porter gave a haughty look and shrugged.
“Yeah. Someone who doesn’t want anything out of my friendship.”
“We were never friends, Porter – and you’re the only one who wanted anything,” I said irritably.
“I’d watch your tone, if I was you,” he said lowly. “Remember, I still know about your psychiatrist. You wouldn’t want me to ... mention it to anyone, would you?”
I bit my tongue without responding. Porter smiled more widely.
“Don’t you want to know who it is?” he asked.
“Who who is?”
“My friend.”
“Not really, so long as it’s not me.”
I stood to leave the gardens even though my foot was still throbbing. As I limped down the path, Porter called after me.
“It’s Julian Wynne.”
I stopped abruptly and turned back to him. Quite suddenly I recognized where I knew the smug look on his face from.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Porter said casually. “Turns out we have a lot in common: he said you two used to be friends, too, until he learned what a psycho you are.”
“And? What’d you tell him?”
“Oh, this and that. He was interested to know how you get out of trouble so easily, so I told him about your mom. He doesn’t really buy it, though – and neither do I.”
My heart pounded violently against my ribcage as he spoke; I wished that I had hit anyone other than Julian to get sent to Barker’s office.
“So how come you didn’t get suspended?”
“For hitting him? I told you, my mother –”
“Not for that. For your foot.”
“I can’t get into trouble for needing stiches,” I said.
“You can when you step on a bottle in the middle of the woods! That’s breaking curfew and being off of school property – so why weren’t you suspended?”
“How’d you know I stepped on a bottle?”
Porter shifted.
“I ... I guessed.”
His superior expression flickered with sheepishness, and the heat in my chest turned to cold as I realized that it had not been Barker’s large form that we had seen following us in the woods. The flood of relief that came over me dissipated almost immediately to be replaced by sheer irritation.
“That was you?” I said. “You’re still following me? Why?”
“I – well – it hardly matters, Enim. The point is that I know that you and Jack are up to something. What’re you two doing in the woods so late at night?”
“None of your business, Porter! Just like everything else in my life, it doesn’t concern you!”
“You and Jack are up to something – I heard you two talking: he said something about a murder.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“I heard him –”
“You heard him wrong, then,” I snapped. “Maybe you should sneak a bit closer next time you eavesdrop on someone so you can actually hear their conversation correctly.”
Porter shook his head to brush off the insult.
“Say whatever you want to, Enim, but I know what I heard. And if you think I won’t tell Julian about your psychiatrist, you’re wrong.”
He turned to leave the gardens. My hands were shaking as I watched him go, and it was only when he reached the walkway that I shouted after him.
“The only reason he’s pretending to be your friend is so that he can get back at me!”
“Maybe,” Porter replied over his shoulder, “but at least he’s pretending.”
“Wait, Porter –” I said, hastening after him. “Come on – please. I’ll do whatever you want. Just – just name your price.”
The hint of a smile slowly stretched across his face and he shook his head.
“Too late, Enim. Turns out that you don’t have anything I want anymore.” He turned back to look at me for a moment, and his eyes were narrowed as he continued to smirk. “You know, for once, I’m glad I’m not you.”
“Porter –”
But he had already gone. I stood alone in the garden for a long moment before turning and hurrying to the residence building. My foot throbbed harder as I stomped up the stairs to the fourth floor and down the hall to my room. When I slammed the door behind me, Dictionary leapt off of Jack’s bed to hide beneath the dresser. I scowled and collapsed upon my mattress, no longer caring about missing classes or mealti
mes: the threat of being sent to Barker’s no longer applied.
When the pain in my foot finally died down, it was replaced with the one from the break in my nose. The throbbing hammered into my skull and shook my thoughts too violently to think, and I was left to stare up at the ceiling in anger that Trask hadn’t hit me harder to warrant me taking a few weeks off of school.
“You look happy,” Jack said upon returning to the room later that afternoon. He made his way into the room and unwrapped his scarf from his neck. As he tossed it aside, he titled his head to get a better look at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just Porter.”
“Again? You’d think he’d have a hobby by now – or a friend.”
“That’s the problem: he does.”
“What? Who?”
“Julian.”
“Wynne?” Jack scoffed. “Good. They deserve one another.”
I sat up and ran my hand through my hair.
“Not really. Porter’s threatening to tell him about Beringer.”
“Hasn’t he been threatening that all year?”
“Yeah, but now Julian’s doing his assignments for him, so he has no reason not to tell him.” I flopped back on the bed. “I’m screwed.”
“No, you’re not,” Jack countered. “Why do you think he hasn’t told Wynne yet? He knows the only reason Wynne’s pretending to be his friend is to get information out of him. Once he spills it, he’ll be his old friendless self again.”
I chewed the side of my mouth as I considered as much, but I didn’t feel any better.
“Listen, Nim – forget Porker. If you’re that worried, I can go take care of him right now.”
“I don’t think threatening him will help any.”
“I wasn’t planning to threaten him. I was thinking I could break his jaw – that’d prevent him from talking to Wynne.”
Though the idea was tempting, I shook my head.
“Alright, well, the offer’s always open,” he said with a disappointed shrug. “But forget him anyhow, and Wynne, too. If they’ve got nothing better to do than bait you, then they must be even more bored than we are.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I usually am,” he replied with a familiar smirk. “Besides, we’ll be out of here in a few months, anyhow.”
“Maybe. Unless I fail all of my classes and can’t graduate.”
“Don’t worry – you’ll graduate. If Karl has anything to say about it, at least.”
“He’ll have something to say about it soon enough. I skipped half my classes today.”
“I was wondering where you were at lunch. I figured Big Brother gave you permission to eat in the library, though.”
“Nope.”
“Well, he might not hear about it now that Barker’s gone,” Jack said, fishing through his pockets for a cigarette. “Or maybe he’s got Porter reporting to him now. That’d be something.”
I gave an absentminded nod before his statement jogged something in my memory.
“That reminds me – it was Porter in the woods last week, not Barker.”
“What?” Jack halted with the lighter raised to his face; the flame danced across his disconcerted expression. “That was Porter?”
Thomas’s admission had only increased my uncertainty of Barker’s role in Miss Mercier and the local girls’ deaths, but I was hesitant to admit as much to Jack, given that he had finally consented to let the whole thing go. He frowned as he thought it through and took a long drag from the cigarette.
“Well, that’s unexpected. Here I was thinking that we’d played a part in causing Barker’s heart-attack.”
My stomach unknotted in relief.
“If only.”
He finished smoking and then we headed down to the dining hall for dinner. As the woman behind the counter piled my plate full of an unknown colorless substance, I took a sip of coffee and stared off across the room. Julian was sitting at a table with his usual group of friends and the addition of Porter. I glowered at their backs before finding Jack and sitting down.
He glanced over his shoulder as my gaze drifted back to Julian.
“Who do you think will kill him first: Trask or Thompson?”
“Thompson. Trask’s too busy deciding how to kill me.”
Across the room, Trask had caught me staring at him. He made a face and moved his hand across his throat menacingly.
“And you’re sure you don’t want me to take care of them?” Jack asked. “It’ll be a lot easier to get them before they get you, not to mention less painful on your part.”
I shook my head.
“Alright, have it your way,” he said. “But as soon as we graduate, I’m ripping his face off.”
“Not worth it. It’d be an improvement on his looks.”
“True. In that case, I’ll break both his arms.”
“That’d work.”
“Might as well do his legs while I’m at it,” he continued. “Just to cover all my bases.”
When we returned to the room sometime later, I pulled up my bag to get started on the assignments that I had missed. Jack watched me idly from across the room for a moment before hopping up beside me and pulling the book from my hands.
“Nim, you do realize that you’re never going to need this in real life, don’t you?” he asked, staring blankly at the pages of Latin text.
“Yes. But do you realize that if I don’t do my homework, I’ll be suspended?”
“You keep saying that, but I’m not sure that it’s true. Karl seems to have you pretty covered.”
“Only because he hasn’t heard how many classes I’ve missed yet.”
Jack gave me a look before decisively tossing the book across the room.
“Jack –”
“Nim, come on: all you ever do is study. Can’t we do something fun for once?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What’d we use to do?”
“In the dead of winter?” I asked as I thought back to previous years. “Hole up in the room, light things on fire, and plan how to not get caught by the building monitor.”
“Was that it?”
“Obviously we had low standards.”
“True.” He took out his lighter and lit the corner of a piece of notebook paper with it. Giving me wry grin, he added, “I’m not sure our standards are any higher now.”
“Good to know some things never change.”
“That’s the spirit.”
We watched the page shrink away until only a blackened piece of ash was clutched between his fingers. He dropped it before it burned his hand and stomped it out against the comforter, leaving a black mark on the fabric. From across the room, Dictionary watched us with a less-than-amused expression.
“Wish the snow would melt – then we could go to the boathouse.”
“Don’t you remember what happened the last time we went there?” I asked. “We nearly froze to death, and Porter caught us.”
“At least it was exciting. I might die of boredom before winter’s over.”
As he flicked open the lighter to ignite something else, the door opened widely and Sanders stepped inside. Jack hastily dropped the paper he was holding and smothered it, and was only saved from being seen because Sanders had halted upon seeing us huddled on the bed together.
“What are you two doing?”
“I’m not aware that it’s any of your business, Sanders,” Jack said, his feet still positioned over the charcoaled piece of paper. “But if you must know, I was spending a little quality time with Nim, here.”
Sanders glanced between us again.
“I can only imagine what that means, Hadler. What are you up to? Smoking? Drinking?”
He looked around the room suspiciously, eyes darting in and out of crevices and around the mess strewn on Jack’s side of the floor. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he moved his gaze back to us.
“Does it look like we’re smoking and drinking?” Jack asked.
“It looks like you’re up to something.”
“We are up to something. You just interrupted.”
He gave the building monitor a pointed look, but Sanders only stepped further into the room.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Nothing.”
“I hardly think that it’s nothing, Hadler. You’re always up to something – and I think I should know what it is.”
He waved his hand to indicate for Jack to move his feet, but Jack remained in place.
“Sanders, let me ask you something: when you barge in on two guys snuggled up together in their room, what do you think they’re doing?”
Sanders’ eyes moved between us again, but this time his expression muddled with distaste. He dropped his hand and stepped back.
“Jesus,” he muttered as he turned away from us. “Well, never mind, then – I don’t want to know. I just came up here to tell Lund that he has a phone call downstairs.”
He hurried from the room and shut the door behind him without another word. As my face fell at the thought of having to listen to Karl lecture me for the rest of the night, Jack grinned triumphantly.
“That’s got to be a record. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten him to leave so quickly.”
“Yeah, and only at the expense of Sanders’ thinking we were in here snuggling.”
He shrugged indifferently and hopped off the bed to put on his shoes.
“Come on, I’ll walk down with you.”
“Why? Just to further the rumors that we’re in here cuddling?”
“No, so Trask doesn’t jump you in the stairwell. If you die, things will really be dull around here.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s not like everyone doesn’t already believe those rumors, anyhow,” he said as we started from the room. “You know, seeing as we’re the only two students who don’t play a sport, we’re attached at the hip, and we spend loads of time in our room ...”
“What?” I said, turning to see if he was joking. He only raised his eyebrows in disbelief at my ignorance. “I can’t wait to tell Karl. Maybe it’ll distract him from lecturing me.”
“It might. Of course, if he doesn’t have his suspicions by now then I’ll be surprised: you’re well-dressed, absurdly-neat, you do my laundry more often than not, your hair smells like cranberries –”
None Shall Sleep (Damnatio Memoriae Book 1) Page 28