Home > Legendborn(8)

Legendborn(8)
Author: Tracy Deonn

She fixes me with a pointed stare. “Why do you think?” It takes me a long minute to realize what she’s referring to—expulsion. Ours. In one motion, I’m upright and out of bed. Alice pivots on a heel and sweeps out the door, her face a mixture of anger and apprehension. “I’m heading over now. Don’t be late.” The door slams.

I scramble for my phone, find Charlotte’s late-night group text.

OMFGGGG holy hsit I’m SO sorry!! cops have NEVER shown up to the Quarry party text me when you get this!!!!

Ignore.

Next, a missed call and voicemail from a number I don’t recognize with an Orange County area code and a university prefix. My own call from the dean’s office.

I dash around the room looking for clean clothes. A few minutes later I’m out the door, down the hallway, and taking the dorm stairs two at a time. I hit the crash bar on the exit door and stumble down the stone steps at the side of the brick building.

To my right, students stand in a long line on the red bricks surrounding the Old Well. Waiting for a sip, and good luck, on the first day of classes. Beyond them, the grounds are dotted with old-growth trees, low bushes, and a Confederate statue facing north.

I cross the street and trot between the South building and the old Playmakers Theatre. As soon as I clear both, I’ve got a picturesque view of Polk Place, the university’s main quad. Then, it feels like the seven-hundred-acre campus stares back at me all at once.

Academic buildings hold the border on all four sides of the rectangular lawn, connected via a sprawling network of walkways that stretch long over the grass and cross one another like red brick latticework. A hundred yawning, groggy students drift across the quad like birds in scattered migration. Some navigate the campus by memory, heads bent over their phones. Others move in pairs or groups, cutting across the grounds toward the dining hall for breakfast before their eight a.m.’s. Late summer’s early morning clouds cast the sky in muted grays and turn leaves to rich greens.

This is probably only a tenth of the grounds, but it’s still more school than I’ve ever walked. It takes a minute to get oriented. I thumb through the campus map on my phone and take off at a jog through the low-hanging mist and dew-drenched grass for the Student and Academic Services Building.

My mind tosses up images from last night like dark, confusing confetti. I want to tell Alice what I witnessed, but would she believe I saw a golden-eyed boy who uses magic to hypnotize students and a girl who carries a bow and arrow in her back pocket? And what about the deputy—maybe even the entire Sheriff’s department—who almost definitely knows the truth and helps keep it quiet? Alice didn’t see the isel, but she saw Selwyn dismiss Deputy Norris. She might agree that that hadn’t been a typical encounter between a police officer and a teenage boy, but would she leap with me from the shores of not normal to the wide, unknown ocean of absolutely terrifying?

 

* * *

 


“Ms. Matthews, Ms. Chen, please, sit down.”

Dean McKinnon has a former-football-player look about him: broad shoulders stretch the seams of his blue-striped button-down. I’m grateful that he’s offered us a seat and sit quickly. I have at least an inch in height on him, even in flats and not counting my hair, tall in its bun. It tends to make older men uncomfortable when I meet their gaze equally.

Sometimes I wish I could shrink into someone more convenient.

He strides around the desk to take his own seat. The sun sends a wide band of light in through his office window, and it bounces white, blue, and gold off the silver nameplate that sits crooked on the front edge of his mahogany desk. He pulls up a file on his computer and starts to scroll through it while we wait. His hair is shorn close to his temples and graying, but the color looks premature. Like working with thousands of students has aged him exponentially. Probably has. I’m probably one of them.

Beside me, Alice sits ramrod straight and still, but my knee bounces in anticipation. I’d been mentally composing my Don’t Kick Us Out speech since the elevator ride up to the second floor of the SASB. I’m not going back to Bentonville. Especially not after what I saw last night.

The dean opens his mouth to speak, but I’m faster. “Mr. McKinnon—”

“Dr. McKinnon, Ms. Matthews.” His voice is so stern I temporarily forget my rehearsed speech. He steeples his fingers. “Or Dean McKinnon. I have earned my titles.” Alice shifts uncomfortably in her chair, and her lips press into a thin line.

“Yes, of course.” I hear my voice slide into the tone and accent that matches the dean’s. “Dean McKinnon. First of all, I’d like you to know that it was my idea to go off campus last night, not Alice’s—”

Dean McKinnon’s blue eyes flash between us, and he smoothly cuts me off again. “Did you handcuff Ms. Chen to you, thus forcing her to follow you?”

I exchange a glance with Alice. She tilts her head as if to say, Shut up, Bree! “No.”

“Good.” He clicks into another file, and my transcript and student ID appear on the screen. He scrolls without looking up. “Because we aren’t in the business of educating students who can’t think on their own. While Ms. Chen’s academic records are stellar—practically perfect, in fact—if she is indeed so passive as to follow someone into her own expulsion, I’d have doubts about her being here in the first place.”

Alice inhales sharply. I could kick this man.

Dean McKinnon leans back in his chair and releases a long sigh. “You’re exceptional students or else you wouldn’t be one of the thirty high school participants admitted to the Early College Program. It’s common for students your age, upon experiencing unsupervised residential life, to make mistakes. Fortunately, the Durham County Sheriff’s office has graced you both with a warning rather than a citation. Likewise, I don’t intend to expel you. Consider this your first and only strike.”

Oh, thank God. We both release a breath.

“However”—something sharp flashes through Dean McKinnon’s eyes—“there are consequences for your blatant disrespect for program policies and the disregard for your own written agreement to follow them.” I open my mouth, but he silences me with a look. “I will be placing phone calls to both of your parents after this meeting, and you will both report to a peer mentor the rest of the semester. A second-year Early College student who has excelled in the program by making better choices.”

I gape, heat creeping up the back of my neck. “We don’t need babysitters.”

“Apparently,” Dean McKinnon says with a raised brow, “you do.”

“Thank you, Dean McKinnon,” Alice says evenly.

“You’re dismissed, Ms. Chen.” We both stand, but he gestures for me to stay. “Ms. Matthews, a moment.”

My stomach sinks like a dropped anchor. Why would he want to speak to me alone? Alice hesitates for a moment and our eyes lock; then she exits and the door clicks softly behind her.

The dean studies me and drills his fingers on the desk in the ensuing silence. Tadum-tadum-tadum. My heart races while I wait for him to speak. Does he know what I saw? Does he know about the Legendborn?

“Deputy Norris reported that you… got an attitude with him last night.”

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)