Shelby made a show of yawning. “See, when it comes to the Nephilim kids at Shoreline, the only thing the teachers are strict about is the pretense of discipline. Discipline itself doesn’t so much exist. Though, of course, Frankie’s not going to advertise that to the new girl. Especially not Lucinda Price.”
There it was again. That edge in Shelby’s voice when she said Luce’s name. Luce wanted to know what it meant. And where Shelby had been until three. And how she’d come in through the window in the dark without knocking over any of those plants. And who were the Nephilim kids?
Luce had sudden vivid flashbacks to the mental jungle gym Arriane had taken her through when they’d first met. Her Shoreline roommate’s tough exterior was a lot like Arriane’s, and Luce remembered a similar how-will-I-ever-be-friends-with-you feeling her first day at Sword & Cross.
But though Arriane had seemed intimidating and even a little dangerous, there had been something charmingly off-kilter about her from the start. Luce’s new roommate, on the other hand, just seemed annoying.
Shelby popped off the bed and lumbered into the bathroom to brush her teeth. After digging through her duffel bag to find her toothbrush, Luce followed her in and gestured sheepishly at the toothpaste.
“I forgot to pack mine.”
“No doubt the dazzle of your celebrity blinded you to the small necessities of life,” Shelby replied, but she picked up the tube and extended it toward Luce.
They brushed in silence for about ten seconds until Luce couldn’t take it anymore. She spat out a mouthful of froth. “Shelby?”
With her head in the belly of the porcelain sink, Shelby spat and said, “What?”
Instead of asking any of the questions that had been running through her head a minute before, Luce surprised herself and asked, “What was I saying in my sleep?”
This morning was the first in at least a month of vivid, complicated, Daniel-ridden dreams on which Luce had woken up unable to remember a single thing from her sleep.
Nothing. Not one brush of an angel wing. Not one kiss of his lips.
She stared at Shelby’s gruff face in the mirror. Luce needed the girl to help jog her memory. She must have been dreaming about Daniel. If she hadn’t been … what could it mean?
“Beats me,” Shelby said finally. “You were all muffled and incoherent. Next time, try enunciating.” She left the bathroom and slipped on a pair of orange flip-flops. “It’s breakfast time. You coming or what?”
Luce scurried out of the bathroom. “What do I wear?” She was still in her pajamas. Francesca hadn’t said anything last night about a dress code. But then, she’d also failed to mention the roommate situation.
Shelby shrugged. “What am I, the fashion police? Whatever takes the least amount of time. I’m hungry.”
Luce hustled into a pair of skinny jeans and a black wraparound sweater. She would have liked to spend a few more minutes on her first-day-of-school look, but she just grabbed her backpack and followed Shelby out the door.
The dormitory hallway was different in the daylight. Everywhere she looked were bright, oversized windows with ocean views, or built-in bookshelves crammed full of thick, colorful hardcover books. The floors, the walls, the recessed ceilings and steep, curving staircases were all made from the same maple wood used to build the furniture inside Luce’s room. It should have given the whole place a warm log cabin feel, except that the school’s layout was as intricate and bizarre as Sword & Cross’s dorm had been boring and straightforward. Every few steps, the hallway seemed to split off into small tributary hallways, with spiral staircases leading further into the dimly lit maze.
Two flights of stairs and what looked like one secret door later, Luce and Shelby stepped through a set of double-paned French windows and into the daylight. The sun was incredibly bright, but the air was cool enough that Luce was glad she’d worn a sweater. It smelled like the ocean, but not really like home. Less briny, more chalky than the East Coast shore.
“Breakfast is served on the terrace.” Shelby gestured at a broad green expanse of land. This lawn was bordered on three sides by thick blue hydrangea bushes, and on the fourth by the steep, straight drop into the sea. It was hard for Luce to believe how very beautiful the school’s setting was. She couldn’t imagine being able to stay inside long enough to make it through a class.
As they approached the terrace, Luce saw another building, a long, rectangular structure with wooden shingles and cheery yellow-trimmed windowpanes. A large hand-carved sign hung over the entrance: “MESS HALL,” it read in quotes, like it was trying to be ironic. It was certainly the nicest mess Luce had ever seen.
The terrace was filled with whitewashed iron lawn furniture and about a hundred of the most laid-back-looking students Luce had ever seen. Most of them had their shoes kicked off, their feet propped up on the tables as they dined on elaborate breakfast dishes. Eggs Benedict, fruit-topped Belgian waffles, wedges of rich-looking, flaky spinach-flecked quiche. Kids were reading the paper, gabbing on cell phones, playing croquet on the lawn. Luce knew from rich kids at Dover, but East Coast rich kids were pinched and snotty, not sun-kissed and carefree. The whole scene looked more like the first day of summer than a Tuesday in early November. It was all so pleasant, it was almost hard to begrudge the self-satisfied looks on these kids’ faces. Almost.
Luce tried to imagine Arriane here, what she would think of Shelby or this oceanside dining, how she probably wouldn’t know what to make fun of first. Luce wished she could turn to Arriane now. It would be good to be able to laugh.
Looking around, she accidentally caught the eyes of a couple of students. A pretty girl with olive skin, a polka-dot dress, and a green scarf tied in her glossy black hair. A sandy-haired guy with broad shoulders tackling an enormous stack of pancakes.
Luce’s instinct was to turn her head away as soon as she made eye contact—always the safest bet at Sword & Cross. But … neither one of these kids glared at her. The biggest surprise about Shoreline was not the crystal sunshine or the cushy breakfast terrace or the buckets-of-money aura hovering over everyone. It was that the students here were smiling.
Well, most of them were smiling. When Shelby and Luce reached an unoccupied table, Shelby picked up a small placard and flung it to the ground. Luce leaned sideways to see the word RESERVED written on it just as a kid their age in a full-on black-tie waiter suit approached them with a silver tray.
“Um, this table is re—” he began to say, his voice cracking inopportunely.
“Coffee, black,” Shelby said, then abruptly asked Luce, “What do you want?”
“Uh, same,” Luce said, uncomfortable at being waited on. “Maybe a little milk.”
“Scholarship kids. Gotta slave to get by.” Shelby rolled her eyes at Luce as the waiter darted away to get their coffees. She picked up the San Francisco Chronicle from the middle of the table and unfolded the front page with a yawn.
It was right around then that Luce had had enough.
“Hey.” She shoved Shelby’s arm down so she could see her face behind the paper. Shelby’s heavy eyebrows rose in surprise. “I used to be a scholarship kid,” Luce told her. “Not at my last school, but the school before that—”