“That bell.”
“Everything is terrible,” agreed Gansey.
The two friends stepped off the walk to make the trek across the sports fields. It was a gift, this commute from the science building to Gruber Hall, ten luxurious minutes gulping air and sunshine between classes. Being on campus in general comforted Adam; the predictable routine cradled him. Study hard. Go to class. Hold up your hand. Answer the question. March towards graduation. Other classmates complained about the work. Work! Work was the island Adam swam to in a stormy sea.
And the sea was very stormy. Monsters churned in the ley line beneath them. A forest grew through the hands and eyes Adam had bargained away to Cabeswater. And Gansey was supposed to die before April. That was the troubled ocean – Glendower was the island. To wake him was to get a favour, and that favour would be to save Gansey’s life. This enchanted country needed an enchanted king.
That weekend, Adam had dreamt twice that they had already found Glendower and were now seeking him again. The first night he’d had the dream, it had been a nightmare. The second time, a relief.
He asked carefully, “What’s next for the Glendower search?”
“The Dittley cave,” Gansey said.
This answer startled Adam. Ordinarily Gansey favoured the cautious approach, and the Dittley cave was the opposite. For starters, after they pulled Glendower’s daughter Gwenllian out of it, strange animals had begun crawling from the mouth every so often. And for finishers, Piper Greenmantle had shot Jesse Dittley dead at its entrance. Everything about the cave reeked of past and future death. “You don’t think Gwenllian would’ve told us if she thought her father was further down in that cave, instead of having us wander the cave of bones?”
“I think Gwenllian serves her own purpose,” Gansey replied. “And I have yet to figure out what it might be.”
“I just don’t think it’s a reasonable risk. Plus, it’s a crime scene.”
If Ronan had been there, he would have said, Everywhere’s a crime scene.
Gansey said, “Does this mean you have different ideas?”
Ideas, plural? Adam would have been happy to have a single idea. The most promising way forward, a cave in Cabeswater, had collapsed during their last excursion, and no new opportunities had appeared to replace it. Gansey had observed that it felt like a test of worthiness, and Adam couldn’t help but agree. Cabeswater had assigned them a trial, they’d set themselves at it, and somehow they’d been found wanting. It had felt so right, though. He and Ronan had worked together to clear the cave of hazards, and then the entire group had pooled their talents to briefly revive the skeletons of an ancient herd that had led Ronan and Blue to Maura. Every night since then, Adam had relived that memory before he went to sleep. Ronan’s dreams, Adam focusing the ley line, Blue amplifying, Gansey speaking the entire plan into motion. Adam had never felt so … intrinsic before. They had been a fine machine.
But it hadn’t taken them to Glendower.
Adam suggested, “Talk more to Artemus?”
Gansey made a hm sound. It would have been pessimistic coming from anyone but was doubly so coming from him. “I don’t think we’ll have a problem talking to Artemus. It’s getting him to talk back I’m worried about.”
“I thought you always said you were persuasive,” Adam said.
“Experience has not proven this to be the case.”
“Gansey Boy!” shouted a voice across the fields. Whitman, one of Gansey’s old rowing teammates, lifted three fingers in salute. Gansey didn’t respond until Adam lightly touched his shoulder with the back of his hand. Gansey blinked up, and then his face transformed into his Richard Campbell Gansey III smile. What a treasure that smile was, passed down through the ages from father to son, tucked away in hope chests during son-less generations, buffed and displayed proudly whenever company was over.
“Sitwhit,” Gansey called back, his old Southern accent rolling generously through the vowels. “You left your keys in the door!”
Laughing, Whitman zipped up his fly. He loped up beside them, and he and Gansey fell into some effortless conversation. A moment later, two more boys had joined them, then two more again. They bantered lightly back and forth, buoyant and youthful and convivial, advertisements for clean living and good education.
This was a master class that Adam had never got good at, although he’d spent months in dedicated study. He analysed Gansey’s mannerisms, dissected the other boys’ reactions, and catalogued dialogue patterns. He watched how an easy gesture unfolded a bouquet of mannish conversation, elegant as a magic trick. He took careful note of the behind-the-scenes footage: how a miserable Gansey could become a hospitable one in just a moment. But he could never work out the practicum. Warm greetings iced in his mouth. Casual gestures became dismissive. A steady eye contact turned into an unnerving stare.
He’d retaken the class each quarter, but he thought, incredibly, maybe there were some skills even Adam Parrish couldn’t pick up.
“Where’s Parrish?” asked Engle.
“He’s right there,” Gansey replied.
“Don’t know how I missed the wind off the glacier,” Engle said. “What’s up, man?”
It was a rhetorical question, answerable by a lightly painted smile. The boys were here for Gansey. Where’s Parrish? In a place too far away to hike to in a day.
Once upon a time, this dynamic would have unsettled Adam. Threatened him. But now he was certain in his place as one of Gansey’s two favourites, so he merely put his hands in his pockets and walked quietly alongside the rest.
Suddenly, Adam felt Gansey tense beside him. The others were still hooting and laughing, but Gansey’s expression had gone pensive. Adam followed his gaze to the great columns that held up the roof of Gruber Hall. Headmaster Child stood at the top of the stairs between them, a textbook or something similar in hand. He was a leathery bird of a man, a hearty recommendation for sunscreen and broad-brimmed hats.
“All right, gentlemen,” he called. “I could hear you from my office. Are we conducting ourselves like ravens? Class awaits.”
Fist bumps were exchanged; hair was scrubbed; shoulders were knocked. The other boys dispersed; Gansey and Adam remained. Child lifted a hand to Gansey in a sort of wave before ducking into the offices of Gruber Hall.
Again Gansey looked angry, and then he looked nothing at all. He resumed his walk to class.
“What was that?” Adam asked.
Gansey pretended not to have heard as they climbed the stairs Child had just stood on.
“Gansey. What was that about?”
“What?”
“The hand. Child.”
“It’s friendly.”
It was not unlike the world to be friendlier to Gansey than to Adam, but it was unlike Headmaster Child. “Tell me you won’t tell me, but don’t tell me a lie.”
Gansey made a big fuss over tucking in his uniform shirt and pulling down his sweater. He didn’t look at Adam. “I don’t want to fight.”
Adam made an educated guess. “Ronan.”
Gansey’s eyes went to him furtively and back to his sweater.
“No way,” Adam said. “What. No. You didn’t.”
He didn’t know exactly what he was accusing Gansey of. Just – he knew what Gansey wanted for Ronan, and he knew how Gansey got things.