“Working on that science project with my classmate, like I told you,” I said, hoping the rain hid my recent tears. “Her guardian was nice and gave me a ride back since it was raining.”
“Her guardian?” she repeated with alarm, squinting at Gabriel’s car. Alarm showed clear on her face as she recognized him. “Get inside, Juliet!” she said, ushering me in quickly.
“What did he say to you?” she demanded, locking the door behind her.
“N-nothing!” I said, startled into lying. I didn’t understand her fervor. Though I still wasn’t certain of his motives, he’d been the nicest person I’d met in this town by far. “He said he was glad I was making friends with Camille, that’s all.”
“Camille?” she said. “Camille Teague? Oh, god,” she said, running a hand over her face. “This friend of yours is Gabriel Katsura’s ward? No, no, Juliet, this won’t be any good at all. You are not to spend time with that girl any more.”
“She’s my only friend!” I exclaimed. “You’ve been telling me and telling me that I needed to make friends, and she’s the only one who’s nice to me!”
“You listen to me,” she said seriously. “Gabriel Katsura is a dangerous man, and I want you as far from him as possible.”
The feeling the Tower gave me was welling up. Indignation burned. “Why?” I snapped. “Because he knows things? Because he has answers? You want to keep me in the dark forever, is that it? Weird things are going on all over, and you just want me to shut up and stay home? You’re just like dad, you know that? You’re
My words seemed to stun her. In a faltering burst of cowardice I ran up the stairs and shut myself in my room.
Chapter 13
Mac
Tailor’s handing me a mop and Destin a bucket of cleaning supplies when the girls come in the front doors Saturday morning. Jul is radiant, dressed in pale pastels that make her skin and hair seem darker than usual, her ponytail twisted haphazard over her shoulder. She tugs on it when she catches sight of Tailor - a sure sign she’s nervous. She’s always pulling on her hair. I want to reach out and take her hand, reassure her, but I just can’t shake the feeling that even though she’s right there, she’s a thousand miles away from me.
“Fellow inmates!” I say brightly, instead. “Welcome to hell.”
Tailor huffs. “You’re the ones stupid enough to get in trouble. I’m the one who has to give up my Saturday to babysit you.”
“So let’s all go get ice cream and no one will be the wiser,” I say. “Or muffins. Isn’t there a cafe just down the street? Benedict or Benvolio or something?”
Tailor’s almost as tall as Destin, and the effect of being stared down over his glasses from almost two feet above is chilling. In church, when they talk about the wrath of heaven, I see an English teacher before his second cup of coffee.
“Or we could clean stuff,” I say meekly.
Tailor quirks an eyebrow, as if challenging me to suggest anything fun ever again in my life. “With the school festival in three days, Principal Umino wants the place spotless. The janitors take care of most things, but since you’ve got nothing better to do, you can do some detail cleaning. The wonder twins get the stairway railings,” he eyed me. “You girls can dust the light fixtures. Tie a duster to a broom handle, I don’t need you falling off a ladder and be forced to take you to the hospital.”
Sentimental, Tailor is not.
“I’ll be in the English classroom. Don’t do anything stupid,” he shoots a look at me.
“Me? Do something stupid?” I grumble under my breath, as Tailor disappears up the stairs.
“It’s like he knows you,” Destin says.
“When do I ever do stupid things?”
“In math last week when Mrs. Ragland asked what the square root of 144 was, you said Jenga,” he reminds me.
“People laughed,” I point out.
“And you got extra homework.”
“Karate yesterday,” Camille says.
Ikeda had made us pick sparring partners, and I’d picked her before Hyde could pick me. Somehow I still ended up getting thrown halfway across the room. “I thought you’d go easy on me because we’re sort of slightly friends!”
“Stupid,” she said flatly.
“Chasing imaginary creatures...” Destin mumbles.
“It is not imaginary! You saw it!”
“What’s not imaginary?” Jul asks.
“The reason we have this ridiculous detention in the first place,” I say, frowning at the window by the front door that was replaced a week ago. You’d never know anything had happened to it.
“Yeah, how
“I made a riot,” Camille says.
She doesn’t seem to think I can top that. “We found the creepy little monster that’s been stealing out of the lockers,” I say, folding my arms. I dare them to laugh. “I chased it around the school and it broke a window. Umino decided I was lying because she’s evil.”
Jul’s eyes are wide. I’m not sure if I’ve ruined her opinion of me or not.
“Monster?” Camille says.
“It was this freaky little thing with a tail and wings and ears - ”
“He’s calling it a catbat,” Destin says, deadpan.
“Don’t you go pretending you didn’t see it,” I snap at him. “Maybe if you got a haircut you wouldn’t have an excuse - ”
“If you say you saw it, you saw it,” Jul says, apparently nervous we’ll start fighting. “We’d better start cleaning something before Tailor comes back or we’ll never get done with detention, no matter how we got into it.”
She and Camille take the dusters and brooms and go down the stairwell to the basement to clean the lights.
“Thanks for the help,” I tell Destin.
“You’re welcome.”
“That was sarcasm.”
He sighs, dunking a rag in cleaning solution. “Do you ever wonder if girls would like you better if you were less weird?”
“Me?” I swipe the curling ironwork of the banister. “I’m not the one who sheds pillow stuffing.”
Reflexively Destin looks around swiftly, tension in his shoulders. “Keep your voice down!” A single downy feather escapes the hem of his shirt.
“Tailor’s shut upstairs and the girls are in the basement,” I say dismissively. “And let’s be clear about something. I’m not weird - I just don’t hide under the covers when something weird
“So is that a yes or a no to being weird? Because I think you just claimed both.”
“What I am is awesome. End of discussion.”
He chuckles and goes back to work on the grime in the grooves of the railing.
Sometimes I wonder if he’d spend the rest of his life shut up in his room with comics and a laptop without me there to drag him out into the sun.
