None of it mattered. Not Noel or camp or the rules that governed coed mingling in the fellowship. People were being tortured and killed in the very place meant to preserve life. Her gram was gone, and Gabi didn’t know whom to trust to help her fix things, but the hopelessness of it all gave her a reckless courage. Noel looked small out in the yard as he cast one last look at the house and turned to go. Gabi flipped the lock and swung the door open.
“Wait!” she called, scanning the neighboring yards for the figures of Bradley and Geoff racing toward her. Gabi stepped aside and held the front door open, hoping Noel would take the hint so she wouldn’t have to hear herself inviting one of her worst enemies into her home.
Chapter SEVEN
I AM making dinner while Noel Sutton sits at my kitchen counter drinking a cup of tea. Everything is completely normal, Gabi recited inwardly. She was grateful for the excuse to keep her hands busy, having made a beeline for the kitchen the moment Noel closed the door behind him. Along the way, she made sure the curtains were all open so that a neighbor would see the assault taking place, even if she couldn’t be saved in time.
“This is weird, right?” Noel said, then slurped the mint tea Gabi had made from some dried leaves harvested from Gram’s pots. Gabi said nothing. Noel had removed his coat, shoes, and hat at the door, and his hair stood out in spikes around his head. His cheeks were glazed with the warmth of the kitchen, and he looked far less intimidating perched on a high stool at the counter, his feet not touching the floor. Noel put his cup down and drummed his fingers on the countertop. Just like Mathew.
He’s somebody’s son, Gabi reminded herself when thoughts of whether or not she would actually have the guts to wield Gram’s kitchen knife against him crept in.
“Thanks again for letting me in,” Noel ventured. “I guess I should have tried to talk to you at school so you’d feel safer, but you didn’t come out for so long. I thought I’d missed you, so I just came here.”
Gabi stopped chopping and looked up from the soft, wrinkled carrots she’d found in the crisper. “Yeah right,” she said softly. “Safer.” Though she was in her own house, challenging Noel still felt dangerous, but he only squirmed on his stool. Noel’s eyes, she noticed, were the color of chocolate squares warmed in a pan with milk. Gabi remembered the softness of his eyes when they were younger. She hadn’t really seen them in eight years.
“I know why Bradley came after you like that today,” Noel said in a rush. “It’s my fault. I should never have told him. I’m sorry.”
Gabi set down the knife. What was happening? Bradley came after her because he hated her and he could, plain and simple. The Training Period attack had been particularly vicious, and all the more scary for being carried out under the supervision of a teacher, but it didn’t surprise her. Bradley saw his chance, and he took it. She picked the knife back up and sawed at the carrots with renewed vigor.
Noel cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m trying to tell you that Bradley was just trying to get back at me. He had this whole plan about pairing up with you at Training Period and I told him he shouldn’t do it. I knew Helmsgerth wouldn’t stop him, so when she called for people to pair up while you were in the locker room, I volunteered to be your partner before Bradley could.”
“Why did you do that?” Gabi asked.
“I thought it was too much, with your grandmother and everything. I know what it’s like to lose somebody.”
“Oh,” Gabi said, remembering Noel’s father and the day when the principal of the school had come to their classroom and asked Noel to step into the hall. His mother had been waiting just outside the door, her eyes swollen from crying. Noel’s face had gone white just before he pushed past the principal and his mother and raced away down the hall, trying to outrun the loss of a father killed on a Witness mission. That was when Noel had stopped passing Gabi knock-knock jokes and started hanging out with Bradley Fiske. She’d never put those events together before, though it was so clear to her now.
“It didn’t work, obviously,” Noel continued. “Bradley had already asked Helmsgerth if he could work with you before class. Then right before you came back, he told me he was going to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“He wanted to get back at me for trying to wreck his plan. He said he was going to tell you a secret that I told him years ago. Did he say anything?”
“He said a lot of things to me, Noel,” Gabi snapped. She was tired of trying to guess at his meaning, sore from her one-sided wrestling match with Bradley, and she still needed to figure out how she was going to bring the secret operations at the Care Center to light. Bradley and Noel’s little tiff was the least of her worries.
“He said he told you when I asked him about it after Training Period. He said now you knew all about your mother.”
Gabi stiffened as Bradley’s words came back to
