Page 18

Chapter 18

A RED, RED ROSE

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

Roses are red

Violets are blue

You make me

Say yahoo

I scribble out my hundredth love letter attempt, then return to fiddling with the STRIP Time sign on my library desk. Even if I had a million days to finish these nineteen prompts, I’d fail. I’m running on four hours of sleep and a two-day-old breadstick from Dix. Either way, an Excellence Scholar can’t write about something as illogical as romance.

But they’re due any moment now, once Jasper wraps up his Thursday one-on-ones with his patrons. There must be an excuse I can give so that Jasper doesn’t revoke our deal. If Luis still had his cat, it could’ve eaten my homework.

“ Greetings, student! ” Jasper practically sings so loudly behind me, it echoes through the dead-silent library.

I jump, my hand knocking over three pawns on the chessboard. My eyes whip to the librarian, who must be armed and ready to shush us. She keeps tapping at her computer like it’s none of her business. Yet another principal’s nephew power.

“Today marks two weeks of your love tutoring,” Jasper says, claiming a chair across from mine. He wears his love tutoring tortoiseshell glasses again, which I doubt have a real prescription. Maybe an old modeling shoot relic.

They do make him look good. The round frames are juxtaposed with the sharper angles of his face, and the color matches his eyebrows, which are several shades darker than his blond hair. Was his brow line always that pronounced?

“Charlie?”

“Hm?”

“I said, let me review your homework assignment.”

“Right—” I push my real glasses up my nose, buying myself time to concoct a lie. “I sort of lost my love letters.”

“How does one sort of lose nineteen letters?”

Yeah, how, Charlie? “A cat. Ripped them up.”

“A cat?”

“Came out of the woods. I tried… fighting it, but it was too late.”

A corner of Jasper’s lip curls. His slender fingers fix the chess pieces I knocked over, one by one, his bracelet jangling against the board. “Cats don’t casually set up shop in the woods, von Hevringprinz. Au Sable Forks is known to have coyotes, though.”

Unspoken Guideline 12: Valentine has coyotes. Do not go in the woods.

“Oh,” I say.

“Does oh mean you’re locking in I was attacked by coyotes as your final answer?”

“Yes?”

Jasper points a white pawn at my very intact composition notebook.

My heart pounds harder. “I’d already ripped out the letters, so that’s why my notebook is still—”

He grabs my notebook off the desk. I attempt to snatch it, but Jasper bends too far away to reach. Holding the packet over his head, he inspects my pitiful scribbles. “What’s this, then?”

“Not finished,” I rush to say. A famous poet can’t read that.

“Art is never truly finished.” Jasper clears his throat. “ Roses are red. Violets are blue. You make me. Say yahoo. ”

A textbook page flips at a nearby desk. A cough echoes through the library.

Jasper casts aside the packet, knocking down the chess pieces he just fixed. “Might I ask why you’re set on this roses are red pattern?”

If Jasper thought I was special , he doesn’t anymore.

I play with the lamp pull chain beside us in a catatonic state of humiliation. “I don’t know where else to start.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Of what?”

“ Roses are red, violets are blue is a cliché. Writers are told to never use them. Do you know why that is, student?”

During that poetry workshop I was forced to take with Jasper, guest speakers hammered this rule into our heads. “The more we repeat certain phrases, the more they lose emotional impact over time.”

Intrigue flickers across Jasper’s gaze like he’s impressed. I can’t deny the rush of how good that feels. “Correct. Sometimes, clichés stop a reader from experiencing emotions. Other times, it can also be the writer.”

He wants me to write about my emotions again.

I pick at a hangnail and scowl, feigning ignorance. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re holding yourself back from expressing your true feelings about romance. You can’t write love letters if you are.”

My pencil case. Now’s a good time to clean it. I pick out a few pencils with dud erasers. “My true feeling is that I don’t believe in romance.”

“How come?”

I can feel Jasper’s blue eyes focused on me like no one else exists. The same look that drew me in years ago. I shrug.

“You’ve had romantic experiences before?”

A pencil slips out of my hands. “Uh—I—”

“Why else would you feel this strongly about your lack of belief?”

My brain screams to shield my face with a textbook, to drape more hair over my eyes, to run back to Queens. If I lie to Jasper, he’ll keep pestering me. If I tell the truth, his memory could be jogged.

I have to be careful here.

Shoving aside the pencil case, I study him equally hard. “If by romantic experience, you mean getting screwed over and left behind, sure. But, in a way, I’m thankful. I learned earlier rather than later in life that your version of romance doesn’t exist.”

Speaking these words makes the past I’ve tried so hard to forget rush to the surface, feel all the more real, and my chest twists tight. I never thought I’d have to admit this aloud someday, let alone to the person who caused the damage.

Jasper frowns. “Forget that person. They’re long gone now.”

I press my lips tightly together.

The next thing I know, Jasper reaches over the table to squeeze my cheeks together and smushes my lips into a fish face.

The courage I summoned prior zips out of my body. He’s so close, I can smell mint gum on his breath. “ Whuat auh youh doang? ” He’s touching me. My face .

“Look at me.”

“I auhm?”

“Tell me you love me.”

“Whuat?!”

Jasper finally lets go. Coughing erupts out of me like I’m a broken dam. If the librarian is finally shushing us, I can’t hear at all.

“EROS Four. Craft for yourself—not your audience—for true connection,” he recites over my choking. “But you’ve closed off your emotions about romance because you’re scared. We must fix that.”

My face burns as hot as lava. No, lava only reaches 1200 Celsius. I’m a bajillion-zillion. “N-no thanks.”

“Then you may end our deal. No more room to yourself.”

What if I strangled him? Then what?

Any feelings I once felt toward Jasper are history. Logically, saying I love him should be painless. But this is about pride, and I’d prefer to retain some after my time at Valentine so far. There must be a way to imagine Jasper is something—anything—else I love. What do I love?

Books. Othello. I’ll pretend he’s Shakespeare. I’m praising his work as a playwright.

Straightening in my chair, I fold my hands on my lap. “I…”

Jasper’s lopsided dimple pops. He’s enjoying this.

I hate you. I hate you.

I ball my hands into fists on my lap. I can do this. “I… I… love…”

“V.H.!”

Luis and two others, holding calculus textbooks. The three increase in size like phone service bars beside us, Luis standing at the shortest rung.

“H-hey ther—!” My voice spikes to a wonky pitch. What is wrong with me?

Luis claims the untaken seat by me. “Sorry I’m late. Had detention today.”

“What? What’d you do?”

“Wore a T-shirt under my gift shop costume and forgot to put my dress shirt back on after. Residential retainers swarmed me like I was a bomb.”

The guidelines sniping down someone so close to me shakes me. When the main person I talk to lately is Jasper, who doesn’t need to follow them, how cutthroat they get over even little things was starting to slip my mind. “That sucks.”

“Is it cool that I brought Emilio and Michael for STRIP?” Luis says. “I’m the only one who got a perfect score on last week’s calc homework because of you.”

Because of me .

A grin spreads along my face. “Congrats.”

Jasper is too busy scrutinizing Luis up and down to offer a hello. His kindness must only extend to patrons who worship his every word. He points his journal’s spine at an empty desk one row over and stands. “I’ll wait there until we can finish our lesson.”

I follow Jasper’s journey to the next row with my eyes until Emilio and Michael distract me by talking among themselves.

“You good?” Luis whispers closer to my ear.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I say.

“Whenever you’re around Jasper Grimes, you look a little anxious.”

“He just gets on my nerves.”

“I heard he’s your roommate.”

Does that mean people talk about us? What could they even be saying? “Unfortunately. What have you heard?”

“You haven’t heard everything going around about you two?”

Brilliant. “No.”

“It’s breaking news that Jasper’s living with someone. Last year, he had the suite on the top floor that that one first year, Frank, has now. That’s brought in speculation on who you are.”

Nerves prickle in my chest. More spotlights. “I’m nobody, I swear.”

“People are crafting all sorts of conspiracy theories. One’s that you’re a famous poet, too, especially since you replaced P.M. as our year’s Scholar. Plus, your class schedules are mostly the same, right? From the outside, it looks like strings could’ve been pulled so you two stick together.”

“Nope,” I say, dead inside. “Just unlucky.”

Luis shakes his head almost incredulously. “Why is the principal’s nephew in a double?”

“There was a mix-up, apparently.”

“Jasper didn’t complain?”

“He thought having a roommate would be”—I toss up air quotes and frown—“fun.”

“In what universe? Mine won’t stop freaking out about spiders.” Luis tugs on a curl so violently that I’m shocked it doesn’t rip off.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Jasper at least gave us secret roommate knocks yesterday, so maybe he’ll stop barging through the door.”

“I guess that’s less obvious than a sock on the knob.” Luis eyes me up and down. “He’s not causing you serious problems, though, is he? He makes you work a lot for STRIP. You look, well, miserable.”

Jasper is causing me problems, but not in the way Luis is likely imagining. Even if Luis did flag me as someone who would be interested in sending love letters on our side of campus, there’s no way he’d guess Jasper’s and my complicated history. I trust Luis the most here, but it’s not like I’d tell him everything.

“Is he, V.H.?”

“No,” I say quickly. “It’s fine. I promise.”

Michael waves to snag our attention. Similar to Luis, his good looks seem frustratingly natural, as if he just wakes up like this. But where Luis is all soft and smooth lines, his sleek crew cut and pointed face make him sharper in comparison. “Ready?”

Instead of answering, Luis laughs as if Michael told a joke deserving of a platinum medal.

This must be his not-so-hypothetical crush.

Holding back a grin, I walk the three through their inverse function questions. While we solve the first equation, my gaze drifts past Luis’s shoulder, toward Jasper’s desk. He’s focused on the love letters in his journal like always. Never a textbook. Yet he has impossibly high grades for a second year. A perfect hundred.

How?

I inspect how his hand moves at a steady pace. Two years ago, he scribbled so fast that the ink would smear worse than nowadays. His thigh doesn’t distractedly shake beneath the desk anymore. I’d have to clutch his knee during workshop to make him stop.

Jasper is different now. But he isn’t different at all.

Luis passes me a sheet of paper. His completed equation. “Can you check this?”

I glance down at my barely finished one. Focus, Charlie. “Yeah.”

Soon, the three are off with quick thanks.

Jasper returns to my desk. Instead of sitting across from me like last time, he claims Luis’s chair, which is still pulled out. “Where were we?” he asks, assertively tossing down his journal.

I stay quiet, not particularly wanting him to remember, and glance around the library. After hearing how the student body is obsessed with us two, I feel invisible eyes on my back despite the vacant desks around us.

“Right,” Jasper says. “My fourth EROS. Tell me you love me.”

“Listen, I really don’t want to keep saying that I lo—”

“You don’t have to say that you love me . Just say I love you . To the wall. The desk. I only want to make you feel that vulnerability.”

I grimace.

“I won’t watch.” As Jasper goes back to his journal, I pick out more changes in him. Unfortunately, he’s always had a nice face to look at, but his jaw is sharper, and his brows really are bolder. The dress shirts he rolls to his elbows look eons better than our hideous camp uniforms—dweeby polo shirts, navy shorts, name tag lanyards, and socks rolled up to the knees.

But one thing about him might not have changed.

“I promised I wouldn’t watch you,” Jasper says, peeking up at me through the hair draped over his face, “yet now you’re watching me.”

I flick my gaze away, covering my lips with a propped hand. “I have a question.”

“You’re muffled.”

“I have a question,” I repeat louder. “Where do you keep going?”

“Can you please be more specific?”

“You’re always late for lights-out. Are you using that special number pin on your collar to sneak into the sister academy at night and stuff?”

“I’m writing letters in my office.”

“That’s all?”

Jasper shrugs. A nonanswer.

I tilt my head at him. Jasper is obsessed with romance, yet I know the truth that he’s secretly a heartbreaker. He should have at least five girlfriends.

“We non-tutors don’t have any ulterior motives of hitting on sister students, if that’s what you’re implying,” Jasper adds.

“So, you really only joined STRIP and stayed because of P.M.?”

Jasper’s fountain pen goes still in his hand. “Excuse me?”

“Xavier mentioned it.”

At first, his mouth only wobbles, yet he’s usually such an open book that I’m trying to slam the cover shut. “I suppose I did enjoy his approach to STRIP’s letters, and we learned from each other until he abandoned us. And I have always taken up any opportunity that allows me to write and improve my craft, so I’ve stayed. Does that answer please you?”

I peer at him. “What happened with you two?”

The moment my curiosity lets the question slip out of my mouth, regret hits hard. Asking about Jasper’s life is the last thing I should do when a wall as towering as the cockblockade needs to stay between us. I shouldn’t even want to know. I don’t .

But it’s too late. Jasper is already huffing so hard that his blond hair flutters around his face as he considers his response. “What is there to say? One day, he was STRIP’s crux. The next, he was gone. He never warned us. Sure he’s having a blast now, writing of his visits to France with his mother or the Philippines with his father. To leave us behind, though? A career can wait. I wish to make Valentine count.”

The theory makes sense, but it doesn’t align with how Xavier reacted when I asked; he had talked to P.M. before he left.

Still, a weight that hasn’t left my chest in weeks lifts. The previous Excellence Scholar didn’t necessarily fail. “So, when you joined STRIP, you weren’t like Xavier.”

Jasper frustratedly sets down his pen. “Von Hevringprinz, no, I did not have a girlfriend like Xavier. I have not. Where are those I love you s?”

He’s lying. He has to be.

“Not happening,” I snap back.

Only once Jasper glances at the other tables do I realize how loudly I spoke and how many distant stares are finding us. Immediately, Luis’s claim about the spreading rumors filters into my mind. How many times have I scolded Jasper in public like this before without realizing so many eyes were around? Maybe those rumors are partially my fault.

They aren’t the only ones giving me looks. Jasper is, too, now. Although it’s a much more intense one, almost probing, like he’s recalling how many not happening s I also gave him back when we sat on the lakeside years ago and he insistently asked me to recite my poetry workshop assignments. The fact that I keep forgetting to watch how I talk to Jasper makes my heart rate spike higher than it has all day. He’s getting too familiar .

No. I’m getting too comfortable .

We need to finish this deal. Quick.

“Then I hereby allow you a two-week extension for your nineteen letters,” Jasper finally says. “One week to write, and one for you to discover how to stop being scared.”

“I’m not scared .” I try to say it quietly this time, but I’m barely successful.

Because if I can’t even write a roses-are-red poem, how can I possibly follow his rules of seduction to get our room to myself? I flip through my notebook and stop at Jasper’s third EROS.

Love does not have to make sense; neither do your words.

Maybe I can’t do this alone, but there might be someone who can help.