Page 2

Chapter 2

PARADISE LOST

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

Delilah spits out her energy drink. “A roommate ?”

I grimace at the regurgitated green liquid on the grass. “That’s what I told them.”

“You paid for a single room,” she says, raising her bumpy nose at me, the only physical similarity we share as best friends. While I can barely control my dark curls, she complains about her blond hair lying too flat. While I have boxes for brows, she’s never had to pluck hers. While Delilah was taller than me by an inch when we met at camp, my shoe inserts shoot me up enough to be the tall one now.

“I also tried to tell them that,” I say.

Digging her stiletto acrylics so hard into her drink that the aluminum crinkles, Delilah leans against the soaring brick wall dividing our brother and sister campuses.

A few parents and students passing through the wall’s gate stare at Delilah’s palpable dark aura the longer she emanates her fury.

My shoulders tense. The focus isn’t on me, but still. “People are watching.”

“Enjoy the show,” Delilah barks at the setting sun and courtyard, where an unsettling séance circle of cupid statues inside a marble fountain shoot water from their arrows. “How dare they shove a roommate on you?”

I haven’t even told her the worst part: It’s Jasper Grimes, the asshole who had me bawling my eyes out to her at the end of summer two years ago.

Delilah has “accidentally” committed arson on oak trees in the surrounding Au Sable Forks woods more times than I’ve seen her in person since camp—twice. Both were a result of her angrily monologuing about Valentine’s strictness and chucking around sparklers that she snuck into camp. Since she’s upset now, I need to assess that anger on a range from tree arson to whole planet arson before I tell her the entire story. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t have any sparklers handy. But with Delilah, you never really know.

“I can’t even help you,” Delilah goes on. “My academy is right there, but it’s basically not with this cockblockade in the way.”

“The what?”

“This wall between us! We all call it that.” She smacks the palm of her hand against the brick wall.

Yet another word I don’t know. Delilah already informed me that summer campers never learn the real campus slang, like how both academy courtyards are the Halos due to their circular shapes and the chocolate-caramel lattes sold at the coffee stands are Jesuses because they taste as good as him. Or something. Cockblockade, however, evaded me.

At least I was familiar with how traditionally the academies operate, even after the recent Saint Valentine’s to Valentine Academy rebrand—an attempt to separate from its religious-focused origins. At camp, everyone attended workshops on the sister campus but slept in their respective residential halls on very-most-opposite map corners, split by this wall. As students now, we only get free rein today and during some winter mixer—which Delilah claims is our sole time to celebrate after months of studying, and which I’ll unquestionably avoid.

Delilah smacks the wall again for dramatic emphasis, pulling me back.

Whole-planet-arson status it is. The best course of action is to wait to share the details on my roommate situation. “My residential retainer said he’d check with the office about a single,” I say. “It’ll be fine.”

“Good. Or I’ll set them on fire.”

“Do not.”

“We’ll see.”

I tug on my left suspender strap. The fact that we need to be in uniforms the moment we’re assigned to rooms—a black-and-red plaid blazer with the Valentine crest on the lapel, matching plaid slacks, bright red button-down shirt, and black ties spawned from the depths of ugly Hell—is cruel. “Do I look like a guy in this uniform?”

“You are a guy.”

“But like.” I wiggle the dress shoes hanging off my feet, which I purposely ordered a size too large. Not my smartest move, but fearing that everyone would notice I have the smallest feet on campus beat my logic. “You know.”

Delilah crosses her arms in her much more aesthetically pleasing uniform. While I look drenched in fresh blood in my suit, she gets a pastel blazer and a plaid skirt that falls to her knee-high stockings. The reminder of how aggressively the brother and sister uniforms play into stereotypes isn’t a thrilling one.

“I thought you finally felt good about this stuff,” she says.

“I did. I do. Sort of.”

“You deferred your acceptance here for a reason.”

I did. To take online classes for a year. To figure out guy clothes and guy hair and other ways to survive, all in the privacy of my bedroom. But. “I guess.”

“No one’s gonna find out. How would they know?”

Jasper Grimes would know.

If he tells anyone, it’s over. The guidance package doesn’t mention transgender students, but that’s the problem. They only use the old church as a bell tower now, but when Mom studied here, going to church was mandatory on Fridays at nine o’clock. She took religion like other students took math. And whenever I visited Valentine before, not a single student struck me as someone who may need updated guidelines for the same reason I do.

Hence, keeping my head down.

“I just have a bad feeling all this will pile up,” I say. “And I’m worried I might not rank top five of my class.”

“Please, you’re the smartest person I know.”

The compliment only briefly warms my chest. Delilah could never understand the fear of losing a scholarship. Although both our parents went to Valentine, hers are doctors drowning in money. Mom was also an Excellence Scholar and now owns a bookshop that, although it’s a cornerstone of the Queens community, is drowning in debt—an anomaly when Valentine alumni get an unofficial fast pass to any Ivy they wish. But Mom wished for her dream instead. “My scholarship depends on it.”

“I mean, I get that. If I want to be able to run for the student council board this year, then I have to rank within the top fifteen of my own class.”

I nod, even though I barely take in what she says.

Delilah sighs, and it comes out a bit irritated and short. A piece of me wants to ask what’s going on, but she distracts me by continuing to talk. “I’m just trying to say that I hear you. About the pressure. I’d back out now if you don’t want this.”

“No,” I say, playing with Mom’s varsity Valentine ring on my finger. “I want it.”

Even more than that. When Grandma and Grandpa were alive, they would ramble about how proud they were of Mom to have scored this scholarship—and when she wasn’t around, how it was “wasted” on a tanking bookstore.

And then there’s Mom. At first, I applied without telling her, assuming the odds of being chosen as one of their Excellence Scholars were microscopically low, and that she would be crushed if I got her hopes up. Once they emailed me that my scholarship was still on the table after I deferred and came clean to her, though, she didn’t cheer like I expected. She only frowned, knowing full well that I would need to stay on the boys’ campus for reasons that might not thrill administration. She insisted there had to be other Ivy feeders in the region besides the one she went to—that I could apply elsewhere, to a place that wouldn’t pose as much risk.

But Valentine is where I realized I was a boy. It’s called out to me all my life, insisting I belong here. It had to be this campus. This academy. After four attempts at explaining this to Mom—alongside reminding her how this life-changing education pointed her toward her love of books and, ultimately, mine—she let go of enough worry to give a hesitant seal of approval.

Yet I’m already facing problems one day in. Exactly like Mom worried about.

“But look how terrified you are,” Delilah says.

“I’m not terrified .”

Delilah points at my hand. It’s shaking.

I drop my arm. “I’ve dreamed of studying here forever. Academics that’ll actually challenge me, and on the boys’ side of campus. I never thought I’d be able to…” I trail off, recalling the worst roommate I could’ve been assigned who might blow up this dream.

How do I keep Jasper Grimes silent? A bribe?

Bonging noises resonate through the courtyard. I startle and cover my ears.

Delilah rips my hands down. “Bro, relax, it’s the ten-minute warning bell till lights-out.”

I glance down the brick wall—cockblockade—where a bell tower sticks out of an otherwise unused church. I hadn’t noticed it in the dim sunset.

Instead of the bro handshake I faced in the residential hall, Delilah goes in for a basic hug. I’ve never been more thankful.

“If you start panicking or sobbing at any point, contact me,” she says. “Since I’m your emergency contact, my residential retainer can send me to the office to take the call.”

“I won’t sob.” I pause. “But thank you.”

Delilah disappears through the open cockblockade gate to the sister academy, and I head toward the residence hall. The sidewalks are crowded with families rushing their goodbyes, but I barely perceive them. Too much is on my mind.

Tonight, I have to sleep in the same room as another boy. One who kissed me and walked away like I was nothing.

My first kiss.

I shove my hands deep into my pockets as if that’ll punch the nerves out of me. The second Jasper sees me, he’ll have questions, and I won’t know how to answer any. I need to have a speech ready, and that bribe, but I don’t know what I’d offer.

I’ll just ask. He never had a problem taking whatever he wanted.