Page 22

Chapter 22

THE INVISIBLE MAN

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11

At least no one pounces at me from the bushes when I do homework in the Dixon Writing Gazebo this time. Probably because it’s only an hour until lights-out. Or Blaze is on delivery duty tonight, tiptoeing around the equestrian center for all the couples whose sole survival relies on STRIP.

Staying out late isn’t enticing to me, especially when the temperature in Au Sable Forks is so low that I need my winter coat and the academy hasn’t turned on the heat lamps in this gazebo yet. But I want nothing to do with Jasper.

Unfortunately, he lives in my bedroom.

Instead, I flip through Mr. Stern’s blackout poetry assignment. The subject material fails to distract from thoughts of Jasper, but it is due tomorrow. The packet is scanned pages taken from “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge,” a Sherlock Holmes short story.

I pick a marker out of my case and pop open the top. At least the words are already here, waiting for me to find the right answer. Unlike Jasper’s poetry, there should be a correct one, just like a multiple-choice test.

Maybe I can handle this.

I squint at the page. My date. There’s no my .

Wait. Am I treating this like one of Jasper’s love letters?

I smack my forehead with my notebook at the same time as laughter swells closer toward the cockblockade. An instructor leads four sister academy students through the gate, back toward their side. Each carries a cardboard box, and plastic cups stick out of one labeled MIXER . One of the students is familiar. Someone I’ve nearly forgotten to think about lately, being so entrenched in the never-ending unwanted surprises on this side of campus.

I jump up from the bench. “Delilah!”

The moment she flicks her head my way, a sense of relief I haven’t felt in weeks washes over me. In the dark, I barely make out her reshuffling the box to wave back, and it’s only then that I realize how much I don’t expect her to. How much I wonder deep down, with her never responding to my letters, if I’ve done something wrong. All I can recall are memories of orientation when she briefly got annoyed, and how unresolved that feels now.

The instructor yells at her to stop waving, and the line continues through the gate.

Right. Because the academy won’t even let me say hello. Seriously?

The two church bell towers chime in harmony. Ten minutes to lights-out.

Shoving my belongings into my bag, I head back to Philautia Residence Hall by myself, feeling even more isolated after seeing Delilah without getting to ask if she’s receiving my letters. The air tickles my nose, the leaves of the woods rotting now with winter around the corner. Except for a few students exiting the library, the paths are deserted. For a moment, I get lost in that dream where I don’t need a room to myself. Where I can make as many friends as Mom. Where I can live my days like any other boy here and not feel so on my own.

But once I’m in front of Room 503, reality comes roaring back. Time to face Jasper after leaving him behind for the second time in our lives. At least, to him, it’s only the first.

I take a deep breath and knock once. Grimes.

“Come in,” his voice calls.

I do cautiously. My eyes split open wide.

Jasper stands at the center of the Valentine crest rug, clutching a bottle of champagne against his stomach. His red dress shirt is tucked into his plaid slacks, and his blazer is buttoned, hugging his waist and shoulders in the right places. What’s rarer is his blond hair left down, falling to his shoulders. He never even sleeps with his hair down.

He somehow looks even more attractive this way.

The thought knocks me back like a punch. I slam the door shut. So what if he’s objectively attractive? He’s not subjectively to me. “What are you doing with a beverage ? Get rid of that!”

Jasper twists the champagne cork. It pops and soars. Foam trickles down his hand.

“What did I literally just say?” I shout.

“You can’t even offer me a honey, I’m home first?”

“We’re minors. We can’t have that on campus. Where did you—?”

“It’s sparkling apple juice.”

“You—Oh.”

“Yes,” Jasper says. “Will you allow me to speak now?”

Pushing my glasses farther up my nose, I huff and scan Jasper’s feet, surrounded by flower petals and cinnamon candles shaped in a heart. My notebook that I left in his office is nearby. So is a stack of pens and pencils. “Are you setting our room on fire?”

“I’m setting the mood for romance.”

My heartbeat splutters. I try to stay very still and normal. “For me?”

The light of Jasper’s buzzing bedside lamp suddenly hits his face at an angle that turns his cheeks rosier. Did he move? “For writing love letters together. Work! Non?”

“R-right.” What else did I think? “Isn’t a dull environment best?” I gesture at the pansy bouquet pattern on our walls. “I mean, even without the heart, we have that pink wallpaper.”

“You mean shabby chic wallpaper?”

“It’s baroque at most.”

“If we’re getting into specifics, it’s French country,” Jasper says, tossing a hand.

I frown. “Is there a point to this, Jasper?”

Jasper’s mouth opens and closes before he hops over the fire hazard he’s created, crushing petals in the process, and meets me at the door. “I have been thoughtless. You do have a lot of pressure on you. Thank you for being honest.”

Now my whole body is what’s on fire. Do I have a fever? Did I catch some illness from that freezing gazebo? “I yelled at you.”

“You did.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

“It’s an honor that you shared your feelings with me. You often don’t with others.”

“Oh.” It’s all I can say in the face of being read by somebody who shouldn’t be able to. Who can’t.

But it’s true. While I have to monitor Mom’s feelings over my grades, Delilah’s over my own well-being, and every other students’ here to ensure I’ve kept my head down enough, I never have to with Jasper. In a way, that part of being around him feels like freedom. Even if I’m simultaneously trapped in a room with him.

“However, you’re misguided about one thing,” Jasper says, playing with the bangs shaping his face. “People do not like me.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh. “Everyone loves you.”

“My aunt is the principal. They have to. Isn’t that why you’ve tried to tolerate me so for so long?”

My shoulders tense. “I. Well.”

Jasper smiles, but it’s bitter. “Same goes for the other top ranks. It’s so sought after by everyone—rather, their parents, who practically threaten their own kids to kick us off.”

I look toward the window and at the library beyond. “You help them with their love lives. They all thank you.”

Jasper wanders to the windowsill. He grabs a chunk of the glass paperweight he shattered on the first day. “And some are friendly to get a date but would cheer if I got hit by a car. I’ll never know who’s who.”

I stand there, unsure what to say.

“My advice,” Jasper says when I don’t respond, putting down the paperweight. “Whenever you do rank, do not trust anybody here either.”

I’d already been telling myself that since I arrived. So why does my heart hurt so terribly, hearing the same from Jasper?

“Anyway, von Hevringprinz.” Jasper closes the space between us and reaches toward me, only to pull back. His hand hangs awkwardly in the air like I shocked him. He’s never had a problem with invading my personal space before.

“You good?”

“Y-yes,” Jasper says, but on a strange trill. He tries again, taking my hand into his.

“What are you doing?” I ask with a waver in my voice.

Jasper guides me away from the doorway, deeper into the room, and I’m so thrown off that I let him. He sits in the candlelit heart, letting go, then pats the space beside him on the rug. As I sit, he pours me sparkling apple juice into a plastic cup stolen from Dix and hands it to me. “We’re scrapping my EROS. What do you wish to write?”

“Me?”

“Whatever you’d like, write it now. No lesson. No rules. Five minutes.”

“I don’t know if this is better or worse.”

Jasper leans his weight on a palm, his drink hovering by his lips. Waiting.

I aimlessly look around the room until I land on our bookcase. Othello catches my eye, then some classics, and then a box set of Sherlock Holmes. Getting back up and digging through my backpack by the door, I pull out my blackout poetry assignment.

“Care to share with the class?” Jasper says from the circle. The candlelight has his uniform glowing a brighter red than usual, and his lips even more.

I return beside him. “I was just—”

Jasper takes the packet out of my hand. “Let me see.”

Nerves lurch up my throat as he reads. I pick at my nails as the minutes pass. Either he has the reading level of a first-grader as Rank One or he’s analyzing the page multiple times.

Finally, Jasper lifts his head. He smiles as charmingly as the posters and cutouts on his walls, no matter how much I deny it. “ May I ask you to be date? ”

“Couldn’t find a my ,” I mumble.

“I see that.”

“And the letters won’t be personalized anymore if it’s blackout poetry. But.”

“I disagree.” He twirls a finger toward our bookcase. “Inside any story over there, you’ll find words that relate to our patrons’ qualms. It’s a compelling idea.”

I squirm along the rug. “You can tell me if it’s bad.”

“Charlie. Blackout poems are some of the most difficult to craft. The fact that you got this close on your first try is”—he chuckles—“impressive. You’re special, I hope you know.”

Special.

Finally. The word comes from his lips.

People have told me that I’m special before. A special student. A special candidate for our scholarship. Yet my stomach won’t stop flipping.

Why? Because an empty bedroom is closer in reach, knowing I might stand a chance at writing these letters?

But I wasn’t even thinking about my room. This illness again?

No. This is something I’ve felt before.

Jasper clasps my forearm only briefly. I jolt. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” Except a phantom burn remains where he touched. This is a disease. The flu. I’m dying. I have to be.

This isn’t anything else.

Jasper keeps studying my blackout poetry. “I once knew someone who had the same hesitations toward writing as you. Hated poetry, even.”

The words suck out all the air from my lungs. I stare at him—at the way his voice is so distant and soft. Almost like he’s remembering.

I force out a warbly laugh. “Really?”

“Really. You two had so little confidence, yet you eventually touched the stars.”

I swipe the page out of his grasp and press it to my chest. “Well, thank you for being an incredible love tutor!”

That’s when the regret hits. Because now Jasper’s face is shifting, and the corners of his blue eyes are crinkling in a way I’ve never seen. I’m too terrified to move, to even scatter my bangs over my eyes or cover myself. Obviously, Rank One would assess this abnormal reaction. He remembered camp. Workshop. Our kiss. My first kiss.

It’s over.

“Hey, Charlie.” It’s the first time Jasper has said only my first name, and I have no clue what that means, let alone what he’s thinking that means. A fragile, almost pained look flashes across his face, but then he wipes it away with a head shake that comes off frustrated. With himself? “I think you’re ready to help me with real love letters.”

My body remains motionless, like if I shift a centimeter, he could still remember. “What comes next, then? There’s only a little over a month left until the mixer.”

“Correct.” His voice is slightly more melodic now, back to his version of normal. “There are roughly eighty patrons left to be served. Take a third of those?” He points at our bookcase. “Rip out any pages from those books and use them.”

“Once these letters are delivered, you’ll still leave our room, right?”

Jasper hesitates. “I suppose that was our deal.”

It was our deal. And it’s more important than ever with how close Jasper keeps getting to the truth. Yet my heart illogically sinks at the thought.

I’m tired. That’s why I’m dying.

Tomorrow, I won’t feel a thing.