Page 23

Chapter 23

AS I LAY DYING

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12

Shakespeare once wrote “arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,” but that is the worst ideology for a Saturday morning. I pull my blanket higher up my face to block out the light. The chatter coming from the Halo is too loud, and the scent of burnt leaves is too strong. The academy must take a blowtorch to every single sprig to keep up appearances for donors.

I have training with Xavier soon. I almost forgot.

Groaning, I tug off the blanket. The wall beside my bed isn’t in front of my face where it should be. Same for the pillows. Instead, there’s a sleeping Jasper.

I yelp and scramble to sit up. Not my bed. The rug is still littered with notebooks and burned tea-light candles, where I must’ve fallen asleep while writing letters. Ones that Jasper approved of, that made me feel so synced with him for once. I can’t help but smile at how he lies on his side next to me, his blond hair frizzy and draped over a cheek. His blazer is wrinkled, barely on his body anymore.

I glance down at my fistful of blanket. No, sleeve. Jasper’s sleeve.

Heat burns in the pit of my stomach and explodes into my head. I flick the sleeve away and touch my cheeks.

A fever. Definitely.

Health Services. Now.

Welcome!

Health Services is closed on Saturdays!

In case of emergency, visit the checkout booth between the two academies to contact our nurses in the off-campus instructor quarters.

I throw up my hands. “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY.”

“Charlie?”

Robby stands by the gift shop next door, not a wrinkle on his blazer or curl out of place above his drop fade. His number-two enamel pin is covered up by a plastic organizational binder against his chest, which I easily recognize since he always overfills it. Too many horse trading cards, maybe.

I hide my zipping panic by summoning a very calm, very normal smile. “Hi.”

Robby inspects the Health Services door. “Are you ill?”

“Maybe. I’m supposed to meet up with Xavier, so I wanted to know if I’m contagious, but they’re closed.”

“You do look off,” Robby says to me. “Do you suffer from anxiety stress? Sleeping problems? Dizziness? Any general worry over people, places, and things?”

He speaks almost like a real doctor, and one with an actually thoughtful bedside manner. When it comes to STRIP, Robby has always been the most professional and reliable. That must seep into every other part of his life too.

Jasper once mentioned that Robby wants to study biochemistry at MIT. Maybe he wants to become an MD.

I put my hands on Robby’s shoulders, and he presses his binder tighter to his chest. “I just had a great idea. What if you did an appointment for me?”

“I-I’m not qualified.”

“What about med school? Med school?” Did I just say that twice?

“I’m not planning to go to med school?”

“But you’re on the biochem track.”

“For veterinary school.”

Right. The trading cards. “Because of the horses?”

Robby lights up. “I love all animals, but especially horses. They’re friends. There aren’t a lot of thoughts in their heads, but they’re nice, and you can share snacks with them like carrots.” His words quicken like I’ve asked what he’s been waiting for someone—anyone—to. “And hay. And Fruit by the Foot.”

I nod slowly, even though I felt like I was borderline tripping on cold medicine a moment ago. There’s something about Robby’s wholesomeness that washes a brief sense of calm over me. Maybe Robby is Rank Two because he’s an MIT hopeful, but there’s no doubt he must also be driven to hit the leaderboard for that unlimited equestrian center perk. “That’s why you have so many cards?”

“Yeah.” With careful movements, Robby opens his binder, revealing the many folders stuffed with his overflowing sparkly horse cards. “I’ve been a collector of Girth and Gallop trading cards since I was six. My parents couldn’t afford to get me a real horse when I was growing up, but they had these for sale under the counter of the garden store my mom visited all the time, so I’d shove them in my pockets before I understood the concept of shoplifting. Half these cards derive from theft.” He closes his eyes. “For shame.”

It’s a lot at once, but I’m still stuck on one part. “You couldn’t afford a horse?”

“My family was sort of struggling until recently.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but my mom went back to school for years to become a nurse anesthetist, and then she started a fund to help me enroll in one of these academies. I’m really thankful for her.”

“Wow,” I say, stunned to relate to anyone else on campus in this way.

“And for STRIP, too, of course,” Robby adds. “They let me talk about the Hackneys here all the time. For me, it’s like a horse club. Plus friends.”

In the distance, Blaze jogs toward us, the overcast sky behind him matching his ominous, destroying aura. His marker-stained dress shoes crunch against the path, and his backpack jostles against his back, the tip of a few letters sticking out.

“Cavalier Captain Robert, Charlie,” he huffs as he approaches. The blazer tied around his neck flutters into his eyes, briefly revealing the number-three pin on his collar. He smacks the blazer away. “What a serendipitous coincidence to spot you yonder. I just now returned from the sister academy to acquire their correspondence.”

“Charlie’s ill,” Robby tells him.

Blaze latches on to Robby’s blazer sleeve. I can barely make out the alarmed look behind his seaweed bangs. “Charlie is a fellow warrior. He cannot fall ill. What if the fated day strikes?”

I’m still so desperate for an answer about my disease that I don’t care about Robby’s lack of professional doctor experience, let alone that I’ve been allowing him to see this much of me up close for several minutes. “You must know at least some medical basics, especially if you want to go into veterinary medicine. I bet you study this stuff in your free time for fun. You’re second on our ranks.”

Robby sighs, which means I’m right. He points beyond the five crisscrossing paths and marble fountain in the Halo, toward the outdoor picnic tables circling Dix. “Fine. Let’s discuss there.”

The three of us walk over, where another familiar face sits. Xavier, pounding down a bowl of rainbow marshmallow cereal with his lucky spoon.

Blaze shrieks and bolts over. He tosses himself over Xavier’s shoulder, which is Blaze’s whole width, and yanks out the spoon. “This lucky relic I bequeathed you is not for feasting. Only for warding off malevolence.”

Xavier’s mouth twists. “Can’t it do both?”

Robby tosses his binder onto the tabletop. It’s so heavy that Xavier’s bowl of cereal leaps into the air. He sits beside Xavier. “Charlie needs help.”

Xavier checks me up and down. “You do look whiter than usual.”

“He’s sick,” Robby says.

I collapse on a seat across from them both. “I’m sick.”

Blaze sits on my side of the picnic table, placing a tiny hand on my forehead. “Do you have a high temperature?”

More like a volcano in my brain. “Yes.”

“Stomach pain?”

“Yes.”

“Loss of appetite?”

I haven’t considered eating since Jasper’s sparkling apple juice last night. “Yes.”

“I’ll be blowed,” Blaze mumbles, eyes spreading wide. “You have been poisoned.”

“What?” Xavier and I say.

Blaze covers his face with his palms—as if his seaweed hair wasn’t already doing enough of that—and whimpers like he’s on the verge of tears. “By the arachnids.”

“Oh,” Xavier and I say.

Robby pulls lined paper and a pencil out of his binder and writes something down. “If you’re overheating, then this may not be stress. When did your symptoms first show?”

“Last night,” I answer.

“What were you doing?”

I hesitate, since Robby is the last remaining member who doesn’t know the truth. “Writing love letters for STRIP.”

His eyes go big, but he’s quick to revert to a professional demeanor. “Where?”

“My room.”

“You were alone?”

“I was with Jasper.”

Blaze gasps beside me. “Jasper poisoned Charlie.”

“No,” Robby says without looking up. “Did you run into anyone else yesterday?”

I tilt my head. “I guess? We had classes. I ran into my friend at the sister academy from a distance. A group crossed over to plan for the mixer.”

Robby’s pencil abruptly stops moving. He neatly files the paper back into his binder. “This is an incurable sickness I’ve heard of many times in the STRIP Crypt.”

My hope soars. “What is it?”

“Lovesickness.”

The world slows to a stop.

I misheard him. “What did you say?”

“Praise the powers that be within the Ring of Ancestral Darkness!” Blaze tugs on my blazer sleeve, shaking my whole body. “My comrade is no longer poisoned.”

Robby grins. “Who from the sister academy caught your eye?”

“I—None of them,” I squeak.

“Jasper can send a letter to her for you.”

I try to answer. All that comes out is a wheeze.

A blurred Xavier clasps Robby’s shoulder. I think. I can’t see straight. “Give bro a break. He’s so high on anxiety that shrooms wouldn’t compete.”

“Charlie would never take shrooms,” Robby grumbles.

I shoot out of my seat and thrust a finger into Robby’s face. “You’re wrong.”

Robby blinks in surprise. “You would?”

“No, I don’t possibly have this disgusting disease you’re talking about.”

“You mean lovesickness—?”

I lean over the table to slap my palms against his mouth. “I said no .”

“Say no all you’d like,” Robby says, his voice stifled through my fingers. “Scientifically, the hormones involved in human attraction can’t be turned off because you tell them to.”

“If not one of the sister academy students,” Blaze says beside me, “who else did you engage with yesterday?”

Only one.

Nausea devours me as I wander away. Voices call after me—something about where I’m going and if I’ve been hypnotized by arachnids—but I barely hear them.

I’m not sharing a room with Jasper for another second.

“If you need Ms. Lyney, she won’t be back until Monday,” a middle-aged man in a red-and-black-plaid newsboy cap says from the office counter. Must be back-end weekend staff. The name tag on his blazer reads MR. ACOSTA on top and WE’RE LISTENING AND LEARNING. WE’RE VALENTINE! on the bottom.

Unspoken Guideline 14: Mr. Acosta wants me to slam my skull against the counter and split it in half, forever changing the trajectory of his life.

I stand there in defeat. The one day my body rejects itself, I need enough brainpower to explain my housing situation to another person in charge. The gnomes on the wall cackle and jiggle at my suffering.

“ Shut up ,” I hiss at them.

Only when Mr. Acosta’s buggy eyes bulge larger do I realize what I did. Have I taken shrooms?

“There was a mix-up with my residential hall room,” I say. “I’m unsure if you could help me with this, but my roommate and I were supposed to have single rooms. There was a mix-up, so now we’re in a double together.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.” It leaves my lips desperately. Exasperatedly. I can’t hold back any longer. “Ms. Lyney barely looked at my file before she dismissed it.”

Mr. Acosta exhales like he doesn’t get paid enough for this. But he does, according to the tuition I’ll be demanded to pay if I don’t reach the top five soon. “What’s your name again?”

Optimism thrums inside me. “Charlie.”

He types on the computer. “Last name?”

“Von Hevringprinz.”

“German?”

“My name? Um. Yeah.”

“Ah, your roommate is Principal Grimes’s nephew,” Mr. Acosta remarks.

Not you’re one of our Excellence Scholars . Not you’re the transfer student . I’m tied to Jasper with a rope. I need to burn it now. I’ll do anything. Weep. Beg. Raise my voice at an authority figure for the first time in my life. “You know that?”

“It says so here. Strange. Mr. Grimes lived in Philautia’s single suite last year. I believe I recall Nathalie—Principal Grimes—saying she converted her office space into a bedroom for him in the instructor quarters as well.”

I stare back at him wildly. “She did what?”

This whole time, Jasper had another room. Of course the principal’s nephew did. How did I never consider that?

Why didn’t Jasper ?

Fury burns in my chest. I clench a fist at my side, trying to hold it together. “Could Jasper move into his aunt’s housing as a compromise, then?”

“I assume so. I’m surprised this was never suggested to you both as an option. Can you refresh my memory on what exactly Ms. Lyney told you?”

“Not much. My check was never sent in, so the academy randomly assigned me a room and roommate, and there’s nothing else in my file?”

The longer Mr. Acosta’s eyes scan the screen, the more his gaze narrows in confusion. “Not sure what Ms. Lyney saw, but there’s indeed a file here.”

“Wait, my check?”

“Not quite.” He looks up. “According to our records, you and Jasper Grimes requested to be roommates.”