Page 8 of House of Hearts
“Absolute worst kiss I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Get out,” Amber gasps, the shrill pitch of her voice competing with the thud of her tray hitting the dining room table.
She momentarily abandons her ridiculous school-crest-branded waffles to gawk at me, her bulging eyes darting between me and the narcissistic blond on the opposite end of the cafeteria.
“Really? He kissed you in the tower? And you hated it? ”
If the hedge maze is the beating heart of this school, Sutherland Dining Hall is its bloated belly.
Hammer-beam ribs arch above our heads, and walnut walls press inward, giving this room the impression of being swallowed whole.
The darkness is only broken by a series of leaded-glass windows and an assortment of low-hanging chandeliers.
Golden light spills from lit candles and gathers across a gallery of grim portraits.
“Uh-huh…” I trail off, unsure what to say. It’s not like I haven’t kissed anyone before, but the problem is I can count the number on one hand and still have most of my fingers up. “It was too much everything, really. Just gross. But at least I got a Joker card out of it.”
I’ll feel a little guilty if this gossip gets back to him, but if the only rumor spread about that man is that he’s subpar in the kissing department, then Calvin will live.
“Only you would find a kiss from Calvin Lockwell gross,” Amber insists. “I can’t believe he really kissed you. I mean, I can , it’s Calvin we’re talking about. Huge player, so I don’t recommend going out with him. It must have been good for Calvin to give you a card—at least on his end.”
“Believe me, I have no intention of dating him,” I say cheerily. And then, solely to be petty, I tack on, “ In fact, I’d never dream of it .”
“Are you hearing this?” Amber squawks to Birdie as she drops down beside me. Birdie’s got a heaping serving of those branded waffles, smothered in syrup.
“Are you still pestering her about yesterday?” Birdie asks with a snort.
Yesterday’s fashion has been pushed aside for the school’s uniform.
There’s not much you can do about a starched white polo, a red-plaid skirt, and a matching burgundy blazer, but Birdie does her best. She’s littered the side of her skirt with safety pins and accessorized with a large Gothic cross dangling around her neck.
“You act like I’m interrogating her,” Amber huffs, which is a perfect description of what she did the moment I set foot outside the tower yesterday.
I probably would’ve caved a lot sooner if the panic hadn’t found me again when Calvin left. He’d somehow kept the brunt of it away, but the very second he stormed off, it returned with a vengeance.
“Sorry, I have a migraine,” I’d lied, dodging Amber’s persistent questions and letting Birdie usher me back into our dorm room. I’d immediately collapsed onto the mattress and covered my head with the duvet to block out the light.
She’d left me there to fake a nap, and somehow that fake nap turned into a real nap, and that real nap turned into me conking out entirely. I woke up only a couple of times in the night, mainly to the soft snores rumbling from my roommate and the steady thumping of students running along the halls.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind the questions,” I say into the rim of my coffee mug now.
“Birdie, I swear, you have the wildest luck when it comes to roommates and Lockwells,” Amber says, swirling a spoon in her own morning tea. “Here you are with a crush on Sadie, and now your new roommate kisses Calvin on day one…and then there was that whole business with your old roommate…”
“Em.” The name slips out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
It’s enough to summon Birdie’s full attention, and I stiffen under her gaze.
I could tell her everything right now. I could let them know that Emoree isn’t some unmentionable tragedy.
That I know about that awful night and that I need as much help as I can get to make it right.
But then Oliver takes his seat at the table and I remember his vow of secrecy and Amber’s penchant for gossip and how I cannot—will not—ruin my chance for revenge this quickly.
“ Erm ,” I recover quickly, widening my eyes in an effort to play dumb. “What do you mean by that? I thought the Lockwells were twins. Do they have another brother or something?”
Birdie and Amber look between each other uneasily, and I do my best not to let on what I know or how much I care. There’s a reason therapists act like a blank slate, a psychological tactic in being no one that makes people want to spill everything .
“Percy Lockwell, but he graduated already,” Oliver informs me idly, his gaze caught between the veggie omelet on his plate and the Advanced Latin textbook splayed out beside him.
Birdie shrugs off his answer and taps her cheek. “If you believe that…”
I quirk a brow, but I don’t have to bother asking what she meant by that. Amber feeds on my confusion and carries the rumor where my roommate left off. “The whole thing was weird as hell. He disappeared before spring semester. Poof. Gone. ”
“I’m fairly certain he left for Le Rosey in Switzerland,” Oliver clarifies, his tone a tad tart but his expression betraying nothing. He lets the book fall shut beside him and stuffs it into his Patagonia bag. “I doubt he was abducted by aliens.”
Amber’s cheeks bloom a telling red. “Did I say I thought he was abducted by aliens?”
“No, but I’m sure you were thinking it. Not everything is some big conspiracy or piece of gossip. Sometimes things just happen.”
“Switzerland?” I demand, trying not to sound outwardly rattled while inwardly rattled.
Should I have applied to Le Rosey instead?
How the hell was I supposed to know he was in Switzerland of all places?
Why did Emoree tell me to find Percy but leave out the little fact that he’s already fled the country?
“So I’ve heard,” Oliver says, dabbing at his lips with the end of a cloth napkin. “Which, as far as rumors go, is far more believable than him vanishing into thin air.”
It’s just a rumor , I remind myself with a measured breath.
I force down another bite of my breakfast and do my best to wipe the concern from my face.
I don’t need to freak out. Even if he’s halfway across the world by now, his siblings aren’t, and I’d bet anything that Calvin and Sadie know exactly what happened that night, and they for sure know where their brother is hiding.
I made the right decision in applying to come here.
The place that’s still 100 percent in the Lockwell family’s control.
Clearly, this rumor has been debated among the trio a million times. Birdie stabs at her own waffles, and I wince as the metal teeth of her fork scrape the ceramic. “You can’t deny the timing of it.”
“The timing is why it makes sense, though,” he says, but any hint of nonchalance in his tone is gone. In its place is a tight hitch in his throat and a flash of something in his eyes I can’t quite pin down. “His girlfriend died in a tragic accident. I don’t blame him for leaving.”
“God, I’ll never forget that day,” Amber laments, her voice taking on a sullen tone. “It was horrible. A huge production. Police. Yellow tape. Reporters. A twenty-four-seven crisis center for students. Headmistress Lockwell was frazzled every time I saw her.”
Birdie slumps in her seat, her breakfast long forgotten. “It really was awful. Her death weighed on me for a long time.”
I want to tell her I know exactly how that feels, that I still feel it now—that inescapable, horrible burn in my chest—but I settle on a soft nod. We sit in silence, none of us knowing how to recover after such a heavy topic and no one wanting to be the one to try.
Our reverie is interrupted by obnoxiously loud laughing and jeering. Calvin’s table, of course.
“ Look at the state of you, bruv! ” one of his friends jeers, slapping Calvin a little too hard on the back.
He’s got a cut-glass accent and a way of making even slang sound posh while shrieking.
“My God, Cal. You lose weight over the holiday? You should’ve summered with me in Buckinghamshire.
I swear, did you leave your room even once? ”
I recognize the posh stranger as one of the crossed-out faces on Amber’s hit list. Ash Rajput, a British Indian transfer student with a gold hoop through his ear and a chiseled jaw. (“I only crossed him out because he’s dating Mallory Hunt. Enough said.”)
Calvin’s not laughing. He’s too busy twirling his fork on his plate, his gaze locked vacantly ahead. It’s only as I lift my head that our eyes meet and he stares at me like a man suspended in a strange waking dream. He squints as if trying to decide whether I’m real or a desert mirage.
Breaking away, I settle on one of the portraits hanging behind him.
The man in the frame is the very first Lockwell to grace these hallowed halls.
Oleander Lockwell scripted in elegant serif lettering.
He is depicted in his prime, handsomely distinguished and distinguished by a streak of gray in his otherwise-brown hair.
His glasses are perfectly perched across the slope of his nose, and his mouth is set in clear disdain for the viewer.
As much as I don’t believe in spirits, I can’t help wondering if everyone else sees his scowl or if it’s reserved purely for me.
If I thought the cafeteria was bad, the main academic hall is ten times worse. The decor in this building needs to go to couples counseling. The past and present refuse to marry, and all they’re doing is yelling over each other.
There are wall sconces and overhead fluorescent lighting, whimsical grotesques and state-of-the-art sprinkler systems, sleek metal railings and aged mahogany. I allow Birdie to lead me through it all, her arm dutifully locked with mine.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me for a bit longer,” she says with my printed schedule clutched in her free hand.