Page 84 of Riot Act

“You’re coming to the house tonight,” I tell her.

“I can’t. Not tonight. I have to go right now.”

“Nope.”

“Yes,” she emphasizes. “My dad’s coming to pick me up right now. Do you think he’d get a great first impression of you if he finds us naked on the ornamental lawn?”

I really couldn’t give a shit about what her father thinks. I’ve taken his daughter. She no longer belongs to him. In the small, dark corner of my soul that still wants things, I recognize that I’ve claimed her and she’s mine now. It’ll be a long fucking time before I’m ready to admit that out loud, but...I reject those thoughts even now, unable to eventhinkthem.

I’m silent as Chase puts on her perfume, administers her eye drops, and packs all of her other shit back into her military bag. She smooths her hair, tucking it behind her ears. and looks down on me where I’m still sitting in the grass, shirtless, with my arms loosely wrapped around my knees.

“I’m really not coming over tonight,” she says.

“Yes. You are.”

“I’m staying at my dad’s place in town for the weekend. He wants to spend some time with me, and we don’t have class tomorrow. I can’t say no.”

“All right, then.”

“All right, then?”

I work my jaw, torn straight down the middle. Years of animosity and violence have made their mark on me. It’s hard to tamp down the drive to wrap myself in sharp barbs, to protect myself from this…this…whateverthis is. I’m so drawn to her at the same time, magnetized to her, hands itching to reach out and touch her again, that I feel like I’m losing my mind. “Yeah. All right, then. Go spend the night at your dad’s place.”

She stews on this. Over on the shore of the lake, the geese squawk and holler. One of them takes flight, followed by the others, the sound of their wings snapping and rustling in the approaching evening’s air.

“I’ll see you on Monday, Pax,” Chase says.

I chew on the inside of my cheek, watching her walk away. That stupid military bag of hers bounces against the backs of her legs as she goes.

Just before she disappears over the prow of the hill, up by the academy’s circular driveway, I’m struck by an illogical, pointless thought. One that hasn’t occurred to me until now. She nearly died a few weeks ago. My mind floods with images of Chase lying on the sidewalk outside the hospital, dressed in blood, sticky and gruesome with it, her eyes full of terror, locked onto me like I was the only thing anchoring her to life, and it dawns on me just how close I came to neverreallyknowing her.

Damn.

I’m not even mad when I look down and see the black friendship bracelet she gave me earlier, tied around my wrist right next to the orange, yellow and red one.

I don’t even tug on it this time.

29

PAX

I get her email at midnight.

On the dot.

Like she fucking timed it or something.

The message contains her chapter of the story.

She was probably sitting on her bed, toying with those Tarot cards of hers, biding her time until the witching hour struck to send it. I’ve decided that’s what Chase is now: a witch. I don’t believe in magic, or the power of crystals, or energy vampires—that’s more Meredith’s vibe—but I’m willing to make a concession and admit that all of that mumbo jumbo, hocus pocus bullshit is real for a second, if it means that I can also name Chase Satan’s handmaid. She addled my brain this afternoon on the grass outside the maze. That’s the only explanation for the trippy haze I was in when I walked all three miles back to Riot House with my own come-soaked t-shirt in my hand.

I print off the attachment she sent and then rip through her words, so ready to tear her work apart. The pen in my hand, poised and ready to start scribbling a slew of vicious criticism down in the margins, remains pressed into the paper, not moving a millimeter as I devour line after line of her work.

When I reach the end, I set the pen down and sit back in my chair, pinching the bridge really goddamn hard.

If it was just good, I’d be pissed.

But it’s more than good.