Page 17 of The Ruling Class

By lunchtime, I was nearing the end of my patience.

“Hypothetically speaking, should I be concerned that you look like you might throw that meatball sub at someone?” Vivvie popped up beside me.

I glanced over at her. “If I was going to throw something, it would be the bread pudding. Hypothetically.”

“Don’t throw the bread pudding,” Vivvie objected vehemently. “It’s got a butter rum sauce!”

She sounded so horrified at the idea that I managed half a grin.

“Here at Hardwicke, we take our baked goods very seriously,” Vivvie informed me pertly. She hesitated just for a second. “Are you looking for someone to sit with?”

Across the room, Emilia met my eyes, then slid her gaze to an empty seat at her table, across from Maya and next to Di. Clearly that was an invitation.

I turned back to Vivvie. “I assumed I was sitting with you.”

Vivvie broke into a smile the way other people broke into song and dance. It lit up her entire face.

“Where do you normally sit?” I asked her. The day before, when she’d been playing official guide, we’d grabbed a seat in the corner, but a girl like Vivvie had to have friends, as alien as that concept felt to me.

Vivvie’s eyes went Bambi wide, the smile freezing on her face. “Well,” she hedged, “sometimes I eat in the art room? And sometimes I just find a place outside?” She said every sentence like it was a question—and like she fully expected me to reconsider sitting with her.

“Outside works for me,” I said. There were too many people in the cafeteria, and I truly did not want to know which of the onlookers would turn out to be my next wannabe “client.”

Vivvie practically bounced with relief and began to lead the way. “I know you’re probably wondering, about the whole ‘sometimes I eat in the art room’ thing.”

“You’re an artist?” I guessed.

Vivvie nibbled on her bottom lip and shook her head. “Not so much. I mostly draw stick figures.” She paused. “They’re not very good ones,” she confessed.

Open book, thy name is Vivvie. “I get eating lunch alone,” I told her. “You don’t have to explain.”

“It’s no big deal,” Vivvie assured me, in a way that told me that for her, it was. “It’s just … Hardwicke is a small school. At least half of us have been here since preschool. I know everyone, but my best friend moved away a couple of months ago. We were kind of a pair. There are people I could sit with. I just … I don’t want to bother anyone.” She offered me another tentative smile. “I’m kind of an acquired taste.”

Something in the way she said those words made me think they weren’t hers. “Says who?” I asked darkly.

Vivvie came to a halt in the courtyard, her eyes going round.

“What?” I said. She didn’t reply, so I turned to follow her gaze to the Hardwicke chapel. Or, more specifically, to the chapel’s roof. There was a single octagonal window at the base of the steeple. Standing just in front of that window—thirty feet off the ground—was a boy. His toes were even with the very edge of the roof.

There was no one else outside. Just me and Vivvie and the boy on the roof. I stepped past Vivvie, wondering what he was doing up there. Wondering if he was going to jump.

“Go get someone,” I told Vivvie.

The boy held his hands out to either side.

“What are you going to do?” Vivvie asked me.

I took a step toward the chapel. “I don’t know.”

The door to the chapel roof was propped open and marked with a sign that readDO NOT ENTER. I stepped through it. One more ladder, and I was on the roof.

The boy was still standing at the edge. I could only see the back of his head. He had auburn hair—a deep, rich red that girls would have killed for, but that looked strange, somehow, on a boy. Now that I was up here, standing just a few feet away from him, I wasn’t sure what to do.

“Top of the morning to you,” the boy said without turning around. I took a step forward. He lifted one foot off the roof and held it out—nothing but air and the ground below.

“It’s not morning,” I replied, inching my way out toward him. The roof was steeper the farther out I went.

The boy glanced back. “I’m not Irish,” he said, a hint of a smile dancing around the corners of his lips. “In case you were wondering.”