The Fallen Sequence (15 page)

She wanted him to say her name again, but he had turned away. He hooked the jump rope over a peg on the wall. “I should go change before class.”

She rested a hand on his arm. “Wait.”

He wrenched away as if he had been shocked—and Luce felt it, too, but it was the kind of shock that felt
good
.

“Do you ever get the feeling …” She raised her eyes to his. Up close, she could see how unusual they were. They seemed gray from far away, but up close there were violet flecks in them. She knew someone else with eyes like that…

“I could swear we’ve met before,” she said. “Am I crazy?”

“Crazy? Isn’t that why you’re here?” he said, brushing her off.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Daniel’s face was blank. “And for the record”—he pointed up at a blinking device attached to the ceiling—“the reds do monitor for stalkers.”

“I’m not
stalking
you.” She stiffened, very aware of the distance between their bodies. “Can you honestly say you have no idea what I’m talking about?”

Daniel shrugged.

“I don’t believe you,” Luce insisted. “Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong. That I’ve never in my life seen you before this week.”

Her heart raced as Daniel stepped toward her, placing both hands on her shoulders. His thumbs fit perfectly along the grooves of her collarbone, and she wanted to close her eyes at the warmth of his touch—but she didn’t. She watched as Daniel bowed his head so his nose was nearly touching hers. She could feel his breath on her face. She could smell a hint of sweetness on his skin.

He did as she asked. He looked her in the eye and said, very slowly, very clearly, so that his words could not possibly be misunderstood:

“You have never in your life seen me before this week.”

SEVEN

SHEDDING LIGHT

“
N
ow
where are you going?” Cam asked, lowering his red plastic sunglasses.

He’d appeared outside the entrance of Augustine so suddenly that Luce almost plowed right into him. Or maybe he’d been there awhile and she just hadn’t noticed in her haste to get to class. Either way, her heart started beating quickly and her palms began to sweat.

“Um, class?” Luce answered, because where did it look like she was going? Her arms were full, with her
two hefty calculus books and her half-completed religion assignment.

This would have been a good time to apologize for leaving so suddenly last night. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was already so late. There hadn’t been any hot water in the locker showers, so she’d had to trek all the way back to the dorm. Somehow, what had happened after the party didn’t seem important anymore. She didn’t want to draw any more attention to her leaving—especially not now, after Daniel had made her feel so pathetic. She also didn’t want Cam to think she was being rude. She just wanted to steer past him and be by herself so she could move on from this morning’s string of embarrassments.

Except—the longer Cam gazed at her, the less important it felt to leave. And the less Luce’s pride stung over Daniel’s dismissal. How could one look from Cam do all that?

With his clear, pale skin and jet-black hair, Cam was different from any guy she’d ever known. He exuded confidence, and not just because he knew everyone—and how to get everything—before Luce had even figured out where her classes were. Right then, standing outside the drab, gray school building, Cam looked like an arty black-and-white photograph, his red shades Techni colored in.

“Class, eh?” Cam yawned dramatically. He was
blocking the entrance, and something about the amused way his mouth was set made Luce want to know what wild idea he had up his sleeve. There was a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, and a disposable espresso cup between his fingers. He pressed Stop on his iPod, but left the earbuds dangling around his neck. Part of her wanted to know what song he’d been listening to, and where he’d gotten that black-market espresso. The playful smile visible only in his green eyes dared her to ask.

Cam skimmed a sip off the top of his coffee. Holding up his index finger, he said, “Allow me to share my motto about Sword & Cross classes: Better never than late.”

Luce laughed, and then Cam pushed his sunglasses back up on his nose. The lenses were so dark, she couldn’t see even a hint of his eyes.

“Besides.” He smiled, flashing her a white arch of teeth. “It’s just about lunchtime, and I’ve got a picnic.”

Lunchtime? Luce hadn’t even had breakfast yet. But her stomach
was
growling—and the idea of being reamed by Mr. Cole for missing all but the last twenty minutes of morning classes seemed less and less appealing the longer she stood next to Cam.

She nodded at the bag he was holding. “Did you pack enough for two?”

Steering Luce with a broad hand on the small of her back, Cam led her across the commons, past the library
and the dismal dorm. At the metal gates to the cemetery, he stopped.

“I know this is a weird place for a picnic,” he explained, “but it’s the best spot I know to dip out of sight for a little while. On campus, anyway. Sometimes I just can’t breathe in there.” He gestured toward the building.

Luce could definitely relate to that. She felt both stifled and exposed almost all the time at this place. But Cam seemed like the last person who would share that new-student syndrome. He was so … collected. After that party last night, and now the forbidden espresso in his hand, she would never have guessed he’d feel suffocated, too. Or that he’d pick her to share the feeling with.

Past his head, she could see the rest of the run-down campus. From here, there wasn’t much of a difference between one side of the cemetery gates and the other.

Luce decided to go with it. “Just promise to save me if any statues topple over.”

“No,” Cam said with a seriousness that effectively erased her joke. “That won’t happen again.”

Her eyes fell on the spot where only days earlier, she and Daniel had come close to ending up in the cemetery themselves. But the marble angel that had toppled over them was gone, its pedestal bare.

“Come on,” Cam said, tugging her along with him. They sidestepped overgrown patches of weeds, and Cam
kept turning to help her over mounds of dirt burrowed out by who-knew-what.

At one point, Luce nearly lost her balance and grabbed on to one of the headstones to steady herself. It was a large, polished slab with one rough, unfinished side.

“I’ve always liked that one,” Cam said, gesturing at the pinkish headstone under her fingers. Luce crossed around to the front of the plot to read the inscription.

“‘Joseph Miley,’” she read aloud. “‘1821 to 1865. Bravely served in the War of Northern Aggression. Survived three bullets and five horses felled from under him before meeting his final peace.’”

Luce cracked her knuckles. Maybe Cam only liked it because its polished pinkish stone stood out among the mostly gray ones? Or because of the intricate whorls in the crest along the top? She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah.” Cam shrugged. “I just like how the headstone explains the way he died. It’s honest, you know? Usually, people don’t want to go there.”

Luce looked away. She knew that all too well from the inscrutable epitaph on Trevor’s tombstone.

“Think how much more interesting this place would be if everyone’s cause of death was chiseled in.” He pointed to a small grave a few plots down from Joseph Miley’s. “How do you think she died?”

“Um, scarlet fever?” Luce guessed, wandering over.

She traced the dates with her fingers. The girl buried here had been younger than Luce when she died. Luce didn’t really want to think too hard about how it might have happened.

Cam tilted his head, considering. “Maybe,” he said. “Either that or a mysterious barn fire while young Betsy was taking an innocent ‘nap’ with the neighbor boy.”

Luce started to pretend to act offended, but instead Cam’s expectant face made her laugh. It had been a long time since she’d just goofed off with a guy. Sure, this scene was a bit more morbid than the typical movie theater parking lot flirtations she was used to, but so were the students at Sword & Cross. For better or worse, Luce was one of them now.

She followed Cam to the bottom of the bowl-like graveyard and the more ornate tombs and mausoleums. On the slope above, the headstones seemed to be looking down at them, like Luce and Cam were performers in an amphitheater. The midday sun glowed orange through the leaves of a giant live oak tree in the cemetery, and Luce shaded her eyes with her hands. It was the hottest day they’d had all week.

“Now, this guy,” Cam said, pointing to a huge tomb framed by Corinthian columns. “Total draft dodger. He suffocated when a beam collapsed in his basement. Which just goes to show you, never hide out from a Confederate roundup.”

“Is that so?” Luce asked. “Remind me what makes you the expert on all of this?” Even as she teased him, Luce felt strangely privileged to be there with Cam. He kept glancing at her to make sure she was smiling.

“It’s just a sixth sense.” He flashed her a big, innocent grin. “If you like it, there’s a seventh sense, and an eight sense, and a ninth sense where that came from.”

“Impressive.” She smiled. “I’ll settle for the sense of taste right now. I’m starving.”

“At your service.” Cam pulled a blanket from his tote bag and spread it out in a scrap of shade under the live oak tree. He unscrewed a thermos and Luce could smell the strong espresso. She didn’t usually drink her coffee black, but she watched as he filled a tumbler with ice, poured the espresso over it, and added just the right amount of milk to the top. “I forgot to bring sugar,” he said.

“I don’t take sugar.” She took a sip from the bone-dry iced latte, her first delicious sip of Sword & Cross-prohibited caffeine all week.

“That’s lucky,” Cam said, spreading out the rest of the picnic. Luce’s eyes grew wide as she watched him arrange the food: a dark brown baguette, a small round of oozy cheese, a terra-cotta tub of olives, a bowl of deviled eggs, and two bright green apples. It didn’t seem possible that Cam had fit all that in his bag—or that he’d been planning on eating all this food by himself.

“Where did you get this?” Luce asked. Pretending to
focus on tearing off a hunk of bread, she asked, “And who else were you planning on picnicking with before I came along?”

“Before you came along?” Cam laughed. “I can hardly remember my bleak life before you.”

Luce gave him the slightest of snide looks so he’d know that she found the remark incredibly cheesy … and just a little bit charming. She leaned back on her elbows on the blanket, her legs crossed at the ankles. Cam was sitting cross-legged facing her, and when he reached over her for the cheese knife, his arm brushed, then rested on, the knee of her black jeans. He looked up at her, as if to ask,
Is this okay?

When she didn’t flinch, he stayed there, taking the hunk of baguette from her hand and using her leg like a tabletop while he spread a triangle of cheese onto the bread. She liked the feeling of his weight on her, and in this heat, that was saying something.

“I’ll start with the easier question first,” he said, finally sitting back up. “I help out in the kitchen a couple of days a week. Part of my readmittance agreement at Sword & Cross. I’m supposed to be ‘giving back.’” He rolled his eyes. “But I don’t mind it in there. I guess I like the heat. That is, if you don’t count the grease burns.” He held out his upturned wrists to expose dozens of tiny scars on his forearms. “Occupational hazard,” he said casually. “But I do get the run of the pantry.”

Luce couldn’t resist running her fingers along them, the infinitesimal pale swells fading back into his paler skin. Before she could feel embarrassed by her forwardness and pull away, Cam grabbed her hand and squeezed.

Luce stared at his fingers wrapped around hers. She hadn’t realized before how closely the shades of their skin matched. In a landscape of southern sunbathers, Luce’s paleness had always made her feel self-conscious. But Cam’s skin was so striking, so noticeable, almost metallic—and now she realized she might look the same to him. Her shoulders shivered and she felt a little dizzy.

“Are you cold?” he asked quietly.

When she met his eyes, she knew he knew she wasn’t cold.

He scooted closer on the blanket and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Now I guess you’re going to want me to admit that I saw you crossing the quad through the kitchen window and packed all this up in the hopes of convincing you to skip class with me?”

This was when she would have fished in her drink for ice, if it hadn’t already melted in the stale September heat.

“And you had this whole scheme of a romantic picnic,” she finished. “In the scenic cemetery?”

“Hey.” He ran a finger along her bottom lip. “You’re the one bringing up romance.”

Luce pulled back. He was right—she’d been the
presumptuous one … for the second time that day. She could feel her cheeks burn as she tried
not
to think about Daniel.

“I’m kidding,” he said, shaking his head at the stricken look on her face. “As if that weren’t obvious.” He gazed up at a turkey vulture circling a great white statue shaped like a cannon. “I know it’s no Eden here,” he said, tossing Luce an apple, “but just pretend we’re in a Smiths song. And to my credit, it’s not like there’s much to work with at this school.”