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My hand is like an empty glove on the end of a noodle. I’ve got no control over it.
And my voice is mushy. “Knock it off”sounds more like“Knog id dov.”
The girl doesn’t seem to hear me. She keeps going. The bobbing of her head is making my body rock, which is making me seasick.
“Stop . . .” I say, even more weakly.
This time she does understand, at least enough to sit back on her heels again.
“What’s your problem?” she says.
Given the chance to move, I heave myself away from the tree. But I underestimated how much I needed the support. I tumble forward on my knees, then drop down on all fours. This is way too much motion for my stomach to handle. I start puking all over the ground.
“How much did you drink?” the girl says, part disgusted, and part concerned.
I don’t know how much I drank. I can’t remember.
The beginning of the night seems to be dissolving away. I don’t know how I got here or what’s happening.
If I focus hard, I can sort of remember that the girl’s name is Gemma and we have that scuba class together. But everything right before this moment is a throbbing dark haze.
“I need to leave,” I tell her.
“I don’t think you’re going to make it very far,” Gemma says.
I open my mouth to reply, but all that comes out is more vomit.
14
DEAN
Ifollow Anna back to Kingmakers.
I keep a long space between us, so she won’t hear me.
Honestly, I don’t think she’d hear a brass band behind her. She’s stumbling along with none of her usual grace.
I don’t like seeing her like this. It pains me to hurt her. But it pains me more to think that she’s upset over that fucking asshole Leo Gallo. He doesn’t deserve her devotion. It took him all of thirty minutes to stumble off in the woods with Gemma Rossi. There’s no drug on earth that could distract me from Anna.
I watch her every moment from the beach to the castle. She’s fleeing across the ground like a white bird, her hair streaming behind her. And I’m chasing after her like a hunter with an arrow at the ready.
When she passes through the gates into Kingmakers, I watch to see which direction she turns.
Just as I expected she veers left, away from her dorm. I know exactly where she’s going.
She passes between the Gatehouse and the greenhouses, then shoots the gap between the dining hall and the brewery.She takes a hard left, passing the library tower, hurrying on toward the cathedral on the far west side of campus.
The cathedral looks skeletal and spooky in the moonlight. The large rose window above the double doors peers at us like a baleful eye.
Anna doesn’t have her speaker, she forgot it at the party. But she came here anyway, because this is her sanctuary.
She’s already inside before I reach the doors. As I slip through, I expect to hear her sobbing echoing around the stone walls.
Instead, there’s nothing but silence.
I walk quietly up the nave, my eyes sweeping the shadowy spaces for any sign of Anna. All the furniture has long since been removed from the cathedral—no pews, no altars, no shrines. Even the doves are quiet, asleep up in the rafters.
At last I see Anna, sitting on the stone floor of the chancel with her knees tucked up against her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins, her silvery hair a shroud around her.
