Page 12

“Is this some kind of joke?” she asks, and I finally turn my head for our eyes to meet. I purposefully make mine cold, using everything in me not to mentally catalogue her injuries. There aren’t any visible, not on her face anyway. I don’t know what I was expecting, for her to be swallowed by smoke, or coughing her lungs out.

Yet, she looks more like herself than I expected. Her spine is locked and her chin lifted, wrapped in a soft sweater with her dark hair falling around her shoulders. There are faint shadows beneath her blue eyes, fury seeping out to stab me through mine. I turn back before she can see my small smile break through.

Dean Colt rounds her desk once more, sitting to go through the motions with Meg now present. I tune out more of the words, my attention being dragged back to the woman perched on the edge of the armchair beside me. She’s doing her best to ignore me, but I’m used to playing this game. I don’t need to look directly at Meg to sense how every breath she takes is hitched or how she picks at her cuticles. When the Dean turns her tablet to display a news article towards us, I stare straight through it.

“I hope I already know the answer to this question,” Dean Colt looks between the two of us, also apt at playing her part, “but I need to ask it. Did either of you have anything to do with what happened yesterday afternoon?” Meg shifts beside me a fraction. She opens her mouth, but I get there first.

“Absolutely not,” I cut in, leaning forward. My lungs protest the movement, pain dragging across my ribs, but I keep my voice level. “Hundreds of witnesses can place both Megan and me on the pitch when the fire started. We played no part in this.” The lie tastes bitter on my tongue, not that either of them notices. I didn’t directly order Cody to start a fire, nor did I force Meg to run into it, but without my attempt to control the narrative, none of this would have happened.

Meg goes still beside me. Maybe she’s also remembering how I dragged her through the heated hallways, or maybe she’s still caught up on the shitty text I sent her. I was furious, as I usually am when my plans don’t work out as expected.

“Good,” Dean Colt sags into her chair with a theatrical kind of relief. “That’s good. I’ve had back-to-back meetings all morning with arson investigators and the board. Not to mention…” Her gaze slides toward me. Hint, hint, my turn to continue the ruse. I give a humorless grunt and look through the window beyond her head.

“My parents.” It’s not so much a ruse, when my father would have been on the other end of the phone for hours. Their precious son, the one they care about anyway, was filmed being publicly injured on school grounds. After the threats and demands passed, they would have realized that pushing the investigation forward would result in Cody’s involvement coming to light, so they do what they always do. Throw money at the problem and hope it goes away. The girl’s locker rooms will be restored to their full glory and then some.

Meg goes on to ask about her mother, which does catch my attention after all. I glance to the side. If the phone Meg ran into a locker room for wasn’t to contact her mother, I wonder who it is. No one else has visited her in the rehab clinic, that I made sure of. Meg needed time and space to recover, not distractions.

We’re quickly moved on through a speech Dean Colt seemingly makes up on the spot. A whole spiel of bullshit about risk assessments, the athletics department, investors, and funding. The words blur into administrative language that brings us back to the actual point.

“The investors want assurance that the money they’ve already poured into the unisex lacrosse program is going to be beneficial. This goes beyond competitions. This is about a community bridge, offering a safe space for mixed skill levels and collaboration across year groups. Such a feat will take two exceptionally strong captains. In particular, the two of you.”

Twisting her tablet towards herself, the Dean brings up a new document and flashes it towards us. Zoomed out to the max, it’s some kind of incident report, but Meg doesn’t even try to read it. Her shoulders slump, a look of defeat crossing her face. I almost applaud the Dean for that impressive performance, dancing around my demand for dual captainship so Meg can’t refuse. Although, as I knew she would, she does try.

“This… has already been decided, hasn’t it?” Meg asks slowly.

“It’s either a team led by you both, or there is no team at all.” Dean Colt nods, not giving an inch of leeway in the rigid set of her spine. For a split second, I’m curious if she acted out of fear for my parents, respect for me, or a favor for her son’s so-called friend. Meg’s eyes lower, a note of sadness poisoning their blue depths.

“But everyone hates me,” she breathes in a voice far smaller than I expected. A small breath is sucked through my parted lips. I hate the way her words scrape through the air between us. I hate how she says it without looking at me when both of us know I helped make it true. I’m her enemy, the leader of the wolves who prowl this campus. My intentions spiralled over the years, from originally intending to make her strong to somehow making her fight to stay visible. Every time she beat my expectations, I wanted to see how far she’d go to prove me wrong, how impressive she could be. But intent is useless if the outcome is a broken girl who has lost all reasons to fight. If not even thrashing me motivates her anymore, I’ve failed, and I’ve truly lost her.

Meg stands to leave, bringing my awareness back to the room. I’ve missed some back and forth, Meg’s humorless laugh spilling across the growing space between us.

“I appreciate what you’re saying, Dean Colt, and I’m sorry to be the person who ruins it for everyone, but I’m in no position to be leading anyone right now. I have a lot I need to deal with, which doesn’t include pretending to be part of some power duo for campus morale.”

Glancing back at me with a look of dismissal, her hand curls around the door’s handle. For a second, I almost let her leave. Let her shrink away like she apparently wants. Then, I note the twitch in the Dean’s brow, like an ‘I-told-you-so’, and my brain responds with a ‘fuck-no’.

“Both Megan and I would be honored to bring glory back to Hollowbrook and the lacrosse team,” I state. All movement behind me ceases. “We will captain the team and partake in any and all publicity that is required of us.”

I can sense the blazing glare slicing against my back, and this time, a small curve of my mouth does break through. She’s still in there somewhere, the version of Meg who can’t resist fighting against me. It’s that tenacity she’s going to need to cling to if she has any hopes of recovering. Dean Colt is wholly unconvinced any of this will work, her voice lowering between us.

“And what about Meg’s admission of not being fit to lead?” That must have been something I missed out on, but it’s not unexpected. Rolling my neck, I push to my feet to embody a commanding stance I’ve seen my father do a million times. It’s the one for when he means business.

“I will vouch for Megan’s recovery.” After a moment of a death glare threatening to explode my head, Dean Colt seals Megan’s fate with a simple ‘very well’, and I’m out of my seat before any more arguing can take place. Wrapping my hand around Meg’s upper arm, I encourage her to step into the hallway on wooden feet.

Despite the glaze in her blue eyes, Meg recovers in an instant. I barely have time to anticipate the swing, managing to catch her wrist as her fist comes toward my face. Some fucked-up part of me is delighted, even as I knock her hand aside and crowd her toward the nearest wall, my forearm hitting the plasterboard beside her head.

“You’ll vouch for me,” Meg snaps. “Are you freaking serious?” Her eyes blaze up at me, wild, blue and so alive that my chest aches. Everything I do is to get her to look at me like that.

“From where I’m standing, there is no one else around here willing to give you a chance at redemption,” I growl, refusing to back down now that I’ve got her fire raging. It feels too damn good to waste. “You should be thanking me.”

“Thanking you?” Meg chokes, laughing without a trace of humor. “It’s your fault everyone is treating me this way. Do you know that I didn’t even make it into class this morning? So many people stopped me to ask why I put their precious Everest in danger, or to accuse me of starting that fire myself for attention. I had enough when Cynthia Farndon spat on me and went straight back to my room.”

Everything inside of me goes still. Cynthia Farndon spat on her. The admission lodges itself in my mind, cutting through the exhaustion and irritation riding me. My fingers flex against the wall, but I keep my face elusive so Meg can’t see how much that thought angers me. She wouldn’t believe I care, but apparently, my reaction is the least of her concern.

“Why couldn’t you just let me fade into the background?” she whispers harshly. I swear my eye twitches, her question slicing directly into my core. Lowering my head, my breath ghosts her cheek.

“You don’t belong in the background, and you don’t get to disappear a second time.” Her inhale catches, and the sound goes through me like a gunshot. This is dangerous, as close as I’ve allowed myself to get, but I find that I can’t move away. Not after her plea.

I know exactly what it is to crave fading away into darkness. Cody lives in that darkness. I put him there to protect him, hiding him in plain sight. I thought I was saving him, but Meg isn’t Cody. She doesn’t have vices that will keep her from losing her mind. She isn’t meant to fade away to a place where her loneliness can consume her. She’s meant to thrive in the limelight where everyone can see her brilliance. The brilliance she earned against all odds, one that no one handed her on a silver platter. Blinking up at me, I can see exactly what Meg’s next words are before she mutters them.