Chapter 2

The injury wasn't bad. They discharged me that afternoon.

In the hospital hallway I caught myself in a glass door.

Damn. Sign debris still in my hair. A streak of gray on my cheek. I looked like I'd crawled out of a demolition site.

Asher had not been about to kiss me.

He'd wanted to clown me to my face.

Laugh at me.

"Evie. Meds are ready. Let's go home."

He jogged over from the pharmacy, coat kicking up in the draft, the paper bag crushed in his hand. The smile on his face was warm anyway. Like light leaking through after the snow stops.

My chest went soft.

Damn it. That was the him I used to have a crush on.

When did the two of us turn into nemeses?

The car crept through the ice. I leaned on the passenger window with my eyes shut, and memory rolled back without asking.

· · ·

Junior year. He was eighteen. I was seventeen. The year Gareth transferred in.

Asher was built to be looked at. Straight nose. Clean mouth. First in every studio class. Competition trophies piled into a hill in the classroom. People called his name in every hallway. At school, he was the moon everyone stood around.

I was the one the moon held up.

I skipped a grade into his class. He carried my bag. He did my cleanup. For the 800 in gym he could finish a thousand first, then fold back and run next to me, still grinning through the breath:

"If you're tired, Evie, I'll carry you home."

"Come on, little Evie."

He never got mad at me. I threw a fit, he talked me down. I freaked before a test, he stuffed candy in my hand. A teacher called on me, and the first thing he did after the bell was ask if I'd gotten yelled at.

I was sixteen and stupid. Falling for him was normal, right?

I wasn't the only one. Half the school was in line.

We were good the way a left hand is good with a right — until those midterms.

Two weeks before the test, Gareth transferred in.

Looks. Grades. He matched Asher beat for beat. The day he showed up, the principal looked like the school's future was set. Two locked-in college spots. These two had the city.

Two days before the exam, Asher got sick. A bad cold dragged into a low fever. He lost a circle of weight. Between classes he folded over the desk coughing, shoulder blades sticking out.

I hurt for him. I didn't dare wake him. I stared at the worksheet until my brain went blank. Gareth stopped on his way past, put two marks on my scratch paper.

The problem opened.

I looked up and gave him a thumbs-up. "Nice."

"It's all right." Gareth smiled. His eyes landed on the scarf at my neck.

Asher had stuffed it at me. Pale apricot, little foxes. Classroom AC too aggressive, don't freeze. I still had baby fat then, and I was pale, wrapped in that scarf. I probably looked like the class pet.

Gareth lifted a hand and ruffled my hair, easy:

"Hey. Little Evie."

I didn't dodge. I didn't think.

The next second, my back went cold.

I turned — Asher was still folded on the desk, but his eyes were slitted this way. The sick look had been pressed under something colder. Like someone had robbed his house.

When our eyes met, my heart kicked for no reason. I wanted to explain. He buried his face in his arm again and coughed, light, like he'd seen nothing.

That afternoon the sky went dark. A hard rain.

Clouds sat low. Rain hit the bike shed like gravel. The dismissal bell rang and Asher didn't wait. Bag on, he went straight into the rain.

Our parents didn't like a show. They didn't want us noticed, so we always walked home. He went that fast, and he didn't put up an umbrella — he hadn't brought one.

I stood at the gate. Rain cut into my collar. Then a canopy dropped over my head.

I looked up. Gareth.

"No umbrella? Come on. I'll take you."

I watched that back get thinner in the rain. My chest was a clogged drain. I didn't know what I'd done wrong.

A long time after I got home, I snuck a look from the third-floor attic. Asher's study stayed dark.

He'd left early. Why wasn't he there?

I was about to go down and ask our housekeeper when a figure cut through — Asher, soaked through, no better than fished out of a river. Hair stuck to his forehead. Wrecked. Pitiful.

Any other day he would have looked up from the study, just once.

That day he pulled the curtains.

No looking.

The next morning he still waited at the lane, took my bag onto his shoulder, and didn't say a word the whole way.

I tried. "Asher. Yesterday—"

"Gareth walked you home," he said.

A statement. Not a question.

I froze. I was about to argue when he glanced at me, then at the school gate — Gareth standing there, smiling at us from a distance.

Asher's voice went colder. "That happy to see him?"

That was the day it started going bad.

For example: I heard Perry Cole telling someone she hadn't had an umbrella last night, and Asher had stuffed one at her. So he hadn't waited for me because he'd gone to give Perry an umbrella?

For example: a dark red luck cord showed up on Perry's wrist, from the old temple out west. And two days before Asher got sick, he'd gone to that temple for no reason.

For example: later, somebody started a rumor I was dating Gareth. I heard Asher lean on the rail and tell the people hooting, lazy, "Who is she to me? Why would I ask?"

For example: the day Gareth left the country, I was already low because Asher and I had gone sour, and he dropped this: "Still upset Gareth's gone? Then I'll take that job from your studio."

After that we went to war. Whoever made the other fold first got to feel like they'd won.

Won what?

The ice outside the window thickened. Asher turned the heat up a click. "We're here. Don't fall asleep. Watch your step."

I nodded, amnesiac. Inside, I knew — some thorns had been in for years. Pulling them would hurt.