A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)(62)
And what I felt, because I’m me, was violently irritated, not at her but at Mum, who wasn’t even here to look at me with that shining warm smile in her whole face that she gets once in a very rare while when I’ve made her really happy. Like the time when I was twelve and we had an enormous fight about cheating, because I didn’t see why I shouldn’t just take the last bit of life out of this bird I’d found dying in the forest anyway, and I stormed away and then came back to the yurt very grudgingly an hour later and told her even more grudgingly that I’d just sat in the trees with the bird until it died, and then buried it. I hated having to tell her, I hated how happy it made me seeing her face glow. It felt like giving in, and I hated giving in more than anything.
And I hated it just as much now when Mum wasn’t here but I could see her face anyway, her happiness that I wasn’t going to take what Chloe was offering me, the priceless unattainable thing I’d declared with enormous firmness I intended to get. Except I couldn’t take it. It was so obviously rubbish after Liu saying quietly, I’m behind on mana. And not even because she and Aadhya wanted me, and Chloe only cared about clinging to Orion. They were just the better deal. When they were offering an alliance, they were offering their lives. They were offering to go all-in, asking me to do the same. Chloe didn’t have a thing on the table by comparison.
“I don’t want an apology,” I said resentfully. “I’m not coming to New York.”
Chloe’s face went stricken. “If—Are you going to London?” she asked, her voice shaking. “Is this—is this because of Todd? He’s going to be kicked out, obviously, no one in New York would—”
“It’s not Todd!” I said, irritated even more, because she hadn’t the slightest right to an answer, only she sounded like I was stabbing her with knives. “I’m not going to any enclave.”
Chloe was starting to look bewildered. “But—are you and Orion just—” She couldn’t even come up with something to finish the sentence.
“We aren’t doing anything. I don’t even understand why all of you are freaking out this way. Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not dating Orion, and even if I were, two weeks ago he didn’t know my name. And you’re ready to offer me a guaranteed slot? What if in a month he’s taken up with a girl from Berlin?”
I thought that at least would make her back off, but Chloe didn’t look at all comforted. She had an odd, confused wobbling sort of expression, and then abruptly she said, “You’re the only person Orion’s ever actually hung out with.”
“Right, sorry, I forgot that your kind aren’t allowed to associate with the plebeians.”
“That’s not what I mean!” she said. “He doesn’t hang out with us, either.” Which was a bizarre thing to say, given I’d seen him hanging out with her almost nonstop for the last three years, and my face must have shown it, because she shook her head. “He knows us, his mom told him to look out for us, but he doesn’t—talk to any of us. He has to sit somewhere at meals and in classes, so he sits with us, but he doesn’t say anything unless you ask him a question. He never comes and just hangs out, not with anyone—not here, not in our rooms; he doesn’t even study with anyone! Except with you.”
I stared at her. “What about Luisa?”
“Luisa was constantly begging him to let her follow him around, and he didn’t shove her off because he felt sorry for her,” Chloe said. “He still avoided her whenever he could. I’ve known him since we were born, and the only reason he knows my name is that his mom drilled him with flash cards in second grade. Even when we were kids, all he ever wanted to do is hunt mals.”
“Yes, how could Candy Land possibly stack up against mal-hunting?” I said, incredulously.
“You think that’s a joke? When we were in preschool, a suckerworm got into our classroom. The teacher found out because Orion was in the corner laughing, and she asked him what was so funny and he held it up in both hands to show us. It was thrashing around with its mouth going, trying to bite. We all screamed and he jumped and pulled it into two pieces by accident. All of us got sprayed with its guts.” My face screwed up involuntarily: ew. She grimaced in memory. “He was doing gate shifts by the time he was ten. I don’t mean he’d be assigned, it was his idea of fun. Magistra Rhys, he’s her only kid, all our lives she was constantly dragging him to our places for playdates, to get him to make friends, and the whole time he was over, he’d just try to find ways to sneak out and go down to the gates so he could jump any mals that came in. He’s not—normal.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help it. It was that, or slap her. “Would you say he’s got negativity of spirit?” I jeered.
“I’m not being mean!” she said tightly. “You think we didn’t want to like him? I’m alive because of him. The summer when I was nine, we had a lyefly infestation in the city. Not a big deal, right?” she added, in a self-deprecating sort of way, as if she were almost ashamed to complain of anything so trivial. “The older kids had to stay inside while the council figured out what to do, but the lyeflies weren’t bothering any of us under eleven. I was at the playground across the street from the enclave when I got a mana spurt.”