A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)(93)

I stared at him. “It is, but that’s my part. Your part’s not up to me. Or are you actually trying to further develop this bizarre loser form of dating where you never actually get round to asking the other person what they think of the idea? Because I’m not helping you with it.”

“For the love of—” He dissolved into a strangled noise of wild irritation and shoved both his hands into his hair: if it hadn’t just been mostly shingled close, it would’ve been standing up like an Einstein mop. Then he said flatly, without looking me in the face, “I’m trying not to get kicked out of your life,” and I got it, embarrassingly belated. I had Aadhya and Liu, now, and not just him. It was like all that mana at my hands, something so vital you could get used to it so fast you’d almost forget what life had been like without it—until it went away again. But he didn’t. He didn’t have anybody else; he’d never had anybody, the same way I’d never had anybody, but now he’d had me, and he wanted to lose that about as much as I wanted to trade him and Aadhya and Liu for an enclave seat in New York.

Of course, he was still being inexcusably stupid about it. “Lake, if I did want to date you, I wouldn’t want you to date me just because I commanded you to as the price of admission,” I said.

    “Are you just trying to be dense?” He glared at me. But I glared right back, indignantly, and then in the tones of someone speaking to a dim pony, he said, “I’d want to. If you want, I want. And if you don’t want, then—I don’t want.”

“That’s the general idea of the thing,” I said, getting wary all over again: that sounded alarmingly like he did want. “Otherwise it’s just stalking. Are you asking? And I’m not kicking you out of my life no matter what!” I added, although I hadn’t any idea what I’d do if he did ask. “I kicked you out of my way downstairs because I had the odd notion that you’d prefer your life saved, which I’d like to point out for the record I’ve now done in turn.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m up to thirteen at this point, so you’ve got a way to go,” he said, folding his arms over his chest, but it didn’t really have the right effect: he looked too thoroughly relieved.

“We needn’t quibble about numbers,” I said, loftily.

“Oh, I think we do need,” he said, and then just when I was about to relax, thinking I’d steered us back into safer waters, he dropped his arms again and his face went open and a little pale, leaving scared pink standing out on the edges of his cheekbones. “El, I’d—I’d like to ask. But not—in here. After we—if we—”

“Don’t even try. I’m not getting engaged to go out with you,” I said rudely, shoving in before he could drag us back onto the shoals. “If you’re not asking now, that’s sufficient unto the day! If we make it out of here alive and you slog across the pond to come ask me, I’ll decide what I think of it at the time, and until then, you can keep your Disney movie fantasies,” and your secret pet mal, my brain unhelpfully inserted, “to yourself.”

He said, “Okay, okay, fine!” in a tone one-tenth irritation and nine-tenths relief, while I looked away, trying to stop my mouth contorting around the laugh I was having to fight desperately to keep in yet again: thanks ever so, Aadhya. Her mum was a genius, actually. “Can I ask you to meet for dinner in an hour?”

    “No, you twit,” I said, as if I hadn’t just forgot about it myself. “It’s induction. We’ve got half an hour at best.” He immediately looked sheepish, although to be fair to us, we’d definitely had the weirdest graduation day ever. I grimaced and looked down at myself. “I ought to shower. And put on my slightly less filthy top.”

“Do you want another one?” he said, a little tentatively. “I’ve got spares.”

Our conversation had made clear that he didn’t need the slightest encouragement, but caution warred with my fairly desperate longing for another T-shirt, which even the one glimpse I’d had into his room had been enough for me to say with perfect authority he had far too many of for his own good. “Yeah, all right,” I said, with an inward sigh. At least the whole school was already completely certain we were dating.



* * *





I WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about Orion needing no encouragement: the shirt he brought me had the Manhattan skyline on it in silver glitter, a single spot marked out roughly halfway along the island with a rising swirl of colored glitter, presumably the enclave location: not at all meaningful or claim-staking in any way. I’d have thwapped him across the head with it, except it was clean, and in fact smelled faintly of washing powder: he’d probably had it wrapped up somewhere in a drawer waiting for his senior year. At least it gave me the excuse to abandon him for the girls’ bathroom instantly so I could put it on, a clean top over clean showered skin: bliss.

    He had waited for me outside, and we collected Aadhya and Liu from her room. I peeked into the big tank she had the mice in. Aadhya’s was already marked with a bright-pink dot that she’d put on with a highlighter. “You can pick yours tonight,” Liu said.

The stairs felt odd when we started up because they weren’t moving anymore: like getting off a ship after you’ve been on the water for a long time. The gears had all settled back into place, and there was only the faint ticking of the minor machinery, more or less just keeping time until the end of next year. Everyone was going upstairs in a big tidal flow together, so it didn’t even take long to climb to the cafeteria and join the waiting crowd.