Because You Love to Hate Me(26)

And I just sat there, inexplicably furious. I wanted to smack him. Or to break this bishop in two. I mean, no one—no one—had ever told me that the law was a stupid career path to follow.

And no one had ever accused me of doing it for the money, either.

Jim returned in under a minute. “Here.” A book fell onto my lap. Worn hardcover, barely taller than my hand and no thicker.

Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The English translation.

“Read it,” Jim ordered, “and tell me who’s guilty at the end. Tell me who you, as a lawyer, would lock away.”

“And should I write a five-paragraph essay on it, too, Professor Moriarty?” I shoved a pawn to H3. “Or will there be a pop quiz tomorrow?”

He sighed and settled back into his seat. “You don’t have to read it. I just think . . . it’s a good book, okay?”

I didn’t answer. It was childish of me—that sullen silence. Not to mention totally irrational. Yes, I can be abrasive, Jean. But you know me! I don’t ever let my temper come out. I make mistakes when I’m mad, and mistakes are for people who are not the offspring of William Holmes.

I moved my pawn to E5—a move as foolish as they come. I mean, instantly, the whole game unraveled for me, and in about fifteen turns, Jim said, “Check.”

A minute passed, during which I only managed to expose my king all the more, and when he finished with “Checkmate, Holmes,” all I could do was glare.





Remember that night I woke you up because I was crying?

I told you the book I was reading was sad, which was a lie. I mean, Chronicle of a Death Foretold wasn’t meant to be sad. It was supposed to be a commentary on who’s truly to blame: those who commit a murder or the village that does nothing to stop it?

Yet underneath, tangled between its sentences and its beats, there was a love story. A girl—Angela—whose life was controlled by the men around her. A girl whose worth was based on what she could give. A girl who finally found what she wanted in life . . .

But she was too late to claim it, leaving only one end for everyone: a senseless death foretold.





I didn’t tell Jim I had cried reading the book. I simply said, “The whole village was guilty” when I eased into my armchair the next day.

The landscapers were right outside our window, weed-hacking and hedge-trimming in a roar of engines and snapping branches. We were halfway into our game before they passed, and I was finally able to add, “The townsfolk knew the brothers planned to kill Santiago, but no one intervened.”

“So who gets punished?”

“The brothers.”

“Even though everyone around them was just as guilty?”

“Well, the village didn’t stab Santiago twenty times until his intestines fell all over the dirt! That was Angela’s brothers.”

A shake of Jim’s head, but not with annoyance. His eyes were crinkling behind his glasses as he jumped his knight forward to take my pawn. “You’re way too smart for the law, Holmes. Too smart to believe in things that aren’t real.”

I slid my rook to D4, claiming a black knight. “And how is justice not real, James?”

“None of it is.” He waved to the board. “Not the rules. Not the game.” He jerked his head toward the window, hair flopping with that gut-wrenching perfection. “Not the pruned trees or keeping up with the Joneses. Least of all that legal system you plan to get a ‘degree’ studying. They’re just myths. Giant lies that we all agree to believe in. And the only reason they hold power over us is because we let them.”

I’ll admit that my jaw fell open a little. Then, in a move of ultimate poise and eloquence, I said, “Huh?”

And Jim laughed. Maybe it was the tenth laugh or maybe the hundredth that I’d conjured from him, yet it was this laugh that sent me tumbling head over heels.

Yet even though I was falling—so fast and with so much blood roaring in my ears—the idiocy of Jim’s next move (black queen to E6) allowed my brain to operate, my mouth to articulate, “All those things, James. Those . . . myths. They give us order. A framework to live in.”

“They also give us war, Holmes. And genocide and poverty and”—a wave around the library—“an upper class. Don’t you see it? Shared mythology is what creates us versus them.”

“Soooo?” I dragged out the word to emphasize my complete and total confusion. “Do you want chaos, then? No school or government or games? Are you an anarchist, James?”

“Hardly, Holmes.” A snort. “More like . . . Let’s just say that I want to find what’s real. I want to feel it—whatever it might be. And then, while the rest of the world sits cozy and oblivious inside their glass houses, I will be walking through walls.”

“Oh?” I said with fake interest. “And how do you plan to do that, sir?”

“Same way I always do.” And there it was again, Jean. That sad, broken smile—though it vanished two heartbeats later as he rested his elbows on the table. Steepled his fingers over the board.

“Want to know something about me, Holmes?”

“Yes,” I breathed with far too much enthusiasm.

He didn’t notice. His eyes drifted down to the board. “I came to Baker Street Prep for something, and once I find it, I don’t plan on sticking around.”