The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)(101)

“Oh, but since we’re poor but happy —” started Blue hotly. “The cheerful peasants —”

“Don’t, please, Jane,” he interrupted. “You know what I mean. I’m telling you I was stupid over it. I thought it was about trying so hard to survive that you didn’t have the time to be a good parent. Obviously, that’s not it. Because you and I, we’re both … wealthy in love.”

“I suppose,” Blue said. “But that’s not going to get me into community college.”

“Community college!” Gansey echoed. His shocked emphasis on community hurt Blue more than she could admit out loud. She sat quietly and miserably in the passenger seat until he glanced over. “Surely you can get scholarships.”

“They don’t cover books.”

“That’s only a few hundred dollars a semester. Right?”

“Just how much do you think I make at a shift at Nino’s, Gansey?”

“Don’t they make grants to cover that?”

Frustration welled in her. Everything that had happened that day felt ready to explode out of her. “Either I’m an idiot or I’m not, Gansey — make up your mind! Either I’m clever enough to have researched this myself and be eligible for a scholarship, or I am too stupid to have considered the options and I can’t get a scholarship anyway!”

“Please don’t be angry.”

She rested her head on the door. “Sorry.”

“Jesus,” Gansey said. “I wish this week was over.”

For a few minutes, they drove in silence: up, up, up.

Blue asked, “Did you ever meet his parents?”

In a low, unfamiliar voice, he said, “I hate them.” And a little bit later, “The bruises he’d come to school with. Who has he ever had to love him? Ever?”

In her mind, Adam pressed that fist against her bedroom wall. So gently. Though every muscle was knotted, wanting to destroy it.

She said, “Look there.”

Gansey followed her gaze. The trees on one side of the road had fallen away, and suddenly they could see that the little gravel track they were on clung to the very side of the mountain, winding up like tinsel. All of the valley suddenly spread out below. Though hundreds of stars were already visible, the sky was still a deep blue, a whimsical touch from an idealistic painter. The mountains on the other side of the valley, however, were night-black, everything the sky was not. Dark and cool and silent. And between them, at the mountains’ feet, was Henrietta itself, studded with yellow and white lights.

Gansey let the Pig slide to a stop. He stepped on the parking brake. They both gazed out the driver’s side window.

It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn’t let you admire it. The sort of beauty that just always hurt.

Gansey sighed, small and quiet and ragged, like he hadn’t meant to let it escape. She shifted her gaze from the window to the side of his head, watching him watch instead. He pressed his thumb against his lower lip — this was Gansey, that gesture — and then he swallowed. It was, she thought, just as she felt when she looked at the stars, when she walked in Cabeswater.

“What are you thinking?” Blue asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Then, when he did, he kept his eyes trained on the view. “I’ve been all over the world. More than one country for every year that I’m alive. Europe and South America and — the highest mountains and the widest rivers and the prettiest villages. I’m not saying that to show off. I’m just saying it because I’m trying to understand how I could have been so many places and yet this is the only place that feels like home. This is the only place I belong. And because I’m trying to understand how, if I belong here, it …”

“— hurts so much,” Blue finished.

Gansey turned to her, his eyes bright. He just nodded.

Why, she thought, agonized, couldn’t it have been Adam?

She said, “If you find out, will you tell me?”

He’s going to die, Blue, don’t —

“I don’t know if we’re meant to find out,” he said.

“Oh, we’re finding out,” Blue said with extra ferocity, trying to tamp down the feeling rising in her. “If you’re not going to, I’ll do it myself.”

He said, “If you find out first, will you tell me?”

“Sure thing.”

“Jane, in this light,” he started, “you … Jesus. Jesus. I’ve got to get my head straight.”

He suddenly threw open the door and got out, seizing the roof to pull himself out faster. He slammed the door and then walked around the back of the car; one hand scrubbed through his hair.

The car was utterly quiet. She heard the buzzing of night insects and singing of frogs and slow chirps of birds who should have known better. Every so often, the cooling engine let out a little sigh like a breath. Gansey didn’t return.

Fumbling in the dark, she pushed open her door. She found him leaning against the back of the car, arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, not looking at her as she leaned on the car beside him. “That was very rude.”

Blue thought of a few things to reply, but couldn’t say any of them out loud. She felt like one of the night birds had gotten inside her. It tumbled and fumbled every time she breathed.