The Fever King (Feverwake #1)(19)

As if he could tell what Noam was thinking, the boy raised an eyebrow.

“Hello,” Noam said, trying to cover awkwardness with false bravado. “I’m Noam. I take it you’re Dara, then?”

“I must be.”

Noam waited for him to keep going, to say whatever else polite people usually said when meeting someone new, but that appeared to be all Dara had in him. He’d already turned his attention back down to his book, disinterested. Fighting a twinge in his stomach that felt suspiciously like embarrassment, Noam cast his gaze around the room. Was he supposed to sit down? How late was Lehrer going to be?

He looked back at Dara, lifting his satchel. “Is there somewhere I ought to put this?”

Dara glanced up. “Hmm? Oh.” He tilted his head toward one of the other armchairs, the one nearest the window. “Right there’s fine.”

“Thanks.” Noam carried the bag over and dumped it on the seat. He hovered there a moment, trying to figure out if it would be rude to go examine the bookshelves. Lehrer had a broad collection, it seemed, everything from glossy new titles to tomes so old the binding had worn away to expose hand-sewn pages.

Noam settled for sitting instead, choosing the chair nearest Dara. He stole a glance at the spine of Dara’s book. Ava. Another Nabokov, just like the one he’d left on the table back at the dorm. Noam seriously doubted that was assigned material. He thought about saying something else, That’s a good book, maybe, to try to draw Dara back into conversation, but that was probably pointless.

This close, barely a foot between their chairs, Noam thought he detected the shadow of a bruise on Dara’s brow, only just obscured by the fall of his hair.

The door opened. Noam’s gaze jerked away from Dara as he leaped to his feet, wondering if he ought to salute. He was glad he didn’t, because Dara hadn’t moved from his spot in the armchair, still looking at his book as if he hadn’t noticed his commanding officer walk in.

Lehrer, for his part, didn’t correct either of them. He smiled when he saw Noam, the door falling shut and cutting off the brief noise that had filtered in through the hall. “Good,” he said. “I see you found the place all right, Mr. álvaro.”

Noam nodded, the back of his throat dry. Once again, that uniform made Lehrer look far too tall, like he wasn’t built to exist in such small spaces. “Yes, sir.”

Lehrer’s gaze slid away from him to Dara, who was still reading. Then he looked away without saying anything, moving toward the armchair by the window. He made as if to sit, then paused, brows raised. He pointed to the satchel. “Whose things are these?”

“Mine,” Noam said at the same time as Dara said, “His.”

The nape of Noam’s neck burned as he moved to retrieve the bag from the chair—from Lehrer’s chair, Dara had him put his bag in Lehrer’s chair—unable to look Lehrer in the eye as he retreated back over to his spot in the corner, his hands white knuckled around the satchel’s strap.

Lehrer sat down in that chair, long legs crossed at the knees and his hands folded in his lap. His expression was impassive. “I gather the two of you made acquaintance,” he said. His tone was as dry as dead leaves.

Noam nodded. Dara did nothing.

“Very well. Noam, you’ll just be reading today. I put a book on the table there. Read through chapter four, do all the practice problems, and check them against the answer key. Let me know when you’re done. Dara, you’re with me.”

Noam and Dara both got up, Dara finally abandoning his book in the chair and crossing the room to Lehrer. That left Noam to grab what was on the coffee table: Algebra and Trigonometry, Book 2. He sat on the sofa and tugged the book into his lap, opening up his satchel for a spare pencil.

This wasn’t what he’d imagined when Lehrer said he’d tutor him. But then, Lehrer was still the reason Noam was even here at all. He turned to the first chapter.

Polynomials. Basic enough—even if the later sections looked like they were gonna be hell. What was a radical function? But for now, solving polynomials meant it was only too easy for Noam to get distracted by what was unfolding between Lehrer and Dara just five feet away.

Dara had taken up the seat nearest Lehrer’s, frowning down at the small table between their chairs. There was nothing on the table; Dara was just looking at it. Opposite him, Lehrer sat with his elbow perched on the armrest and watched. He’d lit a cigarette. Every now and then he’d take a drag and then exhale the smoke away from Dara’s face, toward the open window.

How the hell had Lehrer lived to be over a hundred years old if he was a smoker?

He imagined Lehrer’s lungs staining black, crumpling in on themselves like burned paper, only to heal themselves and expand, pink and fleshy. Over and over again.

Noam wrote down the answer to the problem he was working on, then traced over the numbers again with his pencil.

“You can use gesture, if you must,” Lehrer told Dara.

Dara lifted his hand, holding it palm down over the table, and almost instantly an apple appeared beneath it. Noam, startled, pressed too hard on his pencil, and the tip broke off. He hunched over, using the excuse of digging around in his bag for a fresh one to keep watching Dara and Lehrer.

The apple rocked once, twice, as if touched by a hand, then went still. It was green darkening to red, only barely ripe, and a little bruised toward the base.