Starling House(84)

The image of him walking into the room, looking at me like I was something valuable, even vital, like there was nothing on his list but my name, sends another flush of heat through me.

We pass the detention center, and I can’t help looking for a lanky shadow, but the lot is empty. I wonder if he got a ride from Charlotte, or if he walked. I wonder if he took the old railroad bridge, if he paused to wallow in that old, stale guilt.

I turn right just past the detention center and cut the engine. The cab is quiet except for the hum of old neon and the distant screaking of the crickets.

Jasper clears his throat. “I actually ate at Logan’s, so I’m good.” The light from the Waffle House windows has turned his face an eerie, electric gold.

“We’re not here for waffles, bud.” I rest my head briefly on the steering wheel, reminding myself that this is for the best, that I worked very long and hard for it. Then I dig my phone out of my pocket and pull up the Stonewood Academy website.

I pass the phone over to him. “I had a whole brochure thing and an acceptance letter wrapped up, for your birthday, but the fire . . .”

Jasper’s face is very, very blank. “What is this.”

“Your new school.”

Jasper scrolls down the page, taps twice. “A private high school? A boarding school?”

“It’s all paid for. Tuition, room, board, everything.”

“How the hell did you—actually, don’t answer that. I don’t—why is my face on this website.”

“I—what?” I take the phone back and flick through the images on their slideshow. There—it’s the picture of Jasper leaning against the motel wall, hands in his pockets, hoodie pulled up. But they’ve put it in grayscale and added sans serif font over the image. It doesn’t matter where you come from—it matters where you go next.

“Okay, that’s . . .” I don’t know what it is. Weird, funny, sweet, awkward? The expression on Jasper’s face suggests it’s none of those things, that I have screwed up on a colossal scale.

I rush forward, trying to skate over it. “The semester starts in August, which is a little ways away, but—”

“So I’m already enrolled. Like, you enrolled me.”

I wet my lips. “Yes?”

“Because you thought I would be happy at”—he takes the phone back—“Stonewood Academy. Where Greatness Grows.” He taps the screen. “Jesus, how did you find someplace whiter than Eden?”

“I didn’t—it won’t be like that—”

“This is like Charlotte shouting at the principal all over again. I know she meant well, but those next few weeks were hell.”

I feel like someone who has just leapt out and shouted “Surprise!” on the wrong date, to the wrong person: defensive, embarrassed, even a little angry.

I take an unsteady breath. “Look, we can talk about all that . . . later. What matters right now is that you have to get out of here now. Like, tonight. There’s something I should have told you a while ago.” I take a small, bracing breath. “Our mom was Old Leon Gravely’s daughter. So . . . you and me are Gravelys. Technically.”

The silence that follows is so profound it presses on my eardrums. I can almost hear Jasper’s neurons firing. He says, carefully, “So . . . did they pay for this? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“What? Hell no, those vultures don’t give a damn about us!”

“Okay, then why—”

“It’s the curse. Whatever you want to call it. It—they go after Gravelys, they always have—”

“Opal?” Jasper inhales carefully. “I know. I already know all this.”

“You—what?”

“I’ve known for a while. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I wasn’t sure you were ready to hear it.”

Jasper pauses, but I can’t think of anything to say. I may, in fact, never think of anything to say again.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Well, thank you, first of all. I don’t know how you paid off a private high school, but it’s . . . I know you were just trying to help.” He says it earnestly—too earnestly, like a parent thanking their child for a homemade Christmas gift. A sense of foreboding thickens the air.

“Second, I’m sorry, like really sorry, but”—he hands the phone back to me and wraps my limp fingers around the case—“I’m not going.” He’s rarely sounded more sure about anything.

“If you think you’re working at the goddamn power plant you’ve got another think—”

“Because I’m starting at U of L this fall.” Jasper pauses, giving the syllables time to arrange themselves in my head. “I got a scholarship and financial aid, and the counselor says there are loans available, so you don’t have to worry about anything.”

In the original script of this conversation, I’m fairly sure that was my line. I was the one showing him the door out of Eden, handing him the keys to his own future. “You’re sixteen.”

Jasper smiles, a little shy, a little proud. “There’s no age requirements. It’s all test scores and credits and stuff. Charlotte helped me with the application and the SAT”—Charlotte, my former friend, who I now see is a stone-cold traitor—“and Logan’s mom helped with the state aid paperwork, and Mrs. Gutiérrez gave me a ride to the library today. I just met with my advisor. I’m already registered for classes.”