“How about Jaxon?” I keep my voice light even though, after our encounter earlier, my heart is pounding at the mere mention of his name. “Is he going to be there?”
“Jaxon Vega?” By the time she gets to the second syllable of Jaxon’s name, her voice is little more than a squeak.
“He’s the one we saw in the hall that first day, right?”
“Yeah. Um…yeah.” Macy gives up any pretense of chill—and of walking, as it turns out. Instead, she turns to me, hands on her hips, and demands, “Why are you asking about Jaxon?”
“I don’t know. We’ve met a couple of times, and I just wondered if he was into snowball fights.”
“You’ve met Jaxon Vega a couple of times? How exactly did you meet, considering I’ve been with you almost all the time since you got here?”
“I don’t know, just walking around the school. It was only a few times.”
“A few times?” Her eyes almost bug out of her head. “That’s more than a couple. Where? When? How?”
“Why are you being so weird about this?” I’m seriously beginning to regret bringing Jaxon up. I mean, she was freaked out over Flint, but it was a fun kind of freaked out. Right now, it looks more like she’s going to blow a gasket. “He was in the hallway; I was in the hallway. It just kind of happened.”
“Things don’t just happen with Jaxon. He’s not exactly known for being talkative with anyone outside of—” She stops abruptly.
“Outside of what?” I prompt.
“I don’t know. Just…”
“Just?” I ask. She smiles a little sickly but doesn’t say anything else, and it annoys me. Like, seriously annoys me. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“You start sentences and then never finish them. Or you start to say something and halfway through change what you were saying to something else entirely.”
“I don’t—”
“You do. All the time. And honestly, it’s beginning to feel a little weird. Like there’s some kind of secret I’m not supposed to know. What’s going on?”
“That’s ridiculous, Grace.” She looks at me like I’m a few snowflakes short of a snowball. “Katmere is just, you know, full of all kinds of weird cliques and social rules. I didn’t want to bore you with them all.”
“Because you’d rather I commit social suicide?” I arch my brow at her.
She rolls her eyes. “Social suicide is the last thing you need to worry about here.”
It’s the first real thing she’s said since we started this conversation, and I jump on it. “So what do I have to worry about, then?”
Macy sighs, low and long and just a little sad. But then she looks me in the eye and says, “All I was going to say is that Jaxon’s not very friendly with people who aren’t in the Order.”
“The Order? What’s that?”
“It’s nothing, really.” When I keep looking at her, silently pushing her to continue, she sighs again, then adds, “It’s just a nickname we gave the most popular boys at school because they’re always together.”
I think about the guys Jaxon walked into the party with and the ones who were with him in the hall when Flint was carrying me to my room. At the time, I remember thinking that Jaxon looked like the leader, but I didn’t think much of it. I was too busy trying not to stare at him.
Based on my recollections, Macy’s explanation is reasonable. Still, there’s something about the way she says it—and the way she’s looking everywhere but in my eyes—that makes me think there’s more to the story than she’s letting on.
Although, standing in the middle of the hallway doesn’t seem like the best place to keep pushing at her, especially since we really are going to be late if we don’t get moving.
With that in mind, I start walking and Macy does, too, but she sticks close to my side. I give her a weird look, wondering what she’s up to, at least until she asks in a kind of stage whisper, “Have you met the others, too?”
“The other guys in the Order?” I feel a little ridiculous just saying the name out loud. I mean, they’re twelfth-grade students at a boarding school, not running a monastery in Tibet. “No. I’ve only met Jaxon.”
“Only? You mean he was alone?” Now she doesn’t just look worried; she looks downright sick.
“Yeah. So?”