Wayward Son Read online

  There was no Internet at Watford, so Penny and Micah wrote each other actual letters during the term. I have so many memories of Penelope running out onto the Great Lawn with a letter from Micah that they’ve become one memory—Penny in her pleated skirt and knee socks, smiling, a white envelope in her hand.

  Penelope and Micah were going to get married.

  And now … Merlin, what now?

  * * *

  Baz and I aren’t saying anything, but Penny is nodding as if we were.

  “Are you sure—” I try.

  “Very,” she says.

  “You probably both need to sleep on it.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe—”

  “No! Simon! He’s dating someone else.”

  “Bastard,” Baz hisses.

  “No,” Penny laughs. “He’s not a bastard, he’s just—” She looks up at me. “—not in love with me.” Her shoulders start shaking, and a second later, she’s crying. “I think it was all in my head, all along.”

  “Buffalo Blasts?” A different waiter is at our table. Baz takes the plates, then waves the man away while he’s asking whether we need any ketchup or ranch dressing. Crowley, this burger is gorgeous. It has hash browns on it. Baz’s steak is so rare, it looks like strawberry jelly.

  “It wasn’t all in your head,” I say. “He wrote you letters.” Are we eating, I wonder. Or is this too tragic for eating?

  “We were pen pals,” Penny says.

  “You Skyped. He told you he loved you, I’ve heard him.”

  That makes her cry some more. “Well, apparently he didn’t mean it!” She picks up a Buffalo Blast and takes a big, tearful bite. (Hurrah—we are eating!)

  “He said it was my fault,” she says with her mouth full, “that I didn’t want a real relationship. He said I just wanted to have a boyfriend, so that I could check it off and worry about more important things.”

  Baz picks up his knife and fork, and carefully starts cutting his steak.

  “I can see what you’re thinking, Basilton. I know you agree with him.”

  “I don’t agree with him, Bunce.”

  “But?”

  “I don’t agree with him. And I don’t know anything about relationships.”

  “But I had checked him off,” she says. “I thought we were going to get married.” She’s crying hard now.

  Baz drops his cutlery and swings over to Penny’s side of the table, helping her set her Blast down, putting his arm around her. “Please don’t choke to death, Bunce. Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.”

  Penny turns in to his shoulder and cries some more. “Micah’s right,” she sobs. “I took him for granted.”

  “Maybe,” Baz says, “but that doesn’t excuse what he did. He’s a coward.”

  “He said it’s impossible to tell me something I don’t want to hear!”

  Baz catches my eye, and we both grimace, because that’s absolutely true.

  “I like that about you,” I offer.

  “We all do,” Baz says. “If you weren’t relentless, the Mage and the Humdrum would still be a plague on the whole World of Mages.”

  “But you wouldn’t want to date me,” she says.

  “I would never want to date you,” he earnestly replies, “but it’s not because you’re muleheaded. That’s practically my type.”

  “I’m such a fool, Baz!”

  Baz rubs her back and lets her cry into his shirt. I love him so much, and I want to tell him so. But I’ve never managed to say it, and now is definitely not the time.

  He looks up at me, his eyes urgent. “Switch places with me, Snow. I’m about to drain her dry.”

  Penelope sits up—not as urgently as she should, I reckon—and Baz extricates himself from her arms and her hair and the booth.

  He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I think I’ll step outside. For a moment.” He’s white as a sheet, though his cheeks and nose look sort of flushed with black. He wheels around and heads for the exit, dipping towards the hostess on his way out, then backing out the door.

  I sit down next to Penny and pull my plate over. “I know you don’t eat beef,” I say, “but this burger tastes like America.”

  She takes one of my chips.

  I put my arm around her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she says.

  “I feel like this is my fault.”

  “Did you introduce Micah to a girl named Erin?”

  “No, but I—” My voice drops, I’m embarrassed to say this. “—I know you stayed in England, for university, because of me.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she says.

  “I’m not.” I look in her brown eyes. “Penny, I’m not stupid.”

  She looks right back at me. “Simon, I think I would have come to America for university if I really wanted to. I could have brought you with me.”

  “Would you have?”

  “No. Baz would never have allowed it.” She looks down at her plate. “Anyway. I was happy. The way things were with Micah. Apart. It was enough for me.”

  16

  BAZ

  It’s still broad daylight, but I can’t wait anymore—I have to kill something. Or find something dead.…

  I wander around to the back of the mall, behind some skips. I have no idea what sort of wildlife can be found in West Des Moines. Rats, probably—but I’d need a boatload of them at this point.

  There are some houses over the hill. I hate to use this spell unless I’m desperate, but I am desperate. I crouch low and hold my wand out over the ground, pouring in as much magic as I have available.

  “Here, kitty-kitty!”

  * * *

  When I get back to our booth, the waitress is putting three monstrous slices of cheesecake on the table.

  Simon’s sitting next to Penny, and I’m flushed with warm feelings for both of them. (A side effect of being flushed with the blood of nine cats, probably.) I go to their side of the booth—“Scoot over”—and pick up a fork.

  Simon points at the plates of cheesecake: “This one’s Outrageous, this one’s Ultimate, and this one’s Extreme.”

  “No, this one’s Extreme,” Bunce says, taking a giant bite. “With the Oreos.”

  I take a bite of the same piece and cover my mouth. “Oof, thas good.”

  “It is The Cheesecake Factory,” Simon says. “Does what it says on the tin.”

  * * *

  After dinner, we’re all shattered. We’d meant to keep pushing on through Iowa, but we’re jetlagged and full of cream cheese, and Bunce still looks like someone blew out her pilot light.

  We end up at an inn near the motorway. It’s cheap, but the room is huge with two big beds. Bunce falls onto one. I nudge her foot. “Plug in your mobile.”

  Snow and I are still holding our bags. We could take the other bed. We’ve shared a bed before. A few times. We’ve …

  Being with Simon hasn’t meant what I thought it would.

  It seemed at first that all my dreams were coming true, that he was finally mine. Mine to love, mine to live with—to walk with—to have. I’d never been in a relationship before. “I want to be your terrible boyfriend,” Snow said, and I couldn’t wait for it.

  Maybe I should have taken him at his word.

  For we are indeed terrible at being boyfriends.

  We’re very good at this, though—standing uncomfortably in the same space, absolutely not saying what we’re both thinking, squeezing through a room full of elephants. We’re champions.

  “I’ll take the sofa.” Snow brushes past me and drops his bag near a brown settee. “My wings’ll pop in the middle of the night.”

  I take the bed.

  * * *

  I’m the only one who takes a shower. But I’m also the only one who spent half an hour behind a skip, wrestling tabby cats. I have a nasty scratch on my chest, plus my nose is still charred from the sun. (That’s never happened before, and I’m not wholly confident that it will heal. Maybe this is how you disfigure a vampire.) I’m glad I brought my toiletries from home. The hotel soap smells like marshmallows.

  When I get out of the bathroom, the lights are out, and I can’t tell if the others are asleep.

  I lie in bed for a while, watching the ceiling fan spin in the dark. I think Bunce might be crying.

  I don’t blame her. I don’t have half the security she had, and I can’t bear the thought of losing it.

  17

  SIMON

  It’s freezing in this hotel room.

  Penny’s crying.

  Baz is clean. He opens the door to the bathroom, and steam and cedar and bergamot roll out. It takes me back to our room at Watford. To every morning that he stepped out of the shower, and I pretended not to care—no, I wasn’t pretending. I just didn’t know.

  I genuinely didn’t know how I felt.

  I thought I hated him. I thought about him all the time. I missed him so much in the summer. (I thought I was just lonely. I thought I was hungry. I thought I was bored.)

  Baz stepping out of the shower with his hair slicked back. Baz tying his school tie in the mirror—I could never take my eyes off him.

  We used to spend every night together and wake up together every morning.

  How long has it been since I fell asleep listening to him breathe?

  If I wait, tonight, could I sit up and watch him sleep? (I used to be that shameless.)

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this—Baz and I were supposed to kill each other.

  And then it wasn’t supposed to be like this—we were supposed to be together.

  I’m the one who fucked it up (I am fucking it up) by being too fucked up in the first place. By not wanting to talk to him. And never wanting him to spend the night. B
y not wanting him to look at me. (By not wanting him to see me, actually.)

  “How can you expect me to do this?” I said one night. When he— When we—

  “I thought you wanted this,” he said.

  And I did. But then I didn’t.

  “It’s just a lot,” I said. “You’re pushing me.”

  “I’m not pushing you. I won’t push you. Just tell me what you want.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not the same anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know—stop pushing me.”

  “Are you talking about sex?”

  “No!”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes, maybe.”

  “Okay. I don’t know what you want, Simon.”

  “It’s just too much.”

  That’s the last time I tried to explain how I felt, and the last time he asked me to. I still don’t have any answers. What do I want?

  Baz is the only person I’ve ever wanted. The only person I’ve ever loved, like this.

  But when I think about him touching me, I want to run. When I think about kissing him—

  You can’t hide from someone who’s kissing you, even if you close your eyes.

  I hear Baz getting up and moving around again in the dark. I wonder if he’s cold. Or thirsty. Then, in a rush of warmth and cedar and bergamot, he kisses my cheek. “Good night, Snow,” he says.

  And then I hear him climb back into bed.

  18

  AGATHA

  Ginger slips into our room, trying not to wake me.

  I came back to the room hours ago. I didn’t have the stomach for evening cryotherapy. Or the singalong out on the deck. (Which I could still hear from our room. I swear these guys only know two songs—“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and that Queen song about wanting to live forever. It’s like being in the car with my dad.)

  “I’m not asleep,” I say.

  “You should be!” Ginger whispers. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”

  “You’re the one up late, fooling around in somebody else’s mansion.”

  She giggles, but doesn’t argue.

  “Why is tomorrow a big day?” I ask. “Are you levelling up?”

  “No, that happens on the last night. It’s a ceremony, I think.”

  “What does it even mean, Ging? Do you get a pin and a key to the clubhouse?”

  “It means I’ll be one of them. Like, I’m one of the people who’s going to lead humanity forward. Toward the light.”

  “Ginger, please don’t follow anyone into the light.”

  “It’s not a joke, Agatha. It’s like they see me for who I am. My spirit.”

  “I just … what does that even mean? The rest of them invented the Internet and work in pharmaceuticals.”

  “Are you saying I’m not successful enough to level up?” She sounds hurt, and I don’t blame her. That is basically what I’m saying.

  “I just worry,” I say. “You should think about what it is they want from you.”

  “Should I think about what it is you want from me?”

  “Ginger, you know what I want from you. I want to go to Burning Lad with you. I want to hang out at your apartment and watch shitty TV.”

  “We’ll still be able to do that after I level up!”

  “Oh, I’m sure. Hanging out with me will definitely lead humanity forward.”

  Ginger is propping herself up on an elbow to look at me. “Are you jealous? Is that what this is? Agatha, you know I want to bring you with me.”

  “Hmmm,” I say flatly.

  “And I’m not the only one. You made quite an impression on Braden tonight.”

  “Despite my best efforts.”

  “I’m serious. He says you have a ‘singular energy.’”

  “Ginger, that just means ‘blond.’”

  “It’s more than that. He’s going to invite you to his office tomorrow.”

  “I never go to a man’s office on the first date.”

  “Agatha!” Ginger is sitting up now. “I’m being serious. This could be so good for you. Braden has a huge destiny—his aura is golden.”

  “Can you see it?”

  “You know that I feel them.…”

  “You said my aura was gold.”

  “Yours is more like ginger ale. It has bubbles in it.”

  “Hmmm.” I roll away from her.

  “You should give him a chance. Even if he is just hitting on you. He’s, like, iconic. He’s vacationed with the Obamas. He’s got an Hermès bag named after him. Imagine dating a legend.”

  That’s the trouble.

  I don’t have to.

  * * *

  Braden finds me at the cupcake table.

  I should have expected this, I suppose.

  I bailed on today’s NowNext programming. I tried to go to a seminar on genetically engineered grain, but I couldn’t tell if the speaker was for or against it, and anyway, I was exhausted. I can’t sleep in an unlocked room. Not since fourth year, when the Humdrum sent a harmadillo into our dormitory. (Harmadillos don’t even live in the UK; Penny got very fired up about it being an invasive species. “Well, its invading days are over,” Simon said, disposing of the corpse.)

  “Hi,” Braden says. He’s wearing khaki trousers and a navy jacket. It looks like a school uniform. He is cute, isn’t he. In a blandly symmetrical, perfectly groomed, very, very wealthy way.

  “Hello,” I say.

  “I told you there’d be cupcakes.”

  “I think I told you.…” I pick out a pink one.

  He grins at me. “Agatha—”

  “I did not tell you my name.…”

  “Ginger told me,” he says, looking caught out but not a bit ashamed. “I was hoping we’d get a chance to talk today.”

  I try to cut this off before it becomes a scene: “Look, Ginger told me that you think I have some sort of special energy. But I know that’s all bullshit. So maybe you could not try that line on me, okay? Just spare me.”

  Braden’s eyes are bright. “It isn’t a line. You are special.”

  I snort, but continue taking a bite of cupcake. “Literally everyone in your club is some sort of nerd-bro supreme. I just met two guys who have been to space. Actual space. Do you think I’ve somehow missed the fact that most of the men here are people like you and Josh? And that most of the women, few as we are, are like Ginger and me? I’m not fooled. I know what’s ‘special’ about us.”

  “Your friend Ginger is incredibly special,” he says. “I’m surprised you don’t see that.”

  “No, I do see it. That’s not—”

  “Do you know she can see auras?”

  “It’s more like she feels them,” I mutter.

  “She read my palm. It was extraordinary. She said my lifeline is completely unbroken.”

  “No, I know.” I don’t know how I ended up arguing that Ginger isn’t special. That wasn’t my point.

  “And she’s the most organically activated person I’ve ever met.”

  “I know!” It comes out too loud. “Ginger’s like nobody else. She’s my best friend.”

  Braden is smiling at me again. “You’re right,” he says, “this is sort of a boys’ club. But we’re trying to change that.”

  “I don’t actually care. I don’t even know why we’re arguing about this.”

  He steps closer to me. We’re about the same height. That bothers some boys, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

  “Because you don’t believe I see something rare in you,” he says. “You think that I’m interested in you because you’re beautiful. And you’re right—I am, you are. But beauty is cheap, Agatha. Cheap and bountiful. In my position, beauty is a faucet that never stops running.…”

  His eyes are locked on mine. I finish eating the cupcake, because it seems like the best way to show I’m not bothered, but my mouth has gone dry.