Kingmakers, Year One

9. Anna

9

ANNA

I ’m settling into Kingmakers.

The most challenging part was finding somewhere I could practice dancing without unwanted interruptions. I tried several different places, including a disused classroom and the old wine cellar next to the dining hall.

In the end, I settled on the abandoned cathedral on the far west side of campus. It’s farther to walk than the other options, but no one comes in to disturb me.

Maybe at the time Kingmakers was built, our ancestral families still held some sort of religious sentiment. But it’s been so long since the island had a chaplain that the cathedral has fallen into disrepair. Weeds grow up through cracks in the floor, and an entire pomegranate tree has sprouted in the middle of the chancel.

Some of the stained-glass windows have been broken by wind or birds, but most are still intact. Colored light speckles the floor. I hear the cooing of doves nesting up in the clerestory.

Dancing is the closest I get to a spiritual experience, so it seems fitting to practice here, in the cool, airy silence. It’s far enough away from everything else that I can play my music night or day without disturbing anyone.

The other minor annoyance is that I don’t particularly like my roommate. There are only two other female Heirs in my year—Zoe Romero and Chay Wagner.

Zoe is Galician. She’s tall, dark-haired, serious, and studious. I think we could have gotten along very nicely by sitting silently on opposite sides of our room doing our homework.

Unfortunately, Zoe got the one private room on our floor, which may be the size of a cupboard, but at least belongs to her alone.

I have to share my nice big room with Chay Wagner, the Heir of the Berlin-based Night Wolves.

Chay is loud, confident, and unbearably cheerful. Couple that with a healthy dose of German bluntness, and I have to hear her opinion on virtually everything I do throughout the day.

Chay’s petite, with strawberry-blonde hair and full sleeves of tattoos on both arms. She tells me the tattoos were done by the best artists in Berlin as they passed through her father’s shops. Each is in a different style, everything from pop-art to ultra-realistic black and gray portraiture.

The Night Wolves are a fascinating mafia group, a mixture of rock n’ roll enthusiasts and bikers, from the era when both those things were illegal in Moscow. What began with underground concerts has grown into a string of tattoo shops and rock clubs across Europe, along with custom motorcycle shops and even their own racing team.

As heir to the Berlin chapter of the Night Wolves, Chay is something of a minor celebrity on campus, which is another reason our dorm room is never quiet. She says a German station tried to sign her up for a reality TV series, but her father flatly forbade it.

“I’m going to make my own clothing line after I graduate,” she tells me. “Leather jackets, vest, biker gear, you know . . . I think Papa’s wrong to avoid attention. Ninety-percent of our revenue is mainstream anyway. I honestly think Papa only keeps up with the chop shops and the protection money ‘cause he can’t stand the idea of being fully law-abiding.”

It’s clear that Chay views Kingmakers as something to get through to appease her father. She has almost no interest in our classes, and barely bats an eye at her failing grades.

“Why do you study so hard?” she demands, as I’m poring over an ancient leather-bound library book on contract law.

I shrug. “I like reading. I like learning things.”

“You’re competitive, too,” Chay says slyly.

“I don’t think there’s any point in doing something, unless you’re going to do it well.”

“It’s not just that—you want to be top of the class. I know you do.”

I pause in my reading, wondering if she’s right. Am I more like Leo than I realized?

“Maybe I’m just trying to prove that I’m good enough to do this job.”

Chay laughs. “With all the idiots who manage to be bosses, I think you’ll be fine.”

The classes are challenging, but I really do like studying. It’s a hundred times more interesting than the shit I had to learn in high school. Who gives a fuck about the order of the presidents, or logarithms, or the history of the fur trade? Everything I learn now I’ll actually use someday when I take over my father’s empire.

Leo and Ares are in most of my classes, which is nice. I hate the process of making new friends. I hate the part where you have to be polite and talk stupid nonsense to get to know each other. I already know everything about Leo, and Ares is so easygoing that he slipped right into our little group like he was always meant to be there.

On Wednesdays Leo and I have a class called Environmental Adaptation. When I saw it on my schedule, I forgot for a minute what sort of school I was attending, and wondered if it had something to do with “going green.”

Of course it has nothing to do with environmentalism. Instead, it’s about acclimatizing to unexpected environments. In our first semester, this means learning to scuba dive.

Our instructor is a man named Archie Bruce, a Navy SEAL turned mercenary-for-hire. He’s got a shaved head, pale blue eyes, and a giant beak of a nose that adds to his air of authority.

He teaches us in the underground pool beneath the Armory.

The pool began as a natural sinkhole in the limestone, where seawater seeps. It’s been dug out and enlarged, but the walls of the pool are still rough, pale stone, and the water is salty. It’s much deeper than a normal Olympic swimming pool—even with the pot lights set into its walls, you still can’t see down to the bottom.

The underground cavern is vast and echoing. Professor Bruce barks at us to shut the fuck up, because he won’t be repeating a single word of the lesson.

I watch closely as he shows us each piece of equipment we’ll need, and how to operate it.

I’m feeling anxious, because even though Leo and I have been swimming at Carlyle Lake since we were kids, I’ve never been entirely comfortable in the water.

The idea of breathing on the bottom of the pool, with the full weight of thousands gallons of water on top of me, not to mention several million tons of mountain and castle overhead, is triggering a whole new level of claustrophobia.

“You okay?” Leo’s golden-brown eyes search mine.

“Of course.” I lie. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason,” he says with an easy shrug. But he grabs my hand and gives it a quick squeeze all the same.

Even after he lets go, the warmth of his hand seems to travel up my arm, spreading through my chest and slowing my heartbeat down just a little.

A dark-haired girl stands on the opposite side of the pool. We’re taking this class with a bunch of Spies, and I assume she’s one of them. Her black hair is almost blue in the reflected light of the pool. When I glance over at her, her eyes are fixed serenely on the professor. But I know she was watching us a minute earlier.

“Suit up!” Professor Bruce shouts. “I want you all in that pool in two minutes.”

Leo and I don our equipment, which is cold and damp from the previous class. I’m wearing a thin, one-piece bathing suit, and I can feel my nipples poking through the material as I shiver.

Leo glances at my chest. I expect him to make a joke about it, but he looks away abruptly, tugging a little too hard on the strap of his face mask so the elastic snaps.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

“Problem?” Professor Bruce says at once.

“I broke the band on my face mask.”

“Figure it out,” the professor says coldly. “The point of this class is to adapt and overcome.”

“Swap with me,” I murmur to Leo. “Your head’s bigger than mine. I can just tie it in a knot.”

“I have a big head?” Leo laughs, trading masks with me.

“You’ve got the biggest head I’ve ever encountered, in all ways,” I tell him sweetly.

Leo chuckles and slips his mask into place. It’s full-face, and looks disturbingly like a gas mask, like we’re in the middle of a war or a plague. I knot the back of mine and force it down over my head. It’s too tight, but I can make it work.

Once we’ve got our flippers and tanks on, we drop down into the water.

Immediately, my heart begins to race. I haven’t even put my face under yet. Sensing my stress, Leo sticks right beside me. Even though he’s never done this before either, he already looks comfortable bobbing up and down in the water, as if his gear weighs nothing at all.

Professor Bruce gets into the pool with us. With his flippered feet and the powerful kicks of his legs keeping him buoyant, he looks like a burly frog.

He takes his respirator out so he can shout at us. “While we’re on the surface, we’ll practice hand signals, clearing our mask, and recovering our respirator. After that we’ll descend.”

He teaches us the signals for Ok, Stop, Level Off, Ascend, Descend, and Follow Me. Then he goes over the mask and regulator techniques.

It all seems to fly by much too quickly, and I wish he’d run through it again. With each new instruction, the one before seems to dissolve in my brain. It doesn’t help that I’m continually thinking of the hundred feet of empty water directly below.

“Do you understand it all?” Leo whispers to me.

“I . . . I think so.”

“Just copy me,” he says in his warm, reassuring tone. “I know what to do.”

A lot of people think that Leo is overconfident. But when he says he can do something, he’s almost always right. I’m keeping my heart rate under control because I trust him. I feel safe with him here beside me.

Too soon, it’s time to descend. I fit my regulator in place and follow Leo as Professor Bruce takes us down to the bottom of the pool in measured stages. He uses our newly-learned hand signals to tell us when to pause, when to pop our ears, and when to drop further down.

Every few feet we descend adds an immense amount of pressure from the weight of the water overhead. I try not to think how far it is to the surface. I try not to consider how dependent I am on the little tank of air strapped to my back.

Leo stays right beside me. The release of bubbles out of the side of his mask seems slow and steady. I try to match it, so I don’t hyperventilate and use my oxygen too quickly.

We sink the final distance to the bottom of the pool and sit cross-legged in a big circle, with Professor Bruce at the center. The dark-haired girl and her redheaded friend are still directly across from Leo and me. It’s hard to tell if they’re smiling or not beneath their masks. Hard to tell if they’re staring at us as much as it seems.

I try to feel the sense of calm weightlessness that’s supposed to be pleasurable in this activity. Shouldn’t diving be something like dancing?

It doesn’t feel like that to me. It feels like being encased in wet cement while breathing through a straw.

I’m relieved when Professor Bruce takes us back up to the surface.

That relief doesn’t last long—he lifts his mask to say, “This time we’re going to practice buddy breathing. If your regulator is broken or you’ve run out of air, you can make use of your partner’s. This is the signal that means, ‘I have no air.’ ” He demonstrates the slashing movement of the hand across the throat. “We’ll descend. Then I’ll come around and take half the tanks.”

My stomach lurches. I don’t in any way feel ready to be down there without any air.

But there’s nothing I can do except follow him back down under the water.

At least I’ve got Leo as my buddy. He isn’t joking around like usual, probably because he knows I’m wound tighter than a guitar string. He sits right next to me on the rough and rocky bottom of the pool, waiting patiently for Professor Bruce to approach.

Leo is already undoing the straps of his tank, planning to offer it to the professor.

Our teacher senses weakness. He narrows his pale blue eyes behind his mask and shakes his head, pointing to me instead. With trembling hands, I unclasp my tank and hand it over.

The moment the respirator is out of my mouth, I start to panic. I look up at the distant, shining surface of the pool, impossibly far overhead. I couldn’t swim all the way up there with the single breath captured in my lungs.

Leo removes his respirator and fits it in my mouth, resting his hands on my shoulders and looking into my eyes through our masks. He waits patiently while I take several breaths, watching my face.

I don’t need him to speak to know what he wants to say to me—with his dark eyes looking into mine, I can hear his voice in my head:

Relax, Anna. I’m right here. You’ve got this. I’m not gonna let you drown on the bottom of this pool. For one thing, your dad would kill me . . .

It almost makes me smile.

Only Leo’s perfect calm allows me to maintain mine. If he would have taken the air back too soon, or even stared at me impatiently, I don’t think I could have handled it.

I know what a good swimmer he is. I know how long he can hold his breath.

I take my time getting the oxygen I need, and then I pass the respirator back to Leo. He takes two quick breaths and gives it to me again, watching me closely through his mask. I can see his concern. I know he’d never leave me without air.

Professor Bruce makes us sit down there for over twenty minutes, sharing respirators.

Two of the sets of students can’t handle it—one of the Spies starts squabbling and nearly pulls the hose right out of the tank before the professor intervenes. On the opposite side of the circle, an Albanian Heir named Valon Hoxha loses his nerve completely and goes kicking off the bottom without any tank, trying to swim for the surface.

He only makes it halfway before he takes an involuntary gulp of water and starts to drown.

Lucky for him, the professor is right behind him. He puts the thrashing Hoxha into a headlock and forces the respirator into his mouth. Still thrashing and fighting, Hoxha is dragged up to the surface and tossed out of the pool by the irritated professor.

Professor Bruce finally returns alone, signaling for us to follow him up.

I still don’t have an oxygen tank.

Leo grabs my hand and starts swimming slowly upward. He pauses frequently so we can control our rate of ascent, passing the respirator back and forth.

Even with all his help, I’m wildly relieved when my head breaks the surface again and I can take full, unobstructed gulps of air.

Leo pushes his mask up on his head, grinning at me. “You did it!”

“Only because of you,” I say honestly.

He shrugs. “I’m only passing History because of you. But don’t tell Ares that, ‘cause he’s under the impression that I’ve been studying on my own.”

I snort. “Who told him that?”

Leo grins. “Somebody who didn’t want to accept another invitation to the library.”

I strip off the wet, chilly scuba equipment.

All around me, my fellow students are doing the same.

I notice that Hedeon Gray wore a t-shirt down into the water, even though he’s in good shape and has nothing to hide.

As he pulls off his tank, his shirt rides up and I get a look at his bare back.

He’s covered in scars, layer upon layer of them. Thick, twisting, overlapping bands running in all directions.

I don’t mean to stare, but I’m frozen in place, never having seen anything so brutal.

Hedeon jerks his shirt back down, glowering at me.

I whip around quickly, trying to pretend like I didn’t see, though we both know I did.

“What?” Leo says.

“Nothing.” I shake my head.

My stomach is churning. Those aren’t the scars of an accident or injury.

Someone did that to him.

Even though Leo’s in most of my classes, our schedules don’t entirely align.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have International Banking while Leo and Ares take Torture Techniques. Most of the rest of the students in my banking class are Accountants.

I don’t mind—I like the Accountants. They’re focused and methodical. Not a bunch of aggressive meatheads like the Enforcers, or sneaky and suspicious like the Spies.

The class is competitive, though. Some of the most brilliant kids in our year are Accountants. It’s been a struggle to even stay in the top twenty percent.

If I want the head spot I’ll have to beat out Dean Yenin. He’s in this class too, though thankfully not with his henchman Bram. He sits two rows behind me, where I can feel his eyes boring into my back, especially if I’ve just answered a question correctly.

I’ve tried to avoid speaking to him since the changing room incident. He seems perfectly content to avoid me, too, though I’ve caught him glaring at me more than once.

I don’t know if he hates me because I’m best friends with Leo, or if he knows that my father helped Sebastian Gallo secure his hold on the Chicago territory contested by the Bratva.

My dad wasn’t directly involved in the killing of Dean’s grandfather or the mutilation of his father, but he did murder some of the Yenins’ men, and there’s plenty of bad blood to go around.

I wish we could put the whole thing behind us. It’s a twenty-year old feud, and no one has clean hands.

Leo enjoys conflict and competition. I just want to be left alone to get my work done in peace.

I’m not sure what Dean wants. I haven’t seen him picking fights and causing trouble as much as his roommate, but he certainly surrounds himself with bullies and assholes. And I don’t think he’s smiled once since we got here.

Not that I’d usually judge someone for that. I’m not too free with smiles, either.

Today we’re learning about offshore accounts.

Professor Graves is up at the blackboard going on about shell corporations. He’s the same professor who was hollering at Miles on the first day of classes, (rightfully so), but luckily he hasn’t seemed to remember that I was present for the theft of his very last pen. Or at least, he hasn’t been any ruder to me than to anyone else in our class.

I’m taking notes by hand, filling my fourth notebook of the semester. I write down most of what the professor says, but I also like to draw. Right now I’m making a diagram of tax havens, shaped like Russian nesting dolls. Even though it’s not really necessary, I’m decorating each of the dolls with a little headscarf and a floral-patterned apron.

“Non-profit entities can be useful as an extra layer of insulation,” the professor says. “A private foundation can then own a corporation, adding another diversion to your tax-evasion schematic.”

We’re up on the third floor of the Keep, which means the sky outside the window is full of large, heavy clouds steering through the wind like barges on water. No sunshine today—just a slate gray sky and those clouds, dark on their underbellies with unshed rain. The air is fresh with geosmin.

I draw rain clouds over my nesting dolls.

“For this assignment, I’ll be splitting you into pairs,” the professor says.

I look up sharply. I wasn’t paying attention to the details of the assignment, and he hasn’t written them on the blackboard.

“Wilson and Paulie,” the professor says, looking around the room. “Kyrie and Nelson. Anna and Dean.”

My stomach clenches up. I throw an involuntary glance in Dean’s direction.

He looks just as annoyed as I am. But he doesn’t hesitate in scooping up his books and coming to join me at my table.

“Which part of the assignment do you want to do?” he demands, as soon as he sits down.

“Well . . . I . . .”

I haven’t thought it over, because I wasn’t listening.

Dean looks at my open notebook, at the nesting dolls and the rainclouds. He scowls.

“Do you even know what we’re doing?”

“Yes,” I lie. “Don’t forget, I’ve got the best grade in this class.”

Only as of last week, because I beat Dean on our most recent exam by a measly two points.

I can almost hear Dean’s teeth grinding together behind his full bottom lip.

The softness of Dean’s features does not at all match his personality. His white-blond hair, porcelain skin, long lashes, and pouting mouth are completely at odds with his constant sneer and a body carved out of marble.

I bet he hates being pretty.

I can sort of identify with that—I don’t look on the outside how I feel on the inside.

I look like I should be sweet and delicate. But I could slit a throat without flinching.

For that reason, I would never underestimate Dean.

He spits, “You won’t beat me at anything by end of term.”

I shrug. “I guess we’ll see. We’ll both be getting the same grade on this project, so you might as well tell me how you want to divvy it up.”

Dean lets out a slow exhalation of annoyance, then explains the assignment to me over again, each of us marking down the parts we intend to handle.

“It’s an analysis of Caribbean versus Swiss banks,” he says. “We’ll have to present together, so we can’t do all the work separately.”

“That’s fine.” Not fine, but I can make it work. “We can get the books from the library after class.”

It’s strange sitting side by side with Dean as the professor finishes the lecture. I haven’t been this close to him since we collided in the changing room.

He smells clean like he did then, like soap and fresh shampoo, even though he hadn’t showered yet. It brings back our first meeting vividly.

I keep my eyes rigidly fixed on the blackboard, hoping he doesn’t notice the color in my cheeks. I don’t know why I still feel embarrassed about that—it’s not like me to hold onto some silly, insignificant mistake.

When the professor dismisses us, Dean snatches up his books again and starts walking in the direction of the library without checking to see if I’m following him.

I sling my bag over my shoulder, taking long strides to catch up with him.

Dean hears my boots hitting the flagstone floor, and glances down at my feet.

“Did you draw all that too?”

I doodled all over my docs with white pen. Moons, stars, dragons, vines, rivers, flowers, and birds.

“Yup.”

“Drawing and dancing,” Dean says. “Maybe you should have gone to art school.”

“I’m right where I want to be,” I tell him coldly. “I’m an Heir. Isn’t your father a bookkeeper?”

If looks could kill, I’d shrivel and die on the spot from the glare Dean throws at me.

“It doesn’t matter what my father is,” he spits back at me. “I’ll be Pakhan because I’ll earn it myself. ”

Ha. Nice to know I can get under Dean’s skin when I want to.

It’s a long walk to the library, located in the tallest tower on the northwest corner of campus. The bookshelves form a vast upward spiral, like in the lighthouse of Alexandria. The books are mostly organized by topic, but when you can’t find something, you can always ask Ms. Robin.

The librarian is shy and quiet, but quite beautiful behind her thick glasses. She’s got auburn hair and hazel eyes, and she’s probably in her forties, though she dresses like an old cat lady.

I’m curious how she came to work at Kingmakers. Virtually all the professors were mafiosos themselves, but she obviously wasn’t—she’s so timid that she almost jumps out of her skin if you close a book too hard. She must be somebody’s daughter or niece.

She probably likes working here, because Kingmakers is so isolated, and the library is quiet and peaceful. Besides, it’s a dream for anyone who likes reading, which Ms. Robin clearly does. Every time I come here she has her nose buried in a book, or a bunch of papers and charts spread out at her desk.

I don’t have to ask her where the banking section is, since I’ve come looking for materials for this class plenty of times before. Dean and I scour the shelves, finding a half-dozen books that should help us.

Dean hauls them down—a mix of modern publications and a few old tomes thicker than a phone book.

He gets distracted when he spots an old copy of Blood Meridian already laying butterflied on our reading table.

He picks up the book, turning through the first few pages, his eyes betraying his interest as they flick back and forth.

“Have you read that one before?”

Dean startles, like he forgot I was standing there. He drops the novel back down on the table like I caught him looking at porn.

“Yeah,” he admits. “I’ve read it.”

Interesting.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised—after all, Dean is one of the top students in our year. He obviously isn’t stupid. I just didn’t picture him as someone who read novels for fun.

“Was it for school?”

He frowns at me. “No. It wasn’t for school.”

“Just curious,” I say. “Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors.”

His lips tighten, and for a moment I think he’s going to say something rude. Or, at the very least, tell me we should focus on our project. Instead, he says, “I liked No Country for Old Men better.”

“Have you seen the movie? It’s one of the best adaptations I’ve seen—maybe even better than the book.”

“The movie’s never better than the book,” Dean scoffs.

“It can be,” I counter, listing off the best examples on my fingers. “ Fight Club , Gone Girl , The Silence of the Lambs , Jaws . . .”

Dean stares at me. It’s odd looking at his face this close. His eyes are the exact same color as Aunt Yelena’s. It’s a shade of blue I’ve never seen on anyone else, like the irises that grow in the walled garden at my parents’ house.

“Maybe you’re right,” Dean says unexpectedly.

My mouth falls open. Of course I thought I was right all along. But I didn’t expect him to admit it.

We sit down next to each other at the ancient, heavily-scarred library table. It might be strange for some of the students to live in a place where every stone, every sconce, every piece of furniture is centuries older than they are. For me, it just reminds me of home.

I like objects with history. I like to think who sat at this table before me, and who might sit here in ten or twenty or a hundred years. This library is full of the discoveries of thousands of people. That’s the strength of humans. We can collaborate. We can share. A thousand of us together are infinitely stronger than any one person can be.

Assuming we can get along.

Dean opens up his notebook and starts telling me what we’re going to do for the assignment.

“Hey,” I interrupt. “You’re not in charge.”

His lip curls. “And you think you are?”

“It’s a partnership,” I say. “Ever heard of it?”

“No,” Dean says seriously. “I’ve always found that there has to be a leader. One person at the top. It’s usually best if that person is me.”

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, all the Heirs feel that way.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “There’s wanting to be the man. And then there’s actually being the fuckin’ man.”

“I prefer to be the fuckin’ woman.”

Dean laughs. It’s not a mocking laugh. Actually, it’s pretty genuine. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe I would, too. If I looked like you.”

He’s already turned back to the stack of books in front of him, but I’m still examining that particular comment in my brain.

Was that a compliment?

Impossible to say, because Dean goes right back to being cold, stiff, and business-like as we work our way through the reading materials for the next hour, muddling through comparisons of banking systems, taking plenty of notes by hand.

Contrary to what he said, Dean actually does cooperate pretty well once we’re in the swing of it. He’s clever, detail-oriented, and organized. We only argue once over whether we should weigh the historical benefits of each banking system or focus on their current strengths and weaknesses.

By dinner time, the frosty tension between us has melted enough that Dean says, “Can I ask you something?”

I’m wary as I give him a slight nod. “Go ahead.”

“Why do you paint your face like that?”

It’s a question I hate, and it immediately makes me lose whatever charitable feelings I was developing over our successful cooperation.

I scowl at him. “Because I like it.”

“What does it mean, though?”

He’s looking at me, genuinely curious. Not trying to give me shit or preparing to make some dumb fucking joke about it.

“You want the real answer?”

“Yes,” Dean says. “Or I wouldn’t ask.”

“Clothes, hair, makeup . . . it’s all part of your personal brand. What represents you. How you want other people to perceive you.”

“So you want to be perceived as . . . dark and scary?” Dean says.

“No. It’s more about how I don’t want to be perceived. I don’t want people to see me as someone who seeks approval or belonging. I don’t want to be a part of trends or styles. And I don’t want to look like I’m trying to attract anyone.”

“You don’t want to attract anyone?” Dean says, disbelieving.

“No. I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no one I want to attract. I don’t like dating.”

Dean gives me an inscrutable look. I expect him to ask if Leo and I are dating. Or maybe to ask if I like hooking up. That’s usually the next line of questioning—“ If you don’t want to date, do you at least want to fuck?”

Instead, he says, “I know what you do like.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You like dancing.”

“No big mystery—you saw me practicing.”

“I know you practice every day. In the cathedral.”

I can feel my cheeks getting hot. I wish they didn’t do that—I can keep the rest of my face still and expressionless when I want to. But I can never stop that damn pink flush spreading across my face.

“How do you know that?” I say stiffly.

“You’re not the only one who can’t sleep. I wander all over this place.”

It makes me feel strange knowing that Dean is walking around the grounds in the middle of the night just like I am, when most everyone else is asleep.

To change the subject I say, “My mother’s a dancer.”

“She taught you?”

“Yes.”

“You must be close,” Dean says.

Now I notice something in his face that I don’t think he would want me to see. Pain. And envy.

“She loves me,” I say. “But we’re not close. Not as close as we should be. I’m not like her. I couldn’t be, even if I wanted.”

I don’t know why I told him that. Habits of honesty, I guess. I’m too used to spending time with Leo, where I say exactly what I think and feel all the time, never holding back. Well, almost everything.

“Why would you want to be like your parents?” Dean says, his face darkening. “I hate when I?—”

He breaks off abruptly, biting back the rest of his words.

I wish he would finish. I very much want to know what the end of that sentence would have been.

Instead, he shoves back from the table, closing his notebook and stuffing it back in his bag.

“I’m hungry,” he says. “That’s enough for today.”

Without waiting for me to respond, he swings his bag over his shoulder and stalks out of the library.

I stay exactly where I am, thinking over the dozen different things he might have been about to say.

I don’t think Dean stopped talking because he didn’t want me to hear it. I think he stopped because he surprised himself with what almost came out of his mouth.

I can’t be sure—but it seems most likely that he was about to say, I hate when I’m like my father.