Page 35 of And They Were Roommates

“Am I supposed to know what that is?”

Behind his glasses, Jasper’s eyes flick around the busy library. “Not in public. You’d be surprised how many eyes and ears lurk. Visit STRIP after your tutoring next Thursday. That’s all you need to know.”

Chapter 14THE GIVER

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

“MAINTAIN HORSE HIERARCHY,” Blaze commands, standing upon a stack of books. He shows off the ruby varsity ring on his thumb, then gesticulates something like a fluttering butterfly. “FOR THE RING OF ANCESTRAL DARKNESS COMMANDS YOU.”

Everyone in STRIP’s back room goes still and stares.

I do the same by the moving bookcase door. I’ve just entered, and I’m already confused. But there are as many red-and-black-clothed bodies as there were the first time I came here, so I can at least piece together that a weekly one-on-one must have also been taking place then.

I weave through the crowd made up of—what I’ve learned over the last week—all levels of Valentine standing. Ishaan and Frankie, Ranks Twelve and Six, who raise their hands quickest in calculus and come from enough money to sport bank-breaking Valentine-branded backpacks: high standing. Matt, Rank Forty-Three, who interrupts with roughly one joke per class period: at Twenty-Eighth Avenue Middle School, high standing, but here, low. And lots of in between.

Behind Blaze’s chants of darkness, Xavier and Robby sit on the floor, the upturned horse-riding helmet full of sparkly trading cards on display. They’re too swarmed by visitors to notice me.

One non-tutor is missing.

I detour toward the brocade curtain splitting the room in two and look inside, spotting Jasper’s mop of blond hair in a corner. Of course everyone else works during a rush except him. He sits cross-legged on his blazer to fight off the dusty floor, using another stack of books as a table to scribble in his JFG journal. What are his initials, anyway? Jasper Fucking Grimes?

I struggle not to roll my eyes. “Jasper.”

A nearby antique lamp casts shadows across his startled demeanor, which flips to a lopsided dimple. “Tutor Jasper.”

His fingers. They’re red. Covered in blood.

I run at him, kicking aside some books on the floor, and swipe up his hand. Not blood. Red ink from his leaky fountain pen.

Jasper’s grin widens. “Worried about me?”

My cheeks burn, and only then do I realize we’re still touching. I chuck his hand onto his lap. “No. Buy a new pen.”

“I will not. This is my cherished six-hundred-dollar fountain pen. Limited edition. Only ninety exist in the world. I’m eighty-nine.” Jasper points at the black resin barrel where89is engraved. “Any other pen would render my life a feckless charade.”

“It’s leaking.”

“All fountain penssmear.”

I inspect the barren room more. A handwrittenNO LIQUIDSsign is on the wall, a bucket tucked in a corner is sparsely filled with cleaning supplies, and a single shelf is over Jasper’s head, where there’s a row of the same red-and-white-striped paperback book spines.Love Is a Broken Party Clownby Jasper Grimes. Compared with the other side’s musty, concrete scent, there’s something familiarly floral in the air, like Jasper is here all the time.

Let me guess. “This side of the room is your office or something?”

“From your tone, I take it you’re not impressed.”

“I thought the place you’d write would be”—I shrug—“a garden of roses.”

“Are you forgetting EROS Two?” Jasper is still writing, his number-one enamel pin gleaming on his collar. Is this the type of brain I’m up against for Rank One? One that can simultaneously handle full conversations and craft prizewinning prose? “I could accidentally think my writing is romantic enough due to the romantic environment.”

As if I expected to understand a poet’s mind.

Jasper points his broken pen at another makeshift book table. “Are you staying?” he asks, his tone undeniably eager and hopeful that I am. It’s the same way he sounded when he approached me the first time all those years ago, asking to work on our dramatic mode assignment together, and it makes my chest lurch in a way I can’t place. “You can use a tome table as a seat.”

“Tome table?” I ask.

“A tome is a type of book. A large, heavy, scholarly one.”

I hold myself back from throwing him into Au Sable Forks Lake. “I know what atomeis. A tome table?”

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