Page 27 of Save Me

And there’s a whole term of meetings like that to come. On top of which, I’m not even allowed to train with the others on the lacrosse team.

This is definitely not how I planned my last year of school.

By the time I get to the car, all I want to do is throw myself onto the back seat, but before I can get in, Percy takes me by the arm.

“You don’t look exactly cheerful, sir.”

“Your perceptiveness astounds me, Percy.”

He glances uneasily from me to the car door. “You might want to rein your temper in slightly. Miss Beaufort is not in a good way.”

At once, I’ve forgotten the stupid events team altogether.

“What’s happened?”

Percy looks uncertain, as if he isn’t sure how much he can tell me. In the end he takes a step closer and speaks quietly: “She was having a conversation with someone just now. A young man. It looked more like an argument.”

I nod, and Percy opens the door so that I can get into the car.

It’s just as well it has tinted windows. Lydia looks awful. Her eyes and nose are bright red, and there are dark gray tearstains down her cheeks. She’s never cried as much in her life before as in the last few weeks, and it makes me livid to see her like that while knowing that there’s nothing I can do about it.

Lydia and I have always been inseparable. If you have a family like ours, there’s nothing for it but to stick together, no matter what. I can barely remember a day when I hadn’t seen my twin sister. I get a weird feeling in my chest if she’s in trouble, and it’s the same the other way around. Our mother says that’s not unusual for twins, and, when we were little, she made us promise that we’d treasure that link all our lives and not endanger it lightly.

“What’s up?” I say, once Percy’s started the engine.

She doesn’t reply.

“Lydia…”

“None of your business,” she snaps.

I raise an eyebrow and look at her until she turns away and stares out of the window. I guess that’s the end of our conversation.

I lean back and look out too. The trees flit past us so fast that they just make up a blurry mass of color, and I wish Percy would slow down. Partly because the thought of home makes me feel ill, but mostly because it would give me more time to break Lydia’s silence.

I’d like to help her, but I have no idea how. Over the last few weeks, I’ve done all I could to find out what happened between her and Mr. Sutton, but she always just shut me down. I shouldn’t be surprised. We may be inseparable, but we’ve never discussed our love lives. There are some things you just don’t want to know about your sister—and vice versa. But this time, it’s different. She’s devastated, and the only other time I’d seen her in this kind of state was almost exactly two years ago. And then, it nearly destroyed our entire family.

“Graham’s losing his shit,” Lydia suddenly whispers, just when I’d stopped expecting it.

I turn back to her and wait for her to go on. My anger at this jerk of a teacher bubbles up yet again, but I push it down. I don’t want Lydia to shut me out any more than she’s already doing.

“I’m so scared that Ruby will tell Lexington,” she croaks.

“She won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?” I can see the same doubt on her face that I felt about Ruby the first time I met her.

“Because I’m keeping an eye on her,” I reply after a while.

Lydia doesn’t look convinced. “You can’t run around after her the whole time, James.”

“I don’t have to. She’s on the events team.”

Lydia looks surprised now, and I give a wry smile.

It’s good to see the way the tension seems to drop from her shoulders—not entirely, but a bit, at least. After a while, she says quietly: “I’d totally forgotten about the events team. Exactly how shit is it?”

I just growl.

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