Page 73 of Maid of Dishonor

Unsurprisingly, it takes a firm thirty seconds for Winifred to open the door after I’ve knocked. Thirty seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but count it out—it’s a decent amount of time to stand waiting for someone to open the door. I like to think it’s because she walks so slowly, but I can’t rule out the possibility that she just doesn’t like me and wants to make me wait.

It could go either way.

When Winifred finally opens the door, her narrow-eyed scrutiny makes me feel like I’m being examined under a microscope, and I’m suddenly certain that she knows every bad thing I’ve ever done. Faking sick in the second grade so I didn’t have to take the spelling test? She knows. Skipping school lunch for a full week and using my lunch money to buy a remote control race car, then lying to my mom about it? Wini knows, and she doesn’t approve. She is very, very disappointed in me.

“Hi,” I say uncertainly. I’m rethinking this.

But Winifred just waves me inside, and the time to turn back is gone.

I shuffle in after her, following in her very slow footsteps until we reach the kitchen, where she grabs a bag of peanut butter cups. She offers me one, but I wave it away. “Allergy,” I explain.

She just grunts before heading to the living room. She gestures wordlessly to a chair, and you better believe I sit down immediately, nearly tripping over my own feet in the process. Wini just has this way of looking at me that makes me want to hide.

She eyes me for a second before speaking. “What are you doing here, boy? Samantha is downstairs.”

I swallow. “I know,” I say, sounding gloomy even to my own ears. “She doesn’t want—” I break off, then start again, because I’m not sure Wini needs to be privy to everything. I don’t want to rehash it, anyway. I want to harden myself against everything until all these feelings, these blastedfeelings, go away. “She’s going to be pretty busy this week. So she can’t hang out.”

“Hmm,” Wini says, scrutinizing me, her lips pursed, eyes narrowed. She unwraps a piece of candy and pops it in her mouth, her eyes on me the entire time she chews. It’s a power play, making me wait, and she’s winning.

“So you thought you’d hang around up here, did you?” she says when she’s finally done.

“I didn’t feel like going home.” The words are true, but they aren’t thecompletetruth. Sam isn’t at my apartment. She’s not in this room either, but sheisjust downstairs, and somehow I feel better knowing that, even if the knowledge is tearing me apart for reasons I don’t really understand.

As soon as I realize this, though—that I’m here with Wini because I feel better knowing Sam is one floor away—I shake my head. I’m being pathetic. “You know, never mind,” I say, glancing at Wini before looking resolutely at my scraped hand, which is very interesting and focus-worthy. I stand up. “I’ll get out of your hair—”

“Sit,” Wini barks.

I blink at her. “What?”

“Sit,” she says.

I sigh; I could push back, but I don’t have the energy. So I guess I’m sticking around after all. I ignore the part of me that’s relieved.

“What happened?” Wini says, pointing to my right hand.

“I punched your brick wall,” I say dully. Then I wince, realizing Wini probably won’t approve of that. “Sorry,” I add. A little late, but whatever. I got there.

“You messed up, boy,” she says.

I roll my eyes, my irritation rising. “Carter,” I say. “My name is Carter. Not ‘boy.’”

Maybe I’m mistaken, but for just a second, I think I see a gleam of approval in Wini’s gaze. She eyes me curiously.

“It’s about time you said something,” she finally says, looking at me with something remarkably like pride. “I was beginning to think you didn’t have it in you.”

I’m starting to wish I’d ignored her and left a few minutes ago. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I say. My voice is weary, my eyes feeling heavy. I want to shut down; do a factory reset. Maybe when I wake up this will all have been a bad dream.

“It means,” she says, leaning forward, “that you spend your days running scared, boy.” She pauses. “Carter,” she corrects herself.

A sense of satisfaction surges through me at hearing her call me by my name, but I still find myself saying, “Yeah, well, you’re sort of scary.”

“Not scared of me,” she says. “Scared of Samantha. You spend your days terrified of that girl downstairs.”

“She says she has feelings for me,” I say. I don’t know where the words come from, but strangely, I don’t regret them.

“Of course she does,” Wini barks. “You’re built like a Greek god. If I were ten years younger…”

I blink, surprised. “Ten years younger?” Frowning, I say slowly, “You’d still be in your seventies—”

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