Page 11 of House of Hearts
I tuck that information away neatly into my brain. Joker Night is this week already, huh?
I’d rather die than have Calvin think I was champing at the bit for clout. I’d love nothing more than to storm off and tell him I don’t need this, but I’d be a damn liar.
Swallowing down my reservations, I gingerly accept the card and bury it in my pocket. “Whatever, fine, I don’t care.”
He leans forward to bridge the gap between us. He’s so close I can count every eyelash. “First, you need to look the part.”
I brace myself for a lot of things: for him to kiss me and for me to stiffen like a possum playing dead. I don’t brace myself for the brush of his thumb across my lower lip. He pushes in, applying enough pressure to get the blood rushing to my mouth. Anything to make my lips look swollen. Then he messes up his own hair before shaking a hand through my straight locks. “There. Now you look like you’ve spent time with me.”
I stumble back to the staircase railing, and I’ve suddenly grown wobbly-kneed. “G-got it.”
“And, Violet?” He winks. “Make sure to tell everyone how good of a kisser I am.”
4
“Absolute worst kiss I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Get out,” Amber gasps, the shrill pitch of her voice competing with the thud of her tray hitting the dining room table. She momentarily abandons her ridiculous school-crest-branded waffles to gawk at me, her bulging eyes darting between me and the narcissistic blond on the opposite end of the cafeteria. “Really? He kissedyouin the tower?And you hated it?”
If the hedge maze is the beating heart of this school, Sutherland Dining Hall is its bloated belly. Hammer-beam ribs arch above our heads, and walnut walls press inward, giving this room the impression of being swallowed whole. The darkness is only broken by a series of leaded-glass windows and an assortment of low-hanging chandeliers. Golden light spills from lit candles and gathers across a gallery of grim portraits.
“Uh-huh…” I trail off, unsure what to say. It’s not like I haven’t kissed anyone before, but the problem is I can count the number on one hand and still have most of my fingers up. “It was too much everything, really. Just gross. But at least I got a Joker card out of it.”
I’ll feel a little guilty if this gossip gets back to him, but if the onlyrumor spread about that man is that he’s subpar in the kissing department, then Calvin will live.
“Only you would find a kiss from Calvin Lockwell gross,” Amber insists. “I can’t believe he really kissed you. I mean,I can, it’s Calvin we’re talking about. Huge player, so I don’t recommend going out with him. It must have been good for Calvin to give you a card—at least on his end.”
“Believe me, I have no intention of dating him,” I say cheerily. And then, solely to be petty, I tack on, “In fact, I’d never dream of it.”
“Are you hearing this?” Amber squawks to Birdie as she drops down beside me. Birdie’s got a heaping serving of those branded waffles, smothered in syrup.
“Are you still pestering her about yesterday?” Birdie asks with a snort. Yesterday’s fashion has been pushed aside for the school’s uniform. There’s not much you can do about a starched white polo, a red-plaid skirt, and a matching burgundy blazer, but Birdie does her best. She’s littered the side of her skirt with safety pins and accessorized with a large Gothic cross dangling around her neck.
“You act like I’m interrogating her,” Amber huffs, which is a perfect description of what she did the moment I set foot outside the tower yesterday.
I probably would’ve caved a lot sooner if the panic hadn’t found me again when Calvin left. He’d somehow kept the brunt of it away, but the very second he stormed off, it returned with a vengeance.
“Sorry, I have a migraine,” I’d lied, dodging Amber’s persistent questions and letting Birdie usher me back into our dorm room. I’d immediately collapsed onto the mattress and covered my head with the duvet to block out the light.
She’d left me there to fake a nap, and somehow that fake nap turnedinto a real nap, and that real nap turned into me conking out entirely. I woke up only a couple of times in the night, mainly to the soft snores rumbling from my roommate and the steady thumping of students running along the halls.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind the questions,” I say into the rim of my coffee mug now.
“Birdie, I swear, you have the wildest luck when it comes to roommates and Lockwells,” Amber says, swirling a spoon in her own morning tea. “Here you are with a crush on Sadie, and now your new roommate kisses Calvin on day one…and then there was that whole business with your old roommate…”
“Em.” The name slips out of my mouth before I can think better of it. It’s enough to summon Birdie’s full attention, and I stiffen under her gaze. I could tell her everything right now. I could let them know that Emoree isn’t some unmentionable tragedy. That I know about that awful night and that I need as much help as I can get to make it right.
But then Oliver takes his seat at the table and I remember his vow of secrecy and Amber’s penchant for gossip and how I cannot—will not—ruin my chance for revenge this quickly.
“Erm,” I recover quickly, widening my eyes in an effort to play dumb. “What do you mean by that? I thought the Lockwells were twins. Do they have another brother or something?”
Birdie and Amber look between each other uneasily, and I do my best not to let on what I know or how much I care. There’s a reason therapists act like a blank slate, a psychological tactic in being no one that makes people want to spilleverything.
“Percy Lockwell, but he graduated already,” Oliver informs meidly, his gaze caught between the veggie omelet on his plate and the Advanced Latin textbook splayed out beside him.
Birdie shrugs off his answer and taps her cheek. “If you believe that…”
I quirk a brow, but I don’t have to bother asking what she meant by that. Amber feeds on my confusion and carries the rumor where my roommate left off. “The whole thing was weird as hell. He disappeared before spring semester. Poof.Gone.”
