Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [96]
She stroked its soft fur with her bandaged hands. “So, I’m still here, thanks to you.” She glanced up at Patrick and then winced. “I don’t feel so good though. Don’t be offended if I conk out.”
Patrick nodded. “I was in jail,” he told her, trying to explain why he hadn’t arrived sooner. “Not because of you. For something else.”
Tragedy closed her eyes. “That’s okay.”
Out in the hall, Adam took a step toward Shipley and then stopped. “Look,” he murmured. “I have two exams tomorrow and two on Wednesday, and then I’m done.” His gaze met hers. “I’m transferring.”
“What?” Shipley sucked in her breath. In her mind she’d already played out two separate scenarios. In the first, Tom challenged Adam to a bloody duel, with swords, and Tom won. In the second, she poisoned Tom with arsenic and then she and Adam ran off to Hawaii together. “Transferring where?”
“East Anglia. It’s in England. Dexter has a sort of brother-sister exchange with them, so I was able to transfer my scholarship. I wasn’t going to go, but now I think it’s for the best. My parents are pretty mad at me.”
“It’s for the best,” Shipley repeated. She turned around to glance at Adam’s parents, hugging each other by the coffeemaker. She’d wanted to meet them and make friends, but they didn’t want to know her. Someone had to take the blame for what had happened and she was that someone. She was bad news.
Adam touched her arm and she turned around. Before he could say anything, Shipley grabbed his head and pressed her lips against his. He’d meant to give her a quick, sweet good-bye embrace, but something about rescuing her brother from jail and visiting a half-dead girl in the hospital had given Shipley a taste for the dramatic. It wasn’t the fridge-slamming kiss from Professor Rosen’s kitchen, but it was close.
“Adam?” Ellen interrupted from behind them. “We’re going to head home in a little bit. Just as soon as Trag’s friend comes out. We’re going to make him some lunch and pick up some things for your sister. You coming?”
Adam grinned into Shipley’s kissing mouth. He wasn’t going to be the one to stop this. He could kiss her forever. Finally Shipley took a step back and smiled up at him. “Now you have something to remember me by.”
Adam shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll remember you,” he promised.
“Nice meeting you,” Shipley called to Adam’s parents, but they pretended not to hear. It was pretty obvious she wasn’t invited to lunch, and Patrick was probably better off with the Gatzes than with her. “I guess I should go and study.”
Adam closed his eyes and opened them again. She was still there, although she had moved down the hall to the elevator. It arrived with a ping and the door slid open. Shipley lifted her hand to wave good-bye and stepped in.
Tragedy was too tired to talk. The kitten bathed itself in the crook of her arm, its small pink tongue dampening and flattening its black fur with impressive persistence. Patrick switched on the TV, but it was so loud and obnoxious he switched it off again. He opened the nightstand drawer and found another bible. The cover was bright blue with gold lettering and the line “King James Version” at the bottom. The one from jail just said “The Holy Bible” in white on a black background. He traded that one for the King James and closed the drawer.
“Well, I guess I’ll go,” he said. “I’m glad you’re alive,” he added without a hint of emotion.
Tragedy turned her head. “Doctor said I probably won’t be able to have kids now,” she told him. “Which sucks like a motherfucker.”
Patrick smiled at her turn of phrase. “That’s harsh.”
She closed her eyes. “Don’t think you’re going anywhere either. I told my parents about you. They’re taking you back to our house to eat good food and sleep in a nice warm bed. So suck it up, jackass.”
Patrick wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t know the Gatzes, and usually people didn’t want him around. The worst thing about the yurt burning down was that he’d have no place to sleep, but he could always go back to his old winter haunts—a smashed-up