Fallen - Lauren Kate [86]
When Penn drew back and thanked Luce, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a letter.
“I usually write him something,” she explained.
Luce wanted to give Penn a moment alone with her dad, so she got up, took a step back, and turned away, heading down the slope toward the heart of the cemetery. Her eyes were still a little glassy, but she thought she could see someone sitting alone on top of the monolith. Yes. A guy with his arms wrapped around his knees. She couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten up there, but there he was.
He looked stiff and lonely, as if he’d been there all day. He didn’t see Luce or Penn. He didn’t seem to see anything. But Luce didn’t have to be close enough to see those violet-gray eyes to know who it was.
All this time Luce had been searching for explanations about why Daniel’s file was so sparse, what secrets his ancestor’s missing book held in the library, where his mind had traveled to that day she’d asked about his family. Why he’d been so hot and cold with her … always.
After such an emotional day with her own parents, the thought nearly brought Luce to her knees with sadness. Daniel was alone in the world.
FOURTEEN
IDLE HANDS
It rained all day on Tuesday. Pitch-black clouds rolled in from the west and churned over the campus, doing nothing to help clear Luce’s mind. The downpour came in uneven waves—drizzling, then pouring, then hailing—before it tapered off to start all over again. The students hadn’t even been allowed to go outside during breaks, and by the end of her calculus class, Luce was going stir-crazy.
She realized this when her notes began to veer away from the mean value theorem and started looking more like this:
September 15: Introductory flip-off from D
September 16: Statue toppling, hand on head to protect me (alternately: just him groping for a way out); D’s immediate exit
September 17: Potential misreading of D’s head bob as suggestion that I attend Cam’s party. Disturbing discovery of D & G’s relationship (mistake?)
Spelled out like that, it was the beginning of a pretty embarrassing catalog. He was just so hot and cold. It was possible he felt the same way about her—though, if pressed, Luce would insist that any weirdness on her part was only in response to utter weirdness on his part.
No. This was precisely the kind of circular argument she did not want to engage in. Luce didn’t want to play any games. She just wanted to be with him. Only, she had no idea why. Or how to go about it. Or really, what being with him would even mean. All she knew was that, despite everything, he was the one she thought about. The one she cared about.
She’d thought if she could track every time they’d connected and every time he’d pulled away, she might be able to find some reason behind Daniel’s erratic behavior. But her list so far was only making her depressed. She crumpled the page into a ball.
When the bell finally rang to dismiss them for the day, Luce hurried out of the classroom. Usually she waited to walk with either Arriane or Penn, dreading the moment they parted ways, because then Luce would be alone with her thoughts. But today, for a change, she didn’t feel like seeing anyone. She was looking forward to some Luce time. She had only one sure idea about how to take her mind off Daniel: a long, hard, solitary swim.
While the other students started trucking back toward their dorm rooms, Luce pulled up the hood of her black sweater and darted into the rain, eager to get to the natatorium.
As she bounded down the steps of Augustine, she plowed straight into something tall and black. Cam. When she jostled him, a tower of books teetered in his arms, then tumbled to the wet pavement with a series of thuds. He’d had his own black hood pulled over his head