Steelhands - Jaida Jones [127]
“I hope his eyes don’t fail him before the end of semester,” I said, realizing it was my turn to speak again. I wished I had thought to grab Laure when we’d passed her by—these things were always so much easier with her along to make a joke and break the ice. Also, whenever she was in the room, no one so much as looked twice at me. Hal’s gaze—with his cloudy gray eyes—was unwavering, and I found it difficult to sit still without staring back at him.
“They’re very good essays,” Hal added, to soften the blow. “I suppose I shouldn’t have told you that, about the handwriting.”
I felt even more uncomfortable with the unexpected praise and cleared my throat quickly to distract him. “It’s not exams I wanted to talk to you about; I have organized a very precise system of studying, and I’m feeling extremely confident. No worries at all there. This is more of a personal problem.”
“I see,” Hal said, nodding once to show he was listening. He hesitated, then spoke again. “Is it that girl I always see you with? Not to pry, of course.”
“Laure?” I said, momentarily horrified out of my deep concentration.
“I guess I was wrong,” Hal said, looking as though he was trying to keep from laughing. “My intuition’s all off today. Didn’t sleep very well last night. Perhaps you’d better just tell me, before I embarrass myself any further.”
He was not the one who needed to be embarrassed, I thought, but I took his suggestion gratefully.
“It’s about a … friend of mine,” I began, staring at an empty space on the desk just next to Hal’s wrist. I had to say it all at once, or else my doubts would get the better of me and keep me from speaking entirely. “By the name of Gaeth. He’s gone missing. Actually, he’s been missing for some time now, long enough that I’m sure it’s not just my imagination running wild. The redhead you always see me with—Laure—and I came here together with him, and so we became friends. We’d have lunch with him at the beginning of the semester, even dinner sometimes. And then, one day, he stopped coming to classes, to the dining hall … No one else he knew could tell us where he’d gone. I will admit right away that we did something inadvisable—we were even caught in the act, so I believe it isn’t too incriminating to tell you now that Laure and I ended up breaking into his room just to see if he was there. Which he wasn’t, much to our dismay. We’d been told he went home, you see, only all his things were still in his room. There was even a half-eaten sandwich, though if I speak about it too long I’ll be ill. The point is, everyone here seems to be under the impression that he’s gone back home to Borland. We even spoke to the dormitory authorities, and that’s what they told us. Only then I wrote his mother, inquiring after his health, and she as much as told me to ask him myself since she believes him to still to be here!”
The whole thing had become quite the tale when I finally paused to catch my breath. It was the most I’d said to anyone other than Laure since Gaeth had gone missing, and I was nearly trembling by the time I’d come to the end. I wanted to add that a gentle, hopelessly simple creature such as Gaeth could get into all sorts of trouble without someone cleverer there to get him out of it again, and that I should have realized it sooner and kept a better eye on him to begin with. But none of that concerned Hal, and I held my tongue.
Hal drew in a breath, crossing his arms. I could tell I’d upset him from the sudden tension in his face. The poor man had clearly been expecting something about a tender youth’s love life, or perhaps the typical sob story from a student waking from their stupor to realize exams were coming up.
To be fair, that was all the trouble I had expected from the city when I’d first arrived. The dreams I’d harbored were of first love and proving myself capable of every challenge the ’Versity saw fit to throw at me. All the rest had come quite out of nowhere—first Gaeth, then Laure’s own strange behavior. And as committed