Torment - Lauren Kate [37]
By the time classes let out, the dreariness had penetrated Luce to her very core. She didn’t know what she was doing at this school that wasn’t really hers, in this temporary life that only highlighted her lack of a real, permanent one. All she wanted to do was crawl into her bottom bunk and sleep it all away—not just the weather or her long first week at Shoreline, but also the argument with Daniel and the jumble of questions and anxieties that had shaken loose in her mind.
Sleep the night before had been impossible. In the darkest hours of the morning she’d stumbled alone back to her dorm room. She’d tossed and turned without ever really dozing off. Daniel’s shutting her out no longer surprised her, but that didn’t mean it had gotten any easier. And that insulting, chauvinistic order he’d given her to stay on the school grounds? What was this, the nineteenth century? It crossed her mind that maybe Daniel had spoken to her like that centuries ago, but—like Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet—Luce was certain no former self of hers would ever have been cool with that. And she certainly wasn’t now.
She was still angry and annoyed after class, moving through the fog toward the dorm. Her eyes were bleary and she was practically sleepwalking by the time her hand clasped her doorknob. Tumbling into the dim, empty room, she almost didn’t see the envelope someone had slipped under the door.
It was cream-colored, flimsy and square, and when she flipped it over, she saw her name typed on the front in small, blocky letters. She tore into it, wanting an apology from him. Knowing she owed him one too.
The letter inside was typewritten on cream-colored paper and folded into thirds.
Dear Luce,
There’s something I’ve been waiting too long to tell you. Meet me in town, near Noyo Point, around six o’clock tonight? The #5 bus along Hwy 1 stops a quarter of a mile south of Shoreline. Use this bus pass. I’ll be waiting by the North Cliff. Can’t wait to see you.
Love, Daniel
Shaking the envelope, Luce felt a small slip of paper inside. She pulled out a thin blue-and-white bus ticket with the number five printed on its front and a crude little map of Fort Bragg drawn on its back. That was it. There was nothing else.
Luce couldn’t figure it out. No mention of their argument on the beach. No indication that Daniel even understood how erratic it was to practically vanish into thin air one night, then expect her to travel at his whim the next.
No apology at all.
Strange. Daniel could turn up anywhere, anytime. He was usually oblivious to the logistical realities that normal human beings had to deal with.
The letter felt cold and stiff in her hands. Her more reckless side was tempted to pretend she’d never received it. She was tired of arguing, tired of Daniel’s not trusting her with details. But that pesky in-love side of Luce wondered whether she was being too harsh on him. Because their relationship was worth the effort. She tried to remember the way his eyes had looked and his voice had sounded when he told her the story about the lifetime she’d spent in the California gold rush. The way he’d seen her through the window and fallen in love with her for something like the thousandth time.
That was the image she took with her when she left her dorm room minutes later to creep along the path toward Shoreline’s front gates, toward the bus stop where Daniel had instructed her to wait. An image of his pleading violet eyes tugged at her heart while she stood under a damp gray sky. She watched colorless cars materialize in the fog, peel around the hairpin turns on guardrail-less Highway 1, and vanish again.
When she looked back at Shoreline’s formidable campus in the distance, she remembered Jasmine’s words at the party: As long as we stay under their