A Deadly Education

Orion joined us with his own mail already in his hand, a fat envelope and a small bag, and whispered to me in a cheerful singsong under his breath, “Busted,” slinging his arm around my neck and grinning at me. I made a face at him, but I couldn’t help smiling a little myself as I carefully unrolled my very own letter

And then a boy with a voice that hadn’t quite finished breaking called, uncertainly, “I’ve got a note from Gwen Higgins?” I didn’t hear it the first time, but there was a little lull after, as people heard it, and he said it again.

Aadhya had come over, bringing both her letter and the black girl, from Newark, whose name was Pamyla—one of the reasons parents will have their kids spend a tiny bit of their precious weight allowance on a letter is that they know they’ll get an automatic older friend on the other side in return. “Do you think it’s that Gwen Higgins? Does she have a kid in here?” Pamyla said to Aadhya, sounding hopeful.

Aadhya just made a shrugging expression. Liu was shaking her head. “If she does, they’re keeping quiet; everyone would be on them for healing magic, I guess.”

Then the boy said, “For her daughter Galadriel?” and both of them—along with the handful of other people around who’d been paying enough attention to hear him—gave me a double take, and then Aadhya shoved me in the shoulder, indignantly. Several other people were having a furtive look around the cafeteria like they thought maybe there was some other girl named Galadriel in the place. I gritted my teeth and went over. Even the kid looked doubtfully up at me.

“I’m Galadriel,” I said shortly, and held out my hand: he put a tiny little thing almost like a shelled hazelnut into my palm, probably not even the weight of a single gram. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Aaron?” he said, like he wasn’t completely sure. “I’m from Manchester?”

“Well, come on,” I said, and gave him a jerk of my head, leading him back past a bunch of staring faces. There wasn’t really an escape from them, though: Aadhya and Liu were eyeing me themselves, Aadhya with a narrowed look that suggested I was in for another good long lecture as soon as she got me alone. I introduced Aaron to the others a bit grudgingly, and he and the other three freshmen started talking; Liu’s cousins both spoke English without the slightest hitch, and as fluently as either he or Pamyla did. Aadhya had a small sheet of enchanted gold leaf in her letter: she showed it to us gleefully. “I’ll put this round the argonet-tooth pegs, on the lute.”

“Are you just trying to be dense?” He glared at me. But I glared right back, indignantly, and then in the tones of someone speaking to a dim pony, he said, “I’d want to. If you want, I want. And if you don’t want, then—I don’t want.”

“That’s the general idea of the thing,” I said, getting wary all over again: that sounded alarmingly like he did want. “Otherwise it’s just stalking. Are you asking? And I’m not kicking you out of my life no matter what!” I added, although I hadn’t any idea what I’d do if he did ask. “I kicked you out of my way downstairs because I had the odd notion that you’d prefer your life saved, which I’d like to point out for the record I’ve now done in turn.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m up to thirteen at this point, so you’ve got a way to go,” he said, folding his arms over his chest, but it didn’t really have the right effect: he looked too thoroughly relieved.

“We needn’t quibble about numbers,” I said, loftily.

“Oh, I think we do need,” he said, and then just when I was about to relax, thinking I’d steered us back into safer waters, he dropped his arms again and his face went open and a little pale, leaving scared pink standing out on the edges of his cheekbones. “El, I’d—I’d like to ask. But not—in here. After we—if we—”

“Don’t even try. I’m not getting engaged to go out with you,” I said rudely, shoving in before he could drag us back onto the shoals. “If you’re not asking now, that’s sufficient unto the day! If we make it out of here alive and you slog across the pond to come ask me, I’ll decide what I think of it at the time, and until then, you can keep your Disney movie fantasies,” and your secret pet mal, my brain unhelpfully inserted, “to yourself.”

He said, “Okay, okay, fine!” in a tone one-tenth irritation and nine-tenths relief, while I looked away, trying to stop my mouth contorting around the laugh I was having to fight desperately to keep in yet again