09 | neuromodulator

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          "I don't know," she argues, when he spins around on his heels to walk properly. "I still want to figure out what happened to her. I know it's none of my business," she adds, when Jude opens his mouth and kicks a pebble, "but . . . it could have been Isla or Matteo. It could have been you. I would want to figure out what had happened, and I'm sure her family and friends are desperate."

          "Well." He exhales, hiding his mouth behind his knit scarf. With the weather growing colder by the day, they've been pulling out the heavy clothes from the back of their closets, but there are days when it's not nearly enough. Today, Rhiannon can't feel her toes, even while wearing knee-high boots and equally as tall socks over her jeans. "You do know there's one person who has defeated the system . . . or the urban legend. Whatever. I still don't know whether to believe it or not."

          Rhiannon wrinkles her nose as he holds the library door open for her, letting her step inside first. Brooklyn Bach, a musical theater major at Crowcrest, is the only known Vofield resident who has come back after having been reported missing, but she had disappeared by choice; after all, she ran away back when she was seventeen, her face plastered on the side of milk cartons, flyers and billboards. Big, red, bold letters asked if anyone had seen her.

          The police thought it was a lost cause at some point. Some people thought the urban legend had, once again, come true. Until the day she returned and everyone found out she had simply joined a theater program in the US against her parents' wishes and had earned a full scholarship to Crowcrest.

          "Do you want to talk to Brooklyn?" she questions, craning her neck as they cross the wide aisles of the library to find a vacant table . . . without much luck. Most of them are full and the empty ones are, coincidentally, right next to the damn shelves. The archways tower over them and their footsteps echo in the silent building, with Rhiannon running her fingers over the wooden rail, glancing down at the ground floor. "You know she doesn't want to talk about it. Besides, nothing happened to her, while Taylor . . . I don't know. My gut tells me it's something completely different."

          "It's worth a shot," Jude tries. "Look, there's a table."

          "Good," she sighs.

          The table they occupy is on the opposite side as the one where Rowan Underwood is sitting and Rhiannon isn't surprised to see him slumped over his laptop, typing furiously. According to Isla, the guy knows what he's doing and has quite an impressive resume, despite being only twenty-five, and people really aren't supposed to spread the word about what he's doing here.

          Ghostwriters creep her out. Pun intended.

          "You know they're revealing the list in, like, two weeks or so," Jude continues, setting his backpack over the table, and she falls to one of the chairs, taking off her gloves. "What do you think? Do you think we've gotten through to the next stage?"

          "You make it sound like a video game," Rhiannon retorts, and he grins. "I don't know. Part of me really wants to know the results, but, on the other hand, I'm not particularly confident. I think I blew it when I said I was only in it for the money, but I thought she'd value my honesty, or something. I'm tired of being noble. It has gotten me nowhere."

          "Wow," he murmurs, mimicking Owen Wilson's voice, and she flips through a random textbook, knowing she won't be able to focus. "You totally sounded like Connor just now."

          "Ha-ha."

          "No, I'm serious. Nobility is a good thing, Rhea; it goes hand in hand with your—"

          She throws him a deadpan glare. "If you tell me it has anything to do with my damn humanity, we're done."

          Jude pretends to zip up his lips and throws away a fictional key. "Fair enough, but still. I've always thought you were a lot better than that guy, even if my opinion doesn't do much in this situation; quite frankly, I have no idea what you saw in him, besides that pretty face of his."

          He slouches on his seat, with an arm wrapped around the back of her chair. As soon as he does it, a bird flies against the window next to Rowan's table, the dry thud of the impact of its tiny body hitting the glass echoing softly in the aisle, but Rowan doesn't even flinch, returning the incredulous look Rhiannon and Jude throw him.

          "Well," Rhiannon eventually says, breaking the silence. "That was something you don't see every day." Jude giggles and she finally looks back at him, setting an elbow on the table and supporting her head on her hand to admire the highlights and shadows the lights in the library cast upon his face. "What were you saying about Connor's face? Do you really think he's that pretty for a snake or is it just your . . . humanity speaking? Or jealousy?"

          "Rhea." He shakes his head, with a mischievous smile dancing on his lips, and Rhiannon fails to be startled by Rowan's angry muttering coming from across the aisle. "I'm not jealous. I'm just stating a fact."

          "I was just kidding."

          He inches closer to her, almost imperceptibly, and it's enough to make her breath get caught in her throat when she tries to exhale. He's close enough for the scent of his cologne to get woven into her hair and clothes, along with that of his aftershave, and it's a pleasant change from the fruity scents she's covered in, mostly thanks to her shampoo.

          "I'm not . . . jealous," he mutters, and tilts his head down. His hot breath fans against her cheek and she knows all she has to do is slide half an inch forward—it's that simple. "I'm really not."

          "Because you really think that highly of yourself?"

          "Because."

          Jude leans forward, his nose nuzzling hers, and she doesn't move until the electricity sparks between them. It's a quick brushing of the lips at first, but it's long enough to trigger the release of dopamine and oxytocin into her bloodstream; the endorphins buzz like bumblebees in her ears as she timidly raises a hand to cup the side of his neck, his stubble tickling her skin.

          Adrenaline kicks in when his free hand reaches out to hold the back of her head, as this is still technically a public place and there are plenty of people here, not to mention surveillance cameras, programmed to watch their every move . . .

          "The cameras," she chokes out, moving back first, still trying to catch her breath. This is the last thing she wants to be thinking about at the moment, when everything should be about her and Jude and his fingers brushing against her cheek, but there's something feral inside her that doesn't let her rest. "They catch everything that goes down in this place. Maybe they—"

          "—saw Taylor and whatever happened to her the day she went missing?" he questions, and Rhiannon hesitantly nods, her pulse racing like a marathon runner when his hazel eyes meet hers. "God. We can never catch a break around here, can we?"

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