The night had been long, the heels had been high, and the questions has been hard. Woods had been in a glorious mood all night, which meant, of course, that she had drilled me into nonexistence. I had been slapped so hard with so many questions that my ears were still ringing from the hit.
How old would the Spanish Prince have to be to court the Bulgarian ambassador's daughter?
There are six people of political significance in this room who play a key part in the upholding of the Treaty of Caspia. Name each, their titles, and the roles they play.
Who in this room is most likely to kill the United States President and why?
Where were you the night I died and what could you have done to stop it?
That last one wasn't Woods, but it was with an exhausted laugh and a pull in my gut that I admitted how hard it was getting to tell the difference between the real voices and the fake ones. Or maybe there weren't any real ones at all. Maybe every last bit of this stuff was in my head.
No. Stop.
I couldn't afford to think like this. Once I started, it was almost impossible to stop. I had to shut the thoughts down before they could grow, consuming my mind like a mold.
I listened to the click, click, click sound that my heels made as I walked. It had only been minutes since I'd taken them off, but it felt like it had been years, the cool tile of my grandfather's school providing relief from my blistering feet. My dress collected dirt as it flowed around my toes, turning the hem from blue to black.
Blue and black. Like my professor's eye. Like my shoulder.
Bandages. I needed to change my bandages. I couldn't forget to change my bandages before I went to sleep.
Oh, sleep sounded wonderful. I'd hop in a car with sleep and drive to Vegas if I could, but I had to shower first, otherwise I'd regret it in the morning. I didn't know a single form of torture that was worse than brushing through day-old hairspray. Shower, brush, sleep. That was the plan.
I turned down the hallway, following a pack of sophomores who were giggling and sighing, one of them still dancing with the ghost of a boy she'd left behind. I tried to remember when I had been that excited about prom. When I had been that excited about anything. Scout Jasons had been my date, not my doctor, and the hope of my mother's return had taken the form of conspiratorial whispers and international manhunts.
Nowadays, that hope took the form of a tired, babbling little girl, not a single soul taking her seriously.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Pathetic. It was pathetic. I was pathetic.
I shook the thoughts away. Shower, brush, sleep. I just had to make it to make it to my room. After I slept, I'd feel better.
I'd had a lot of homes in my lifetime. There was my school. My family's safe house. The very peculiar number of apartments my family burned through in North Dakota. And now Blackthorne. It had only taken a year, but I felt completely comfortable sticking Blackthorne on my list of homes.
And, well, I knew a lot of things about this building. There wasn't much that caught me off guard. I expected my father's door to squeak when I opened it. I expected Mr. Hughes to be hiding away in his training room. I expected to see Alice sharing a room with me when she spent the night.
What I did not expect, was opening my door to find Alice, in her bed, underneath a boy with flaming red hair.
"Oh my god."
Was it the wittiest thing I could have said? No. Was it the most intelligent? Probably not. But let me tell you, when you walk in on your best friend under the blankets with a boy, you say the first thing that comes to mind and, aside from the constant strand of various screaming noises running through my head, the only thing that came to mind was, "Oh my god!"
I threw my hand over my eyes, wanting to slam the door shut, but not knowing which side I needed to put myself on. It was with great dread that I realized that I needed to take a look around. Examine the crime scene. Assess the situation. And so I cringed as I peeked through my fingers.
Alice shot up and I was beyond relieved to see that her dress was still on. "Maggie," she said, her cheeks even redder than my own.
The boy, on the other hand, rolled over, swagger in his movements and a smile on his lips (along with, for the record, Alice's lipstick). "Hello, Morgan."
Morgan isn't an uncommon name. Everyone in the English-speaking world knew how to say it, which was how I knew that he said it wrong on purpose. He always emphasized the second half, rather than the first, and he did it just to piss me off.
Alice slapped his shoulder. "Finn, stop it," she whispered.
I looked to her, then to him, and back to her. His tie was loose and his collar button was undone. Her hair was not in the elegant pony tail it had been when we left the Gallagher Academy. Both of them had that dreamy, whimsical look in their eye and both of them were under Alice's blanket.
And that was when it clicked.
"Oh my god," I said for a third time, dropping my hand. "It's him."
"Maggie, I know what you're thinking—"
"Finn O'Reilly is your secret boyfriend!" It was just an answer. The conclusion to a math problem that had taken me weeks to solve. But when I took a step back and caught sight of the bigger picture, it was suddenly so much more than just a data point. "Finn O'Reilly is your secret boyfriend?"
Finn grinned, mischief in his every feature. "Boyfriend, huh?"
She hit him again, harder this time. "I'll kill you," she said. "I swear I will."
He turned his head towards her voice. His lip stuck out a little too far, but a smile was extremely visible through his pout. "You wouldn't kill your boyfriend, would you?"
"Wait," I said, before the two of them could get caught up in whatever weird couple thing they were doing. "You mean to tell me that this asshat is the one you've been sneaking out of the mansion to see?"
"I don't think I'd call myself an asshat," Finn said. "Occasional jerk, maybe, but not an asshat."
"Actually, I'm pretty settled on asshat," I told him.
Of all the kids. Of all of the kids who swooned and grinned and wanted to kiss Alice Anderson, she chose to stick with the one who got a good laugh out of knocking me down. Who enjoyed calling me by my full name just to hear the anger in my voice a minute later.
"What's the matter, Morgan?" he asked. My stare locked on him and I saw clouds of smoke stealing the blue from his eyes. They were hard to look at, and so I dropped my glare. He didn't stop. "Still bitter about that time I broke your wrist? Or maybe that time I about pulled your shoulder from the socket?"
"Finn," Alice said, like she was chastising a puppy who had run too far. "Stop."
For the first time since I walked in, I really focused on Alice. On the bags beneath her eyes and the sag in her cheeks. The way her skin looked greyer and duller than it usually did. Alice was exhausted. She needed to talk to someone—share her grief with someone. But her mom was always so worried about Ellie and her dad was back home. I hadn't exactly been Friend of the Year and everyone else in her life was off running missions. Who did Alice have?
She pulled her hair over her shoulder and around her neck, covering a splotchy red spot that was rapidly turning purple. I looked to Finn, realizing that he was that person. Alice had picked him and Alice was no idiot. I didn't know what she saw in him, but there had to be something redeemable about him. "Whatever," I said. "It's whatever."
I turned towards the en suite, listening to the blankets rustle as Alice threw them away. "Maggie—"
Her voice stopped when the door shut. It didn't slam, but I really didn't want to talk to anyone. Wasn't sure that I could. It had been a long night and now Alice was hanging around Finn O'Reilly. Alice was finding some amount of comfort in being around Finn O'Reilly. Alice had spent one of her longest relationships with Finn O'Reilly.
You weren't there.
I leaned over the sink before I could fall, snapping my attention to the mirror. I expected to see my mother standing over my shoulder, whispering in my ear. That was what it felt like, all the time, a constant hiss in my ear.
But she wasn't there. It was just me, thinner and paler than I expected. My hair was dry and unkempt, the bags under my eyes now a permanent feature of mine, reminding me of just how tired I always was.
You should have helped her.
"Stop it."
You should have helped him.
"Stop it!"
Stop obsessing. I needed to shut myself down. I had to think about something else—anything else besides how terrible I was at loving the people I claimed to. Anything. Anything. Finn.
He wasn't the worst choice she could have made. He was a good fighter—the only one I'd ever seen take Alice on and win. They were both so fast. He could actually keep up with her, which was something that not even I could always do. Alice deserved someone like that. Alice deserved the world.
God help Finn O'Reilly if he didn't give it to her.
My mind jumped back to Macey in her glamorous red dress, telling the two most talented men I knew that girls got to choose who they wanted to kiss. Alice had a lot of extra experience with kissing, but the same rules still applied. I didn't get to tell her that Finn was a bad choice. Then again, Finn wasn't a bad choice. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more he seemed kind of perfect for her.
Better than you.
I couldn't think anymore. I just wanted to shut down. Tired. I was so tired. The shower could wait. For now, all I wanted was sleep, so I reached for the knob, but hesitated. Finn and Alice were on the other side of that door. Embarrassment and blushing and general teenage awkwardness were on the other side of that door. But my bed was on the other side of the door too, and I was utterly exhausted, so I pulled the door and hoped that Finn was gone.
He wasn't, but he was asleep, which was almost as good.
It was Alice who got my attention. She was standing right in front of me, her first raised like she had been about to knock. Her dress was the same color as her eyes, her skirt wide and fluffed. She looked like Cinderella, except she was in a different version of the fairytale where the princess got busted for staying out past midnight. Then again, that would require her to actually go out and attend the ball in the first place. "Is this where you were all night?" I asked.
She lowered her arm with a shrug. "We made an appearance," she said. She spoke a mile a minute, her entire train of thought plowing through her lips. "You dad asked us some questions and then we snuck back to the room. It's just that, I think Macey's been keeping an eye on me, so it's been harder and harder to sneak out. We figured tonight would be a good opportunity, but if we'd known you'd be back so soon we wouldn't have... I'm sorry. We thought you'd be gone longer."
There was so much we-talk going on. We thought. We figured. We wouldn't. Whenever she talked about boys, Alice always kept everything so separate. I went out with him. He likes to kiss me. But not Finn. With Finn, it was we. In ten years or whatever, when I'm the maid of honor at their wedding, I'll be able to say that was how I knew. That was how I knew he was the lucky guy.
Alice really liked Finn, and she hadn't told me. She was sure I hated him—positive that I would be so completely pissed off that I would do something stupid. This was just another thing to add to the top of Guilt Mountain. "It's fine," I said, and it was. "Really, it's fine. You could have told me, Alice."
She just shook her head, ever so slightly. "It wasn't supposed to last this long," she admitted. "It was just supposed to be a little kissing here and there, not... whatever this is."
She looked over her shoulder at the freckled boy, still wearing his formal clothes, and I could feel the warmth leaving her. See the smile that she couldn't hold back. She really liked this kid and I instantly felt guilty for making her feel like she needed to keep that from me. "It's great, Alice," I said, this time successful in my sincerity due to the fact that I really did mean it. "I never thought I'd see the day."
She didn't look away from Finn when she whispered. "Me neither."
That was it. That was when I knew that Alice Anderson was a goner and that I would have to get real used to the idea of Finn O'Reilly.
She turned back to me, as if remembering why she was there in the first place. "I was just going to ask you if you needed help," she said. "With your bandages. You're probably tired."
Right. Bandages. I had almost forgotten. I looked back to the mirror, my shoulder perfectly framed. I knew that I could change them myself, but it would be a process and a long one at that. Not that I had to tell her that. She already knew. "Yeah, if you don't mind."
Alice rolled her eyes. "Of course not, you idiot."
Alice is a good friend. The best. There are times I wonder if I deserve having her in my life, or if having a Sutton by your side is just another perk that comes along with being a Goode. I guess it doesn't really matter though, does it? She's here. She's always going to be here.
And so, as she peeled the old bandages off and replaced them with new, clean ones I glanced out the door to Finn's mess of hair, and I vowed that this was it. This was the last time I let myself forget about Alice Anderson. This was going to be the last time she ever had to feel alone.