Page 15 of A Heart of Bluestone

One might think them a poor family.

But they aren’t. Average, I suppose, in terms of money. The Home for the Misplaced—sort of an orphanage, prep home for made ones—is very well funded by our society. And so, I know they do not go without.

James pushes thick-rimmed glasses up his nose. “Someone pushed her into the fertiliser bags.”

I look down the way to the winding path, the ones that lead to the barns of the witching village. Suppose there would be some animals kept that way, bagged manure and fertiliser for someplants that would grow in this barren temperature. The sort of plants only witches have the touch for.

My mouth puckers as I turn back to Courtney. “Didn’t happen to be my brother, did it?”

“No,” she sighs. “But it was a Snake.”

Snakes.

The common school term for those banded seniors, the select elites who don’t seem to ever be apart. Dray, of course, and my brother, and Serena Vasile, Landon Barlow, Asta Ström and the psychotic Mildren Green.

I reach out for her sleeve and, with no apologetic look spared on the students behind me, tug Courtney into the queue.

James slinks in with her, his face aflame.

He looks anywhere but at the silently glaring students behind us, those a tad younger than us, so not as brave as they could be.

“Who was it?” I ask.

“Mildred,” she says and fixes her ugly pink gloves, patterned with yellow smiley faces.

“At least she didn’t break anything.” I sigh and look her over, and I find only a scrape on her cheek, but it could have been worse.

Courtney tucks her hair behind her ears, the sort of hair that always looks a little on the oily side, but she’s made it worse this year.

I grimace at the sight of the uneven fringe that cuts along her brow, and fleetingly wonder if she snipped at it herself with some craft scissors. It wouldn’t surprise me.

She’s impulsive that way.

The cold steals away the conversation, and we slip into silence.

By far my favourite part of traveling on the gondola up the mountain to Bluestone is the view.

You’ve never seen the Swiss Alps until you’ve seen them from the highest possible point off groundbeforethe clouds and mist swallow you.

Courtney and James pile into the gondola car with me, along with a silent redhead I don’t know, but whose youthful, freckled face places him early in his school years.

He is quiet in the gondola of seniors, and so I quickly forget he’s in here with us at all.

I lean my head on the window and watch the lush green of the mountains climb higher and higher, into a dusting of light, off-season snow, the kind that melts into sludge within moments of touching the earth.

Opposite me, James doodles on the thick white page of a sketch book, blotchy charcoal stains all over his shirt and fingertips.

I glance between the siblings, seeing the resemblance in their heart-shaped faces, delicate thin lips, and dark brown hairs. Their complexions are pasty, the kind that blotchy reds show up on whenever they’re rushed or embarrassed.

They look alike. More like twins.

Oliver and I are twins, but we sure don’t look it. There’s a family resemblance, but distant, like cousins.

I look most unlike my family.

Father and Oliver are doubles of each other. Their hair colour is a rich brown, soft and glossy, Mother’s is sleek black, mine is a pale brown and sort of dull. My eyes are hazel, Oliver and Father share emerald eyes, and Mother’s are as black as ink. My complexion is pale, but red if I spend too much time in the sun—yet all the others in my family take a sunkissed tan quite nicely. I get burnt and freckles.

Those differences might seem small.

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