Page 53 of A Heart of Bluestone

Courtney rushes to his side, all panic and fluster.

I wander over, not too fussed since the witchdoctor is ace at her job. She will have him healed in a couple of days. Broken bones only take two or three days to heal.

It’s really not that big of a deal.

Plus,bonus, James will love the chance to hide out from class. He’s a bit of a worm that way, always trying to fake some sickness or poorly state so he can hide out.

Courtney says he has mind worry. Anxiety. And not to feed into it. Yet, that’s exactly what she does.

She fusses, leaned over his bedside.

I perch myself on the foot of the narrow, wrought-iron bed. “I see your lesson went well.”

“Don’t tease him,” she chides with a narrowed look my way.

“She’s wrong anyway,” says James, a dreamy smile on his face. He’s been drinking too many painless brews. “It was going well untilafterthe lesson.”

I lean onto my side, my elbow planted on the mattress, and I eye him up with a sudden brightness. “What happened?” My grin is crooked. “You tried to tackle the dangerous mountain on your own?”

He shrugs. “Everyone else was doing it.”

The scoff jolts my shoulders. “Byeveryone else, you mean the best skiers here, the ones who have been doing this since they were children?”

“Yeah, well,” he huffs and shoots a frown down at me, “it’s because ofthemI’m in here.” His dreamy look slips away to something tired and sad. “I was doing just fine—” I highly doubt that “—until the Snakes caught up with me. It was your brother who barged into me. I fell, and that’s how I broke my leg.”

I nod with a curt hum. “He’s an asshole,” is all I say. It’s true, but especially so when he’s around Dray.

But he wasn’t around Dray.

Now that I think on it, I didn’t see my brother around the village at all today. He’s on the ice-hockey team—and given mybrother’s apparent sour mood on the slopes after the games, I can take a wild guess that maybe his team lost.

Best to stay out of his way, then.

He doesn’t need Dray around him today to be an ass. He’ll be a natural all on his own.

After a little while, I leave Courtney and James alone and head back to the dorms.

Diamonds haunt me through the corridors.

Eyes grazing over me, like a tender touch, brushing my clavicle, lingering on my lips, all the while he’s kissing Melody, kissing her mouth the way I once thought he might kiss mine, and has kissed so many others instead.

My cheeks swell with a huffed breath.

I run my hands down my face and ignore the slight ache that’s blooming. That horrid sensation that’s somewhere between arousal anddo-I-need-to-pee?

I won’t accept any other answer but the latter, and so I stop in at the toilets on the third floor before I head to the phone booths just down the way from the main atrium.

I call Mother, not for any other reason than lack of company.

With Courtney sticking to the infirmary, and no one else to entertain me in my spare weekend hours, I bother the one who can’t tell me to go away.

Mommy dearest.

I get a win out of the call. She agrees to send a replacement for my ruined uniform, the one stained with forever gum and butterscotch sauce, even though I have plenty of others with methat I can wear. Still, it’s nice to have more things than I need. It’s nice for all of a minute or two, then the pleasant feel of it vanishes, and I wonder what the point of this wealth is, of all this money at my fingertips if I can’t find anything meaningful about it.

Do the others feel this way?

Mother, Father, Harold and Amelia?

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