Page 31 of The Luminaries
“You’re welcome.” He taps the steering wheel faster. “I’ll remember that the next time I steal your bike.”
“Yeah, okay.” Her cringe deepens. She zips her leather jacket all the way to the top, then snags her backpack and grabs the handle to leave the car.
“Wait.” There’s an authority in Jay’s voice that Winnie isn’t used to. It makes her actually pause her fingers on the worn handle. “Do you want to train today?”
“Yes. Please.” Winnie runs her finger over the handle. The metal is scratched and chipped. She knows she needs to get out of the car, but she’s finding it hard to move, even though today can’t possibly be worse than yesterday at Gunther’s. It can’t possibly be worse than the four years she spent outside looking in.
Jay exits first, finally jolting her back into action. By the time she is out of the Wagoneer, he has pulled her bike from the trunk. “How about this afternoon?” he asks, his grip lingering on the handlebars as Winnie tries to pull it away. “Cool?”
“Yeah.” She avoids Jay’s eyes as she takes the bike. Neither of them says goodbye.
Clickity-clickity-clickity.Winnie has rolled her bike halfway around the estate when footsteps hammer behind her. Then a voice, slightly accented, calls, “Winnie. It has been a long time.”
Coach Rosa. Beyond the aforementioned awkward encounters, Winnie hasn’t seen her at all in the past four years. Now she falls into step beside Winnie as if nothing has changed and Winnie has always belonged here.
“You’re in my third-period training.” Coach Rosa rubs her hands together against the wind. Her tracksuit billows. “It’s the easier class, but don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll get bumped to second period in no time. A banshee.” She grins sideways. “I don’t think anyone has killed a banshee solo in… well, not as long as I’ve lived here. And with onlya poison-mist trap too! You will have to tell the class how you managed that.”
Winnie thinks she might vomit. “Yep.” She rolls a bit faster toward the bike rack ahead. “Looking forward to it.”
“Great.” Rosa claps her on the back. “See you in a few hours, then.” She hops up the steps into the estate entrance, taking two at a time with enviable ease, while Winnie fumbles with her bike chain.
“This is what you want,” she tells herself. “This is what you want.”
It’s not only physical training that has Winnie placed into introductory courses. “You are four years behind,” Headmaster Gina Sunday (who is also Councilor Gina Sunday and head of the Sunday clan) explains in her soprano voice. “But you always were an excellent student, and I have no doubt you will advance quickly. Though”—she wags a red-painted finger at Winnie from across her broad desk—“you will have to study a bit more than everyone else to catch up. Now, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
She smiles, her warm, dark brown skin stretching across high cheekbones, and Winnie ventures a smile of her own. Headmaster Gina is another one who has always been kind to Winnie when they meet, and she’s kind now, wheeling her chair into the halls so she can guide Winnie to her first class.
The school looks like Winnie remembers: polished wood paneling, heavy oak doors, and dangling candelabras that are much too nice to be appreciated by a bunch of teenagers. Winnie certainly didn’t appreciate them four years ago. Now, she just sees how many light bulbs the Sundays must have to change.
All down the main hall hang the banners and sigils of the families.Culture runs thicker than blood,she thinks as her eyes skim down each one.
First is a white swan for the Sundays. Their motto isPatience inside. Calm under pressure.Next, a white scroll with a black ribbon for the Mondays.Intellect at the fore. Knowledge is the path.A red scorpion forthe Tuesdays.Strength of body and heart. We hold the line.Then comes the Wednesday black bear.The cause above all else. Loyalty through and through.A silver bell for the Thursdays.Always prepared. Never without a plan.A gray sparrow for the Fridays.Integrity in all. Honesty to the end.And lastly, a golden key for the Saturdays.Leadership in deed and word. Persuasion is power.
Each person in Hemlock Falls will mold themselves into their clan’s needs, all in the name of the Luminaries. All in the name of keeping an oblivious world safe from the fourteen sleeping spirits. Winnie is one of those people—again. Finally.
Pride swells up from her belly. Loyalty through and through.
The first two-hour period of class is—thank god—easy for Winnie. It’s nightmare anatomy, and if there is one thing she actuallydoesknow, it’s where a changeling liver is or why vampira don’t have livers at all. Before the first hour is up, she has already been bumped ahead three classes. Goodbye Professor Anders, hello Professor Il-Hwa.
Second period proves harder. Winnie has never been interested in Luminary history. Nightmares, sure. But the politics and history of the Luminaries, no. She knows the first spirit formed in what is now northern Italy, and it was the only spirit for almost a thousand years. The second appeared in Norway, a third in Russia. After that, spirits spread much more rapidly, leaping across continents, until the most recent spirit formed here, near Hemlock Falls, in 1901. The various Luminary branches sent members here to deal with it, and eventually the American Luminaries were formed.
Of course, that’s the basic stuff, and the students—all of whom are thirteen years old (or in the case of her cousin Marcus, who keeps grinning smugly at her, fourteen)—are learning more nitty-gritty stuff like names and dates… and more names and dates.
Because Professor Samuel is a jerk (thatdefinitely hasn’t changed), he keeps calling on Winnie when he knows she doesn’t have the answer. It’s mortifying and Marcus’s grinning face isn’t helping.
She doesn’t even have her usual margin doodling to save her. She is too busy taking notes, so she can’t pause for sketching or shading or nightmare adornment. Although, she does vaguely think that might bea good thing. Like last night, her fingers feel empty. No spark, no itch, no desire to transfer a banshee’s empty eyes into solid lines.
Overall, the morning passes in a big Alice in Wonderland blur. People aren’t just nice to Winnie, they’retoonice. The sort of nice you use when you feel really guilty about something but don’t want the other person to know.
Not that Winnie thinks any of the Luminaries actually feel any guilt for how they’ve treated her over the past four years. After all, she had been labeled an outcast—what did she expect? No, it’s more probable they don’t know how to be friendly, so they’re turning into creepy, unnatural versions of themselves. Like when video game characters smile—it’s notquitehuman, but it’s close enough to make you uncomfortable.
Every fist bump makes Winnie flinch as if someone is going to smack her. Every call ofbanshee slayermakes her shrink as if it’switch spawnthey’re saying instead. And every brilliantly white smile makes her recoil instead of smile back.
This is just all too, too weird.
And as the day ticks past, as Winnie shambles through classes and the people, the cold inside her spins a little bit wider. By the time third period rolls around, she is exhausted in a way she didn’t know a human could be exhausted. Too many eyes have been upon her. Too many false grins she didn’t earn.
At the doorway that will lead into the locker rooms—where Winnie can hear all the same thirteen-year-old voices chattering away while they change for third-period physical training, while Coach Rosa chatters away too—Winnie realizes she can’t breathe.
