Page 75 of House of Hearts
It’s not the only thing I’ve decided to do for her today. The Cards were true to their word when it came to the reward money. It was staggering—far more money than I’ve ever seen in my life or dreamt of in my bank account—but despite it all, I didn’t feel good about using it. It was burning a hole in my pocket.
“Cut it in half,” I told Headmistress Lockwell in a rare moment of civility between us. Really, how does one interact calmly with a woman who advocated for your murder?
“You’re asking to receive less?” she scoffed, like she couldn’t process the concept.
“Half for me and half for Emoree.”
She approached the next question with as much tact as she could muster. “What would she use it for in her…condition?”
“I want a scholarship in her name.”
She stared contemplatively at her desk pen. “That can be arranged, but as for the title of it, I’m not sure if—”
“In her name,” I said again. “The Emoree Hale Memorial Scholarship.”
“Fine.”
I carry Em across the stage with me. Like Calvin, I avoid Headmistress Lockwell’s handshake, but she’s learned from the twins and strategically angles her back to hide another student slighting her in public. There’s no whispered congratulations or pleasantries between us. It’s all a cold transaction.
Meanwhile, Mom sits in the crowd with her go-to box of tissues. She blubbers into her boyfriend’s side, but for once I’m not worried about her. Ryan is actually good for her, it turns out, and it definitely helps to have another person keeping track of her perpetually lost keys. She mouths “I’m so proud” like it’s a chant of her own, and I beam back at her as I exit the stage.
Music flares to life, and most of the girls throw their flower crowns in the air. A handful of them break apart and litter the ground in a colorful shower of loose petals.
“I don’t think anyone wants my hair falling on them,” Birdie quips.
Sadie inclines her head beside her. “I don’t mind.”
For most of spring semester, Birdie and Sadie have been engaged in Newton’s fourth law of motion: Two people newly in love must be inconstant contact with each other at all times. Birdie loops an arm over her girlfriend, and Sadie giggles in her embrace. Even with all the PDA, I’m over the moon for them both.
“What can I say?” Amber asks with a wiggle of her eyebrows. “I’m Cupid. Guess my hit-on list worked.”
“Your what?”
Birdie burns bright red. “Amber!”
They’re still teasing one another when Calvin comes to my side. He’s already been forced into an awkward interaction with my mom and Ryan that resulted in a hundred prom-esque photos, but now that Mom is busy exploring campus with her beau, I have a brief window with mine.
“We’ll be right back. I just need to borrow her.”
“Going up to the lookout?”
“Haven’t you heard? Couples that go up together stay together,” Calvin says with a wink.
As I scale the tower steps, instead of the paranoia I first felt here, I’m met with a quiet sense of self-reflection. Em said something really bad had to happen for ghosts to come back, but now I realize the absence of them isn’t a denial of their existence. It’s a symbol of their peace.
Oleander’s knife has scratched a permanent sickle on Calvin’s cheek. The scar has scabbed and faded in the months following the incident, but it remains a sheer, glossy white line. I find it makes him twice as beautiful.
This is what survival looks like.
He leads me up to look out the window. A straight shot down still makes me wobbly-kneed, but I’m getting better with Calvin’s hand on my back. I stare out at the hedge maze and the bodies buriedthere, and this time, I know the maze isn’t staring back.
Down below, Amber has her arms full of papers. She’s handing them out to students, parents, cousins, anyone she can reach.
“Are those more graduation pamphlets?” he asks, squinting down to get a better look.
I don’t need to follow his gaze to know precisely what she’s passing out. “No, they’re theHart Herald’s last article of the year.”
“About what?”
