Page 23 of The Last Graduate
Liesel shrugged. “He’s here, too. It doesn’t count.” I rather thought it did, since he didn’t want to be in here and would have gone like a shot if we hadn’t been here, but I was the only one arguing his case. She added to him, “I will need amphisbaena scales.”
“Oh, sure, no problem,” Orion said, very enthusiastically. I scowled at him across the room, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on even metaphorically; that was a completely reasonable trade for someone doing your homework, and even if you thought it was in some way his duty to go hunt down amphisbaena for nothing, which I didn’t, that still wouldn’t mean he wasn’t entitled to get something back for taking the trouble to collect the scales.
Anyway he probablywouldn’thunt amphisbaena for nothing; they’re only slightly more dangerous to us than the agglos, which they eat. Their worst quality is every decade or so enough of their predators get wiped out in a cleansing, and then the amphisbaena lay a bumper crop of tiny rubbery eggs in nice warm damp spots like for instance around the hot-water pipes, and when they hatch shortly after New Year’s, the babies pour out of the taps and the showerheads in droves, both heads hissing and biting. Which you’d justifiably say is in fact nightmarishly bad, but the poison isn’t strong enough to do more than sting at that stage, and it doesn’t get stronger until they’re big enough that they don’t fit through anymore. You just hear them stuck in there and hissing as you wash and hope very hard that the showerhead doesn’t break off today.
There almost certainlywouldbe an infestation this year, now I thought about it. I’d have to pass the word, and also spend some of my crochet time making mesh bags to put on the showerheads. Liesel must have seen it coming a while ago and worked up a strategy using what was about to become an abundant resource; clever of her. Even more clever to take advantage of a golden opportunity to have Orion do the harvesting, in exchange for her doing the remedial homework she would probably knock off in the next two hours.
I sulked on the bed in completely unjustified resentment while she motored through the entire stack of worksheets with about as much effort as it was taking me to lie there. The only thing that slowed her down even a little were the places where Orion had dripped food and/or maleficaria innards on some of the questions, and she had to get him to help her reconstruct what the unspattered words had been. Actually I overestimated vastly: it took her thirty-eight minutes, and that includes the time she spent sorting it neatly into deadline order and putting it into a pair of folders for him and also tidying up absolutely everywhere.
I veered from being annoyed at her to being annoyed at Orion when he received the folders and just perfunctorily put them on the side of his desk and said, “Great, thanks. How many scales do you need?” It wasn’t effusive enough forme,much less by American standards.
“What Lake means is, he’s pathetically grateful that he doesn’t have to spend the last six months of term dodging vats of strong acid because he couldn’t be arsed to do his own homework,” I said peevishly.
Liesel just shrugged with all the weariness of a veteran of the wars—I suppose she’d worked her way through the entire time doing homework for enclavers—and said to Orion, “Can you get thirty hides? I need them at least two weeks old.”
“Sure,” Orion said blithely, and I didn’t literally gnash my teeth because no one does, do they, but Ifeltas if I were gnashing my teeth. With no justification in the slightest. Liesel had made a good deal for her, and so had Orion, and for that matter it was good forme,too, because I wouldn’t have to keep saving his thick plank self all the time. I didn’t even need to be worried that he was neglecting something important that would come back to bite him the way neglected assignments usually did. He didn’tneedto practice his alchemy, either to graduate or for any other reason; he didn’t have any special affinity for it as far as I’d ever seen. I didn’t even know why he’d done alchemy track in the first place. New York surely had all its lab space packed with geniuses; he wasn’t going to graduate and go be a modestly competent alchemist the rest of his life.
It annoyed me more and not less because I didn’t have a good reason for being annoyed. I couldn’t even come up with anything to say about it. If I’d tried to put into words what I was feeling, it would have been something unpleasant and envious and whinging likeWhy should you get to make easy deals that suit you perfectly to get out of the things you don’t likewith the strong implication ofwhen I never do,which wasn’t even true anymore since I had a New York power-sharer on my wrist.
So I didn’t put it into words; I just lay curled on his bed in an unpleasant stew of cooled sweat and resentment while they discussed their happy arrangement. Orion even stopped being so distracted: even if the malsdidget purged back, Liesel had just cleared his slate completely of anything but hunting and eating and sleep, with the last two as optional as he wanted them to be. She even offered to help him brew up some amphisbaena bait.
The one thing I wasn’t, at all, was jealous. I was so far from it actually that I didn’t even think about being jealous until Liesel shotmean exasperated look and I realized that she’d very much have liked to make me jealous, and would have had a strong go at it if the field had been the least bit open. I couldn’t blame her. She wanted that guaranteed spot in New York enough to have seriously contemplated both Magnus Tebow and murder for it; I certainly ranked Orion higher than those alternatives. If he had so much as taken a first glance at her cleavage, she’d have been a plonker not to make sure he got a second.
But he hadn’t, and when I realized he hadn’t, I started to feel more than a bit panicky, because he hadn’t any excuse not to be taking a first glance. I’m only mildly motivated in that direction myself and I absolutelyhadtaken both a first and a second glance at the cleavage and the bouncy golden curls and shiny pink lips. I think anyone who wasn’t really impervious would have. If you haven’t eaten anything but tasteless slop in years and suddenly someone offers you a slice of chocolate cake, so what if you don’t especially like chocolate cake; if you were interested in food at all, you’d at least think it over before you saidno thanks.
Orion had no business sayingno thanks.I was fairly confident hedidlike cake, or at least was quite ready to give it a try, and he wasn’t getting a bite off my plate if I had anything to say about it, which I did. He ought to have at least licked his chops, even if he didn’t want to dive in, and instead he didn’t so much as drop his eyes for a peek. He wasn’t a good enough actor to have been faking it, either.
Which irritated Liesel, understandably. It was like the homework; that much bloody effort deserved a smidge of appreciation. So when the all-clear bell rang, she said stiffly, “I will be going to my room now,” and cleared out before I had a chance to jump on the bandwagon and leave with her.
“I’ll be going too,” I said in a hurry, swinging my legs over the side of the bed, and Orion came over and said, “Are you sure you’re okay?” a little wistfully and then had the unmitigated nerve to have a quick peek atmybreasts, which were currently under a second-day top marred with alchemy stains and soot, with the sawn-off ends of my hair obscuring the view.
“I’m fine,” I said sharply.
“I’ll walk you back to your room,” he said.
I should just have let him; Precious was in my room. Instead I said, “I don’t need help going nine doors down, Lake,” and then my stomach growled and he said, “And you threw up your whole breakfast, you need to eat something,” and jumped to grab me a sealed muesli bar only eight years past its best that he must have been gifted by some adoring fan. It wasn’t cake maybe, but by Scholomance standards it still qualified as haute cuisine. I stupidly took it and stupidly sat there on the bed eating it—so stupidly that I have the bad feeling I did it on purpose—and obviously he sat down on the bed next to me. He tentatively crept his arm round my shoulders when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, and I pretended I wasn’t paying attention, and then he said in a faintly hopeful voice, “El,” and I told myself to shove him off the bed.
I didn’t. In fact, mortifyingly I kissed him first, and then it was all up, because I’m starving, and Idolike cake, and after I’d taken the first bite I wanted another, and another after that, and I put my hands under his shirt to press them flat against his warm bare back, and it was so good to be this close to someone, only it wasn’t justsomeone,it wasOrion,and he shivered all over and put his arms around me and I could feel how strong he was, the muscles moving under his skin that he’d built over years of fighting all the very worst things that come out of the dark. His mouth was all warm and wonderful and I can’t even describe how good it felt and how much better it made everything. I was one of those poor stupid freshmen longing inside the gymnasium fantasia I’d made, only this was real and I could really have it, inside and after we graduated andforever,and the rest of my dream along with it—a life of building and creation and good work, and every prophecy of evil and destruction could go fuck right off and I could start the rest of my life right now, and Iwantedto, so much I couldn’t stop, couldn’t want to stop.
So I didn’t. I just kept kissing him and running my hands all over him and breathing in time with him, our foreheads pressed together making a warm private space between us to catch our breath in, full of gasps. Orion had a hand all tangled up in my hair, moving around like he wanted to feel the strands running over his fingers, tightening his grip and relaxing in small bursts, his own breath coming out in hard panting raspy gulps, and it felt so good I laughed a little into that open space between us and reached down to grab the bottom of his shirt.
He gave a convulsive shudder and jerked back, pushing me to arm’s length, and crackled out, “No, we can’t,” in a rawly agonized way.
I’ve been mortified in all sorts of awful ways in the course of my life, but I think that might possibly have been the worst. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to; that would’ve been all right. But he wanted to just as much as I did, and he’d nevertheless managed to stop himself, and Ihadn’t,like some undisciplined yahoo grabbing at the shiny treat that I knew perfectly well would lead to complete disaster. He even heaved himself off the bed in the next moment, all but levitating to the other side of the room.
“Right you are,” I said, and fired myself out the door and into the still-lightly-toasted corridor at once.
Precious was right on the other side of my door when I shot it open, so frantic she was leaping almost as high as my waist. I caught her right out of the air and said furiously, “Will you stop? Nothinghappened,no thanks to you.”
I slammed the door hard behind me and slumped onto my bed. Precious crept up my arm to my shoulder and sat there silently until I finally admitted, “No thanks tome,either,” as bitter as rotten squash. She crept closer to my ear and rubbed the lobe with the tip of her little nose and made a few comforting squeaks as I put up my hands to rub away a few leaking tears.
Orion didn’t even havethe bare decency to avoid me the rest of the day. In fact, he spent all of lunchtime casting pathetic looks of desperation and longing in my direction, exactly as though I’d been the one who’d fired him up only to cruelly leave him hanging. Nobody made a peep about it in my direction, but I could tell they all assumed that I had done just that. When I complained to Aadhya about it that afternoon, she told me—with a total lack of sympathy—that no one was spending that much time thinking about my love life, but what did she know?
“You should just be grateful he saved you from yourself, anyway!” she added.
I glared at her. “Andwhowas just asking me for all the salacious details?”
“That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have thrown a bucket of cold water on your head if I’d been in range. What were you thinking? Do you even know when your last period was?”
