Page 111 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

He’s beautiful. So beautiful that it hurts to look at him, that it hurts to realize he’s mine. The responsibility of it all, to be so in love, with the hurt that would ever come to pass if Rory were to somehow be taken away from me. The pain just looking at Rory brings, the terror of losing him in some way, of putting a foot wrong, because a world without Rory would be pure and utter torture for my obsessed, restless heart.

As one of the youngest here, Rory attracts eyes and attentive murmurs — as do I, though it’s not lost on me that the drawn-out glances he receives are more covetous than the confusion my existence brings. I’m so overwhelmingly underdressed, borrowing one of Finlay’s old, oversized black pleather biker jackets, that I feel barbaric just standing here with my naked earlobes. Like it would have been better for everyone if I’d been refused entry at the door.

But Rory notices none of this. For whatever reason, he only has eyes for me.

“We’re in the box,” Rory declares with a smug little smile, flashing the pair of tickets at me. For the briefest second, I think I see something of note on the tickets, but Rory quickly slides them into the inner pocket of his overcoat.

There’s only one box on each side of the theater, and the theater is filled from top to bottom. From our vantage point, it’s as though we’re rulers of tonight’s performance, over the queendom of our audience. But somehow the performance doesn’t seem all that important, because even just being here, sitting high up here with Rory in our own private chamber at the theater… I could stay like this all night.

It’s one of the grandest, most spectacular buildings I’ve ever been inside. Bronze statues of nude men and women hold glass globe lanterns aloft. A motif of carved golden wings decorates the balconies. The ceiling bursts with a fantastical celestial sky, the scene broken up with cavorting chubby-cheeked cherubs shooting arrows lined with gold from heavenly, cotton-colored clouds. A monstrously large candelabra spans the entirety of the ceiling, with layers upon layers of glinting, sparkling light. I crane my neck to take a closer look, wishing I could recall this art forever in my mind, for the sensation of being culturally overwhelmed that it makes me feel.

As I tilt my head so far back that I end up arching on my chair, Rory suggests with a wry quirk of his lips, “Maybe it’d be easier if you took a photo?”

I decide to stop trying to embarrass myself and behave as primly as everyone else in the theater, sitting motionless and waiting patiently like a good little citizen for the performance to start.

Idly, Rory flicks through a thick program, glancing with vague interest at the photographs and reading none of the words. After a moment, he passes it across to me.

“Why did you get a program if you didn’t want to read it?”

“It was free.”

I stare at him. I’m not a complete animal — Ihavebeen to a couple of theater productions in my life, and the programs are never free.

“They’re giving programs for the National Opera away for free?”

“They’re free for me,” Rory amends.

When Rory notices me still staring at him, he explains, as though trying to use as few words as possible, “My mother… was a dancer with the National Opera.” Each word feels bitten-out in some way, low-toned like he doesn’t want to talk about it. “I get complimentary tickets. I get complimentary everything.” After a beat, Rory adds, “She was very well-loved. Did a lot for the company.”

“I didn’t realize,” I murmur, taking in the tense line of Rory’s jaw, the molten silver of his eyes. He’s clearly still hurting.

But it explains the tickets. I thought there’d been something strange about them — a word where the price should have been.

Rory takes my hand in his, squeezing it gently. “I don’t like talking about… things.” He gives me a tight smile. But then his expression softens slightly. “She would have liked you,” he says, a smile spreading, unchecked, across his face. “She would have liked you a lot.”

My heart warms at the idea, of the approval of someone I’ll never get to meet.

It seems horrible, but knowing how much Rory clearly adored his mother, one of my first thoughts is,Why did the wrong Munro have to die?

What could Rory’s mother, a nineteen-year-old dancer, possibly have seen in Oscar Munro?

To my dismay, it doesn’t take long for my shallow mind to formulate a list of answers to that question, and I hate myself in an instant.

Glancing guiltily off to the side, I look down at the array of heads lined in neat rows in the theater stalls. I amuse myself by thinking they resemble newly planted bulbs in rows and rows of flowerbeds.

Rory’s still holding my hand. As the blaze from the magnificent overhead candelabra, and the light from the lanterns held by the naked statues, gradually dim to small amber cones, he lifts our joined hands to his mouth and kisses it.

“Don’t tell Fin,” he murmurs unexpectedly against my skin, so inaudible I almost miss it over the first sweeping notes from the orchestra. “Don’t tell him I know about you two.”

I give him a narrow look in the dark, wondering what’s made him suggest such a thing. But the curtain rises for the performance, and all thoughts to the contrary quickly scatter.

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