Page 2 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

Rory doesn’t turn around, but in the distance his clipped voice informs me, “Outside.”

I frown. I haven’t explored the grounds yet, the manor being too large to fully get my head around even in the three days I’ve been here. I get lost constantly, turning down one art-laden hallway after the next and ending up confronted by a series of locked mahogany doors.

Yesterday I managed to stumble across Rory’s bedroom, which he never told me about. The name on the door confusingly saidRuairidh, which looks as alien and Gaelic as Finlay’s studdedAlba gu bràthblazer, but the sheets on the four-poster bed inside were the same blue and white of the soccer club I’d seen during Operation Strike First, and on his bedside table had stood unsmashed photo frames featuring his mother.

As I round the corner to the front entrance, Rory’s hurrying into a green-brown coat with large pockets. Captain Porthos joyfully weaves around his thick black Wellington boots. Rory slings a large messenger bag across his right shoulder and then places a flat gray cap over his blond hair. And the schoolboy I know transforms into the lord of a country estate.

Rory gives me a pointed look, his gaze sliding down my body and flickering where the edge of my sundress meets the skin of my thigh. “You can’t wear bright yellow,” he says dismissively. “You’ll need to get changed.” He passes me something that resembles forest-green coveralls and nods over to a room in the corner for somewhere I can undress.

I stare at him, drinking him in. “Are you a hunter?” The only thing missing from him is a rifle.

He eyes me carefully. “No.” When I don’t move, he adds, “I want to show you something.”

“What?”

“You’re not going to find out if you don’t get dressed. Move.” He jerks his head once more in the direction of the empty room, and I sigh, following his orders yet again.

It’s not that I’m weak or gullible, though some may say I am. Rory just knows the direct route to my mind, and that’s by dangling a mystery in front of me like a carrot on a stick.

I pull on the waterproof suit, snapping buttons all the way up my torso. When I return to Rory, feeling like an exterminator from pest control, he shoots me an approving look and hands me a pair of wellies.

Armstrong, the butler, dressed in a neat black suit, pulls open the wide wooden door for us. Rory glides through with a quiet, “Thank you, Armstrong,” and ruffles Captain Porthos’s scruffy gray fur. The dog lopes beside him, springing onto the grass with a happy yip. When I don’t immediately follow, Rory turns to give me a pointed look. “What are you waiting for?”

He’s almost halfway down the interminable gravel path that leads off in a straight line, disappearing at the horizon into a copse of dark trees, before I step a foot outside.

The land is so barren, stretching for acres and acres around us. Lochkelvin school had been remote and strange but at least it had been populated by noisy kids. Lochkelvin estate feels more like a secret, the hush-hush hub of private meetings where unorthodox plans and schemes are outlined for the future of this desperate country.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask again, a yell, staring at the thick smudge of woodland bristling across the horizon edge. “I don’t trust you.”

Rory flicks an irritated glance at Armstrong before glaring at me. If he thinks I’m going to break down when confronted by one of his cold stares when I refuse to dance to his tune…

“If you don’t want to come, fine. I’m not forcing you. Go back to reading your crappy space fiction books. But if you want to see something special, all you have to do is follow.”

I don’t bother correcting him that I’d been reading Mary Wollstonecraft’sVindication of the Rights of Woman.

He turns his back to me and proceeds down the path, the crunch of gravel firm beneath his proud marching boots.

I heave a sigh, hovering at the doorway. He’s such an arrogant fuckwit.

There’s a polite cough beside me. “If I may,” Armstrong murmurs, out of earshot from his lord. I stare at him, startled, unaware he could be allowed his own agency. So far during my time here, the staff had been door-opening, food-serving robots, and I’d never heard any of them speaking out of turn before. “The young master has taken it upon himself in our gamekeeper’s absence to personally assess the grounds. What he doesn’t explicitly say, however, in order to keep the momentum of surprise, is that a discovery has been made recently. The young master has been quite enthusiastic about it, which, if you may forgive him, has led him to a certain forgetfulness in providing you with this context.”

It takes a while to parse Armstrong’s strong Standard English. I find it bemusing that a butler should sound more aristocratic than Rory but there’s no denying the clipped consonants and enunciated vowels, as though it’s something he’s studied for years to master.

I twist my lips into a grimace. “You’re saying I should follow the young— Rory?”

“It is what I would suggest, yes, though I am but a lowly butler.” There’s a twinkle in Armstrong’s eye as he speaks. This whole island is awash with jovial self-deprecation that I don’t understand, the wry ironic-but-not humor. I’m getting better at it, though. If I were still the same girl who first landed here, I’d be aghast.

“Thanks.”

Armstrong nods at me, his eyes tracing me as I step into the expansive grounds. The sky is overcast with the threat of summer rain and I flip up the hood of my waterproof just in case, jogging all the way down the gravel path to catch up with Rory and Captain Porthos. Mainly Captain Porthos, who at least looks happy to see me, his pink tongue lolling from his open mouth and his tail wagging exuberantly. Rory’s gray gaze slides across to me, flaring with triumph, as though he knew all along that I’d follow him to the ends of the earth.

I hate proving him right every single time.

“Where are we going?” I huff, falling into step beside Rory. Ice-cold rain begins to drizzle on the front of my scalp so I tighten the toggles of my hood. “If we have to venture out into the middle of nowhere, could you not at least have picked a day with better weather?”

He raises an eyebrow. “In Scotland?”

I scowl at him. He says this but I’ve experienced some gloriously sunny days these past few weeks, playing chess with Danny on the front grounds of Lochkelvin, watching a single cloud drifting for hours across a bright blue sky. Thinking about Danny makes me ache for him.

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