Page 23 of Vicious Desire (Fallen Royals 4)

We were friends while she was receiving treatment, but… I wasn’t family. When she left, the nurses couldn’t tell me where, or how she was. I got breadcrumbs from sympathetic rule-breakers. It certainly wasn’t enough to deduce anything except that she might be alive.

The story I formed in my head is that the chemoradiation didn’t work, and she elected to die at home. She didn’t say goodbye because she didn’t want to be another person to leave me.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

I can only shake my head. “What are you doing here?”

She hooks her thumb back toward the door. “The guidance counselor said the door might be open if you were in here.”

I narrow my eyes. How the hell does the guidance counselor know I come in here?

Maybe it’s obvious.

“I just transferred,” she says. “Um, well, more like I was forced to change schools? I didn’t last long at Lion’s Head.”

We grew up in different worlds, and she’d lament the public school system in its entirety.

“I didn’t know you were there,” I manage.

She exhales. “I’m sorry. I totally bailed on you. I liked your mom, you know? I got into a trial and she didn’t, and it just made me feel too fucking guilty to reach out.”

I squint at her. There were so many close calls to even remember most of them—drug trials and programs, new FDA approved treatments, on and on. Through it all, I was struggling in my freshman year of high school, missing more classes than I attended.

“Is she okay?”

I appreciate that she doesn’t ask if she died. If the cancer got her in the end.

She was never one to mince words.

“She’s in remission.” I can’t quite call her okay when she spends more hours in her bed than out of it, but she’s alive. Time for a subject change. “Did you just transfer in?”

“Today.” She grins. “You’re a senior, right? I am, too. Dad said I needed to do some sports and make friends—the full high school experience crammed into a few months. I remembered you went here, and when I asked…”

“They pointed you here.” I look around and sigh. “Okay, then. Schedule?”

“Schedule.” Amelie held out her hand.

I gave her the sheet of paper, holding my breath. The guidance counselor had asked a meek sophomore to show me around, but she was scared off by Amelie. An imposing force.

We had met at a party a week prior, before I knew anyone at Emery-Rose. Now, she looped her arm through mine and pulled me along.

“We have study hall together at the end of the day. It’ll be great. Half the time a teacher doesn’t even show, and we can leave early. We’re going to be best friends.”

Best friends turned out to be a load of shit.

She put her claim in, made sure all the ‘dangerous’ boys stayed away—including Eli. By that point, though, it was too late.

“Here,” Parker says.

I take the schedule from her and scan it quickly, noting that we do have a few classes together. More than a few, actually. Most of my day will be with her.

Gram never believed in coincidences, and she instilled that in me. I hand it back, wondering if I should move some things around.

It isn’t like I don’t want a friend—the opposite, really. I need more friends now that Margo’s gone. It’s just… this is a lot.

Hospital life and school life don’t need to merge.

No one at Emery-Rose knows the real story.

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