The Dream Thieves (45 page)

“Adam has killed himself for Aglionby,” he said suddenly. “And for what? Education?”

No one went to Aglionby for education. “Not just that,” she said. “Prestige? Opportunity?”

“But maybe he never had a chance. Maybe success is in your genes.”

Something more.
“This really isn’t a conversation I feel like having right now.”

“What? Oh — that is
not
what I meant. I mean that I’m rich —”

“Not helping.”

“I’m rich in
support
. So are you. You grew up
loved
, didn’t you?”

She didn’t even have to think before she nodded.

“Me too,” Gansey said. “I never doubted it. I never even thought to doubt it. And even Ronan grew up with that, too, back when it mattered, when he was becoming the person he was. The age of reason, or whatever. I wish you could have met him before. But growing up being told you can do anything … I used to think, before I met you, that it was about the money. Like, I thought Adam’s family was too poor for love.”

“Oh, but since
we’re
poor but happy —” started Blue hotly. “The cheerful peasants —”

“Don’t, please, Jane,” he interrupted. “You know what I mean. I’m telling you I was stupid over it. I thought it was about trying so hard to survive that you didn’t have the time to be a good parent. Obviously, that’s not it. Because you and I, we’re both … wealthy in love.”

“I suppose,” Blue said. “But that’s not going to get me into community college.”

“Community college!” Gansey echoed. His shocked emphasis on
community
hurt Blue more than she could admit out loud. She sat quietly and miserably in the passenger seat until he glanced over. “Surely you can get scholarships.”

“They don’t cover books.”

“That’s only a few hundred dollars a semester. Right?”

“Just how much do you think I make at a shift at Nino’s, Gansey?”

“Don’t they make grants to cover that?”

Frustration welled in her. Everything that had happened that day felt ready to explode out of her. “Either I’m an idiot or I’m not, Gansey — make up your mind! Either I’m clever enough to have researched this myself and be eligible for a scholarship, or I am too stupid to have considered the options and I can’t get a scholarship anyway!”

“Please don’t be angry.”

She rested her head on the door. “Sorry.”

“Jesus,” Gansey said. “I wish this week was over.”

For a few minutes, they drove in silence: up, up, up.

Blue asked, “Did you ever meet his parents?”

In a low, unfamiliar voice, he said, “I
hate
them.” And a little bit later, “The bruises he’d come to school with. Who has he ever had to love him? Ever?”

In her mind, Adam pressed that fist against her bedroom wall. So gently. Though every muscle was knotted, wanting to destroy it.

She said, “Look there.”

Gansey followed her gaze. The trees on one side of the road had fallen away, and suddenly they could see that the little gravel track they were on clung to the very side of the mountain, winding up like tinsel. All of the valley suddenly spread out below. Though hundreds of stars were already visible, the sky was still a deep blue, a whimsical touch from an idealistic painter. The mountains on the other side of the valley, however, were night-black, everything the sky was not. Dark and cool and silent. And between them, at the mountains’ feet, was Henrietta itself, studded with yellow and white lights.

Gansey let the Pig slide to a stop. He stepped on the parking brake. They both gazed out the driver’s side window.

It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn’t let you admire it. The sort of beauty that just always hurt.

Gansey sighed, small and quiet and ragged, like he hadn’t meant to let it escape. She shifted her gaze from the window to the side of his head, watching him watch instead. He pressed his thumb against his lower lip — this was Gansey, that gesture — and then he swallowed. It was, she thought, just as she felt when she looked at the stars, when she walked in Cabeswater.

“What are you thinking?” Blue asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Then, when he did, he kept his eyes trained on the view. “I’ve been all over the world. More than one country for every year that I’m alive. Europe and South America and — the highest mountains and the widest rivers and the prettiest villages. I’m not saying that to show off. I’m just saying it because I’m trying to understand how I could have been so many places and yet this is the only place that feels like home. This is the only place I
belong
. And because I’m trying to understand how, if I belong here, it …”

“— hurts so much,” Blue finished.

Gansey turned to her, his eyes bright. He just nodded.

Why
, she thought, agonized,
couldn’t it have been Adam?

She said, “If you find out, will you tell me?”

He’s going to die, Blue, don’t —

“I don’t know if we’re meant to find out,” he said.

“Oh, we’re finding out,” Blue said with extra ferocity, trying to tamp down the feeling rising in her. “If you’re not going to, I’ll do it myself.”

He said, “If you find out first, will you tell
me
?”

“Sure thing.”

“Jane, in this light,” he started, “you …
Jesus.
Jesus. I’ve got to get my head straight.”

He suddenly threw open the door and got out, seizing the roof to pull himself out faster. He slammed the door and then walked around the back of the car; one hand scrubbed through his hair.

The car was utterly quiet. She heard the buzzing of night insects and singing of frogs and slow chirps of birds who should have known better. Every so often, the cooling engine let out a little sigh like a breath. Gansey didn’t return.

Fumbling in the dark, she pushed open her door. She found him leaning against the back of the car, arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey said, not looking at her as she leaned on the car beside him. “That was very rude.”

Blue thought of a few things to reply, but couldn’t say any of them out loud. She felt like one of the night birds had gotten inside her. It tumbled and fumbled every time she breathed.

He’s going to die; this is going to hurt —

But she touched his neck, right where his hair was cut evenly above the collar of his shirt. He was very still. His skin was hot, and she could very, very faintly feel his pulse beneath her thumb. It wasn’t like when she was with Adam. She didn’t have to guess what to do with her hands. They knew. This was what it
should
have felt like with Adam. Less like playacting and more like a foregone conclusion.

He closed his eyes and leaned, just a little, so that her palm was flat on his neck, fingers sprawled from his ear to his shoulder.

Everything in Blue was charged.
Say something. Say something.

Gansey lifted her hand gently from his skin, holding it as formally as a dance. He put it against his mouth.

Blue froze. Absolutely still. Her heart didn’t beat. She didn’t blink. She couldn’t say
don’t kiss me
. She couldn’t even form
don’t
.

He just leaned his cheek and the edge of his mouth against her knuckles and then set her hand back.

“I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

Her skin burned with the memory of his mouth. The thrashing bird of her heart shivered and shivered again. “Thanks for remembering.”

He looked back over the valley. “Oh, Jane.”

“Oh, Jane, what?”

“He didn’t want me to, did you know? He told me not to try to get you to come to the table that night at Nino’s. I had to talk
him
into it. And then I made such an idiot of myself —” He turned back to her. “What are you
thinking
?”

She just looked at him.
That I went out with the wrong boy. That I destroyed Adam tonight for no reason at all. That I am not sensible at all —
“I thought you were an asshole.”

Gallantly, he said, “Thank God for past tense.” Then: “I can’t — we can’t do this to him.”

It was jagged inside her. “I’m not a thing. To
have
.”

“No. Jesus. Of course you’re not. But you know what I mean.”

She did. And he was right. They couldn’t do this to him. She shouldn’t do it to herself, anyway. But how it made a disaster of her chest and her mouth and her head.

“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,” he said. “Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.” He flailed an arm toward the stars. “And then we’d never say anything about it again.”

That could’ve been the end of it.

I want something more.

She said, “We can pretend. Just once. And then we’ll never say anything about it again.”

What a strange, shifting person he was. The Gansey who turned to her now was a world away from the lofty boy she’d first met. Without any hesitation, she stretched her arms around his neck. Who was this Blue? She felt bigger than her body. High as the stars. He leaned toward her — her heart spun again — and pressed his cheek against hers. His lips didn’t touch her skin, but she felt his breath, hot and uneven, on her face. His fingers splayed on either side of her spine. Her lips were so close to his jaw that she felt his hint of stubble at the end of them. It was mint and memories and the past and the future and she felt as if she’d done this before and already she longed to do it again.

Oh, help
, she thought.
Help, help, help.

He pulled away. He said, “And now we never speak of it again.”

T
hat night, after Gansey had gone to meet Blue, Ronan retrieved one of Kavinsky’s green pills from his still-unwashed pair of jeans and returned to bed. Propped up in the corner, he stretched out his hand to Chainsaw, but she ignored him. She had stolen a cheese cracker and now was very busily stacking things on top of it to make sure Ronan would never take it back. Although she kept glancing back at his outstretched hand, she pretended not to see it as she added a bottle cap, an envelope, and a sock to the pile hiding the cracker.

“Chainsaw,” he said. Not sharply, but like he meant it. Recognizing his tone, she soared to the bed. She didn’t generally enjoy petting, but she turned her head left and right as Ronan softly traced the small feathers on either side of her beak. How much energy had it taken from the ley line to create her? he wondered. Was it more to take out a person? A car?

Ronan’s phone buzzed. He tilted it to read the incoming text:

your mom calls me after we spend the day together

Ronan let the phone fall back to the bedspread. Ordinarily, seeing Kavinsky’s name light up his phone gave him a strange sense of urgency, but not tonight. Not after spending so many hours with him. Not after dreaming the Camaro. He needed to process all of this first.

ask me what my first dream was

Chainsaw pecked irritably at the buzzing phone. She’d learned a lot from Ronan. He rolled the green pill in his hand. He wouldn’t take anything out of his dreams tonight. Not knowing what they were doing to the ley line. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t still choose what to dream of.

my favorite forgery is Prokopenko

Ronan put the pill back in his pocket. He felt warm and sleepy and just — fine. For once, he felt fine. Sleep didn’t feel like a weapon tucked inside his brain. He knew he could choose to dream of the Barns now, if he tried, but he didn’t want to dream of something that existed in this world.

I’m going to eat you alive man

Ronan closed his eyes. He thought:
My father. My father. My father.

And when he opened his eyes again, the old trees roamed upward all around him. The sky was black and star-full overhead. Everything smelled of hickory smoke and boxwood, grass seed and lemon cleaner.

And there was his father, sitting in the charcoal BMW he had dreamt all those years ago. He was an image of Ronan, and also of Declan, and also of Matthew. A handsome devil with one eye the color of a promise and the other the color of a secret. When he saw Ronan, he rolled down the window.

“Ronan,” he said.

It sounded like he meant to say
Finally.

“Dad,” Ronan said.

He was going to say
I missed you.
But he had been missing Niall Lynch for as long as he knew him.

A grin cracked over his father’s face. He had the widest smile in the world, and he’d given it to his youngest son. “You figured it out,” he said. He held a finger to his lips. “Remember?”

Music wafted out the open window of the BMW that had been Niall Lynch’s but was now Ronan’s. A soaring bit of tune played by the uilleann pipes, dissipating into the trees.

“I know,” Ronan replied. “Tell me what you meant in the will.”

His father said,
“T’Libre vero-e ber nivo libre n’acrea.”

This Will stands as fact unless a newer document is created.

“It’s a loophole,” his father said. “A loophole for thieves.”