EXCERPT
Footsteps in the hall outside—both boys froze. Then a voice, Ms. Lowell’s. “No, I’ll meet you there, I’m just going to swing by and check it on my way to…”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Logan muttered. “We’ll never get out of here.”
“Out the window?” Jace suggested, circling the desk to stand in front of it.
“We’re on the fourth floor,” said Logan. “Shit, shit, shit! We need a distraction!” They were going to get booted. If they could come up with any reason to be in the director’s office other than stealing files, maybe they’d have a chance, but with the papers scattered everywhere, they needed a distraction, they needed the Bens, they needed something—anything—to keep Lowell from noticing what they were doing.
There was no time, no time, no time. The footsteps were right outside Ms. Lee’s door. She’d be inside the director’s office in seconds.
Logan despaired. They were getting booted. There was nothing they could do. He would get sent away. He would get put in Shalecrest like his parents. He would lose everything again.
His mind filled with exactly one thought. He did the only thing he could think of doing, the only stupid, useless thing.
He grabbed Jace with a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him.
Jace jerked back in shock, then some recognition sparked in his eyes. “God, that’s fucking brilliant,” he said. “Take the files and run once the coast is clear.” Then he put a hand on either side of Logan’s face and kissed him hard.
The world stopped turning. Logan forgot what breathing felt like. The earth must have turned upside down; all the blood was rushing to his head and his chest was bursting open and his stomach had disappeared. He didn’t even process that he was pulling Jace against him, doing his best to crush him; he just wanted to be closer, closer, closer.
“Oh—oh!” A woman’s shocked exclamation reminded Logan they weren’t alone, but he would’ve happily kept going, caught or not, if Jace hadn’t pulled away sharply.
The expression on Jace’s face when he jerked back was like a punch in the gut for Logan. He looked surprised at the intrusion, but also mortified, disgusted, completely unsettled. Jace glanced between Logan and Ms. Lowell where she stood in the doorway with her hand over her mouth, and desperate horror grew on his face. He tried to step away from Logan, his hands raised as if to signal that he hadn’t just been touching the other boy, but Logan’s hands were clenched on Jace’s jacket.
Jace slapped his hands away, something between fear and fury flickering over his face. “I—we—it wasn’t—” he choked out at Ms. Lowell. “It’s not what it—God!”
Lurching like he was on the edge of vomiting, Jace ran, pushing past Ms. Lowell and into the hall. Logan stood staring after him, every bit as stricken on the outside as he felt on the inside. Ms. Lowell shot him a baffled, unhappy look, then turned to follow Jace. “Mr. Evans?” she called. It wasn’t an angry tone; she sounded concerned.
As soon as she was gone, Logan remembered his task: get the files, get out. He scrambled to gather those they’d scattered, scooping them into a loose pile and throwing them haphazardly into his bag. He seized another handful from the desk and tossed that in too, then kicked the drawer shut and ran for all he was worth.
When he burst into the common room, he could barely breathe, both from the exertion of the run and the flood of emotions trying to choke him. He pounded up to his bunk and shoved the papers into the slit he’d made in his mattress. Heart hammering, he pulled the sheet down over his temporary hiding place, tore off his jacket and socks, and stowed them.
Someone snored to his right, and he wanted to shake them and demand to know how they could sleep at a time like this—the world was still upside down.
There was no question of him sleeping. He headed out of the room and settled in a common room chair, waiting for Jace. As the large wall clock above the fireplace ticked away second after second, the incessant rhythm of it made Logan want to crawl out of his skin.
Several long, torturous minutes later, the common room door opened, and Logan shot to his feet. Jace and Ms. Lowell entered together, her hand on his shoulder in a half-mother, half-jailer gesture. Ms. Lowell gave Logan a smile altogether too warm for having just found them doing something against the rules, but Logan’s eyes went straight to Jace.
Jace was a mess. His face flickered with expressions of fear and uncertainty, his eyes red from crying or near crying.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Ms. Lowell said gently. When she spoke again, her voice held a bit more steel. “Do not let me catch you anywhere you’re not supposed to be again. I mean it. You have to be smarter than this.”
As soon as she shut the door behind her, every element of Jace’s demeanor changed. As he threw off his discontent like a costume, his shoulders straightened, his head rose, and his face split into a wicked, crooked grin. He lunged the distance between them and threw shadow punches at Logan’s torso.
“You are a genius,” he whisper-shouted. “That was some of the fastest thinking I’ve ever seen. Not many ways we could’ve thrown Lowell for a loop. God, I played her like a violin.” He adopted his miserable stance again but more exaggerated this time, a parody of himself. “‘Oh, Ms. Lowell, I’m just so confused…we just got so close and…well, there’s something exciting about being somewhere you’re not supposed to be with someone you’re not supposed to be with—’ She ate it up, Logan, I tell you what. ’Course, now she thinks we’re gay, but I knew she’d let that slide, and I’d say that’s better than being booted with no prospects.” His laugh bubbled over with genuine delight.
Logan’s stomach sank, but he tried to mimic Jace’s laughter. It came out strangely hollow. “Yeah…now she thinks…we’re gay. Funny.”
“And don’t tell me you can’t act, Homeschool. That was fucking brilliant. Probably the best I’ve ever seen. Your face! You had Lowell convinced. Hell, you had me convinced.”
All the pleasure drained out of the night like Jace had pulled a plug. Logan hated this. He hated how much joy Jace found in the idea that he’d been acting. It made his words more acidic than he intended. “Yeah, I had me convinced too.”
Jace hadn’t quite caught his mood. “Huh?” He was still grinning.
“Nothing. Forget it. Glad we made it out clean.” He pushed past Jace to the stairs.
“Whoa, hey!” Jace grabbed his arm and held him back. “You’re not nearly excited enough about this getaway. Take a moment and luxuriate in a good idea well executed!”
“It wasn’t a good idea, Jace,” Logan snapped. “It wasn’t an idea at all. I just…did it.” Seeing Jace didn’t comprehend his meaning, he continued. “I racked my brain to come up with a distraction but came up with nothing. I knew we were goners. So I stopped trying to think of distractions and I kissed you. Those were separate events.”
“I don’t understand,” Jace said, but Logan said nothing more to clarify. He just stared at the curly-haired boy.
Several ticks of the wall clock sliced up the long moment of silence between them. Some of Jace’s overzealous glee drained from him, leaving an expression that vaguely resembled the one he’d worn on his way into the common room. At length, Jace said, “What are you trying to say? You kissed me because…you wanted to kiss me?”
“Yes.” Logan couldn’t hear his own words over his heart. He felt like he was hoisting a huge weight over the edge of a ledge and waiting for gravity to take it. “I did what I’ve been wanting to do since the day I met you because I thought everything was over. I thought we’d be booted.”
Understanding dawned on Jace’s face like he’d just realized for the first time that night follows day. If Logan hadn’t been breathing so shakily himself, he might have heard the way each of Jace’s breaths came faster than the last.
