It was this: Henry giving Gansey and Blue a tour of Litchfield House as the other boys followed in their togas. One of the things about Aglionby that had always appealed to Gansey was the sense of sameness, of continuity, of tradition, of immutability. Time didn’t exist there … or if it did, it was irrelevant. It had been populated by students for ever and would always be populated by students; they formed a part of something bigger. But at Litchfield House, it was the opposite. It was impossible not to see that each of these boys had come from a place that was not Aglionby and would be headed to a life that was also not Aglionby. The house was messy with books and magazines that were not for school; laptops were tipped open to both games and news sites. Suits hung like bodies in doorways, worn often enough to require easy access. Motorcycle helmets rolled up against used boarding passes and crates of agriculture magazines. Litchfield House boys already had lives. They had pasts and they hurtled on beyond them. Gansey felt strange: He felt he had looked into a funhouse mirror. The details wrong, the colours the same.
It was this: Blue, teetering on the edge of offence, saying, I don’t understand why you keep saying such awful things about Koreans. About yourself. And Henry saying, I will do it before anyone else can. It is the only way to not be angry all of the time. And suddenly Blue was friends with the Vancouver boys. It seemed impossible that they accepted her just like that and that she shed her prickly skin just as fast, but there it was: Gansey saw the moment that it happened. On paper, she was nothing like them. In practice, she was everything like them. The Vancouver crowd wasn’t like the rest of the world, and that was how they wanted it. Hungry eyes, hungry smiles, hungry futures.
It was this: Koh demonstrating how to make a toga of a bed-sheet and sending Blue and Gansey into a cluttered bedroom to change. It was Gansey politely turning his back as she undressed and then Blue turning hers – maybe turning hers. It was Blue’s shoulder and her collarbone and her legs and her throat and her laugh her laugh her laugh. He couldn’t stop looking at her, and here, it didn’t matter, because no one here cared that they were together. Here, he could play his fingers over her fingers as they stood close, she could lean her cheek on his bare shoulder, he could hook his ankle playfully in hers, she could catch herself with an arm around his waist. Here he was unbelievably greedy for that laugh.
It was this: K-pop and opera and hip-hop and eighties power ballads blaring out of a speaker beside Henry’s computer. It was Cheng2 getting impossibly high and talking about his plan to improve economics in the southern states. It was Henry getting drunk but not loud and allowing Ryang to trick him into a game of pool played on the floor with lacrosse sticks and golf balls. It was SickSteve putting movies on the projector with the sound turned down to allow for improved voice-overs.
It was this: the future beginning to hang thick in the air, and Henry starting a quiet, drunk conversation about whether or not Blue would like to travel to Venezuela with him. Blue replying softly that she would, she very much would, and Gansey hearing the longing in her voice like he was being undone, like his own feelings were being unbearably mirrored. I can’t come? Gansey asked. Yes, you can meet us there in a fancy plane, Henry said. Don’t be fooled by his nice hair, Blue interjected, Gansey would hike. And warmth filled the empty caverns in Gansey’s heart. He felt known.
It was this: Gansey starting down the stairs to the kitchen, Blue starting up, meeting in the middle. It was Gansey stepping aside to let her pass, but changing his mind. He caught her arm and then the rest of her. She was warm, alive, vibrant beneath the thin cotton; he was warm, alive, vibrant beneath his. Blue slid her hand over his bare shoulder and then on to his chest, her palm spread out flat on his breastbone, her fingers pressed curiously into his skin.
I thought you would be hairier, she whispered.
Sorry to disappoint. The legs have a bit more going on.
Mine too.
It was this: laughing senselessly into each other’s skin, playing, until it was abruptly no longer play, and Gansey stopped himself with his mouth perilously close to hers, and Blue stopped herself with her belly pressed close to his.
It was this: Gansey saying, “I like you an awful lot, Blue Sargent.”
It was this: Blue’s smile – crooked, wry, ridiculous, flustered. There was a lot of happiness tucked in the corner of that smile, and even though her face was several inches from Gansey, some of it still spilled out and got on him. She put her finger on his cheek where he knew his own smile was dimpling it, and then they took each other’s hands, and they climbed back up together.
It was this: this moment and no other moment, and for the first time that Gansey could remember, he knew what it would feel like to be present in his own life.
Ronan could tell straightaway that something wasn’t right.
When they stepped into Cabeswater, Adam said, “Day,” at the same time that Ronan said, “Fiat lux.” The forest was ordinarily quite attuned to the wishes of its human occupants, particularly when those human occupants were either its magician or its Greywaren. But in this case, the darkness around the trees remained stubbornly present.
“I said, fiat lux,” Ronan snapped, then, grudgingly, “Amabo te.”
Slowly, the dark began to rise, like water bleeding through a paper. It never made it quite to full daylight, however, and what they could see was … not right. They stood among black trees blossomed with dull gray lichen. The air was gloomy and green. Though there were no leaves left on the trees, the sky felt low, a mossy ceiling. The trees had still said nothing; it was like the dull hush before a storm.