They release me, shrieking as they stumble away. Fall back on the floor.
Pushing to my feet, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The red-gold luster of my skin. The sharpened features and ridged nose. The face that blurs in and out like shimmering firelight.
With a gasp, I dive into a stall, slam the door shut. Gulp air and fight to cool my lungs.
And hope, desperately hope, that none of them saw what I just did in the mirror.
I press vibrating palms against the door. Bowing my head, I stare blindly at the scuffed toes of my shoes, dragging air thickly between my teeth as my tingling back arches. I focus. Push back at the wings itching to spring, unfold, and rip through my shirt.
Panting, I fight every instinct, every fiber of my being. My arms tremble, muscles burn.
It’s so hard with a little bit of myself released…. The rest of me wants out, too.
For once, it’s the reverse. Me, straining to be human, to bury my draki.
Not. Now. Not now! I toss my head, catch hair in my mouth and spit it out.
Voices overlap outside my stall, but I can’t process them. Can only fight down the swamping heat.
Then I hear it.
Him.
The one voice I would hear even in death. A rotting corpse in the ground, I would sit up and take notice. It reaches inside me, stokes the fire.
My fear intensifies.
“Go away!” I beg, my voice already thick, garbled with char and smolder. I work my jaw, my throat, try to stop the altering of my speech, the conversion of my vocal cords.
He can’t be here. Can’t see me like this.
“Are you all right?” Will beats on the door. “Did they hurt you?”
“Hurt her?” Brooklyn snarls. “Look at my arm! She lit me on fire! I barely even looked at her and she attacked me! Come out of there!” A kick shudders the stall door, throwing it against my trembling palms. I jerk back.
My face tightens, cheeks sharpening, stretching—bones dragging into position. I’m losing the fight. I stare down at my arms, moan at the sight of the blurring flesh. Ancient instinct grips me. I need more time.
Why did he have to be here now?
My wings push, just a little, just enough, and I hear my shirt rip.
The cotton tee loosens around my shoulders, slithers down my arms. My wings unfurl, the gossamer membranes stretch behind me, rippling, eager for flight. Not yet fully manifested, my wings are still strong enough to raise me in the air.
The soles of my feet lift up from the tiled floor.
I grasp the slippery sides of the stall, fighting to still the quivering sheets of red-gold.
Heat courses through me. Struggling to demanifest, I clench my teeth against a scream. A groan spills through.
“Jacinda! Open the door!”
Then there’s another sound. A slam. Shoes squeal on tile. A jarring thump. The stall shakes all around me.
A breathless “Jacinda…”
His voice isn’t at the front of my stall anymore. I follow it. Heart in my throat, I blink tightly, and look up.
Will stares down at me over the top of the stall, his mouth parted in a small O of shock.
His hazel eyes gleam dully, something within dying as he looks at me.
“Will,” I manage to get out in a breath of steam, my English barely intelligible. “Please.”
I don’t know his face. The beauty is the same but not. Different. Terrible.
Then he’s gone. I hear the beat of his footsteps, hard smacks striking the floor, fleeing the bathroom. Fleeing me.
According to the clock above the principal’s desk, we’re still in seventh period.
I’m sure it’s a mistake. I didn’t betray my kind, lose everything, every hope and chanceWill—in so little time.
The principal hangs up the phone and faces me again. His eyes are a harsh blue beneath bushy gray brows. I’m sure it’s the type of stare that inflicts fear in most adolescents, but it has little effect on me. Not when right now, somewhere nearby, Will is connecting all the puzzle pieces.
I sit numbly, turning to stare out his office window at the red-brown earth edging the quad, cracked and wrinkly like an old man’s skin beneath the baking sun.
I managed to fully demanifest before the staff arrived to investigate the commotion.
Despite Catherine’s assertion that we didn’t start it, that Brooklyn and her friends attacked us, I’ve been suspended.
Several of the girls showed their burns as evidence against me. Even though they couldn’t find a lighter on me, the theory was that I flushed it down the toilet.
“Your mother’s on her way.”
I nod, knowing she would be home by now. She promised to pick us up this afternoon.
I’m wearing a red Chaparral T-shirt that smells like the cardboard box from which it emerged. My ripped shirt sits at the bottom of a wastebasket. Everyone assumes it got that way during the fight. Another assumption I’m willing to play along with.
“We have a strict no-tolerance policy at this school, Ms. Jones. No violence, no bullying.”
I nod, barely processing his words. In my mind, I see only Will’s face. Hear the fast beat of his footsteps as he bolted away. Think how he must hate me.
Gradually, it sinks in, the dread settling deeper and deeper with every passing moment.
Something else has happened. Even worse than Will hating me—as terrible as that is.
I’ve done it. Exposed all draki. Revealed our greatest secret. The one thing that has protected us for centuries. The one thing the hunters and enkros don’t know. Can never know.