"Was it what you expected?"
"I don’t know what I expected. I’d read all about the effects of the line but I never thought it would be so pronounced. So … I never expected the trees. I never expected it to happen so fast, either. I’m used to getting one clue every month, and then beating that dead horse until another one comes along. Not this." He paused, his smile wide and benevolent. "This is all down to you. Putting us on the line, finally. I could kiss you."
Though he was obviously joking, Blue skittered to the side.
"What was that for?"
She asked, "Do you believe in psychics?"
"Well, I went to one, didn’t I?"
"That doesn’t mean anything. Lots of people go to psychics just for a laugh."
"I went because I believe. Well, I believe in ones that are good at what they do. I just think there’s quite a lot of hooey you have to wade through to get to them. Why?"
Blue viciously stabbed the ground with her snake stick. "Because my mom’s told me, ever since I was born, that if I kiss my true love, he’ll die."
Gansey laughed.
"Don’t laugh, you —" Blue was going to say bastard but it felt too strong and she lost the nerve.
"Well, it’s just a very precautionary-sounding sort of thing, isn’t it? Don’t date or you’ll go blind. Kiss your true love and he bites it."
"It’s not just her!" Blue protested. "Every psychic or medium I’ve ever met tells me the same thing. Besides, my mom’s not like that. She wouldn’t just play around with something like that. It’s not pretend."
"Sorry," Gansey said, realizing she was genuinely annoyed with him. "I was being a dick again. Do you know how he’s supposed to die, this unlucky guy?"
Blue shrugged.
"Ah. Devil’s in the details, I guess. So you just kiss nobody, in a precautionary way?" He watched her nod. "That seems grim, Jane. I won’t lie."
She shrugged again. "I don’t usually tell people. I don’t know why I told you. Don’t tell Adam."
Gansey’s eyebrows spiked up toward his hairline. "It’s like that, is it?"
Her face went instantly hot. "No. I mean … No. No. It’s just, because it’s not — because I don’t know — I would rather play it safe."
Blue fantasized that time had begun again with them getting out of the car and her instead striking up a conversation about the weather or which classes he was taking. It didn’t seem like her face would ever stop burning.
Gansey’s voice, when he replied, was a little rough. "Well, if you killed Adam, I’d be quite upset."
"I’ll do my best not to."
For a moment, the silence was uneven and uncomfortable, and then he said, his voice more ordinary, "Thanks for telling me. I mean, trusting me with something like that."
Relieved, Blue replied, "Well, you told me about how you felt about Ronan and Adam and the nonplussing thing. Only, I still want to know … Why are you looking? For Glendower?"
He smiled ruefully, and for a moment, Blue was afraid that he was about to switch over to flippant, glossy Gansey, but in the end, he just said, "It’s a difficult story to summarize."
"You’re in a pre–Ivy League high school. Try."
"All right. Where to start? Maybe — you saw my EpiPen. It’s for bee stings. I’m allergic. Badly."
Blue stopped in her tracks, alarmed. Hornets nested on the ground, and this was prime territory for them: quiet areas close to trees. "Gansey! This is the countryside. Where bees live!"
He made a dismissive gesture, as if eager to be off this particular subject. "Keep poking things with your stick and it’ll be okay."
"My stick! All week we’ve been walking in the woods! That seems awfully —"
"Cavalier?" Gansey suggested. "The truth is that there’s not even really a point having an EpiPen. The last they told me was that it would only work if I got stung once, and even then, they don’t know. I was four the first time I had to go to a hospital for a sting, and the reactions only got worse after that. It is what it is. It’s this or live in a bubble."
Blue thought about the Death card, and how her mother hadn’t actually interpreted it for Gansey. It was possible, she thought, that the card hadn’t been about Gansey’s foretold tragedy at all, but rather about his life — how he walked side by side with death everyday.
With her stick, Blue thwacked the ground ahead of them. "Okay, go on."
Gansey sucked in his lips and then released them. "Well, seven years ago, I was at a dinner party with my parents. I can’t remember what it was for. I think one of my dad’s friends had gotten the party nomination."
"For … Congress?"
The ground beneath their feet or the air around them vibrated with thunder.
"Yeah. I don’t remember. You know how you sometimes don’t remember everything right? Ronan says that memories are like dreams. You never remember how you got to the front of the classroom with no clothes on. Anyway, the party was dull — I was nine or ten. It was all little black dresses and red ties and any sort of food you wanted, as long as it was shrimp. A few of us kids started to play hide-and-seek. I remember thinking I was too old to play hide-and-seek, but there was nothing else to do."
Blue and he entered a narrow copse of trees, sparse enough that grass grew between them instead of brambles. This Gansey, this story-telling Gansey, was a different person altogether from any of the other versions of him she’d encountered. She couldn’t not listen.
"It was hot as Hades. It was spring, but it had suddenly decided it was summer. Virginia spring. You know how that is. Heavy, somehow. There was no shade in the backyard, but there was this great forest that bounded it. Dark and green and blue. Like diving into a lake. In I went, and it was fantastic. Only five minutes and I couldn’t see the house."
Blue stopped poking the ground. "Did you get lost?"
Gansey shook his head a little.
"I stepped on a nest." His eyes were narrowed in that way people do when they’re trying hard to appear casual, but it was obvious this story was anything but casual to him. "Hornets, like you said. They nest on the ground. I don’t have to tell you. But I didn’t know back then. The first thing I felt was a little prickle on my sock. I thought I’d stepped on a thorn — there were a ton of them, those green, whip-shaped ones — but then I felt another. They were just such small hurts, you know?"