Free The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater Page B

for their mother, a poor grade at school, an unexplained credit card bill. Maybe just Ashley.
    Across the lot, the manager of Nino’s emerged from the front entrance. It wouldn’t be long before the cops were called. Where was Adam?
    “Declan,” Gansey said, voice full of warning, “if you come back over here, I swear …”
    With a jerk of his chin, Declan spit blood at the pavement. His lip was bleeding, but his teeth were still good. “Fine. He’s your dog, Gansey. You leash him. Keep him from getting kicked out of Aglionby. I wash my hands of him.”
    “I wish,” snarled Ronan. His entire body was rigid underneath Gansey’s hand. He wore his hatred like a cruel second skin.
    Declan said, “You’re such a piece of shit, Ronan. If Dad saw —” and this made Ronan burst forward again. Gansey clamped arms around Ronan’s chest and dragged him back.
    “Why are you even here ?” Gansey asked Declan.
    “Ashley had to use the bathroom,” Declan replied crisply. “I should be able to stop where I like, don’t you think?”
    The last time Gansey had been in the Nino’s co-ed bathroom, it had smelled like vomit and beer. On one of the walls, a red Sharpie had scrawled the word BEEZLEBUB and Ronan’s number below. It was hard to imagine Declan choosing to inflict Nino’s facilities on his girlfriend. Gansey’s voice was short. “ I think you should just go. This isn’t getting solved tonight.”
    Declan laughed, just once. A big, careless laugh, full of round vowels. He clearly found nothing about Ronan funny.
    “Ask him if he’s going to get by with a B this year,” he told Gansey. “Do you ever go to class, Ronan?”
    Behind Declan, Ashley peered out of the driver’s side window. She’d rolled down the window to listen; she didn’t look nearly as much like an idiot when she thought no one was paying any attention to her. It seemed like justice that perhaps this time, Declan was the one getting played.
    “I’m not saying you’re wrong, Declan,” Gansey said. His ear throbbed where it had been boxed. He could feel Ronan’s pulse crashing in his arm where he restrained him. His vow to consider his words more carefully came back to him, and so he framed the rest of the statement in his head before saying it out loud. “But you are not Niall Lynch, and you won’t ever be. And you’d get ahead a lot faster if you stopped trying.”
    Gansey released Ronan.
    Ronan didn’t move, though, and neither did Declan, as if by saying their father’s name, Gansey had cast a spell. They wore matching raw expressions. Different wounds inflicted by the same weapon.
    “I’m only trying to help,” Declan said finally, but he sounded defeated. There was a time, a few months ago, when Gansey would’ve believed him.
    Next to Gansey, Ronan’s hands hung open at his sides. Sometimes, after Adam had been hit, there was something remote and absent in his eyes, like his body belonged to someone else. When Ronan was hit, it was the opposite; he became so urgently present that it was as if he’d been sleeping before.
    Ronan told his brother, “I’ll never forgive you.”
    The Volvo’s window hissed closed, as if Ashley had just realized that this had become a conversation she wasn’t meant to hear.
    Sucking on his bloody lip, Declan looked at the ground for a bare moment. Then he straightened and adjusted his tie.
    “Wouldn’t mean much from you anymore,” he said, and tugged open the Volvo’s door.
    As he slid into the driver’s seat, Declan said, “I don’t want to talk about it” to Ashley and slammed the door shut. The Volvo’s tires squealed as they bit into the pavement, and then Gansey and Ronan were left standing next to each other in the strange dim light of the parking lot. A block away, a dog barked balefully, three times. Ronan touched his pinkie finger to his eyebrow to check for blood, but there was none, just a raised, angry bump.
    “Fix it,” Gansey said. He wasn’t entirely sure that