Free Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater Page A

quiet of the empty classroom, he could hear the rustling of leaves against yet more leaves.
“I can’t take it,” Ronan said.
Adam opened his eyes. “Take what?”
Take sitting, apparently. Ronan went to the whiteboard and began to write. He had furious handwriting.
“Malory. He’s always complaining about his hips or his eyes or the government or — Oh, and that dog . It’s not like he’s blind or crippled or anything.”
“Why couldn’t he have something normal like a raven?”
Ronan ignored this. “And he got up three times in the night to piss. I think he has a tumor.”
Adam said, “You don’t sleep anyway.”
“Not anymore .” Ronan’s dry-erase marker squeaked in protest as he jabbed down Latin words. Although Ronan wasn’t smiling and Adam didn’t know some of the vocabulary, Adam was certain it was a dirty joke. For a moment, he watched Ronan and tried to imagine that he was a teacher instead of a Ronan. It was impossible. Adam couldn’t decide if it was how he’d shoved up his sleeves or the apocalyptic way he had tied his tie.
“He knows everything,” Ronan said in a casual way.
Adam didn’t immediately reply, though he knew what Ronan meant, because he also found the professor’s omniscience uncomfortable. When he thought harder about the source of the unpleasantness— the idea of Malory spending a year with fifteen-year-old Gansey — he had to admit that it was not paranoia, but jealousy.
“He’s older than I expected,” Adam said.
“Oh, God, the oldest,” Ronan replied at once, as if he had been waiting for Adam to mention it. “He never chews with his mouth shut.”
A floorboard popped. Immediately, Ronan put down his marker. One couldn’t open the front door of Borden House without making the floor creak two rooms over. So both boys knew what the noise meant: School was underway.
“Well,” Ronan said, sounding nasty and unhappy, “here we go, cowboy.”
Returning to his desk, he threw his feet up on it. This was forbidden, of course. He crossed his arms, tilted his chin back, closed his eyes. Instant insolence. This was the version of himself he prepared for Aglionby, for his older brother Declan, and sometimes, for Gansey.
Ronan was always saying that he never lied, but he wore a liar’s face.
In the students came. It was such a familiar sound — desk legs scraping the floor, jackets swooshing over chair backs, notebooks slapping worktops — that Adam could’ve closed his eyes and still seen the scene with perfect clarity. They were chattering and hateful and oblivious. Where have you been on break, man? Cape, always, where else? So boring. Vale. Mom broke her ankle. Oh, you know, we did Europe, hobo style. Granddad said I needed to get some muscles because I was looking gay these days. No, he didn’t really say that. Speaking of which, here’s Parrish.
Someone cuffed the back of Adam’s head. He blinked up. One way, then the other. His assailant had come up on Adam’s deaf side.
“Oh,” Adam said. It was Tad Carruthers, whose worst fault was that Adam didn’t like him and Tad couldn’t tell. “Oh,” mimicked Tad benevolently, as if Adam’s standoffishness charmed him. Adam wanted desperately and masochistically for Tad to ask him where he had summered. Instead, Tad turned to where Ronan was still reclined with his eyes closed. He lifted a hand to cuff Ronan’s head but lost his nerve an inch into the swing. Instead, he just drummed on Ronan’s desk and moved off.
Adam could feel the pulse of the ley line in the veins of his hands.
The students kept coming in. Adam kept watching. He was good at this part, the observing of others. It was himself that he couldn’t seem to study or understand. How he despised them, how he wanted to be them. How pointless to summer in Maine, how much he wanted to do it. How affected he found their speech, how he coveted their lazy monotones. He couldn’t tell how all of these things could be equally true.
Gansey appeared in