Chapter 650 | A Musical About Your Life

Chapter 650: 650 | A Musical About Your Life

Caden nodded solemnly, and syrup dripped onto the counter. "Nyx replied with a picture of her earplugs, which was honestly the hardest thing anyone’s posted all semester."

I took the eggs away from Marco because the eggs deserved better, and cracked four new ones into a clean pan while Caden made a choir of hallelujah sounds behind me. The fridge held a block of cheddar and half a carton of milk, which was enough. My hands did the work on their own while my brain replayed the fountain on a loop, Sloane’s thumb on my pulse and the wet stone soaking into my jeans.

Percy came down the stairs at six fifty-two, which meant he had left his room at six fifty, which meant he had been awake since four thirty doing something terrifying in a notebook. His navy hair lay flat against his skull, his collar pins sat in a perfect line, and his eyes went straight to my lip.

"You have a laceration on your lower lip consistent with a human bite," he said. "I’m noting it, and I’m also noting that your gait is normal, which means you didn’t get hit anywhere else."

"Good morning to you too, Percy."

"Good morning." He sat at the island and opened his oatmeal container, which he had portioned the night before into a glass jar with a label. He ate three spoonfuls in silence and then set the spoon down very carefully. "I’m going to say something, and I want you to know that I wrote it down first so I would say it correctly."

"Okay, go ahead."

"Rina was awake at one in the morning because she couldn’t sleep, and she heard the stairwell door, and she asked me this morning if you were okay." His ears went pink at the tips. "I told her you were probably more than okay, and then she laughed, and I timed it at four seconds, which is the longest one I’ve recorded."

Caden slapped the counter so hard the waffle jumped. "Mendoza, that’s the most romantic thing a person has ever said about timing a laugh, and I’m genuinely moved."

"It wasn’t romantic, it was data." Percy pulled his notebook a little closer to his chest. "It was very good data, but it was data."

I slid a plate of scrambled eggs in front of him, and he looked at it and then at me with an expression I filed under things I’d remember on bad days.

The stairwell door opened at seven oh four.

Felicity came down in a full Halloran uniform, blazer buttoned and skirt at regulation length, her blonde hair braided over one shoulder and fresh makeup covering most of her freckles. She looked like a girl who had slept eight hours on a cloud. Then she hit the bottom step and her eyes found me across the room, and every inch of her composure dropped two floors.

Her cheeks went red underneath the foundation, and her hand went to her collar, where I knew for a fact a bruise sat that no concealer in the world could fully cover. The blazer gaped when she reached for it, and the white shirt under it strained across her chest, a button doing serious structural work.

Caden made a sound like a kettle.

"Bestie," Felicity said, her voice two notes too high. "Good morning, everybody, wow, what a beautiful sunny morning."

"It’s foggy outside," Marco said.

"It’s beautiful and foggy, Marco, both things can be true." She crossed the room in quick little steps and stopped beside me at the stove, close enough that her shoulder bumped mine and the vanilla of her shampoo hit me under the smell of eggs. Then she lowered her voice so only I could hear it. "You left a note on my phone, and Gerald said you were very polite on your way out."

"Gerald is a water stain, Felicity."

"Gerald is an emotionally available water stain, and he speaks very highly of you." She bit her lip and looked at the pan, then at my mouth, and her eyes narrowed. "Sloane bit you, didn’t she?"

"At the fountain, at five thirty."

"Oh, so you told her already." Something loosened in her shoulders that I hadn’t noticed was tight. She exhaled, and her hand found the back of my wrist under the counter where nobody could see, her thumb pressing once over my pulse. "Okay, good, then I’m finding her before lunch, and you’re not allowed to be there."

"She said the same thing, word for word."

Felicity’s mouth curled into a slow, delighted smile that had a lot of teeth in it. "Then she and I are already on the same page, which means you should be very scared."

"I’m aware, believe me."

She stole a forkful of eggs straight from the pan, blew on it, and ate it while maintaining eye contact, and then she patted my cheek twice and walked off toward the coffee machine with her hips swaying under the pleated skirt. Caden watched her go and then turned to me with his whole face lit up.

"Belmont, I need you to know I’m writing a musical about your life, and the second act is going to be incredible."

"Please don’t write a musical, Caden."

"Too late, I’ve already got a title." He spread his sticky hands in the air like a marquee. "I’m calling it A Man and His Many Women, and Percy’s playing the lead because he’s got the cheekbones for it."

Percy didn’t look up from his eggs. "I’m not playing you, because I don’t have the stamina for the choreography."

Room 214 smelled of wet umbrellas and the cheap pine cleaner that facilities used on Wednesdays, and by eight fifty most of 1-B had dragged itself into the compressed tiers.

Camille sat at the end of the second row with her arms folded and her two-tone hair pulled into a tight braid, her blazer open over a white shirt that had been tailored by someone who clearly respected the muscle in her shoulders. Her palms rested on her biceps, dark, and when her brown eyes found me coming down the stairs they dropped to my lip and stayed there long enough to count as a statement.

"Did your girlfriend finally bite you, or did a dog?"

"My girlfriend," I told her.

"Shame, a dog would’ve been funnier."