Lilac grinned. It was the first time she’d ever smiled at me, and it made the hairs on my arms stand on end. “Sunny, Sunny. She fooled everyone. But not me. Everyone always asked why I couldn’t be more like her. ” Her grin turned into a sneer. “Poor girl, but so pretty and so bright. ”
“So that’s it? You had a foster sister who looked a lot like me, poor but smart, and it didn’t vibe with your rich-and-stupid routine? Or did you just hate that your mummy liked this Sunny better than you?”
Repeating the name made something click. I’d heard it before in Lilac’s psycho sleep chatter. Foreboding made my skin crawl. “Wait. Is this Sunny, as in Burn, sunny, burn?”
Lilac narrowed her eyes, but the smile didn’t leave her face. “Poor Sunny. The house burned down with her in it. ”
Blood turned to ice in my veins. Lilac was always calling me a freak, but as far as I was concerned, she was the only mutant in this dorm room. She must have incinerated her foster sister. And now she dreamt of incinerating me.
I doubted I’d ever sleep again.
I forced my voice to remain calm. “So, you gonna burn me while I sleep, Lilac?”
“No,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m going to burn you in front of everyone. ” And then she leaned over to unlace her boots.
“Over my dead body,” I said.
“Oh, it will be. And, apparently, I can even win a prize for it. ”
The Directorate Award. “Careful, Lilac. People might think you’re overconfident. ”
“You know I’m stronger than you are,” she said. “How many of those pretty little stars did they give you? Four? I saw you in class today. In your lame hands, they’ll be about as deadly as Christmas ornaments. ”
I bristled. She could diss my hair but not my weapon. “You know nothing about my shuriken, von Slutling. ”
Her laugh trilled through the room. “Listen to you, freak. Shur-i-ken . . . sure-ya-can . . . sure-you-can’t. ”
Little did she know, her posturing only firmed my resolve. “Don’t you have homework or something? You can burn down the dorm, sleep with every last Trainee, and spin-class your way to Watcher status for all I care, but it won’t do any good if you fail out of German. ”
I’d hit a nerve.
She curled her upper lip in a flat-eyed snarl. Flowing hair plus that signature blank viciousness, and von Slutling looked like a lunatic Playboy Bunny. “What do you know?”
A lot more than you, I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut. I talked big, but I honestly didn’t want to get torched in my sleep.
She snagged her German workbook from her bag and swung her legs onto her bed, and we proceeded to ignore each other.
Reaching onto my desk, I snagged Sun Tzu’s Art of War and was immersing myself in wisdom that seemed just-almost useful, when I heard it. A quiet shlish sound.
I glanced over, but Lilac was slumped, looking sound asleep over her grammar homework. My eyes went to the tiny fold of paper that someone had slid under the door.
Was it for me? I sat up straight, on alert. Or was it for Lilac? I wasn’t sure which would be more of a coup.
I waited, but Lilac didn’t move. Miraculously, she slept on, breathing evenly onto the pages of her workbook. I decided to make my move before a stiff neck woke her up, and I tiptoed out of bed.
Grabbing the paper, I shuffled back to my bed, ready at any moment for von Slutling’s eyes to fly open in an accusing stare. But they didn’t.
As it turned out, the note was for me. It was scrawled in furtive, barely legible script that looked like a boy’s handwriting.
Drew,
Something’s happened. They said I might not live
until morning.
Meet me by the gates, near the stones, tonight at mid-
night.