Even though he keeps his voice even, I swear the professor winces just a bit.
“Very well. Go find your new seat, Alex.”
With trembling hands, I gather my books
off the professor’s desk and turn around, my eyes searching for Rafael. He’s watching me with absolute pity in his eyes.
Beck, however, is watching me like a hungry wolf watches a sick deer. He sits back in his chair with his arms folded across his broad chest. I hesitantly make my way over to the empty desk next to him.
My heart is beating so fast, I’m surprised the professor’s voice can be heard over it. I know for me, it’s drowning out everything else.
I thought a few days’ break from Beck and the rest of The Brotherhood had been good for me. I thought it would help me gather my thoughts. Why then do I feel like my whole world is suddenly imploding, shattering, collapsing in on a black void of itself like a black hole?
But all that is inside. On the outside, I keep my feet and hands steady. I force my eyes not to shift nervously.
I slide into the chair with Beck side-eyeing me. The rest of the class has moved on. They don’t care. They’re getting their partners and lamenting their assignment. They don’t have to worry about their partner being one of the people sworn to torment them.
“So,” Beck says finally, letting the singular word hang in the air between us.
It takes every muscle in my body to keep from shaking. I’m keenly aware of every part of him, sitting so close. My whole body feels like it’s ready to flee at any moment.
Rafael is peeking over at me, and something about his face makes me wonder if I’m not holding it together as well as I thought.
“So,” I reply, trying to keep my voice in the boy-range. I clear my throat for a second and try to focus on calming down. This must be the pain pills. They’re making me jumpy. Paranoid.
Beck wouldn’t do anything. Not here, in the middle of class, anyway.
No promises later, when we inevitably find ourselves travelling alone. But that … that I can’t think about right now.
“Hello? Earth to Alex?”
“Oh, sorry. What?” I bat my eyelids a couple times, trying to focus as Beck’s face swims back into view.
Beck has pulled out a tattered, dog-eared copy of one of the books we’ve been reading in class.
“I have a few places I think we can start.” He opens to one of the bent pages. “Obviously there’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Hugo wrote to try and preserve the Notre Dame Cathedral, but that’s French architecture, not German.”
I blink up at him again a few times, my voice lodged in my throat until I blurt out, “I thought we were getting something assigned.”
Beck just gives me a look. “And here I was, thinking you might not be a complete idiot.” He flips through a few more pages, before spinning the book around and pointing to a paragraph mid-page. “Or have you not figured out that The Brotherhood comes with more privileges than just getting to mess with you in our free time?”
I gulp and glance down at the book. It’s better than looking at him.
The passage he’s pointed talks about timber framing or something in the cathedral, but that isn’t what surprises me. No. It’s his voice, filled with sudden unexpected enthusiasm.
“Paris. Man … have you been? It’s amazing.”
I glance up, expecting this to be some other kind of joke, but there’s no malice on his face. His eyes practically shine, and as he goes on, forgetting for a moment where he is—who he is—he actually smiles.
“If we have the time, we have to go. The architecture …” he trails off, his eyes dropping back down to the lines of text with a greedy intensity. “But then, everyone’s going to want to go to Paris. Maybe we should pick something different. Something more original.”
“What do you think?” he asks, glancing back up.
I look at him slack jawed. I wasn’t expecting this, not from him.
“I—I, I don’t know.” I glance down at the book he’s holding, still open to a dog-eared page. “What happened to your book? Mine still looks new.”
He glances down. “This is mine from home. I’ve already read this.”