Chapter Four: In Which I Find My Social Skills Lacking, or, Glass’ Perception

As the two of us slowly ascended the stairs, me in front, holding the duffel bags, her behind, clutching the suitcase, I wondered again why the Headmaster had been so adamant that I be friendly to the new student. Not that it had ever been my intention to be rude to Glass Farthingdale. I reserved my insolence for special people, like the Headmaster, or for special occasions while I was snooping, when it became the only way around an obstacle. In general, I tried not to be rude. Being helpful was the best way to get information, and being polite usually went hand in hand with that.

  So, in an attempt to be friendly, and to break the uncomfortable silence between us, I decided to introduce myself.

  “I’m Carrie,” I said, peeking at her over my shoulder. She was staring at the ground, watching as her stylishly booted feet slipped from one polished marble step to the next. Her boots were made from black leather, and had what looked like faintly pink pearl buttons running from near her ankles to the black lace lining at the top. Her family must be quite rich, in order to afford shoes like that.

  Rather annoyingly, she didn’t answer. I wondered if she’d even heard me.

  I tried a slightly different tactic. “The bedrooms are on the third floor.”

  Still, she didn’t respond.

  So, I stopped trying to talk to her. I knew enough, both from my own experience and from learning, that if somebody isn’t responding to any attempts at conversation, it’s best just to stay quiet. If they want to open up, they’ll do that eventually. If they don’t, they’ll be relieved that you’d shut up, which might – and I mean might – eventually lead to an opening later on.

  We reached the second floor in silence, then circled up to the third. The staircase, situated nearly in the middle of the building, ended at a landing which split into two hallways. Turn down the left hallway and you would reach the boys’ rooms. Turn right, and you’d arrive at the girls’ rooms.

  I led Glass down the right hallway, the sound of our movements nearly muffled by the thick, faded red carpet running along the floor. Plain brown doors, spaced apart by only a few feet, flashed across my vision. I counted them, only half minding the numbers, too aware of the girl just paces behind me. I instinctively knew her gaze was on the ground, but I could feel her eyes boring into my back like two purely concentrated rays of direct sunlight. My shoulders twitched.

  Door 18. Setting down one of the duffel bags, I fished the room key out of my skirt pocket. The key popped against the lock, and the door cracked open. I stepped out of the way.

  Glass strode into the room. To my surprise, she didn’t look around at all. Not a glance was given to the little iron bed rammed up against the right wall, nor to the wobbly wooden desk positioned just across from it. She didn’t seem to notice the size of the room, which was barely big enough to fit the bed, the desk, and a small wardrobe that was hidden behind the open door. Instead, she just dropped her suitcase, and swiveled around to face me. The coldness in her eyes was intense, and very uncomfortable when directed at me.

  What did she want? Why was she staring at me like that?

  “Oh,” I said, remembering the key. I held it out to her. “Here.”

  Glass didn’t take it. Her gaze grew withering. “What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was soft, and the tone quiet, but it was just as cold as her eyes. She seemed to hate me. Or perhaps she hated everything.

  I would love to say that this didn’t bother me. After all, Norlocke housed children typically known for being unpleasant or uncommonly nasty. Thus, I was used to interacting with people who detested everyone. I was used to people’s angry stares, their thoughtless remarks, and the knowledge that they disliked me intensely, often times for no good reason. But Glass’ coldness did bother me. I felt chilled almost to the bone both by her look and her voice, not to mention her question.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, which was perhaps not the best response.

  “You’ve been following me around. Those idiots downstairs didn’t seem to notice, but I did. You’ve been watching me since the moment I arrived.” Her expression hardened, and her lips tightened into a distinguishable frown. “What do you want?”

  Thrown off guard by her perception, my mind went blank.

  Glass’ eyes bored into my face.

  I had to answer, and quickly. If I didn’t, I might never get a chance to do anything other than observe her from afar. Unfortunately, besides a few tricks I’ve learned that help me when I’m snooping, I’m actually quite terrible at socializing with people. I had no idea what to do. A thousand different half-formed responses flitted through my brain, but none of them ventured out of my mouth. Instead, I just stood there awkwardly for about ten seconds, still holding the key out towards her.

  Jaw clenched, having finally given up on me, Glass snagged the key from my hand so quickly and smoothly that I hardly felt her fingers as they swept across my palm. She glared fiercely at me, and yanked the duffel bag I still held out of my other hand. “I won’t be needing that tour,” she said icily, and slammed the door in my face.

  Great.

  I left after sliding her second duffel bag in front of her door.

Chapter Five: In Which I Enlist Some Help, or, Walken Toomes

The dining hall was one of my favorite rooms. This wasn’t because I particularly enjoyed my time there, nor was it because I liked the food, although most of the meals were actually quite tasty. Mainly, I liked the dining hall because all of the students were laid out before me like open books. You could learn so much just by observing people’s eating patterns.

  Besides that, though, I found the room itself hilarious. Despite the fact that Norlocke Academy had a maximum occupancy of sixty students (thirty boys and thirty girls), and currently only housed forty-six, the dining hall could hold much more than that. Whoever had designed Norlocke had decided that the dining hall should not only be the largest room in the entire school, but it should have enough space to fit a ridiculous number of full-sized tables. I believed there to be three reasons behind this: to provide a similar feeling to a regular boarding school; to give the sociable children room enough to fit all their friends at only one or two tables; and to provide plenty of space so that all of the extremely unsociable children, or those with the biggest issues, could comfortably sit all by themselves, with multiple empty tables in between them and any other people. I couldn’t find any other explanation for the unnecessary number of full-sized tables in the unnecessarily large room. 

  Interestingly enough, at the current time, there were very few tables with only one occupant. Nearly half of the students – nineteen, to be exact – sat at the table nearest the bay windows that overlooked a distant view of the tallest mountains in Fraighe. The rest of the students were scattered amongst the other tables, in groups no smaller than three and no larger than seven. Before the arrival of Glass Farthingdale, there were only ever two tables with less than three people seated at them.

  I made up one of those tables. But no, I wasn’t alone. I always had someone sitting with me, at least after my first few days of attending Norlocke. Those days I had sat by myself.

  Walken Toomes, the boy who sat opposite me, was a quiet, sleepy sort of fellow, and probably the only one in Norlocke’s prestigious history who had been sent there without having any issues at all. Despite that fact, or possibly because of it, the other students had ostracized him. They thought him an oddball because he rarely said anything, and had little to no interest in anything except his music. I, however, appreciated his silence, his disinterest in anything that I did, and his general lack of issues. For those reasons, he made a nice person to have around, and he’d somehow ended up sitting at my table and working with me on any group assignments. And yet, even though we had no one else besides each other, neither of us would’ve exactly called the other their friend. We were at an awkward spot where we were well past being acquaintances, but hadn’t gotten anywhere near being friends. I didn’t know what we were.

  He was, however, extremely reliable. Which was what I needed at the moment.

  Supper was halfway over, and Glass Farthingdale had yet to make an appearance, when I said, “Walken.”

  Walken looked up at me, his gigantic spoonful of chicken pot pie three-quarters of the way to his mouth, his pale brown eyes half-hidden behind heavy eyelids and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles nearly identical to my own. Interestingly enough, those were not the only physical traits we had in common. Although our eye color is different (mine are a dark blue-green), his hair is a bit curlier than mine, and his nose pointier, we looked almost exactly alike. We had almost the same build – slender, and of an average height (he was only one inch taller than me) – and could’ve fit into each other’s clothes if we’d tried. Both of our noses were straight and dusted with freckles; our lips thin and faintly pink; and our faces, which were round and almost unnaturally pale, were framed by short, curly, dark brown hair. While I secretly thought our similar appearances a rather strange phenomenon and one which might one day come in handy, and Walken hardly seemed to notice, the other students liked to tease us about it. We were derisively called “the twins”.

  “What?” Walken asked slowly, his spoon plunking back down onto his plate, his shoulders hunching forward. He was typically a rather expressionless fellow, but his reaction gave away the fact that he was worried. We hardly ever spoke to one another, so I figured I understood why.

  I leaned forward ever so slightly across the table and whispered, “The Headmaster wants to see me in his office later. I’m going to need you to create a distraction.”

  Although I wasn’t entirely sure how friends, or even casual acquaintances, were supposed to behave around each other, I was pretty sure that most people, upon hearing my statement, would react negatively. At the very least, they’d probably say something along the lines of, “You’ve been called to the Headmaster’s office again?” At the most, they’d be extremely uncooperative. Worst of all, they might ask why I needed a distraction, which I wasn’t going to explain to anybody.

  Walken just said, “Okay. What time?”