The Raven Boys

She closed the pages. It felt as if there were a larger, terribly curious Blue inside her that was about to bust out of the smaller, more sensible Blue that held her. For a long moment she let the journal rest on her legs, the cover cool against her palms.

A favor.

If she had a favor, what would she ask? To not have to worry about money? To know who her father had been? To travel the world? To see what her mother saw?

The thought rang through her brain again:

Today is the day Gansey comes for his reading.

What will he be like?

Maybe, if she was standing before that sleeping king, she’d ask the king to save Gansey’s life.

"Blue, I hope you’re awake!" Orla screamed from downstairs. Blue needed to leave soon if she was to make the bike trip to school on time. In a few weeks, it would be an uncomfortably hot ride.

Possibly, she would ask a sleeping king for a car.

I wish I could just cut class today.

It wasn’t that Blue dreaded high school; it just felt like … a holding pattern. And it wasn’t as if she was bullied; it hadn’t taken her very long to discover that the weirder she looked on the outside — the more she let other kids realize that she wasn’t like them, from the very beginning — the less likely she was to be picked on or ignored. The fact was, by the time she got to high school, being weird and proud of it was an asset. Suddenly cool, Blue could’ve happily had any number of friends. And she had tried. But the problem with being weird was that everyone else was normal.

So her family remained her closest friends, school remained a chore, and Blue remained secretly hopeful that, somewhere out there in the world, there were other odd people like her. Even if they didn’t seem to be in Henrietta.

It was possible, she thought, that Adam was also odd.

"BLUE!" Orla bellowed again. "SCHOOL."

With the journal held fast to her chest, Blue headed toward the red-painted door at the end of the hall. On her way, she had to pass the frenzy of activity in the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and the furious battle for the bathroom. The room behind the red door belonged to Persephone, one of Maura’s two best friends. The door was ajar, but still, Blue knocked softly. Persephone was a poor but energetic sleeper; her midnight shouting and nocturnal leg paddling ensured that she never had to share a room. It also meant that she grabbed sleep when she could; Blue didn’t want to wake her.

Persephone’s tiny, breathy voice said, "It’s available. I mean, open."

Pushing open the door, Blue found Persephone sitting at the card table beside the window. When pressed, people often remembered Persephone’s hair: a long, wavy white-blond mane that fell to the back of her thighs. If they got past her hair, they sometimes recalled her dresses — elaborate, frothy creations or quizzical smocks. And if they made it past that, they were unsettled by her eyes, true mirror black, the pupils hidden in the darkness.

Currently, Persephone held a pencil with a strangely childlike grip. When she saw Blue, she frowned in a pointy sort of way.

"Good morning," Blue said.

"Good morning," Persephone echoed. "It’s too early. My words aren’t working, so I’ll just use as many of the ones that work for you as possible."

She twirled a hand around in a vague sort of way. Blue took this as a sign to find a place to sit. Most of the bed was covered by strange, embroidered leggings and plaid tights running in place, but she found a place to lean her butt on the edge. The whole room smelled familiar, like oranges, or baby powder, or maybe like a new textbook.

"Sleep badly?" Blue asked.

"Badly," Persephone echoed again. Then, "Oh, well, that’s not quite true. I’ll have to use my own words after all."

"What are you working on?"

Often, Persephone was working on her eternal PhD thesis, but because it was a process that seemed to require vexed music and frequent snacks, she rarely did it during the morning rush.

"Just a little something," Persephone said sadly. Or perhaps thoughtfully. It was hard to tell the difference, and Blue didn’t like to ask. Persephone had a lover or a husband who was dead or overseas — it was always difficult to know details when it came to Persephone — and she seemed to miss him, or at least to notice that he was gone, which was notable for Persephone. Again, Blue didn’t like to ask. From Maura, Blue had inherited a dislike of watching people cry, so she never liked to steer the conversation in a way that might result in tears.

Persephone tilted her paper up so Blue could see it. She’d just written the word three three times, in three different handwritings, and a few inches beneath it, she’d copied a recipe for banana cream pie.

"Important things come in threes?" Blue suggested. It was one of Maura’s favorite sayings.

Persephone underlined tablespoon next to the word vanilla in the recipe. Her voice was faraway and vague. "Or sevens. That is a lot of vanilla. One wonders if that is a typo."

"One wonders," repeated Blue.

"Blue!" Maura shouted up. "Are you gone yet?"

Blue didn’t reply, because Persephone disliked high-pitched sounds and shouting back seemed to qualify as one. Instead, she said, "I found something. If I show it to you, will you not tell anybody else about it?"

But this was a silly question. Persephone barely told anybody anything even when it wasn’t a secret.

When Blue handed over the journal, Persephone asked, "Should I open it?"

Blue flapped a hand. Yes, and quickly. She fidgeted back and forth on the bed while Persephone paged through, her face betraying nothing.

Finally, Blue asked, "Well?"

"It’s very nice," Persephone said politely.

"It’s not mine."

"Well, I can see that."

"It was left behind at Ni — wait, why do you say that?"

Persephone paged back and forth. Her dainty, child’s voice was soft enough that Blue had to hold her breath to hear it. "This is clearly a boy’s journal. Also, it’s taking him forever to find this thing. You’d have already found it."

"BLUE!" roared Maura. "I’M NOT SHOUTING AGAIN!"

"What do you think I should do about it?" Blue asked.

As Blue had, Persephone ran her fingers over the varying grains of the papers. She realized Persephone was right; if the journal had been hers, she would’ve just copied down the information she needed, rather than all this cutting and pasting. The fragments were intriguing but unnecessary; whoever put that journal together must love the hunt itself, the process of research. The aesthetic properties of the journal couldn’t be accidental; it was an academic piece of art.