The Raven Boys

"Blue?" the woman asked. "Blue Sargent?"

At first, Blue didn’t understand that she meant that the flowers were for her. The woman had to thrust them toward her, and then Calla had to take back one of her bags in order for Blue to be able to accept them. As the woman headed back to her car, Blue turned the arrangement in her hand. It was just a spray of baby’s breath around a white carnation; they smelled prettier than they looked.

Calla commented, "The delivery must’ve cost more than the flowers."

Feeling around the wiry stems, Blue found a little card. Inside, a woman’s scrawl had transcribed a message:

I hope you still want me to call. — Adam

Now the tiny bunch of flowers made sense. They matched Adam’s frayed sweater.

"And you’re blushing," Calla said disapprovingly. She held a hand out for them, which Blue smacked. With sarcasm, Calla added, "Whoever it is went all out, did they?"

Blue touched the edge of the white carnation to her chin. It was so light that it didn’t feel like she was touching anything at all. It was no portrait or fruit basket, but she couldn’t imagine Adam sending anything more dramatic. These little flowers were quiet and sparse, just like him. "I think they’re pretty."

She had to bite her lip to keep a foolish smile inside. What she wanted to do was hug the flowers and then dance, but both seemed insensible.

"Who is he?" asked Calla.

"I’m being secretive. Take your bags back." Blue stretched out her arm so that Calla’s brown bag and canvas bag slid down to Calla’s open hands.

Calla shook her head, but she didn’t look displeased. Deep down, Blue suspected she was a romantic.

"Calla?" Blue asked. "Do you think I should tell the boys where the corpse road is?"

Calla gazed at Blue for as long as a Neeve gaze. Then she said, "What makes you think I can answer that question?"

"Because you’re an adult," Blue replied. "And you’re supposed to have learned things on your way to old age."

"What I think," Calla said, "is that you’ve already made up your mind."

Blue dropped her eyes to the ground. It was true that she was kept awake at night by Gansey’s journal and by the suggestion of something more to the world. It was also true that she was dogged by the idea that maybe, just maybe, there was a sleeping king and she would be able to lay her hand on his sleeping cheek and feel a centuries-old pulse beneath his skin.

But more important than either of those was her face on that page of cups card, a boy’s rain-spattered shoulders in the churchyard, and a voice saying, Gansey. That’s all there is.

Once she’d seen his death laid out for him, and seen that he was real, and found out that she was meant to have a part in it, there had never been a chance she would just stand by and let it happen.

"Don’t tell Mom," Blue said.

With a noncommittal grunt, Calla wrenched open the door, leaving Blue and her flowers on the step. The blossoms weighed nothing at all, but to Blue, they felt like change.

Today, Blue thought, is the day I stop listening to the future and start living it instead.

"Blue, if you get to know him —" Calla started. She was standing half-in, half-out of the doorway. "You’d better guard your heart. Don’t forget that he’s going to die."

Chapter 20

At the same time that his flowers were being delivered to 300 Fox Way, Adam arrived at Monmouth Manufacturing on his somewhat pathetic bicycle. Ronan and Noah were already out in the overgrown lot, building wooden ramps for some unholy purpose.

He tried twice to persuade his rusted kickstand to hold his bike up before laying it down on its side. Crabgrass poked up through the spokes. He asked, "When do you think Gansey will get here?"

Ronan didn’t immediately answer him. He was lying as far beneath the BMW as he could, measuring the width of the tires with a yellow hardware-store ruler. "Ten inches, Noah."

Noah, standing next to a pile of plywood and four-by-fours, asked, "Is that all? That doesn’t seem like very much."

"Would I lie to you? Ten. Inches." Ronan shoved himself from beneath the car and stared up at Adam. He’d let his five o’clock shadow become a multiday shadow, probably to spite Gansey’s inability to grow facial hair. Now he looked like the sort of person women would hide their purses and babies from. "Who knows. When did he say?"

"Three."

Ronan climbed to his feet and they both turned to watch Noah working with the plywood for the ramps. Working with really meant staring at. Noah had his fingers held ten inches apart and he looked through the space between them to the wood below, perplexed. There were no tools in sight.

"What is your plan with these things anyway?" Adam asked.

Ronan smiled his lizard smile. "Ramp. BMW. The goddamn moon."

This was so like Ronan. His room inside Monmouth was filled with expensive toys, but, like a spoiled child, he ended up playing outside with sticks.

"The trajectory you’re building doesn’t suggest the moon," Adam replied. "It suggests the end of your suspension."

"I don’t need your back talk, science guy."

He probably didn’t. Ronan didn’t need physics. He could intimidate even a piece of plywood into doing what he wanted. Crouching by his bike, Adam messed over the kickstand again, trying to see if he could pry it free without breaking it entirely.

"What’s your malfunction, anyway?" Ronan asked.

"I’m trying to decide when I should call Blue." Saying it out loud was inviting ridicule from Ronan, but it was one of those facts that needed to be acknowledged.

Noah said, "He sent her flowers."

"How did you know?" Adam demanded, more mortified than curious.

Noah merely smiled in a far-off way. He kicked one of the wooden boards off the plywood, looking triumphant.

"To the psychic’s? You know what that place was?" Ronan asked. "A castration palace. You date that girl, you should send her your nuts instead of flowers."

"You’re a Neanderthal."

"Sometimes you sound just like Gansey," Ronan said.

"Sometimes you don’t."

Noah laughed his breathy, nearly soundless laugh. Ronan spit on the ground beside the BMW.

"I didn’t even realize that ‘midget’ was the Adam Parrish type," he said.

He wasn’t being serious, but Adam was, all at once, fatigued with Ronan and his uselessness. Since the day of the fistfight at Nino’s, Ronan had already gotten several notices in his student box at Aglionby, warning him of the dire things slated to befall him if he didn’t begin to improve his grades. If he didn’t begin attempting to get grades. Instead, Ronan was out here building ramps.