The Raven Boys

She scowled. "I’m done with this conversation."

Then Blue had bought her own chips, though it was clear the price was dear to her and nothing to Gansey. Adam was proud of her.

After the first day, too, Noah came with them, and this also pleased Adam, because Noah and Blue got along well. Noah was a good bellwether for people. He was so shy and awkward and invisible that he could be easily ignored or made fun of. Blue was not only kind to him, but actually seemed to get along with him. Strangely enough, this relieved Adam, who felt like Blue’s presence among them was largely his doing. He now so rarely made decisions without Gansey or Ronan or Noah that he doubted his judgment when he acted alone.

The days slid easily by with the five of them doing everything but returning to the strange pool and the dreaming tree. Gansey kept saying, We need more information.

Adam told Blue, "I think he’s afraid of it."

He knew he was. The ever-pervasive vision he’d had in the tree kept creeping into his thoughts. Gansey dead, dying, because of him. Blue looking at Adam, shocked. Ronan, crouched beside Gansey, his face miserable, snarling, Are you happy now, Adam? Is this what you wanted?

Was it a dream? Was it a prophecy?

Gansey told Adam, "I don’t know what it is."

Historically, this phrase had been a very good way of losing Adam’s respect. The only way to counteract admitting to not knowing something was to immediately follow it with the words but I’ll find out. Adam didn’t give people much time to find out: only as much time as he’d give himself. But Gansey never let him down. They’d find out what it was. Only — Adam wasn’t sure, this time, that he wanted to know.

By the end of the second week, the boys had settled into a routine of waiting for Blue at the end of the school day, then setting off into whatever mission Gansey had assigned them. It was an overcast spring day that felt more like fall, cold and damp and steel gray.

While they waited, Ronan decided to finally take up the task of teaching Adam how to drive a stick shift. For several minutes, it seemed to be going well, as the BMW had an easy clutch, Ronan was brief and to the point with his instruction, and Adam was a quick study with no ego to get in the way.

From a safe vantage point beside the building, Gansey and Noah huddled and watched as Adam began to make ever quicker circles around the parking lot. Every so often their hoots were audible through the open windows of the BMW.

Then — it had to happen eventually — Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear.

Ronan finished with, "For the love of … Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic."

Adam lifted his head and said, "They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73."

There was a flash of fangs from the passenger seat, but before Ronan truly had time to strike, they both heard Gansey call warmly, "Jane! I thought you’d never show up. Ronan is tutoring Adam in the ways of manual transmissions."

Blue, her hair pulled every which way by the wind, stuck her head in the driver’s side window. The scent of wildflowers accompanied her presence. As Adam catalogued the scent in the mental file of things that made Blue attractive, she said brightly, "Looks like it’s going well. Is that what that smell is?"

Without replying, Ronan climbed out of the car and slammed the door.

Noah appeared beside Blue. He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever. Noah had decided almost immediately that he would do anything for Blue, a fact that would’ve needled Adam if it had been anyone other than Noah.

Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair, something Adam would have also liked to do, but felt would mean something far different coming from him.

"Okay, let’s go," Gansey said. He was being theatrical about it, flipping open his journal, checking his watch, waiting for someone to ask him where they were going.

Through the car window, Adam asked, "Where today?"

Gansey swept up a backpack from the ground. "The wood."

Blue and Adam looked at each other, startled.

"Time," Gansey said grandly, striding past them toward the Camaro, "is wasting."

Blue jumped back as Adam scrambled from the driver’s seat of the BMW. She hissed to him, "Did you know this?"

"I didn’t know anything."

"We have to be back in three hours," Ronan said. "I just fed Chainsaw but she’ll need it again."

"This," Gansey replied, "is precisely why I didn’t want to have a baby with you."

They bundled into the car with the comfort of routine, climbing into the Camaro though all logic suggested they take the BMW instead. Ronan and Gansey scuffled briefly over his keys (Gansey won, as he won everything). Adam, Blue, and Noah climbed into the tiny backseat, in that order. Noah shrank up the side of the car, trying desperately not to touch Blue. Adam didn’t take quite so much care. For the first ten minutes on the first day, Adam had been polite, but it quickly become clear that Blue didn’t mind when his leg touched hers.

Adam was all right with that.

Everything was the same as before, but for some reason, Adam’s heart was thumping. New spring leaves, jerked from the trees by the suddenly cold wind, scurried across the lot. He saw goose bumps through the loopy crocheted cardigan Blue wore. She reached to take a handful of both his shirt and Noah’s, and tugged them both to her like blankets.

"You’re always cold, though, Noah," she said.

"I know," he replied, bleak.

Adam wasn’t certain what came first with Blue — her treating the boys as friends, or them all becoming friends. It seemed to Adam that this circular way to build relationships required a healthy amount of self-confidence to undertake. And it was a strange sort of magic that it felt like she’d always been hunting for Glendower with them.

With his shoulder pressed against Blue’s crocheted one, Adam leaned forward between the two front seats and asked, "Gansey, don’t we have any heat?"