Fallen

When Luce looked at Cam, he was watching Daniel. He turned to Luce and said, more loudly than he needed to, "I almost forgot to tell you. Having a little party in my room tonight after Social. I'd love for you to come."

Daniel was still within earshot. Luce had no idea what this Social thing was, but she was supposed to meet Pe

Her eyes were fixed on the back of Daniel's head, and she knew she needed to answer Cam about his party, and it really shouldn't be so hard, but when Daniel turned around and looked back at her with eyes she swore were mournful, the phone behind her started ringing, and Cam reached for it and said, "I've got to take this, Luce. You'll be there?"

Almost imperceptibly, Daniel nodded.

"Yes," Luce told Cam. "Yes."

"I still don't see why we have to run," Luce was panting twenty minutes later. She was trying to keep up with Pe

"People who are chronically tardy never understand the many ways in which they screw up the schedules of people who are punctual and normal," Pe

"Ha!" A laugh erupted behind them.

Luce looked back and felt her face light up when she saw Arriane's pale, ski

Luce sloshed to a halt just before she'd have landed in a scarily muddy patch on the lawn. "Somebody please tell me where we're going!"

"Wednesday night," Pe

"Like… a dance or something?" Luce asked, visions of Daniel and Cam already moving across the dance floor of her mind.

Arriane hooted. "A dance with death by boredom. The term 'social' is typical Sword & Cross doublespeak. See, they're required to schedule social events for us, but they are also terrified of scheduling social events for us. Sticky predicky."

"So instead," Pe

"There was that whole symposium on taxidermy?"

"So, so creepy." Pe

"Tonight, my dear," Arriane drawled, "we get off easy. All we have to do is snore through one of the three movies on rotation in the Sword & Cross video library. Which one do you think it'll be tonight, Pe

"It's Starman." Pe

Arriane shot Luce a baffled look. "She knows everything."

"Hold on," Luce said, tiptoeing around the quicksand and lowering her voice to a whisper as they approached the front office of the school. "If you've all seen these movies so many times, why the rush to get here?"

Pe

"Don't want to get stuck in the hot seat next to Mr. Cole," Arriane explained, pointing at the teacher. His nose was buried deep inside a thick book, and he was surrounded by the few remaining empty chairs in the room.

As the three girls stepped through the metal detector at the door, Pe

"Which wouldn't be so bad—" Arriane chimed in.

"— if you didn't have to stay late to analyze the findings," Pe

"Thereby missing," Arriane said with a grin, steering Luce toward the second row as she whispered, "the after-party."

Finally they'd gotten down to the heart of the matter. Luce chuckled.

"I heard about that," she said, feeling slightly with it for a change. "It's in Cam's room, right?"

Arriane looked at Luce for a second and ran her tongue across her teeth. Then she looked past, almost through, Luce. "Hey, Todd," she called, waving with just the tips of her fingers. She pushed Luce into one seat, claimed the safe spot next to her (still two seats down from Mr. Cole), and patted the hot seat. "Come sit with us, T-man!"

Todd, who'd been shifting his weight in the doorway, looked immensely relieved to be given the directive, any directive. He started toward them, swallowing. No sooner had he fumbled into the seat than Mr. Cole looked up from his book, cleaned his glasses on his handkerchief, and said, "Todd, I'm glad you're here. I'm wondering if you can help me with a small favor after the film. You see, the Ve

"Mean!" Pe

Arriane shrugged and produced a giant bag of popcorn from her carpetbag. "I can only look after so many new students," she said, tossing a buttery kernel at Luce. "Lucky you."

As the lights in the room dimmed, Luce looked around until her eyes landed on Cam. She thought about her abbreviated dish session on the phone with Callie, and how her friend always said that watching a movie with a guy was the best way to get to know things about him, things that might not come out in a conversation. Looking at Cam, Luce thought she knew what Callie meant: There would be something sort of thrilling about glancing out of the corner of her eye to see what jokes Cam thought were fu

When his eyes met hers, Luce felt an embarrassed instinct to look away. But then, before she could, Cam's face lit up in a broad smile. It made her feel remarkably unabashed about being caught staring. When he put his hand up in a wave, Luce couldn't help thinking about how the exact opposite had happened the few times Daniel had caught her looking at him.

Daniel rolled in with Roland, late enough that Randy had already taken a head count, late enough that the only remaining seats were on the floor at the front of the room. He passed through the beam of light from the projector and Luce noticed for the first time a silver chain around his neck, and some sort of medallion tucked inside his T-shirt. Then he dipped completely out of her view. She couldn't even see his profile.

As it turned out, Starman wasn't very fu

When the shadows came this time, Luce was expecting them. Then she started to think about it and counted a tally on her fingers. The shadows had been popping up at an increasingly alarming rate, and Luce couldn't figure out whether she was just nervous at Sword & Cross… or whether it meant something else. They'd never been this bad before…

They oozed overhead in the auditorium, then slithered along the sides of the movie screen, and finally traced the lines of the floorboards like spilled ink. Luce gripped the bottom of her chair and felt an ache of fear swell through her legs and arms. She tightened all the muscles in her body, but she couldn't keep from trembling. A squeeze on her left knee made her look over at Arriane.

"You okay?" Arriane mouthed.

Luce nodded and hugged her shoulders, pretending she was merely cold. She wished she was, but this particular chill had nothing to do with Sword & Cross's overzealous air conditioner.