Liv, Forever by Amy Talkington Read Free Book Online Page B

nook. We kissed, but I didn’t stop the music. I really wanted to finish the song because I kind of felt like I was in a music video.
    He jammed his tongue into my mouth forcefully. I noticed a bitter taste as he put his hand down my shirt. The music was so loud, I didn’t hear what came up behind me. But I heard the snap of my neck while Ian McCulloch sang:
 … the killing time
unwilling mine …

 
    It was weird how little I saw Malcolm during those first weeks. Considering we were confined within the walls of the campus, you’d think we might have collided more often. But we had no classes together. His dorm, Pitman, was at the other end of Dorm Row from mine. And boys and girls ate all meals in separate dining halls except for Saturday Supper. And I just might’ve skipped most of those to work in the Art Center.
    When he texted me, I was always busy, headed to class or the studio or my work-study job, where Gabe and I would enter ridiculous names into the growing database, both of us awkwardly trying to pretend that I didn’t know about his delusions.
    And Malcolm was busy, too—classes, meetings, sports, and whatever sorts of things it was an Astor had to do. There was little time for flirtation at Wickham Hall. The school practically seemed designed that way.
    Our only shared activity was the weekly morning Chapel. Once I bumped into him there, but he was being pulled in the opposite direction by his friends. And I was quick to tell him I was headed to the studio and would see him soon. I noticed his group—Abigail, Kent, and the others—always sat in the exact same spot near the front of the chapel, so I always sat in the back. This way, I managed to avoid Malcolm (without totally avoiding him) for a few weeks. I told myself I was playing hard-to-get like all the other girls seemed to do. But, as I watched the leaves turn from green to yellows and oranges as brilliant as Cezanne’s fruits, I couldn’t stop thinking about that spontaneous kiss he’d given me and wondering what exactly it had meant.
    At Chapel, I kept waiting for someone to come out and talk about God, until finally a girl in my art history class told me it wasn’t a religious thing. It was just an all-school meeting thing, and they only called it Chapel because it was in the chapel. Every week the headmaster came out and made various announcements, most of which were boring and braggy: Wickham Hall had won This Award, so-and-so alumnus had been appointed to That International Whatever. I was already in the habit of tuning him out and counting blazers in the pews or pieces of stained glass in the windows.
    But on this particular day—now early October but before summer had totally thrown in the towel—the headmaster went up to his podium. He silenced the room, took a good long dramatic beat with all eyes on him, uttered two words, and walked away.
    “Headmaster Holiday” is what he’d said.
    The normally reserved students jumped out of their seats, hooting, hollering, and high-fiving—behaving almost like
normal
high school kids. I remained seated. I didn’t know what Headmaster Holiday meant, but I was beginning to get an idea. I looked around and caught a glimpse of Gabe as he slipped out the door, alone as usual. I considered going after him. I wanted to help him, to befriend him, but he’d told me he saw ghosts. That kind of complicated things.
    Then I saw Malcolm walking up the aisle. Abigail hooked arms with him and started to drag him toward the door, but he broke away from her and gestured to his friends he’d see them later. Abigail pursed her lips. She had that look of poorly masked outrage. The others all sauntered out the big, pointed wooden doors, but she lingered and watched as Malcolm paused, looking around.
    I quickly realized he might be looking for me, and I busied myself. I stood up and clicked on my phone, as if it were utterly urgent to know what the weather forecast was. My stomach started to contract into a