The Shadow Society by Marie Rutkoski Read Free Book Online

dresses. That filled me with a huge longing, though Lily, when she saw my face, added that she had been about three years old then, and it was probably the last time her mom had any idea about what made her happy.
    “She doesn’t understand me,” Lily said. “I wish she’d leave me alone.”
    I thought it might be nice to be misunderstood by a mother. Because if you snap at her and she’s still there in the morning to pour you coffee and say she hates your green hair, that’s something special. It’s forever.
    I listened to Marsha’s snores, remembering how I’d huddled with cold outside the fire station as a five-year-old child. And even though Conn made my heart race as I lay in the dark, and even though I knew I had crossed some line with him by wishing my parents were dead, I could never take back what I’d said.
    I closed my eyes, and my mind nuzzled its way into sleep. I had one last conscious thought, and it was sharp.
    Tomorrow, he will avoid me .

 
    11
    I was wrong.
    Conn was leaning against his motorcycle, parked by the last street corner I always passed on the way to school. A gust of wind blew through the trees, showering red and gold leaves. He walked up, close enough that I could see the hollow of his throat. He plucked a maple leaf from my hair and twirled it between his thumb and forefinger. It was a red, delicate, pointed star.
    I had been angry with him the night before. Really angry. I only fully realized that now, as a knot in my chest disintegrated.
    “I have a gift for you.” Conn let the leaf fall. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out something. His hand opened, and resting on his palm was a gleaming metal object the size of a plum. It was round, silvery, and looped by a brass ring. “It’s a planet,” he said. “For the sculpture. I thought of it because J. Alfred wonders what it would be like to squeeze ‘the universe into a ball / To roll it toward some overwhelming question.’”
    “‘To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,”’” I quoted the next lines. “‘“Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all.”’”
    “Do you like it?” He tipped the planet into my open fingers.
    I traced the cool, smooth, silver surface. “It’s beautiful. How did you make it?”
    He grinned. “I’m good with my hands.”
    Those words left me a little breathless.
    “I stayed up late last night making it,” he said.
    “I thought I had offended you.”
    “Of course you didn’t.” He looked straight at me with an innocence so convincing it had to be fake.
    “Conn, I may be socially dysfunctional, but I can tell when I’ve upset someone.”
    “All right,” he said slowly. “Maybe you did. It seems like you hate your parents without knowing anything about them. Mine are important to me, so I couldn’t ever agree with your perspective. But I can’t fault how you feel when I don’t know much about you. And”—he paused—“I upset you, too.”
    I was used to people disagreeing with the way I saw the world. That’s why my DCFS file was brick-thick and I would never be voted Prom Queen or Most Likely to Do Anything. I considered the idea that Conn could disagree with what I had said but would still try to understand how I felt. This seemed as rare and lovely as the planet I cradled in the palm of my hand.
    “Let’s ditch school,” he said.
    “Ditch?” I glanced at my watch. If we began walking now, I wouldn’t be late for first period. “I don’t know, Conn. I like Art.”
    “I thought you were supposed to be working on Whatever You Want. Maybe you want to spend the day with me.”
    I looked at him. Why did he have to speak so seductively, when he couldn’t mean it? Carefully, I said, “I don’t want to miss English. I also like English.”
    “Ah, but you hate Pre-Calculus.”
    He had a point. “What about lunch? My friends will be looking for me.”
    “Your friends monopolize you.”
    “That’s not true.”
    “It is. They’re like a