Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“What do you have against sharks?” Timmy asked.
“Why is everyone on this bus so uncultured?” Derrick complained.
Shane ignored him to address Jean: “We’ll be stopping for a break in an hour or so. I know you can tolerate us for that long.”
Jean couldn’t guess an ulterior motive, but they were his teammates. He would go along with this for now. Jean obediently sat in the spot Lucas had cleared for him, keeping his back to the other man and putting his legs in the aisle. Derrick hung off the back of the seat to ask, “What do you want to talk about?”
“This was your idea,” Jean reminded him.
“What do you normally talk about with them?” Derrick tried.
“I mostly listen.”
Derek’s dry, “That works, because Derrick loves to talk,” only made Derrick laugh.
He wasn’t lying; as soon as Derrick had permission to speak he was running his mouth without any breaks for breathing. Jean was content for now to lean against the back of his seat and listen.
Save for Shane, who was in three of Jean’s classes, Jean rarely saw these Trojans outside of practice. With Jean living off-campus and no Nest to bind them together, perhaps it was inevitable, but this was a rare chance to see how they interacted without Exy in the mix. There was an easy familiarity to the way they treated each other as they bounced from topic to topic without cease. They were quick to tease one another, but it lacked the biting edge and sly grievances that stained too many of the Ravens’ conversations.
“What’re you thinking about?” Derek asked, poking at the top of his head. “You’ve got a serious look on your face.”
There was no point lying, so Jean said, “The Nest.”
“Y’all’s Away locker room is horrible,” Sebastian said. “Can I say that now?”
“‘Y’all’ nothing,” Shawn spoke up. “He’s not a Raven.”
Sebastian grimaced. “Yeah, I just—the point stands. I hated it. Did you really live there?”
Jean thought of dark walls and red lighting, rows of identical rooms, and the way his blood looked black on Riko’s bedroom floor. The same few meals over and over, the same callous faces day-in and day-out, and the court where the Ravens could finally spread out and breathe. Harsh laughter, wild violence, and the crick-crack of fracturing bones. Jean flexed his fingers, needing to know they worked, but the lack of pain was as unsettling as it was comforting.
“Yes,” Jean said, because they were still watching him.
Dillon leaned past Sebastian. “What was it like?”
A living nightmare, Jean thought. Aloud he said, “The Nest was a critical factor in our success as a team.”
“Stronger than me,” Sebastian said, looking to Dillon for agreement. “I’d’ve gone mad.”
“Who says they didn’t?” Lucas asked.
It was the first thing he’d said since Jean sat down. Shane stood, looking ready to intervene if needed, but Jean wouldn’t deny it.
He considered it, then sent a sidelong look over his shoulder. “What is it in English, the colored glass at church?” Lucas hesitated before answering, and Jean couldn’t fight back a faint scowl at the sound of it. “Stained glass. English continues to be a hideous invention. Stained glass.” He flicked his fingers, trying to erase it from his memory, but said, “That is what the Ravens are: sharp-edged and shattered, and fused together into a new whole. You cannot take them apart again.”
“You and Kevin left,” Derek said.
Kevin was forcibly broken off and Jean was stolen, but there was no point getting into that with these people. “We are perfect Court,” he said. He was closer to the Ravens than Kevin and Riko had ever been, as the King and his brother existed on a pedestal, but his entire tenure at the Nest he’d been a half-step apart. Jean dug his fingers into his tattoo until his cheekbone ached. “We are not the same.”
Jean hadn’t realized the freshmen were paying attention, but Chuck popped up in his seat to stare at Jean. “Are you going to keep that?” he asked, pointing at his own face. “Isn’t it a little weird? All the others being gone, I mean.”
“Ignore him,” Derek said. “His mama didn’t raise him right.”
Chuck made a face. “I’m not the only one who wants to know!”
“You could probably find a better way to ask,” Nabil said from a row or two up.
Haoyu hissed at Chuck to get his attention. His stage whisper wasn’t quiet enough for Jean to miss his “Riko!” warning, and Jean glanced over in time to see Haoyu slice a finger across his own throat. Chuck blanched at the reminder and dropped out of sight as soon as he realized Jean had seen them. Haoyu glanced over, warned by Chuck’s reaction that something was wrong, and dropped his hand to his lap as quickly as he could.
“Pop, and he was gone.”