Luce cracked her knuckles. Maybe Cam only liked it because its polished pinkish stone stood out among the mostly gray ones? Or because of the intricate whorls in the crest along the top? She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Yeah." Cam shrugged. "I just like how the headstone explains the way he died. It's honest, you know? Usually, people don't want to go there."
Luce looked away. She knew that all too well from the inscrutable epitaph on Trevor's tombstone.
"Think how much more interesting this place would be if everyone's cause of death was chiseled in." He pointed to a small grave a few plots down from Joseph Miley's. "How do you think she died?"
"Um, scarlet fever?" Luce guessed, wandering over.
She traced the dates with her fingers. The girl buried here had been younger than Luce when she died. Luce didn't really want to think too hard about how it might have happened.
Cam tilted his head, considering. "Maybe," he said. "Either that or a mysterious barn fire while young Betsy was taking an innocent 'nap' with the neighbor boy."
Luce started to pretend to act offended, but instead Cam's expectant face made her laugh. It had been a long time since she'd just goofed off with a guy. Sure, this scene was a bit more morbid than the typical movie theater parking lot flirtations she was used to, but so were the students at Sword & Cross. For better or worse, Luce was one of them now.
She followed Cam to the bottom of the bowl-like graveyard and the more ornate tombs and mausoleums.
On the slope above, the headstones seemed to be looking down at them, like Luce and Cam were performers in an amphitheater. The midday sun glowed orange through the leaves of a giant live oak tree in the cemetery, and Luce shaded her eyes with her hands. It was the hottest day they'd had all week.
"Now, this guy," Cam said, pointing to a huge tomb framed by Corinthian columns. "Total draft dodger.
He suffocated when a beam collapsed in his basement. Which just goes to show you, never hide out from a Confederate roundup."
"Is that so?" Luce asked. "Remind me what makes you the expert on all of this?" Even as she teased him, Luce felt strangely privileged to be there with Cam. He kept glancing at her to make sure she was smiling.
"It's just a sixth sense." He flashed her a big, innocent grin. "If you like it, there's a seventh sense, and an eight sense, and a ninth sense where that came from."
"Impressive." She smiled. "I'll settle for the sense of taste right now. I'm starving."
"At your service." Cam pulled a blanket from his tote bag and spread it out in a scrap of shade under the live oak tree. He unscrewed a thermos and Luce could smell the strong espresso. She didn't usually drink her coffee black, but she watched as he filled a tumbler with ice, poured the espresso over it, and added just the right amount of milk to the top. "I forgot to bring sugar," he said.
"I don't take sugar." She took a sip from the bone-dry iced latte, her first delicious sip of Sword & Cross-prohibited caffeine all week.
"That's lucky," Cam said, spreading out the rest of the picnic. Luce's eyes grew wide as she watched him arrange the food: a dark brown baguette, a small round of oozy cheese, a terra-cotta tub of olives, a bowl of deviled eggs, and two bright green apples. It didn't seem possible that Cam had fit all that in his bag -
or that he'd been planning on eating all this food by himself.
"Where did you get this?" Luce asked. Pretending to focus on tearing off a hunk of bread, she asked,
"And who else were you planning on picnicking with before I came along?"
"Before you came along?" Cam laughed. "I can hardly remember my bleak life before you."
Luce gave him the slightest of snide looks so he'd know that she found the remark incredibly cheesy ...
and just a little bit charming. She leaned back on her elbows on the blanket, her legs crossed at the ankles.
Cam was sitting cross-legged facing her, and when he reached over her for the cheese knife, his arm brushed, then rested on, the knee of her black jeans. He looked up at her, as if to ask, Is this okay?
When she didn't flinch, he stayed there, taking the hunk of baguette from her hand and using her leg like a tabletop while he spread a triangle of cheese onto the bread. She liked the feeling of his weight on her, and in this heat, that was saying something.
"I'll start with the easier question first," he said, finally sitting back up. "I help out in the kitchen a couple of days a week. Part of my readmittance agreement at Sword & Cross. I'm supposed to be 'giving back.'"
He rolled his eyes. "But I don't mind it in there. I guess I like the heat. That is, if you don't count the grease burns." He held out his upturned wrists to expose dozens of tiny scars on his forearms,
"Occupational hazard," he said casually. "But I do get the run of the pantry."
Luce couldn't resist running her fingers along them, the infinitesimal pale swells fading back into his paler skin. Before she could feel embarrassed by her forwardness and pull away, Cam grabbed her hand and squeezed.
Luce stared at his fingers wrapped around hers. She hadn't realized before how closely the shades of their skin matched. In a landscape of southern sunbathers, Luce's paleness had always made her feel self-conscious. But Cam's skin was so striking, so noticeable, almost metallic - and now she realized she might look the same to him. Her shoulders shivered and she felt a little dizzy.
"Are you cold?" he asked quietly.
When she met his eyes, she knew he knew she wasn't cold.
He scooted closer on the blanket and dropped his voice to a whisper. "Now I guess you're going to want me to admit that I saw you crossing the quad through the kitchen window and packed all this up in the hopes of convincing you to skip class with me?"