I took a step backward. “I’m sorry. I think I need—”
The door sealed shut with an elegant shush. Sealed me in.
“Hey, Charity Case.” The other girl’s voice was sharply feminine—like a cheerleader who’d lost all patience. “Move it, so we can get out of here.”
I gave her a blank look, parsing her words. Charity Case?
Raising a sculpted brow, she scowled at my top.
Oh. The shirt. It wasn’t exactly used, per se. It was real vintage. A Velvet Underground concert tee, to be precise. It had little cap sleeves, and I liked to think it was something Kristen Stewart might wear. I fought the urge to tug at it. “Sure thing . . . Bunny,” I muttered, thinking as long as we were using nicknames.
“Just here,” Ronan said, coming to my rescue. His presence comforted me, but not enough, not like before. Because now mingled with that reassurance was the nagging sense of betrayal.
He motioned to the front bank of seats, and I followed him like a robot, sitting with my back to the shark tank in the rear of the plane. I wedged my hoodie under my leg. It was a Juicy knockoff, and I braced for the scorn I was sure that would elicit.
I ran my finger along the hard edge of the iPod hidden in the pocket. I’d need to figure out how to stash the thing more securely without it slipping out and clattering to the floor. In my jeans, maybe.
Ronan claimed the seat next to mine, and I wasn’t sure if my jangly feeling was relief or anger. The girls’ disdain radiated at my back. I felt duped. And, well, jealous.
“I have no money, you know.” I spoke to him in a low hiss. I would not let those girls overhear our conversation. “Like, to pay? Whatever this special school is you’re taking me to, I can’t afford tuition.”
The gorgeous, uniformed attendant buckled herself into her jump seat. She gave him a mysterious nod. It felt like a stab in the back, and my cheeks blazed with irrational embarrassment.
He buckled his seat belt. Defiant, I didn’t touch mine. I contemplated hopping up and escaping through the emergency exit.
Ronan reached across and buckled me in. The hot sweep of his fingers on my thighs made my breath catch. Kept me glued to my seat.
“We know you have no money,” he said simply.
“We?” I asked, my voice cracking.
The overhead lights flicked off, then on, then off again as the plane hummed to life.
I fought not to panic. What had I expected, getting into a zillion-dollar private jet with a stranger? “Who’s the we?” I repeated.
The plane eased forward. I looked out the window, watching the tarmac begin to roll beneath us.
He answered only, “Think of it as a scholarship.”
We picked up speed, and I had to flick my eyes to follow the horizon whooshing by in the distance. Horror bloomed, a sickening pit in my belly. There was no going back.
I stared at Ronan’s profile. I shouldn’t have let him convince me to come on board. Why had I listened? I wasn’t naive, not by a long shot. Nor was I a girly girl, falling for whichever cute guy looked my way. What was it about him? What had I been thinking?
I studied him. He was a guy’s guy, with a rugged, dimpled chin. A faint haze of dark stubble dusted his jaw. He’d convinced me with those stares, those touches. I willed him to look at me, to make me feel better again.
Doubts seized me. On the surface, he was out of my league. What would he want with me? I was smart, but lots of people were. I skimmed my eyes down, taking in my chipped purple nails and faded jeans. I knew guys went for blond hair, but there had to be more to it than that.
I clenched my hands, forcing myself to think. “Had you tracked me down before we met at the registrar’s?” I’d fantasized he’d simply seen me and swooned. But this scenario—this special school, this scholarship, how he knew my name before I told him—implied otherwise. “So it’s not that you saw me in the registrar’s office and, I don’t know, just . . . knew?”
He shook his head. Mutely. Maybe even regretfully. “Your name appeared in our system.”
Their system? How had my name gotten into a system?
I thought of all the Florida universities that’d offered me full rides and got a clue. “Did you get my name from Bright Futures?” Our state scholarship program had always sounded to me more like a Scientology pamphlet than a grant.
“Aye, your name did pop up.” There was something colder in his voice. His eyes no longer glimmered with suggestion. Why wasn’t he giving me one of his looks? One of those brushes of his hand?
“Why me?” I gripped my armrests, not knowing if I wanted the answer. The leather was as soft as it looked. “I mean, I can’t be the only kid who got a perfect score on her SATs.”
“But you are the only student with perfect SATs and a father with a history of domestic assault.”
Of course. Daddy Dearest. There’d be all sorts of information about him, me, us in the school system, with Social Services, in the Orlando Criminal Justice database.
I wrenched my shoulders back. I’d be more than what Daddy Dearest had made me. “So, how’d you find those two?” My voice came out sharp as I gave a sneer and a nod behind us. “Are they some of Florida’s brightest lights, too?”
“No, Annelise. I said the other girls were gifted. You’re the only genius.” Something softened in his face as he delivered the news, like it was something for me to be proud of.
I gulped convulsively, thinking I might sick up all over the beige Gulfstream rug. Abruptly, I began to fumble around my seat, beneath it.
“What is it?” he asked. I thought I saw concern flicker in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant, making me doubt it’d ever been there.
And why would he need to show sympathy? Ronan had gotten me on the plane, and now I was on my own. Again.
How had he done it? How had he duped me? It wasn’t drugs—he hadn’t given me anything to drink. It was like he’d mesmerized me with that stupid accent. I felt like a total idiot. A cute guy paid me some attention, and I fell over myself, following him to God knew where. Idiot.
The blood drained from my face. I wondered if I looked as queasy as I felt.
I felt like more of a freak than ever. If I’d been chosen because I was smart, why were those other girls here? I was proficient in a few languages and had aced AP calc in ninth grade. Their gifts were probably Varsity Hotness and an uncanny ability to torment nerdbots like me.
The plane slowed, turned onto the runway for takeoff. There was a tugging in my gut as it lurched forward. The sight of tarmac skimming by made my head spin with vertigo.
I breathed through my clenched teeth, frantically running my hand along the gleaming wood panel at my elbow, searching for a hidden compartment. “Don’t they have any of those airsick-bag things?”
I felt his hand on my arm, and froze. Despite his treachery, a tiny part of me willed his touch to warm me once more.
“Annelise,” he said, and his husky accent was gentle. I felt that familiar warmth spread from his fingertips, and the tight coil squeezing my chest loosened. “Your gift isn’t simply a high IQ. You are more than that.”
“Right.” I leaned back against the headrest and shut my eyes. More than that? Really? More than a weirdo? More than a hopeless social case?
I thought of the girls in the seats behind me. I had to swallow the sourness in my throat. If I’m more than that, what are they?
CHAPTER SIX
“Mimi? And Lilac von what?” I kept my voice down, but I couldn’t do anything about my disdain. After withstanding five hours of my incessant prying, Ronan finally told me the other girls’ names, though surely I must’ve misheard. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Lilac von Straubing,” he said under his breath. He avoided my eyes, and I wondered if I spied amusement on that stony face of his.
“Lilac von Straubing,” I repeated to myself, marveling. What fresh hell was this? as my girl Dorothy Parker might’ve said. The only von anybody I’d ever heard of was that superrich Claus von Bülow, and he’d been suspected of murdering his wife. Was this Lilac of the idle superrich, too? She sure looked capable of murdering loved ones.
A bell dinged, and the cabin lights went up. It was a gentle tone, in stark contrast to the alarms ringing in the back of my head.
Ronan unclicked his seat belt and stood. His gaze locked with mine and lingered for an unsettling moment. I looked away, but regretted I did. I was furious with him but impulsively longed to feel that connection we’d had in his car. It made me even surlier.
He went to the front and whispered something to the attendant. I watched avidly as she unlocked a closet at the front of the plane.
He retrieved three large satchels, handing one to each of us. They were canvas kit bags in a drab olive color, like we were off to boot camp instead of this whatever-they-called-it school. Getting issued new stuff gave an air of finality to the whole thing. I rubbed my arms, suddenly chilled.
I was in deep now.
“What’s the name of this place, anyway?” I settled the bag between my legs. Private jets offered more than a little legroom, and I was determined to rifle through my satchel as soon as I could. I was desperately curious about what might be inside.
“I told you already,” he said as he sat back down. “Eyja nœturinnar.”
“That’s it? But I thought you said that was the name of the island.”
“There’s naught much else on the isle but the school.”
Hopefully they didn’t go for any lame Go, fight, WIN, Eyja Tigers! nonsense. I bit my cheek to avoid succumbing to nervous tittering. “Either way, Nœtur . . . Eyjan doesn’t sound like any university I’d ever heard of.”
“Eyja nœturinnar.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “But you were close.”
I shrugged. It was pretty simple once you parsed the roots into recognizable bits. “I’ve got a thing for Germanic languages.”
“Aye.” Looking distracted, he stared past me out the window, even though the only view was a flat wall of black and two flickering red lights on the wing. “We knew that.”