Fallen - By Lauren Kate Page 0,27

whether she was okay or not. He just walked away.

Luce's jaw dropped as she watched him go, as she watched everyone else seem not to care that he had bailed.

"What did you do?" Ms. Tross asked.

"I don't know. One minute, we were standing there" - Luce glanced at Ms. Tross - "um, working. The next thing I knew, the statue just fell over."

The Albatross bent down to examine the shattered angel. Its head had cracked straight down the middle. She started muttering something about forces of nature and old stones.
Chapter Five
THE INNER CIRCLE

"Don't ever scare me like that again!" Callie reprimanded Luce on Wednesday evening.

It was just before sundown and Luce was folded into the Sword & Cross phone cubby, a tiny beige confine in the middle of the front office area. It was far from private, but at least no one else was loafing around. Her arms were still sore from the graveyard shift at yesterday's detention, her pride still wounded from Daniel's fleeing the second they'd been pulled out from under the statue. But for fifteen minutes, Luce was trying hard to push all that out of her mind, to soak up every blissfully frantic word her best friend could spit out in the allotted time. It felt so good to hear Callie's high-pitched voice, Luce almost didn't care that she was being yelled at.

"We promised we wouldn't go an hour without speaking," Callie continued accusingly. "I thought someone had eaten you alive! Or that maybe they stuck you in solitary in one of those straitjackets where you have to chew through your sleeve to scratch your face. For all I knew, you could have descended into the ninth circle of - "

"Okay, Mom," Luce said, laughing and settling into her role as Callie's breathing instructor. "Relax." For a split second, she felt guilty that she hadn't used her one phone call to dial up her real mom. But she knew Callie would wig out if she ever discovered Luce hadn't seized her very first opportunity to get in touch. And in a weird way, it was always soothing to hear Callie's hysterical voice. It was one of the many reasons the two were such a good fit: Her best friend's over-the-top paranoia actually had a calming effect on Luce. She could just picture Callie in her dorm room at Dover, pacing her bright orange area rug, with Oxy smeared over her t-zone and pedicure foam separating her still-wet fuchsia toenails.

"Don't Mom me!" Callie huffed. "Start talking. What are the other kids like? Are they all scary and popping diuretics like in the movies? What about your classes? How's the food?"

Through the phone, Luce could hear Roman Holiday playing in the background on Callie's tiny TV.

Luce's favorite scene had always been the one where Audrey Hepburn woke in Gregory Peck's room, still convinced the night before had all been a dream. Luce closed her eyes and tried to picture the shot in her mind. Mimicking Audrey's drowsy whisper, she quoted the line she knew Callie would recognize:

"There was a man, he was so mean to me. It was wonderful."

"Okay, Princess, it's your life I want to hear about," Callie teased.

Unfortunately, there was nothing about Sword & Cross that Luce would even consider describing as wonderful. Thinking about Daniel for, oh, the eightieth time that day, she realized that the only parallel between her life and Roman Holiday was that she and Audrey both had a guy who was aggressively rude and uninterested in them. Luce rested her head against the beige linoleum of the cubby walls. Someone had carved the words BIDING MY TIME. Under normal circumstances, this would be when Luce would spill everything about Daniel to Callie.

Except, for some reason, she didn't.

Whatever she might want to say about Daniel wouldn't be based on anything that had actually happened between them. And Callie was big on guys making an effort to show they were worthy of you. She'd want to hear things like how many times he'd held open a door for Luce, or whether he'd noticed how good her French accent was. Callie didn't think there was anything wrong with guys writing the kind of sappy love poems Luce could never take seriously. Luce would come up severely short on things to say about Daniel. In fact, Callie'd be much more interested in hearing about someone like Cam.

"Well, there is this guy here," Luce whispered into the phone.

"I knew it!" Callie squealed. "Name."

Daniel. Daniel. Luce cleared