As he stood in the crowd of pledges, Chloe came over and stood next to him, touching his arm reassuringly with her smal , strong hand. A gap appeared in the bubble wrap, and he could realy feel her with him. He put his hand over hers and squeezed it gratefuly.
The pledge meeting was in the wood-paneled underground room where they'd first met. Ethan assured them this was just one of many secret hideouts - the others were only open to fuly initiated members. Matt had discovered by now that even this pledge room had several entrances: one through an old house just outside campus, which must have been the one they brought them through that first time, one through a shed near the playing fields, and one through the basement of the library. The ground beneath the campus must be honeycombed with tunnels for so many entrances to end up in one place, he thought, and he had an unsettling picture of students walking on the sun-warmed grass while, a few inches below, endless dark tunnels opened underneath them.
Ethan was talking, and Matt knew that usualy he would have been hanging on his every word. Today, Ethan's voice washed over Matt almost unheard, and Matt let his eyes fol ow the black-clad, masked figures of the Vitale members who paced the room behind Ethan. Duly, he wondered about them, about how the masks disguised them Wellenough that he was never sure if he recognized any of them around campus. Any of them except Ethan, that is. Matt wondered curiously what made the leader immune to such restrictions. Like the tunnels beneath the campus, the anonymity of the Vitales was slightly unsettling.
Eventualy, the meeting ended, and the pledges started to trickle out of the room. A few patted Matt on the back or murmured sympathetic words to him, and he warmed as he realized that they cared, that somehow they'd come to feel like friends through al the sily pledge bonding activities.
"Hold up a minute, Matt?" Ethan was next to him suddenly. At Ethan's glance, Chloe squeezed Matt's arm again and let go.
"I'l see you later," she murmured. Matt watched as she crossed the room and went out the door, her hair bouncing against the back of her neck.
When he looked back at Ethan, Ethan's head was cocked to one side, his golden-brown eyes considering.
"It's good to see you and Chloe getting so close," Ethan declared, and Matt shrugged awkwardly.
"Yeah, Well..." he said.
"You'l find that the other Vitales are the ones who can understand you best," Ethan said. "They'l be the ones who wil stand by you al through col ege, and for the rest of your life." He smiled. "At least, that's what's happened to me.
I've been watching you, Matt," he went on.
Matt tensed. Something about Ethan cut through the bubble-wrap feeling, but not in the comforting way Chloe did. Now Matt felt exposed instead of protected. The sharpness of his gaze, maybe, or the way Ethan always seemed to believe so strongly in whatever he was saying.
"Yeah?" Matt said warily.
Ethan grinned. "Don't look so paranoid. It's a good thing. Every Vitale pledge is special, that's why they're chosen, but every year there's one who's even more special, who's a leader among leaders. I can see that, in this group, it's you, Matt."
Matt cleared his throat. "Realy?" he said, flattered, not knowing quite what to say. No one had ever cal ed him a leader before.
"I've got big plans for the Vitale Society this year," Ethan said, his eyes shining. "We're going to go down in history.
We're going to be more powerful than we've ever been.
Our futures are bright."
Matt gave a half smile and nodded. When Ethan talked, his voice warm and persuasive, those golden eyes steady on Matt's, Matt could see it, too. The Vitales leading not just the campus but, someday, the world. Matt himself would be transformed from the ordinary guy he knew he had always been into someone confident and clear-eyed, a leader among leaders, like Ethan said. He could picture it al .
"I want you to be my right-hand man here, Matt," Ethan said. "You can help me lead these pledges into greatness." Matt nodded again and, Ethan's eyes on his, felt a flush of pride, the first good thing he'd felt since Chris's death.
He would lead the Vitales, standing by Ethan's side.
Everything would be better. The path was clear ahead.
Indeed, Keynes posited that economic activity was determined by aggregate demand. For the fifteenth time in half an hour, Stefan read the sentence without beginning to comprehend it.
It al just seemed so pointless. He'd tried to distract himself by investigating the murder on campus, but it had only made him more anxious that he couldn't be by Elena's side, seeing to it himself that she was safe. He closed the book and dropped his head into his hands.
Without Elena, what was he doing here?
He would have fol owed her anywhere. She was so beautiful it hurt him to look at her sometimes, like it hurt to stare into the sun. She shone like that sun with her golden hair and lapis lazuli eyes, her delicate creamy skin that held just the faintest touch of pink.
But there was more to Elena than beauty. Her beauty alone wouldn't have held Stefan's attention for long. In fact, her resemblance to Katherine had nearly driven him away.
But under her cooly beautiful exterior was a quicksilver mind that was always working, making plans, and a heart that was fiercely protective of everyone she loved.
Stefan had spent centuries searching for something to make him feel alive again, and he'd never felt as certain of anything as he did about Elena. She was it, the only one for him.
Why couldn't she be as sure of him? No matter what Elena said about Stefan being the one, the fact remained: the only two girls he'd loved in his long, long life both loved not just Stefan but his brother, too.