A Deadly Education (Scholomance #1) - Naomi Novik Page 0,47
every time we walked past their corner in the reading room, to and from meals. I knew better. I should have been chumming up with all of them. I wasn’t dating Orion, but he really was my friend; that wasn’t just a temporary illusion. I had an actual in at New York. If they took me in, I wouldn’t need to worry about finding any other allies. I could pop on one of those power-sharers and glide all the way to the gates and right on through like I was on ice skates. I wouldn’t even need to grovel, I suspected, just make myself decently polite.
But I didn’t. I didn’t encourage any of the enclaver kids who kept trying to make up to me; I just cold-shouldered them all. I wasn’t subtle about it, either. On Saturday night, on our way to brushing our teeth, Aadhya actually said to me, tentatively, “El, have you got some kind of a plan going?”
I instantly knew what she meant. But I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to be talked sensibly out of my stupid behavior. After a pause, Aadhya said, “It is what it is. I was really popular at school outside. Soccer and gymnastics, a million friends. But my mom sat me down a year before induction and told me I was going to be a loser in here. She didn’t say it like, be ready if that happens. She just told me flat-out.”
“You aren’t a loser,” I said.
“Yeah, I am. I’m a loser because I have to think about it all the time: how am I getting out of here? We have one year left, El. You know what graduation is going to be like. The enclave kids are going to pick and choose from the best of us. They’ll hand out shields and power-sharers, and cast a timespear or light up a kettler and zoom right out the gates, and the mals will come for everybody else. We don’t want to be everybody else in that scenario. Anyway, what are you going to do after? Go live in a hut in the Rockies?”
“A yurt in Wales,” I muttered, but she was right, obviously. It was everything I’d planned on, in fact, with one crucial exception. “They don’t want me, Aadhya. They want Orion.”
“So what? Use it while you can,” Aadhya said. “Look, I’m only saying any of this because you’ve done me a solid, and I think you’re smart enough to hear it, so don’t get mad: you know you turn people off.”
“But not you?” I said, trying to sound cool about it, when I didn’t feel cool at all.
“I wasn’t immune or anything,” she said. “But my mom also told me to be polite to rejects, because it’s stupid to close doors, and suspicious of people who are too nice, because they want more from you than they’re letting on. And she was right. Jacky W turns out to be Hannibal Lecter, and you turn out to be so hardcore you’d ditch New York and London to stick with me just because I didn’t completely rip you off trading.” She shrugged.
We were at the bathroom by then, so we couldn’t talk anymore: I seethed the whole way through brushing my teeth and washing my face and keeping watch for Aadhya’s turn. But on the way back, I burst out, “Just—why? What have I ever done that turns people off?”
I waited for her to say all the usual things: You’re rude, you’re cold, you’re mean, you’re angry, all the things people say to make it my fault, but she looked over at me and frowned like she was really thinking about it, and then she said with decision, “You feel like it’s going to rain.”
“What?”
But Aadhya was already waving her hands around and elaborating. “You know that feeling when you’re a mile away from anywhere, and you didn’t take your umbrella because it was sunny when you left, and you’re in your good suede boots, and suddenly it gets dark and you can tell it’s about to start pouring buckets, and you’re like Oh great.” She nodded to herself, satisfied with her brilliant analogy. “That’s what it feels like, whenever you show up.” She paused and glanced back behind us, making sure there wasn’t anyone in earshot, and then said to me abruptly, “You know, if you cheat a little too much, it can mess up your vibe. I know a kid in alchemy track who has