Black Heart by Holly Black

Author:Holly Black [Black, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf, azw3
ISBN: 9781442403468
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2012-04-03T07:00:00+00:00

Instead of going to class I head to Lila’s dorm. I have some idea that I’m going to talk to her about Daneca, but it’s become so jumbled up with a sheer, mad desire to see Lila that it doesn’t make any real sense.

I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don’t think I’m so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without really being aware of it—a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking.

I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure if it will come.

Maybe she’s eating breakfast in her room, I tell myself. That’s a reasonable thought, a normal one. I can just catch her before she leaves. I won’t let her see how much it matters.

I race up the stairs of Gilbert House, past a couple of freshmen girls, who giggle.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” one says, mock-scolding. “This is the girls’ dorm.”

I pause and give her my best smile, my coconspirator smile. The one that I practice in front of the mirror. The one that’s supposed to promise all kinds of evil delights. “Good thing I have you to cover for me.”

She smiles back, her cheeks going pink.

At the top of the steps I catch the door to Lila’s hall as Jill Pearson-White comes out. She’s got her backpack thrown over one shoulder and an energy bar in her mouth. She barely pays attention to me, taking the stairs two at a time.

I cross the corridor, fast, because if Lila’s hall mistress sees me, I am totally screwed. I try Lila’s door, but it’s locked. I don’t have time for anything fancy. I pull out a bank card from my wallet and slide it down the seam. That trick has worked on my own door before, and I’m lucky, because it works now.

I expect Lila to be sitting on her bed, maybe lacing her shoes. Or pulling on a pair of gloves. Or printing out a paper at the last possible minute. But she’s not.

For a moment I think I’m in the wrong room.

There are no posters on the walls. There is no bookcase, no trunk, or vanity or illicit electric kettle. The bed has been stripped down to the mattress, and there’s nothing else there.

She’s gone.

The door swings shut behind me as I cross the empty room. Everything feels like it has slowed down, the edges a little dim. The awfulness of it, the loss of her, hits me in the gut. Gone. Gone and there’s nothing I can do about it.

My eyes are drawn to the window, where light’s streaming in, casting an odd shadow. There on the sill, resting against one of the panes of glass, is a single envelope.

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