It wasn't until we were walking up the steps to Hell Hall that I realized what I was doing. The second I did, I tripped on the top stair and had to grab Josh's arm to prevent my knee from cracking on the slate.
"Careful!" Josh said, helping me up.
Our faces almost touched as I fought for balance. Our skin was so close that his body heat warmed my cheek. My heart was already pounding from nervousness. Now it pounded twice as fast. Josh looked at me and his grip on my arm tightened for a split second before he released me.
"I can't do this," I told him, stepping back. As if that might slow my pulse. I didn't need this. Not on top of everything else. What, exactly, was my capacity for confusing emotions? How much could I handle before a vital organ actually imploded?
"What do you mean?" Josh asked, his brow creasing. "I thought we decided--"
"I know what we decided," I said through my teeth. I could
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smell the burning nylon as Thomas's note tried to sear its way out of my backpack.
Mr. Cross ascended the steps. He was the Ketlar House monitor and had been Thomas's advanced biology professor. Like all the other faculty members, he had an office in Hull Hall. ("Hell Hall" was the students' nickname for the ancient brick building in which most of the adults on campus spent the bulk of their time.) I pulled Josh aside, averting my gaze with a blush, to let the man pass. Still, my pulse raced at Josh's nearness.
I will not be attracted to Josh. I will not be attracted to Josh. Josh's dead roommate is my dead boyfriend. I will not go there.
Cross shot us a disapproving look under his clipped white eyebrows but kept moving. I didn't speak again until the heavy door had slammed behind him.
"But isn't this, like, withholding evidence?" I asked Josh under my breath. My earlier righteous bravado was gone, replaced, miraculously, by logic. "I could get in serious trouble here. I mean, before I was just protecting my boyfriend who was alive and rehabbing. Now it's like ... what? Aiding and abetting or something?"
Obviously, I had spent too much time watching those bad cop shows. Damn you, Dick Wolf.
Josh stood up straight as this sank in. A cold breeze tousled his hair, and a thick gray cloud moved in front of the sun. I pulled my coat closer to me. Dozens of dry brown leaves chased one another
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across the stone path down below. Suddenly I really didn't want to be here. I turned to go.
"Wait. Reed, wait," Josh said, grabbing my arm lightly.
My foot hovered in the air over the next step and my stomach went weightless, like I was on a roller coaster that had just taken a dip.
"What?" I said over my shoulder.
"We have to show it to them. This is about finding out what happened to Thomas," Josh said earnestly. "It's about telling the truth. Finally."
I recalled a conversation Josh and I had with Walt Whittaker last week in the cafeteria. One in which Whit had accused Josh of being a hypocrite for not turning Thomas into the board of trustees for his illegal activities ages ago. Something in Josh's eyes told me that conversation had really affected him. Maybe even more so, now that Thomas was gone. Now that Noelle, too, had suggested it was the right thing to do.
The girl really did have power.
"Besides, what can they do to you?" Josh said. "You're a minor and you were just scared and confused and all that. It's not like they're gonna throw you in jail for keeping a love note or whatever."
His certainty somehow took the edge off my fear. "Fine," I said. I strode past him and opened the door before I could lose my newfound resolve. "But if I do end up behind bars, it's your job to get me out."
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"Done and done," Josh said. Firmly. Like he really did intend to be my rescuer one day.
I walked ahead of him down the long, echoing hallway. Unbelievable. I was potentially walking to my doom, and definitely going to turn in my lying, deceased boyfriend . . . and then I did the most inappropriate, appalling thing possible.
I smiled.
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* * *