I was actually starting to feel a grudging ounce of respect for him when he turned and grinned at me. The charitable feelings I had toward him dissolved. I could just tell he was going to make a huge deal out of us “getting to know each other.”

I knew then that the rest of this annum was going to be hell.

Chapter 2

The remainder of the trip had gone pretty normally, apart from Henry giving me the cold shoulder on the bus ride back. Well, and Tamara. She wouldn’t even look at me—or anyone else, for that matter. She just stared down at her rhinestone-studded sneakers like they were the most interesting thing in the world.

I felt really guilty for dragging them into this. Though, honestly, Henry didn’t really have any room to complain. He’d gotten me into trouble way more often than vice versa. So it was an enormous relief when school got out that afternoon and I saw the two of them waiting for me out in front of the Academy as usual. Henry and I always walked with Tamara over to the pier, where she took the ferry over to Herschel Island for her music lessons, before catching the train down to the south side of town where the two of us lived.

I hurried down the first set of steps to meet them. “You’re not too torqued at me?” I asked when I caught up with them.

“That depends on whether you’re going to explain to us what all that was about,” Henry replied. He led the way down the second set of steps. The Academy was perched among the flat-faced cliffs on the northwest side of town, and it was quite a trek down to the street for those of us who didn’t qualify for a key to the elevator. There were some mornings when cutting class seemed a more appealing alternative than climbing all those flights of stairs. “Seriously, Isaak, what’s so special about that pile of rocks that it was worth six weeks of Saturday school? That’s a new record, even for me.”

I flushed. “It’s probably stupid,” I admitted. “It’s just… I really felt like I’d seen that arch before.”