The large clock tower to my left started chiming, and I hurried down the path. I’d gone only a few steps when I noticed something gray shoved into one of the well-manicured hedges, and despite my preoccupation I paused to grab it. It turned out to be two drab gray shirts, each sporting a weird number on the pocket. They looked like Glitch costumes, although I had no idea what historical event they might belong to, which wasn’t all that surprising for me. Still, I didn’t want whatever cadets had lost these to get in trouble, so I shoved them under my arm and picked up my pace. I could drop them by the Academy laundry on my way home, but I would have to hustle. The campus crowd was already thinning out, and I didn’t want another teacher delaying my dinner any further with questions about why I’d lingered after the last recap. Although it already felt miles away, the confrontation with Elliot and the letter were taking up all my available brain space. Man, what I wouldn’t give to recap that. To sit back and watch the scene play out in the detail that only a recap could provide. But, of course, that was impossible. What mattered now was figuring out how to get that letter back from Elliot, preferably before he realized what he had and turned me in.

Chapter Three

Elliot

Regan Fitz was a stuck-up brat. She always had been, and she always would be. Of course, if I’d grown up the commander’s daughter, I might be a stuck-up brat too. I scowled out of Green’s classroom window as I watched her turn right toward her impressive brick house on the hill. I’d always wanted to see inside that house, but of course I’d never gotten an invite. Whatever, someday I’d be the one who lived there, and Regan “Too Dumb for Her Own Good” Fitz would be a nobody. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the weird texture of the envelope she’d almost taken me out trying to get back, and I wondered again why I’d bothered to hide it from Green. It had been a perfect opportunity to really stick it to Fitz right before leveling up. But I was too nosy, and I’d have given just about anything to find out what made all the blood drain out of her face like that. As I watched her disappear around the corner, I felt an old familiar jealousy wrap itself around my chest, and I momentarily regretted not throwing her under the bus when I had a chance. I tightened my grip around the letter, crumpling it mercilessly in my hand before realizing what I was doing and releasing it.