I decided to ignore this and held up my empty hands. “But what happened to the letter?” I asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like it dissolved.”

“I noticed,” he said, his wrinkled forehead mirroring my own confusion. Then his face brightened, and he looked at me. “It’s like it never happened.”

“But it did happen,” I said. “You saw it. Now we have to figure out what to do.”

“We do nothing,” Elliot said. “I’m not risking everything I’ve worked for because of a stupid letter I didn’t even write. I’m leveling up tomorrow, so any future Cocoons you get, just keep them to yourself.”

“But the letter said you couldn’t level up tomorrow, that something bad was going to happen if we didn’t start working together,” I said.

“That sounds a lot like a you problem,” Elliot said. With that he stood up and made his way over to the side of the fountain. Putting both hands on the concrete ledge, he levered himself up and out.

“But,” I protested, then stopped myself, because, really, what was I supposed to say? He was right, he had no skin in this game now. I stood in the freezing cold fountain as he stalked off down the dark path, leaving a dripping trail behind himself like the bread crumbs in the story of Hansel and Gretel. A trail I couldn’t follow.

Chapter Seven

Elliot

I couldn’t think about this. Not now. Not with the test tomorrow. The letter was gone. I’d watched it dissolve like sugar in water, no trace. As long as Fitz hadn’t shown anyone, which she claimed she hadn’t, I was in the clear. My name scrubbed off the only incriminating piece of evidence.

I slipped silently into the same window I’d left less than an hour before. Standing in my dark room, I waited to feel the relief I’d felt at the fountain when I’d realized that I was off the hook, but it didn’t come. Instead I felt a gnawing sense of guilt. But for what? For leaving her standing in the fountain? That would be incredibly stupid since she’d done the exact same thing to me once.

My eyelids felt scratchy but my brain was still going about a thousand miles an hour, and I knew that sleeping wasn’t in the cards for the night. I found myself pacing my tiny dorm room. After the cool expanse of the campus at night, the tiny six-by-ten room felt like a cage. I needed something to disengage my brain. Something I could use to forget about the mess of the last few hours.