After a few hellos, Nick spots me and makes a beeline toward the end of the table. He drops down on my other side, laundry and cedar on max, and shoves a red-and-white checkered paper basket of bacon-cheddar tater tots in front of me. “Hey.”

“Hey.” I try not to focus on the way Nick sits so close to me. Or how, after he settles, he doesn’t move his body away from mine. Or how warm his bicep and hip are through his clothing. But it’s difficult. Suddenly, my low halter-top back feels too low. My skin too exposed. I’d just spent the last twenty-four hours obsessing over every text, every emoji, but now I’m so attuned to him that his very closeness makes me want to run far, far away? What the hell, Matthews? Get it together.

Sel takes a spot across from us, tucked back under the overhang, and balances against the wall on the back legs of a chair. He seems plenty happy to keep his eyes on me and doesn’t look interested in budging. After our confrontation and the revelation about his heritage, half of me is screaming to look away, and the other half wants to keep an eye on him. The left side of his mouth curls upward in a smirk, like he knows what I’m thinking and finds it amusing.

Ass.

Beside me, Nick tilts his head with a frown, eyes drawn to my mouth. “No smile. Everything okay?”

“Not exactly.” How do I talk about what I saw on the memory walk? I witnessed something no one I know has ever seen. How would I even begin to talk about it with a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who would have never been on the receiving end of Carr’s whip? Would Cecilia and Ruth even want me to share their memories? They hadn’t shown them to Patricia.

I don’t know how to carry the borrowed images that still feel alive and raw in my body. How does Patricia do it?

“You said you wanted to talk?”

I gesture off to the side of the porch where we can have some privacy. He catches my drift and shoves up from the table, grabbing a tot on the way. Before we can untangle our legs from the picnic table, Vaughn strolls by. Without preamble, he asks, “So, is the Table being reunited or what?”

A beat of silence.

Nick regards the other boy quietly before he answers. “If you’re asking if Arthur has Called me yet…” He looks down the table at the other listening faces. “If any of you are wondering that, the answer is no. Not yet.”

“I got a friend up at Western.” Whitty shoves his hands in his pockets beside Evan. “Said they’ve seen six Shadowborn up there in the last week.”