Fallen 2. Torment(106)

uselessly.

"I'm here, Penn," she whispered. "I'm sorry I had to leave you. I'm sorry you got

mixed up with me in the first place. You deserved better than this. A better friend than

me."

She wished her friend were still here. She wished she could talk to her. She knew

Penn's death was her fault, and it almost broke her heart.

"I don't know what I'm doing anymore, and I'm scared."

She wanted to say she missed Penn all the time, but what she really missed was

the idea of a friend she could have known better if death hadn't taken her away too soon.

None of it was right.

174





"Hello, Luce."

She had to wipe away the tears before she could see Mr. Cole standing on the

other side of Penn's grave. She'd gotten so used to her crisply elegant teachers at

Shoreline that Mr. Cole looked almost frumpy in his bunched-up tawny suit, with his

mustache, and his brown hair parted straight as a ruler just above his left ear.

Luce scrambled to her feet, sniffling against herwrist. "Hi, Mr. Cole."

He smiled kindly. "You're doing well over there, I hear. Everyone says you're

doing very well."

"Oh ... n-no ...," she stammered. "I don't know about that."

"Well, I do. I also know your parents are very happy to get to see you. It's good

when these things can work out."

"Thank you," she said, hoping he understood how grateful she was.

"I won't keep you but for just one question."

Luce waited for him to ask her about something deep and dark and over her head

about Daniel and Cam, good and evil, right and wrong, trust and deceit. ...

But all he said was "What did you do to your hair?"

Luce's head was upside down in the sink in the girls' bathroom down the hall from

the Sword & Cross cafeteria. Shelby carried in the last two slices of cheese pizza stacked

on a paper plate for Luce. Arriane held out a bottle of cheap black hair dye--the best

Roland could do on such short notice, but not a bad match for Luce's natural color.

Neither Arriane nor Shelby had questioned Luce about her sudden need for a

change. She'd been grateful for that. Now she saw they'd only been waiting for her to be

in a vulnerable half-dyed position to begin their inquisition.

"I guess Daniel will be pleased," Arriane said in her coyest leading-question tone

of voice. "Not that you're doing this for Daniel. Are you?"

"Arriane," Luce warned. She wasn't going there. Not tonight.

But Shelby seemed to want to. "You know what I've always liked about Miles?

That he likes you for who you are, not for what you do with your hair."

"If you two were going to be that obvious about it, why didn't you guys come

down in your Team Daniel and Team Miles T-shirts?"

"We should order those," Shelby said.

"Mine's in the laundry," Arriane said.

Luce tuned them out, focusing instead on the warm water and the strange

confluence of things flowing over her head, into her scalp, and down the drain: Shelby's

stubby fingers had helped with Luce's first dye job, back when Luce thought that was the

only way to start afresh. Arriane's first act of friendship toward Luce had been the

command to chop off her black hair, to make her look like Luce. Now their hands worked

through Luce's scalp in the same bathroom where Penn had rinsed her clean of the meat

loaf Molly had dumped on her head her first day at Sword & Cross.

It was bittersweet, and beautiful, and Luce couldn't figure out what any of it

meant. Only that she didn't want to hide anymore--not from herself, or from her parents;

not from Daniel, or even from those who sought to harm her.

She'd been seeking a cheap transformation when she first got out to California.

Now she realized that the only worthwhile way to make a change was to earn a real one.

175

Dying her hair black wasn't the answer either--she knew she wasn't there yet--but at least

it was a step in the right direction.

Arriane and Shelby stopped arguing over which guy was Luce's soul mate. They

looked at her silently and nodded. She felt it before she even saw her reflection in the

mirror: The heavy weight of melancholy, one she hadn't even known she was

shouldering, had lifted from her body.

She was back to her roots. She was ready to go home.

176





EIGHTEEN

THANKSGIVING

When Luce stepped through the front door of her parents' house in Thunderbolt,

everything was just the same: The coatrack in the foyer still looked like it was about to

topple under the weight of too many jackets. The smell of dryer sheets and Pledge still

made the house feel cleaner than it was. The floral couch in the living room was faded

from the morning sun that fell through the blinds. A stack of tea-stained southern