Chapter 78: The Two Columns

GEORGIA

My notebook starts as one list.

Then it becomes two.

I don’t like how much they overlap.

I pull it out from under my pillow and settle back against the headboard, propping my bad leg on the stack of blankets beside me. The paper feels cool beneath my palm when I open to a clean page. There’s something steadying about the blankness of it, like I can still make sense of things if I just get them out of my head and onto something solid.

Outside my window, wind moves through the trees. I can’t see the branches from here, but I can hear them scraping together in the dark, a dry, restless sound that makes my skin prickle.

I pick up my pen and draw a line straight down the center of the page.

I press too hard.

The tip catches on the paper, and for a moment, I stare at the small tear like it means something.

At the top of the left column, I write:

SABOTAGE

On the right:

IMPOSSIBLE

Both words look terrible in my handwriting. Jagged. Uneven. Like something scratched out in a hurry by someone who isn’t sure of anything anymore.

Mom would hate them.

Presentation matters, Georgia. Even in your notes.

I can practically hear her voice, crisp and disapproving, the way it always sounds when she thinks I’m not trying hard enough.

I don’t care.

This isn’t for her.

I start with sabotage.

The blade goes first.

Irregular wear on the blade mount. Not normal use.

I stare at the sentence for a second before moving on, my chest tightening as I remember the exact moment the ice came up to meet me.

The technician.

Told them something was wrong.

Told he was mistaken.

Told to stop asking.

Then the disconnected number.

Because phones don’t just stop existing in the middle of a conversation.

At least, mine never have.

Not while someone is still talking to me.

My pen moves faster, my handwriting growing sloppier with every line, like my hand can’t keep pace with the thoughts crowding my skull.

Bianca.

Her voice through the door before the Classic.

Sharp. Low.

It has to look like an accident.

I write that down, and my stomach twists at the memory of how casual she’d sounded, like she was discussing homework instead of my body hitting the ice.

Then the twins’ sudden kindness all week. Every compliment. Every door held open. Every perfectly timed smile. I hadn’t trusted a single one of them, not really, but I’d wanted to. That’s the part that stings the most.

The nurse telling me the equipment had been collected for review.

Just protocol.

Mom saying the same thing too quickly, her voice bright and brittle. The voice she uses when cameras are around, the one that means smile through it, Georgia, smile through everything.

My skate bag.

Sitting alone in the locker room while I went to get water.

The zipper was half open when I came back.

I could have sworn I’d closed it.

My pen slows.

I look at everything I’ve written.

The left column is getting long.

Too long.

And every point leads to the same place.

Someone wanted me on the ice with a loose blade.

Someone wanted me to fall.

I swallow hard, my throat tight, and move to the other side.

IMPOSSIBLE.

I write Puck.

The pen hesitates over his name, the ink pooling slightly before I force myself to keep writing.

He gets slammed into the boards hard enough that the glass should have cracked.

Two seconds later, he’s back on the ice.

Breathing like he’d barely broken a sweat.

I write that down, my hand trembling slightly.

Then his skin.

Burns under my fingers.

Pens snapping in his fist without him even seeming to notice.

Four dents in the steel balcony rail where his fingers should have left scratches.

I add:

Eyes flash gold.

I stop.

I’ve written that sentence so many times that it doesn’t even look real anymore.

It looks like something a different girl wrote. Someone braver, or crazier, I can’t decide which.

A girl who isn’t sitting in bed with a notebook, trying to decide whether she’s actually losing her mind.

I keep going anyway because stopping means admitting I don’t know how to make sense of any of it.

The twins.

The way one quiet sentence from Puck makes both of them go still. Throats tilted. Eyes lowered. Completely submissive.

Not polite.

Not respectful.

Submissive.

Everyone here heals in days.

Everyone except me.

I set the pen down and flex my fingers, trying to shake off the ache building in my palm.

For a minute, I just stare at the page, letting the silence of the room settle around me.

The radiator ticks beside the wall.

I barely notice.

The two columns don’t look separate anymore.

They look like one list I cut in half because I didn’t know what else to do, because some part of me needed the illusion of order even as everything blurred together.

I start with the twins because they’re easiest.

Bella.

Bianca.

They’re on the left because of Bianca’s voice through the door and the sudden kindness afterward.

They’re on the right because of the way they move. Too smooth. Too quiet. Almost like their feet barely touch the floor.

And because of what happens when Puck speaks.

Same two girls.

Same names.

Both sides.

My stomach tightens painfully.

Then I look at Puck’s name, and something in my chest aches in a way I don’t want to examine too closely.

I don’t want to put him on the sabotage side.

I do it anyway, my hand moving almost against my will.

Was in the arena.

Was on his feet before I hit the ice.

His voice comes back to me, unbidden.

Rough.

Low.

Destroyed.

I should have been closer.

He’d said it like the words hurt, like he was the one who’d fallen.

I stare at his name for a long moment, my eyes stinging.

I don’t think he did anything.

I don’t.

I feel that somewhere deeper than logic, somewhere in the part of me that still remembers the warmth of his hand against my back, the way his touch had felt like the only steady thing in a world that kept tilting sideways.

But he’s here.

On the page.

Under sabotage.

And the notebook doesn’t care what I want to believe.

I move on, blinking hard until my vision clears.

Rosethorne.

I write the school’s name in both columns, the letters coming out harder, angrier, than the rest.

On the left, there’s the equipment report that disappeared.

The technician who got scared enough to vanish halfway through a phone call.

The number that was disconnected before I could call back.

On the right, there’s everyone who heals faster than they should.

Bones knitting.

Cuts closing.

People getting back on their feet in days while I’m still counting how many steps I can take before my leg starts screaming.

I stare at the school’s name until the letters blur together.

Someone made things disappear.

Someone here has the power to do that.

And somebody here has the power to make an entire campus hear a howl in the woods and accept coyote without question.

Three hundred students.

One explanation.

Not a single person seems to think it’s strange.

I put my pen down.

My hand is shaking.

I flex my fingers.

Again.

The movement helps.

A little.

I sit there with my back against the headboard, looking at the page, feeling smaller than I have in weeks.

I don’t write anything else for a moment. I just breathe, trying to steady the storm building behind my ribs.

A door closes somewhere down the hall.

The sound is louder than it should be.

My shoulders jerk toward my ears before I can stop them.

I hate that.

I hate how quickly my body reacts now, how thin the wire holding me together has become.

I hate that flinching has become automatic.

Outside, the trees are dark against the slightly lighter sky. I look toward the window, then away again.

I don’t want to look at them.

Not tonight.

Two columns.

Two mysteries.

That’s what I thought I had.

A saboteur on one side.

A strange school on the other.

Except every time I look down the page, the same names are staring back at me.

Every single one.

I pick up the pen again, my resolve hardening even as my chest tightens with dread.

Slowly, I go down the sabotage column.

I put a small mark beside every name I’ve also written under impossible.

The twins.

One mark.

The ink sinks deep enough into the paper that I almost tear through it.

Puck.

One mark.

Rosethorne.

One mark.

I underline it twice, pressing so hard the pen nearly punctures the page.

Then I stop.

There’s one name left.

I go back through the list, my pulse loud in my ears.

Darcy.

My pulse jumps.

I read the left column again.

Knew the wear pattern on the mount.

Showed up at the hospital with exactly the right words.

Was suddenly attentive the week before the Classic.

I look at the right.

"You smell like him already."

He’d said it quietly.

Almost thoughtfully, like he was tasting the words before he let them go.

Puck goes rigid whenever Darcy walks into a room.

Jaw tight.

Shoulders squared.

Like he’s waiting for something.

Like he’s preparing for a fight neither of them ever starts.

And then there’s the gala.

The entire ballroom going quiet when Puck and I walked through the doors.

Conversations dying outward from us in a slow wave.

Three.

I look at the sabotage column.

Three.

Then the impossible column.

Three.

For several seconds, I just stare at the number, my heartbeat thudding painfully against my ribs.

My stomach turns.

I don’t know what it means.

I don’t know if it means anything.

But I can’t ignore it anymore.

I grip the pen.

Press down.

Harder.

My knuckles turn white as I draw a circle around his name.

Once.

Twice.

Again, until my hand aches and my breath comes shallow and quick.

Until the ink nearly tears through the paper.

Darcy.