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There had been a time—not the first time, maybe, but one of the first—when they were in Ronan’s bed, naked and close and quiet, and Adam was beginning to itch for his clothes. Minutes before, his nakedness had felt like a superpower, but now he was uncomfortable, unwieldy, an unprotected body that would have to take the time to dress before starting a new task.
Ronan looked unconcerned. Ronan looked some other things, too: pale, long, pink in ways that were Adam’s fault. He looked like all of the things Adam liked about being in bed with Ronan.
As if he could feel Adam’s thoughts, Ronan slid his eyes sideways to meet Adam’s, then slid their hands together, slid their tangled fingers up and into a pile against the dull blades of his ribs. His eyelashes were swept low. He flicked his thumbnail against the meat of Adam’s palm, once, twice, and said, “Does doing this ever feel like bullshit to you?”
Oh. Well. “Try again, Lynch,” Adam said, because he was feeling generous.
Their hands migrated up, to rest against Ronan’s mouth, which was how Adam knew that Ronan’s actual point wouldn’t be as terrible as it sounded.
“Like it’s fake,” Ronan elaborated, unhelpfully. His expression was veering toward frustrated.
Adam tapped his index finger against Ronan’s lips, and Ronan huffed, shifted against the pillow that was bunched up somewhere under his back. “Like it’s what shitty teenagers do when they’re trying to feel like adults,” he said, then made another annoyed sound, bowed his body up into a shape that Adam’s brain registered as being Interesting, and clawed the pillow out from under himself. “That thing was driving me fucking crazy,” Ronan added. It sounded like he was deflecting from his other sentence, because he was.
Adam took a breath. “Do you not like it?”
“It was digging into my back, why the fuck would I?” Ronan swiped at the pillow a second time, flung it onto the floor.
“Ronan.”
It was quiet again. Ronan’s teeth worried at Adam’s knuckles. Adam allowed it.
Outside, there was thunder, and the air spooling through the cracked window smelled alive and full of promise. Somewhere in the house, closer than Adam would have preferred, maybe, he could hear the funny scuffing sound that Opal’s hooves made when she was tripping along, getting into trouble, trying to go unnoticed. He would have to put clothes on, probably, so he could go intervene in whatever mischief she was creating.
That could wait a little longer. Adam moved his hand away from Ronan, and replaced it with his mouth. They kissed, and breathed, and kissed, until Ronan muttered, “I didn’t say that I don’t like it, obviously I fucking like it, it just doesn’t seem like something I would do,” and then Adam understood.
There was the part of it, of them together, that was like following the steps of a ritual intended to make them normal, to make them older. It was something that Adam secretly enjoyed about sex with Ronan, actually. It felt aligned with adulthood: I work three jobs, I’m going to college soon, I pay my own rent, I just fucked my boyfriend in his bed.
“You mean it seems insincere to act like people now, when we don’t any other time.”
“Yes.” Ronan’s face settled out of frustration, and into satisfaction. “Like that. Like it’s bullshit.” He kicked his foot against Adam’s. “Like it’s not real life. Or like it’s someone else’s real life.”
It made sense to Adam and it didn’t; he kissed Ronan again, and felt grateful for all the places their skin was touching. “If it makes you feel any better,” Adam said, his words a tether between his mouth and Ronan’s, “I think Opal is shredding something in Declan’s room right now.”
“Oh, good,” Ronan said, with more sarcasm than he would’ve used a few months before. He glanced at the shut door, clearly hearing the same sounds Adam was hearing—and then a crafty smile hooked its way onto his face. “Hey, listen to this: she’s half kid, half kid.”
“Oh my god,” Adam said, and pushed away, swung his feet to the floor, let them land conveniently in a puddle of discarded clothing.
“Because of the goat legs,” Ronan continued unnecessarily. He sounded gleeful and smug, and Adam liked him so much.
“You’re terrible,” Adam said, and then, “I like you so much.”
“Sick burn,” Ronan replied, before brushing his hand against Adam’s back. They both knew which thing was his real answer.
*
When Adam left for college, it was in his own car, which he both appreciated and resented. He had always intended to leave on his own terms, and the Shitbox was his; however, it would be a lie if he said there wasn’t a part of him that had imagined driving to school in Ronan’s slick BMW, looking like a picture out of the future he and his classmates would all be steering towards.
He hadn’t wanted to take Ronan’s car, not really, but the idea had certainly had its appeal, especially near the end when his own car was beginning to seem incurable. But Ronan had dreamed up a fix, both for the Shitbox and for the liquid death that had streamed out to coat his teeth, and since Adam had been rendered thoroughly terrified and skeptical, it was, of course, time to go.
They had decided that Adam should leave early—so he could beat the traffic, so he could leave before the leaving hurt too much. They had decided that Adam should leave alone.
When Adam left, it was with a duffle bag and a few boxes in the back, his wallet in his left pocket, and the passenger seat taken up by a canvas bag containing the shiny, school-required laptop Adam had agonized over spending his last few paychecks on. The seat also cradled a scuffed, black CD binder that had once lived in Ronan’s room. Ronan had burned a small mountain of CDs to get Adam through the drive, or maybe through the year, and Adam hadn’t argued. The overstuffed case meant that his secondhand car radio could pump out the harsh, electronic sounds of Ronan’s heart.
Adam suspected that the CDs with their Sharpie-scrawled descriptions (“You’ll Fucking Hate This One”, “8 AM A-Go-Go”, “Play This For Ur Roommate If He Sux”) were Ronan’s compromise for not actually spending the next school year in Adam’s passenger seat.
The sky was starting to go pale and bland with sunrise, but that morning in the driveway had been dark and starry and endless. Ronan had shuffled out after him in bare feet, and they had clung to each other, and Adam had closed his eyes and seen black Unmaking dripping from Ronan’s ears. It would be fine. It would be fine, as long as Ronan spent more time Dreaming than he did Being A Shit, but it bothered Adam. It felt irresponsible to leave.
He had willed the thought away, and breathed in the sleep-sweat of Ronan’s neck instead. He thought about the scratch of Ronan’s jaw, and the soft fury of his mouth. He thought about how far into the drive his first exit would be. He thought about Opal, who had hidden herself in the enthusiastic buttonbush that grew alongside the house; she had taken to crouching there whenever it looked like Adam and Ronan were doing things related to Leaving, and had gnawed an entire branch clean. She watched them as they swayed and whispered, and Adam had thought she would stay in the bush and not come see him at all, but he was wrong: at the last minute she had been unable to stand it, and had burst out to wrap herself around his legs.
It was impossible to leave them.
He had gotten in the car.
Now, in the clean, ordinary light of 6:30 am, Adam turned the radio up against the ache that had replaced all of his organs. His teeth shook; he was starting to understand why Ronan liked this music so much.
*
It was not Adam’s first night at school, but it was one of the first, and the inside of his head was a painting titled Things That Might Be Happening At Home.
The painting was a triptych. The first panel was this: the Barns, muted; Ronan, gone or in a room by himself; Opal, gone or in a room by herself; endless opportunity for something bad to befall one of them without the other knowing. The second panel showed Ronan’s teeth, glazed black; his ears, sticky and dark; his eyes and nostrils, weeping in viscous, inky stripes. The third panel was a detailed rendering of the fine, blonde hair that had been cobwebbed across what had once been Aurora Lynch; except it wasn’t Aurora, because the pieces were too small, and it wasn’t Aurora, because the hair was too short, and it wasn’t Aurora, because he could see a hoof.
Adam called Ronan.
Every trill of the phone dialing was a sick stab of anxiety. Adam was in this moment, holding a cell phone to his right ear, and he was also in the moment a week ago when Ronan had pressed the phone into his palm and said, take it, even if it’s just to call me, when he had said, I promise I’ll even answer. He was now, and he was then, and he was in a third, imaginary moment somewhere in the future where Ronan fished his phone from his pocket and swiped up and was fine, and also in a mirrored moment where he did not fish his phone out and he did not swipe up, because he was not fine.
Would Adam know if something had happened? Would he have to scry? Would the cards tell him, or would he just know?
The ringing stopped, and there was a beat of silence, and then, “Parrish.”
The sound of Ronan’s voice was the sound of Adam’s overfull imagination depressurizing. “Hey,” Adam said. He sounded normal; his left hand, where it had been clenching a fistful of pillowcase, was shaking.
“Hey,” Ronan parroted. His voice was edged with amusement. “Hang on, I’ve got—let me put Chainsaw down, she’s being a shit.” There was some shuffling, some mild squawking, a fuzzed, far away version of Ronan saying well, don’t put it in your fucking mouth, then, and then he was back. “Okay. What’s up?”
“Just wanted to call,” Adam said. His eyes were closed. “Check in. See how things were going at home.”
Ronan was quiet for a few seconds. Adam wondered how many of those seconds were about his use of the word home. “Yeah. It’s good. It’s okay. I’m repainting that one barn we talked about.”
“Yeah? What color? Red?”
“No. It’s a surprise.”
“Lime green?”
“I’m not a fucking child. I went with something sophisticated. Understated. You know.”
“Sure, Gansey,” Adam said, and they both laughed. It was an incredible kind of magic, the way the new-bed, desk-bent ache in Adam’s shoulders was nearly gone, just from hearing Ronan’s voice.
“How’s higher education?” There was a sound like a door shutting; Ronan must have gone inside. “Are you smarter than everyone there, or just most of everyone?”
Adam wasn’t going to answer that. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “It’s fine. A lot of work already, but I’m handling it. I think my roommate’s going to be gone a lot.”
“Good. Fuck that guy.”
Adam laughed again. Magic. “No, he’s not too bad. I think he’s out socializing, or something. Not everybody came to school already knowing every person they’ll ever wanna know, I guess.”
“Bunch of losers,” Ronan agreed.
Adam pushed out a breath. “How’s Opal?”
“Sulking,” Ronan replied, his voice a study in exasperation. “She kicked up the couch the other day, and then did the whole pterodactyl routine when I yelled at her.” Adam could picture the scene vividly: the tiny girl-creature, her tiny, sharp hooves, her enormous, shrieking voice. “I keep waiting for her to ask when you’re coming back. I haven’t told her when your breaks are, or anything. I’m not sure if she would even get it. Time was always so fucked in the dreams.”
“And Cabeswater,” Adam added quietly.
Neither of them said same difference, but it was implied.
Ronan was silent. Adam remembered when Ronan’s silence used to make him uncomfortable; now, he leaned into it, swam in it, collected it to live in later. “I dreamed up this thing,” Ronan said, finally.
“You are dreaming, then.” Adam tried to make it a question, and failed.
There was a time when this comment would have instigated a fight. They didn’t fight, now. They understood each other so much better than they used to. “I’m handling it,” Ronan said, echoing Adam’s earlier words. “Like I said. I dreamed up this thing. Interactive nature bullshit. I think Sargent will really dig it, when—well.” When they come back.
Adam knew they were thinking the same thing: If they come back.
“If she doesn’t love it, I’ll love it for her,” Adam said, as truthfully as he could without knowing for sure that he was telling the truth. “They’ll end up back in Henrietta, eventually, won’t they? Gansey loves it too much.”
“And there’s Blue’s mom,” Ronan said.
“Blue’s mom,” Adam agreed. “And Calla. Orla.”
“Orla,” Ronan sneered, contempt bleeding into his voice like an ink pellet dissolving in water. His pure, scalding disgust conveyed exactly what he thought of Blue’s cousin, including her inability to take a hint, including that time Adam and Gansey had stared a little too long, including her protuberant nose.
Adam huffed a laugh. The painting in his head was changing shape: it was swiftly retitling itself, Things At Home You Are Missing. The first panel was Fox Way and the Camaro, busy and bright and timeless; the second was Opal and Chainsaw, the truest products of Ronan’s mind, cawing circles around one another; the third was Ronan’s face, derisive and delighted, half-lidded and secret, stony and wild, joyful, angry, open. The frame around the paintings was every hook and claw and knot inked into Ronan’s back.
“Jesus,” Adam sighed. “I’m so happy to be here. But it’s going to take so long.”
“Don’t think of it like that.” Adam imagined Ronan on the couch, sprawled, closing his eyes. There would be water in a glass on the coffee table. Ronan’s shoes would be kicked off by the door. “A few months until Thanksgiving. Winter break right after that. Spring break a couple months later. And you’ll be working in between.”
Adam thought of what his first day of Thanksgiving break would be like: packing, cleaning, driving home. He would think it and think it until it was real.
Ronan cleared his throat. “Do you have homework? Any Greek societies to pledge yourself to?”
“Please,” Adam scoffed. “Greek. Secret societies, maybe.”
“Because you aren’t part of enough of those.”
“We don’t count as a secret society. A secret…team, maybe. A secret group?” Adam registered all of the unconvinced Ronan noises coming through the phone. “A non-secret friendship? I’m not making this any better, am I?”
“Oh yeah. Everybody knows a secret group is way different than a secret society.” Ronan laughed. “We’re a motherfucking secret squad. I’ll make patches.”
“God. I actually do have homework, though.” Adam allowed himself a moment of feeling tired. He wished he still had Cabeswater to give the feeling to after he was done. “I don’t want to do it.”
“You will, though.”
“Yes. Of course I will.”
Ronan breathed through the phone. In, and out. Deep, and alive. “I’m thinking of making the runt eat something for dinner other than Oreos, so I should probably go.”
Adam breathed with him. In, and out. “Okay.” He brought his hand to his mouth and worried at a knuckle, and then realized it was a Ronan habit, and stopped. “I miss you guys. I’ll call again soon.”
Their timed breathing grew momentarily off kilter. “I’ll be here.”
Ronan’s voice swept through Adam, and he clung to it greedily, long past the end of the call.
He would do his homework. He would do his homework, but first, Adam was going to sit on his bed and press his hand to his stomach, and spend a few more minutes in the part of his day where he got to be relieved and loved and in love.
*
For so long, Adam’s highest goal had been to just get out. Leave the trailer, leave Henrietta, go somewhere impressive enough to validate his leaving. To prove that he deserved a better life, that he had earned it, that he was better than what he had come from.
The problem with giving so much weight to this milestone was that after he had hit it, there was nothing left.
He was out. What did he want to do now? What could he do that would justify the work he had done to get there?
Adam took out his notebook—five-subject, college ruled, black cover—and began to make a list.
This notebook already contained a few lists, copied over from the notebook he had crowded with words during his senior year at Aglionby: Degree Programs by School, Degree Programs by Median Post-Grad Salary, Degree Programs Requiring Further Education, Degree Programs by Personal Ability, Degree Programs by Personal Interest. These lists had not helped him much; they mostly contained the same ambitious options, reordered slightly depending on the way he was categorizing them. His handwriting strained forward in each, leaning toward the future.
Theoretically, Adam could do anything. All it would take was work; all he had to do was choose.
He was back to the same question that had haunted him, driven him, defined him. He titled the page: What do I want?
The first word Adam wrote was success. But no, that didn’t feel entirely true. What was success? Did success end at being accepted to a respected school? Was success a number on a paycheck he might one day earn, or a certain job, or a particular number of people who knew what he was capable of? Success was difficult to quantify. It wasn’t a tangible thing. It was possible that Adam would never be satisfied with any success that he achieved.
He erased the word, and replaced it with stability, which he immediately erased, as well. Stability sounded too much like stasis. Stability was being alive, and nothing more. Stable was what they called you when you graduated from emergency surgery to the ICU.
Adam had spent too many years stuck at stable.
The scuffed space between the thin, blue lines on his paper yawned. He imagined the trees that the paper had once been. Almost certainly, those trees had not had voices, but what if they had? He imagined trees, trees in his heart, flowers brushing his face, vines growing beneath his hands. What do you want, Adam?
For a third time, he filled the line with a single word. Things were better in threes, the Persephone-voice in his mind reminded him.
Adam’s third word was purpose. He left it, because it was true.
What else was true? Adam wanted so many things, and he could think of none of them. Or, well, he could think of some, but most were not related to school, or to his career goals, or to his ambition. But maybe that was okay. He had asked himself what he wanted, and that question had always had more answers than he knew what to do with.
On the second line, Adam wrote Ronan. It was easy to do. Adam wondered if it should scare him, how easy it was, but it did not scare him at all.
Adam filled the following two lines in with Blue and Gansey. Except, no, that wasn’t quite right; giving them their own lines put them on the same level as Ronan, and while that may have been true once, it hadn’t been for a long time. He erased. Tried again with Blue & Gansey, all on one line.
That wasn’t all of the truth, either, though. Their names alone didn’t contain enough information. What did he want from them? After some consideration, he amended the entry: Stay friends with Blue & Gansey. This was less comfortable, and more truthful. It reminded him of when he had wanted everything from both of them, nothing from either of them. It reminded him that they were always going to be a little out of his reach. Their names in context drew attention to the painful absence of Noah, to the purposeful absence of Henry.
Adam was not going to feel bad about it. Ronan wouldn’t want him to be a liar.
The fourth line was an easy one, the way the second had been. He filled it in without hesitation: Opal safe and happy.
The fifth line was the hardest of all, because he meant it so much, because he wished he didn’t. Because there was a place not-so-deep inside of him that wanted it more than he wanted to get good grades or a good internship or a good job. It was the hardest to write, because he suspected that it was the only answer to his question of purpose. He wrote it anyway. He wrote it three times, because things were better in threes.
Magic. Magic. Magic.
These were his necessities. As long as he had these things to work toward, he could survive almost anything. With them, he had already survived a lot.
Adam breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. It was a move that Ronan often performed; Gansey called it his “smoker’s breath”. Adam knew now that it was actually some kind of breathing exercise—a weapon against anxiety and anger, a remnant from the short-lived counseling sessions Ronan had been forced to attend after his father died. The counseling had been Declan’s idea. Like most of Declan’s ideas, Ronan had hated it; he had participated as little as possible, but the breathing had survived. Whether Ronan had kept it on purpose, Adam wasn’t sure.
Adam breathed in.
He wanted to talk to Ronan. Maybe he would call him later.
He added to his list, items less vital but more complicated. At least one college degree, but probably more; a place to live that was everything Adam needed it to be, and also everything Ronan needed it to be; Cabeswater, in whatever way Ronan could make it; a more reliable car.
Adam breathed out.
Maybe he should get out his tarot cards. Maybe he should scry. He ached to try it; he was terrified that it wouldn’t work. Maura had said he was still psychic, and he believed her, but whatever he was now was painfully less than what he had been when he had had Cabeswater.
How soon would his roommate be back? Too soon, probably. He hadn’t latched on to as many extracurriculars as Adam had hoped.
It was hard to tell if the list had served its purpose. In most ways, Adam knew just as much as he had known before: that he was moving forward, that he had things he wanted to go back to, that he didn’t know how to reconcile those two facts.
He closed his notebook.
*
It was not the first time Blue had called Adam after school had started, but it was one of the first. She wanted to talk about what she and Gansey were up to, what progress Ronan was making, the things that Henry had planned, how Adam was doing.
She wanted to talk about adventure. She told him all about the California redwoods, bigger than the biggest tree in Cabeswater; how they were all so alive, but some were more alive than others. She told him about visiting the ocean for the first time. She told him about seeing Henry without any product in his hair.
While Blue spoke, it occurred to Adam that he trusted her, truly. He knew that she would have no problem giving him answers he didn’t like, if he needed to hear them. So when Blue asked Adam how his first semester was going, instead of telling her about the beautiful grounds or the challenging classes, he said, “I need to declare a major before Christmas and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”
“Oh,” Blue had said, surprised. “Don’t you have your options narrowed down at all?”
“Yes, of course.” Adam felt defensive, despite his best efforts not to. “I didn’t go into this completely unprepared. I just don’t know what the best option is. I don’t know which thing is the right thing.”
“Have the cards helped at all?”
Adam was quiet.
“Oh,” Blue said again, this time more gently. “Oh, Adam.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Adam repeated. He hated saying it. It had to be said.
“Well,” Blue answered eventually, tentatively, “I think you should do what I did.”
“What? Take off across the country in a magical car?”
“No,” Blue said, voice back to its typical level of testiness, “This version of the Pig may be more eco-friendly, but it’s still the Pig. You know we like you just fine, but I’m not sure we could fit another person in here if we tried. Henry’s suitcase alone takes up the space that you and me plus Noah did. No—actually, I think you should talk to my mom.”
Adam was surprised. “Like for a reading?”
“She’s helped you solve problems that way before. She’s helped me, too.”
It was an idea. An idea, more importantly, that Adam never would have arrived at on his own. Visit a psychic to help Gansey? A no-brainer. Visit a psychic to help himself? That was more difficult.
Adam was grateful for Blue’s input, and he told her so. He was trying this new thing where he tried to value the people he cared about out loud, now that he knew he could love them and mean it.
“Pshaw,” Blue said dismissively, accent as unapologetic as the rest of her, and changed the subject to Gansey’s fascination with souvenir t-shirts.
What would his life have been, Adam wondered, if Gansey had never stuck his foot in his mouth that night at Nino’s? If Adam had never pursued Blue afterwards? If they hadn’t all tumbled together, awkward and jealous and curious and perfect?
Fate was a funny thing.
As impossible as things had gotten, the universe had never delivered Adam into something he was unable to walk through. Maybe his future wouldn’t be so hard to solve for, after all.
*
Maura Sargent had always intimidated Adam. He supposed it stemmed from the time he had tried to date her daughter. Or maybe from the time her daughter had broken up with him. It also could have been any number of the bodies buried, bargains made, or deathly situations they had all been wrapped into that had done it. Maura simply knew too much about the inside of his head for Adam to feel entirely comfortable around her.
There was also this: when he looked at Maura, Adam thought of Persephone. When Maura looked at Adam, she also thought of Persephone.
When Adam dialed the number for 300 Fox Way, he felt almost as skeptical as he had the very first time he and Gansey and Ronan had stepped in to meet their futures. This time, he knew that what Maura and her family did was real; it was just that he wasn’t confident that there was an answer for Maura to find.
The phone rang three times.
Orla answered. “Psychic hotline, you’ve got Orla,” she said, in her most business-like voice—that was to say, in her most suggestive voice.
Adam’s mouth twitched. “Hi, Orla. This is Adam Parrish. Is Maura in?”
“Hmm. Hi, Adam. Maura, you said? You sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”
The come-ons had to just be habit, because Orla certainly knew better by now. It almost made Adam miss her. “I’m certain, thank you,” Adam said. He took pains to suppress any traces of his accent. It kept trying to surface in solidarity with all of these voices from home.
This seemed to irritate Orla. “Okay, okay, no need to use the Ivy-League tone with me. I’ll tell her.”
There was a pause, followed by the tail end of a cut-off word as the call was transferred, and then Adam was faced with the beginning of a conversation he still wasn’t certain he wanted to have.
“Adam.” Maura’s voice reminded him of every exhausted moment spent on her couch, of every tentative evening with Blue, of Ronan’s hard face back when he still had all of his secrets, of learning that Gansey was going to die.
Maura sighed.
Adam never knew how much of his mind she could see. “Hi, Maura. How are you?” He wasn’t as concerned about letting his accent slip, not now that it wasn’t Orla on the phone. Maura knew that he had parts much uglier than a few dropped consonants.
“I’m fine,” she said. “How can I help you, Adam?”
“Well,” he said, “I was actually hoping for a reading.”
“Is that right?” Maura did not sound surprised. This, of course, was because she wasn’t.
“I just had a few questions. Blue said I should talk to you.”
“Ah,” Maura said. “That makes more sense. Alright, then. Let me just get my cards.”
Maura got her cards. Adam also got his.
“What questions are we clarifying today?”
Adam moved his cards back and forth in his hands, took a breath, and told Maura what he had told Blue.
He could hear Maura shuffling. He moved his own cards away from the phone; Maura probably already knew that he had them, but he wanted to at least try to keep his experiment to himself.
The blank sound of Maura’s concentration fell through the phone like a physical thing. “Okay, Adam,” she said, “I know you called me for psychic answers, but I’m going to give you some mom answers, first, if that’s okay.”
It was okay, and he told her so. If anyone had earned it, it was Maura.
“I’m going to ask you the same thing I asked Blue, now, and I think you’re going to like it even less than she did. Bear with me.”
Adam could almost see her, fanning cards across the table, elbow deep in some horrid herbal experiment, lit by both the window and the stained glass atrocity that hung from the ceiling. He felt an unexpected pang of nostalgia for that funny little kitchen.
“Are you certain,” Maura asked, after a pause, “that college is the only way to get where you are going?”
Adam had never seriously considered this question. Maura had been right: he didn’t like it very much at all. “No, I’m not sure,” he said, finally. “I am sure that I need to finish, though. Doing otherwise is not an option.”
“That’s fair.” There was the distant sound of Maura flipping a card, a second card, a third. Adam turned cards over with her. If their readings matched, he would know that he had kept some of his magic. And if they didn’t—well. It still would not be the worst thing he had endured.
Balanced on his knees were three dark, scribbly cards: the Two of Wands; the Ace of Cups; the Magician.
Adam’s breath rushed from him.
Miles away in Henrietta, Maura made a ponderous sound. “Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought of him like that. But I guess you would know better than I do.”
Adam ran a finger over the Ace of Cups, and felt his soul gentle.
“Here’s the thing. We know that you’re going to do fine in school, because you told me so. That’s not really the question here.” Maura shared Blue’s tendency to avoid sugar coating things. Adam liked that about her. “This is about making a decision.”
“Making the best decision,” Adam corrected.
“Of course.” Calla’s voice floated through the background, and then away. Adam was reminded that life at Fox Way was a solar system, a revolving cooperative of people and projects and mixed drinks. “Thus far, you’ve been asking yourself what you’re good at. You need to ask yourself what you’re best at.”
“I don’t know.” Adam ran a hand through his hair. “I’m best at work. Everything is work; that doesn’t narrow my choices down.”
“Come on, Adam.” Maura was growing impatient. “You know the answer here. What are you best at? What have you spent the last year doing better than anyone else?”
Adam looked at his cards: the Two of Wands, the Ace of Cups, the Magician.
He did know the answer, after all. “Making connections. Taking disparate things and unifying them.” Magic. Magic. Magic.
“Yes. You’re still the Magician, Adam. I told you before.” Adam took his card in his hand, raised it to rest against his face. The card was warm. “You’ve been trying to find the path that will give you the best possible future. That’s not how it works for people like us. You need to define your best possible future first, and then pick the path that will take you there.”
“That—actually makes a lot of sense.” Adam’s breathing suddenly came easier than it had a few minutes previously.
“Of course it does. I’m a very good psychic.” They both laughed, because Maura was funny, because it was true. “Not for nothing, Adam, but I need to ask: how much have you talked to Ronan about this?”
“Some.” Adam took a moment to find the truth before he spoke it. “A lot about leaving. Not as much about coming back.”
“But you are planning to come back?”
“Yes.”
Maura made a pleased noise. “Talk to Ronan, then. He has good ideas—God, I can’t believe I just said that. But I think he’ll compromise if you need him to. There’s not much point planning a future without including the people who are going to be in it.”
“Okay,” Adam said softly. “I can do that.” He imagined a future where his life spread like roots, where he healed the network of ley lines, where he analyzed the energy and the how and the why. Maybe Blue could study the trees, and preserve the ones with souls like hers; maybe Henry could help, with his loud plans to change the world. Maybe Gansey could find the magic there, and the history, and call it all back to life. Maybe Ronan could dream the entire world into something sacred and peculiar and full of light.
Adam was beginning to see the shape of the thing. He was beginning to understand what he needed to do to get there.
“I’ll bill you for the phone call when you come home for Thanksgiving,” Maura said, and the humor in her voice made Adam think that he was not going to be contributing money in exchange for his reading. Labor, maybe. Quality time. Things Maura valued more than money.
“I’ll be expecting it. Thank you.”
“Anytime, Adam. Call again if you need us. We’re family now—Blue made sure of that.”
Adam closed his eyes, because they had started to prickle at the corners. He thought Maura wouldn’t mind too much if he changed the subject. “Before I go, can I ask what cards you drew?”
“You can. But you already know the answer to that, too.”
He did. Two of Wands: Planning, patience, a path forward, a decision to make. Ace of Cups: Creativity, overwhelming love, the opportunity to choose happiness. The Magician: Problem solving, willpower, the ability to combine the elements and manifest a desired outcome.
The future was his to make.
*
The months until Thanksgiving dragged, and they flew. Somewhere in time was an Adam eternally at work, digging out a path to the first break of his freshman year of college; somewhere else in time was an Adam already heading back to meet the weeks of class before Christmas.
This Adam, now, was in his terrible car on his way down a long driveway walled in by endless green. He was pulling up in front of a house, parking neatly next to a charcoal BMW that had brown, brittle leaves caught under its windshield wipers. He was stepping on gravel that had maybe been arranged with purpose once, before it had met enthusiastic teenage boys who liked doing obnoxious things with vehicles.
Opal, ever an impossibility, was like thunder arriving before a lightning strike: Adam heard her approaching long before she hit him. Her raucous screech blared until she buried it in his leg, and then she was grasping his hands, dragging him forward, bounding to his side, tugging on his arms until he lifted her up.
“I got in trouble yesterday,” Opal said into his sweater, in lieu of a greeting. She had mud smeared all down her face.
Adam’s love for her was too big for his body. “Nice to see you, too. Why did you get in trouble?”
“’Cause Ronan said,” she told him seriously, eyes enormous, expression compelling him to be on her side with no questions asked.
“No,” Ronan corrected from the doorway, “it was because you were messing with dreams that weren’t ready to be messed with.”
“It wanted to be birds,” Opal insisted, scowling, as she wriggled from Adam’s grasp to drop back into the dirt.
“You think everything wants to be birds,” Ronan grumbled back, hyperbolically grudging, impossibly fond. Ronan’s love for Opal was a mirror of Adam’s: maybe, Adam thought, if he and Ronan faced each other with Opal between them, the care they felt would reflect into infinity until she never had to feel afraid again.
“Hey,” Adam said to Ronan.
“Hey,” Ronan said back.
The part of Adam that compulsively considered all possibilities had worried that things would not be the same when he came home. It had wondered if he still knew how to be around Ronan, if Ronan had forgotten how to be around him, if something important and irreparable might have shifted in the months Adam had been gone.
The part of Adam that played with time knew how heavily Ronan featured in the future, and was not worried at all.
Adam got his bag from the car, walked past Ronan to set it inside, and then turned and buried his face into the black twist of hooks or claws or beaks that populated the space between Ronan’s shoulder and neck. Ronan’s fingers were part of it, too, and they hooked or clawed or beaked their way into Adam’s back.
Opal watched from the ground, eyes dark as a new moon.
A large, iridescent Something flitted by.
Silvery leaves hissed in spirals through the tall, yellowing grass that spiked up just past the gravel line.
Adam was struck anew by the impossibility of the Barns, of its inhabitants, of its heir. Adam was also an impossible thing; it made sense that he might belong here, too.
“Can we go inside?” Ronan asked, from somewhere inside Adam’s hair. “The wind’s coming from the northeast. It smells like cow shit.”
“Jesus, Ronan,” Adam said, but of course they were going in, of course they were, of course.
*
It was not the first time Adam had been rendered speechless by Ronan’s design sensibilities, but it was one of the first.
Adam was looking at a barn. At one point, it had been brown; apparently Ronan had happened to it since then.
The conversation where Ronan had mentioned painting this particular barn was not submerged too deeply in Adam’s memory—in fact, he could have sworn that he recalled Ronan using words like “sophisticated” and “understated” in relation to the project. And maybe it had even started that way. It was true that there were a few solid feet of even white primer rolled onto the back wall of the structure.
The exact spot where Ronan had given up was obvious.
“What—did you leave any paint at the store?” Adam’s eyes tracked an ambitious gob of purple, a thick stripe of slate blue, a spatter of rosy pink that looked as though Ronan had taken a full can of paint and slammed it into the wall until it was empty. The earth around the barn bore the faded remnants of the whole messy endeavor.
The barn was a dripping kaleidoscope of high-quality, weatherproof paint. It occurred to Adam that maybe this was what Ronan had chosen as a distraction after Adam had left for college; if that was the case, Adam certainly preferred this disaster of paint to Ronan’s old ways of coping.
“Tell me that it isn’t fucking excellent.” Ronan’s face wore the kind of uncomplicated satisfaction that only appeared when he had done something delightful and unnecessary.
“It’s terrible.” Adam considered the barn door, which was drenched in deep slashes of goldenrod. “I like it so much.”
“Damn straight.” Ronan propped his elbow on Adam’s shoulder, and leaned his forearm against the side of Adam’s face. It turned out that once he started touching Adam, he didn’t like to stop. “What time do they want us over at Sargent’s?”
Adam turned his mouth until it brushed Ronan’s arm. “We should leave in an hour or so. I think Blue’s mom wants me to help make pies. Or possibly perform a ritual. Something that involves the words “pumpkin” and “hatchet”, anyway.”
“There’s no chance they’re going to let me in on the hatcheting, is there?”
“Absolutely not.” Adam smiled into one of Ronan’s leather bands. The contents of the evening to come nudged at him in flashes: Blue and Maura, dark hair beside dark hair; Gansey, politely fielding questions; Orla’s nutmeg brown nail polish; Ronan being bullied into using a potato masher. “Don’t bother feeling left out, though. I think Calla has other plans for you.”
“Jesus God, help me.” Ronan’s voice was full of horror, but his face was relaxed. He dropped his arm, planted both hands between Adam’s shoulder blades, and gave a mild shove. “If that’s how it’s going to be, I should show you what’s in the barn before Calla ruins my life forever.”
Adam wasn’t going to argue. Every one of the barns held curiosities at the least, and wonders at the most. He would always want to see the things Ronan had to show him.
The inside of the barn had been mostly cleaned out, except for a handful of items. There was a dirty pile of gardening tools. There was a collection of drop cloths, carelessly tossed into a corner—even more tragic than Hemingway’s baby shoes, Adam thought: Painting tarps, never used. There was a mostly empty package of Oreos.
There were those things, and there was also a tree.
The sick twist in Adam’s gut recognized the tree before Adam did. It was an old tree, bare-limbed and enormous; it was gaping, hollow like a mouth; it was full of the worst things that could happen to anyone who stepped inside.
Ronan’s arms circled Adam from behind. “It’s not what you think.”
“You want me to go in there,” Adam said flatly.
“I do.”
“And you think that’s a good idea?” Adam asked.
“It’s not the same tree,” Ronan replied.
And—it wasn’t. Adam looked again, but did a better job of it, this time. Logically, he knew that the nightmare tree was gone, destroyed by the demon. This tree was different in subtle ways—it was graceful and smooth, fuzzed over with moss, thicker at the roots.
Ronan nudged him, and Adam led them into the warm cave that was the tree’s body.
When Adam closed his eyes, he was still at the Barns, but was outside. He was with Ronan, and he was also removed from the scene, watching himself with Ronan. They were laying stones along the perimeter of an empty field near the tree line.
“How much of this can we do on our own?” Other-Adam asked Other-Ronan.
“All of it, if we’re not chicken shits,” Other-Ronan said scornfully.
Adam’s face was also Other-Adam’s face; he felt both of their mouths tip up into a smile. “We’ll see,” he said. “We should at least hire an electrician. A plumber.”
Other-Ronan dropped onto his knees in the dirt, kicked his legs out, flung himself down until he was sprawled on his back like a starfish. “Ye of little faith,” he said, eyes closed, face turned into the sun. “You and I can dream everything we need.”
Adam opened his eyes, and he was back in the tree, in the barn, in Ronan’s boa-constrictor grasp. “What was that?”
“Interactive nature bullshit.”
Adam waited.
“Dreams,” Ronan said. Adam felt the word against the back of his neck. “Good ones, this time. What did you see?”
“I think we were going to build a house.” Adam felt soft inside, weightless. “We were in the field.” Adam leaned his head back. “What did you see?”
Ronan did not answer; instead, he held Adam even tighter. Adam let him have his silence.
Around them, every shadow in the world seemed to glow around its edges. Adam felt the thrum of magic from all directions, pumping through him like a bass line. “The school is going to let me make my own major,” he said, before he knew what he was saying. The words had been waiting to come out, and so he let them. “They had plenty of classes that I wanted to take, but not an entire degree program that was right for me. So I’m going to make it up myself.”
Ronan’s silence lasted almost too long. It stretched as they stepped out of the tree, as they trailed out of the barn. The air outside smelled like snow. When they were halfway down the trampled dirt path that led back to the house, Ronan said, “I’m glad you’re doing it that way. You’re at your best when you make your own rules,” and when they were nearly to the house itself, he said, “You know that I’m in love with you.” It was a statement, not a question. Ronan’s eyes were fixed on some undefined point in the distance.
“Yes,” Adam said, because he did know. He knew that they would not be together at all if Ronan felt otherwise. He matched his breathing to Ronan’s, just like every time on the phone, just like every time their chests were pressed close, and tried a sentence out in his mouth. “And you know that I love you, too?” It was more of a question than Ronan had made it, but there was no uncertainty to be found in the question mark.
It was easy, like Ronan’s name on his list of necessities. It was easy like coming home.
“I do now,” Ronan said.
*
It was not the first time Adam had spent a holiday with family, but it was the first time he had spent a holiday with family who loved him. He loved them, too, all of them, every single one. Now that he knew his own capacity for love, he was greedy for it.
He and Maura made pies in the shape of Persephone’s absence, in the shape of her invisible presence. Calla and Ronan needled each other into semi-productivity. Blue steamed broccoli, and hugged everyone at least twice; Gansey described the spectacle that was his family’s annual Thanksgiving celebration, which he had already attended. Jimi bustled over the stuffing with something that was hopefully just rosemary, and Orla diced sweet potatoes, and Opal crouched under the table, and Gwenllian stood on a chair to increase her already impressive height, and Mr. Gray hovered around the edges and made himself busy wherever Maura told him to.
“This is all so much,” Adam said to Ronan, later. “I don’t even know how to feel.”
“Like you like it,” Ronan had answered. “Like it isn’t something you would do.”
“Exactly.” Adam worried his knuckle with his teeth. “Like it’s not real life. Or like it’s someone else’s real life.”
Ronan kissed him.
There was this Adam, being kissed, and there was the Adam who had kissed Ronan more than a year ago, and there was the Adam who was studying and working and building and giving himself away and taking himself back. There was the Adam who was the Magician, and the Adam who could never quite clean all the grease from under his fingernails, and the Adam who would graduate from an Ivy League school.
Somewhere, they were all happening—but this Adam, this Adam now, was the most important version of himself, because he was the one who got to decide that the future would be a thing of light and learning and magic, as long as he believed it enough to make it true.