Page 55 of Hushed

“Parker!” Lance says in exasperation.

“What? Bastien has what I want, and this guy has wiles that can be worked and we’re all happy.”

“Why would you think I have influence on Dr. Saint-Jacques?”

They both give me incredulous looks.

“Okay, never mind. I’ll do what I can. But no promises.” I deliberately don’t say that they’ve way overestimated my value to the good doctor. Or how miserable it makes me feel that the relationship they thought they saw doesn’t exist.

I finish my sandwich and still feel miserable, so when I’m on Flint Street, and have a choice about going back to my apartment or not, I decide to embrace the suck and head out to the library to get some work done.

Six weeks I’ve been at this school. That’s the first time anybody’s asked me to something. It should feel pretty momentous, but it doesn’t.

I take the stairs to the fourth floor of the stacks, which is the monumentally ugly cement tower behind the University library. The computers said that this was the area where the psychology stuff is housed, so I figure I’d get a start on my final paper.

The fourth floor smells like carpet glue, and when I open the door into the little lobby in front of the elevators, the first person I see in the reading area is Matt Comstock. He has about nine books fanned around him in a horseshoe, and he’s currently trying to pop his neck and find something in a book at the same time.

“Hey,” I say.

He jumps about an inch and looks up at me. “Oh, sorry,” he says.

“Levi, from your building. And class.”

He gives me a slightly puzzled smile. “I know who you are.”

“Right. I wanted to apologize for the other day when I ran into you. There was kind of an emergency and I needed to get out right away to fix it.”

“Oh. It’s no problem. Were you able to?”

I think about it. “Sort of. Kind of. Not really.”

He looks up and to the right, like he’s trying to put together what that means. “Is there some way I could help?” He doesn’t sound that sure of himself. He wants me gone. I can read that from here, and I’m not going to make him work at it, so I point my chin at the horseshoe of books instead. “Are you getting started on the Psych paper?”

“No.” He glances at the stack of books. “I just changed my major recently, so I’m taking an overload right now so I can get caught up.” He turns to his laptop and makes a show of scanning the setup for a book.

I look at the titles. “Public policy. That’s a pretty heavy subject.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What was your old major?”

“Dance.”

“Dance?” Involuntarily, I look him over, and now that he’s said it, I can see it. His body is thin and, beneath his clothes, it’s exquisitely muscled. “That’s a big change. Do you like it?”

He looks up at me. “It’s a better long-term prospect.” He says it the way you repeat a thing somebody else said.

“My sister is super into dance, so I kind of know dance people. I just…what inspired you to fall into the clutches of public policy?”

“Urban planning, specifically. It was suggested to me.” He offers me a tired smile that doesn’t meet his green eyes, and it strikes me that Matt Comstock could even be handsome. But right now, there’s something about him that seems like a man just barely holding on.

“Well,” I say. “For what it’s worth, sorry about the stairs. And for putting you on the spot on the first day of class.”

He shrugs. “I’ve had worse,” he says. It doesn’t sit right with me, and I don’t know why. But he’s turned back to his work, and I’ve been bothering him long enough. I find the books that I was thinking I needed and pull them to the only other table that isn’t full. There’s a man with brown hair trying to read something, but every few seconds he looks over at Matt.

I put out the three books that I’ve selected and ignore it for about five minutes when I realize that he hasn’t turned a page, and despite telling myself that it’s none of my business, I look up at him directly. “I know you,” I say.

He looks at me, surprised. He has light brown hair and blue eyes. “You do?”