~ Wedge ~
When I walked back into the half-destroyed girls’ quarters, I was met by cots and fresh mattresses being dragged up the stairs and into the room. Men and women were picking up and putting everything back in its place. I doubted I would get to sleep anytime soon.
Sassy, Harmony, and Nadine were all waiting for me in Harmony’s bed. I climbed on up, still stunned. “What happened?” Harmony asked me.
“It was awful.” I found myself crying unexpectedly. No matter what the end result was, Luke was about to undergo a lot. And our Christmas evening together was ruined, along with my beautiful dress. “They, they found the suit and the wire and all the things that’ve been stolen in Luke’s stuff...He’s in big trouble, guys.”
“What suit, Kristine?” Sassy asked.
“The one Rose’s attacker was wearing—They found the wire from Luke’s snowmobile—But why would he try to blow himself up?!”
“Oh, Kristine,” Harmony pulled me close. “The Cinders’ minds have been warped by their past and by their school.”
I sat up straight and stared at her in outrage. “He didn’t do it!”
“I know it’s hard to accept something so horrible, but you have to at least consider it.”
“Cinders are always getting in bloody fights and even they don’t trust each other,” Nadine said.
“You seriously—I can’t listen to this,” I said, before climbing off Harmony’s bed and into mine. I pulled the curtains closed and hated them for thinking he could be the culprit.
I lay down and pulled my blanket over my dirty dress. They can’t prove an innocent man guilty, I thought. And he couldn’t have been the one to destroy our room, because he arrived at the dance when girls were still leaving it. And he was always by my side after that. Except when we were casting votes.
“This whole thing is stupid,” I said, rolling over onto my stomach and reaching under my pillow. Something thin crunched against my fingers. I let them glide over a sheet of paper. Pulling my pillow halfway up, I took out a folded piece of notebook paper and a bigger, heavier piece of shiny black paper, which had been rolled up and tied with a gold ribbon. Letting the pillow go, I rolled onto my back and slid the ribbon off of the heavier one. I unrolled a poster of Luke—or Knight, as it said.
The guy in the picture was different from the one I knew. Someone else almost. The man version of the kid I once knew and was now completely in love with. As I stared into his dark eyes and felt that overpowering attraction he always caused, I saw him in a new light—a Cinder light.
Perhaps the happy childhood memories and feelings he brought about every time I saw him made me blind to all the changes he’d undergone over the years. Could he really have committed all those crimes?
He sneaked into my room sometime during the day to leave me this present. But he was with me when the room had to have been wrecked. He couldn’t have been in here, leaving this for me, when it happened.
It was really confusing.
Setting the poster aside, I opened the piece of notebook paper.
Dear, dear Kristine,
First, I love you more than anything. I always have. That’s why it could never be anyone else. Now that I know you love me too and that you’re mine, I can never go back. I can never go back to life without you. It would hurt more than ANYTHING else ever has.
I take the note you wrote me out of my pocket every night and let your voice read it to me as I fall asleep. You’re the last thing I ever see or hear. I want to be the same thing for you. I want you to feel like I’m there with you every night, especially when you’re back at North Haven. So keep this under your pillow. Let me be the one to put you to sleep every single night.
And always remember that we share blood, never to be contaminated by another. The same blood pours through our veins. The same blood—something no one else shares with you—keeps me and you alive. And know that I love you. I live for you. I would die for you. And you are mine, only mine. Never forget that.
I love you, Kristine.
Love, Luke
It made me cry. Everything was making me cry. It was a rough night.
“Kristine,” Harmony said from the other side of my drapes, “can I please come in?”
“If you bring me some tape.” I unrolled the poster and smiled at my sinfully hot boyfriend. I was sure he was innocent. But either way, I was so in love. I would do whatever it took to prove Luke’s innocence if it came to that, even offer myself in his place. Let them throw me out into the cold instead of him.
Harmony opened the curtain and handed me some scotch tape before she sat down beside me. “I’m sorry,” she said as I tore off a long piece of tape to stick a corner of the poster to the bottom of her bed. “If you say Luke didn’t do it, then he didn’t. I don’t know him very well, but I know you. And I trust your judgment. Will you please forgive me?”
“Yeah. I’m not really mad at you. I’m mad at whoever stashed all that stuff in his room.”
The other curtain opened and Sassy sat down beside me. “Then you can forgive me, too?”
“You didn’t say anything, Sassy.”
“I know, but I thought it.”
We giggled and hugged each other as Nadine sat by my feet, not looking as sorry as the other two had. “I’m sorry you’re upset, and I’m sorry that you got dragged into this. But I think it could’ve been Luke.”
“He didn’t do it,” I said, shaking my head.
She shrugged and went to lie on her bed.
I sincerely hoped this wouldn’t drive a wedge between friends.