Twelve

Sam stood outside the lecture hall, a thin sweat under his arms and in the small of his back.

He didn’t want to be here. He’d left nine years ago. It didn’t help that Fiadh had teased and Janette had urged him to come.

But Dee had kissed him. He’d kissed her. In Sam’s mind, he owed her. When their lips had parted, her eyes, which had been so soft and dreamy, sharpened.

“Well?” she’d asked.

For a second, he’d been confused. “Well, what?”

“Are you coming to the lecture?”

He didn’t know what to tell her. It sounded suspiciously like a date, and he didn’t do dates. It was at the university, and he was done with university. Common sense and experience—that had been Dad. Sam didn’t pretend to be a better man than his father.

But she was such a nice girl, and the kiss . . . Well, that was better than nice. After that kiss, Sam’s brain couldn’t come up with a convincing reason to say no fast enough. Hurting the girl’s feelings without good reason was a dick move. So he’d made some vague statement like, If I can get away, and she’d smiled at him as if he’d promised her the moon.

For the next two weeks, every time she came into the shop or he saw her on the sidelines of Aoife’s games, she’d worn the same damn smile. Happy. Hopeful.

He should have found a way to tell her he wasn’t what she thought. Not boyfriend potential, any of his usual hookups could have told her. Not university material, his old guidance counselor would have said. But Dee never asked. Anyway, she was headed back to America when her year was up. So there was this temptation, right? To pretend, for a little while, that this could be something else. That he could be something else.

He wanted a fag. He thrust his hands into his hoodie, surveying the square.

“Fancy yourself too smart for us,” his da used to say, joking, back when Sam thought he had a future here.

At least this wasn’t the regular lecture crowd. Fewer gray-haired alums and book club mums, more families with kids. He could have brought Aoife and fit right in. But he wasn’t using his little sister as camouflage. He didn’t need a chaperone.

“Sam!”

He turned in relief toward the sound of Dee’s voice. She was hurrying across the cobblestones, bright smile in place. He smiled back before he noticed the two with her, her pal Reeti and that Tim fellow, clean-shaven and self-assured and wearing a fecking jacket like a proper grown-up. So she’d brought her own chaperones. Or support.

Dee kissed his cheek—she smelled like lemons—and then Reeti did, too. Tim held out his hand.

Sam shook it. “What’s with the fancy dress?”

“Oh, the kids’ costumes.” Dee beamed. “Aren’t they cute?”

Now that she mentioned it, Sam noticed a bunch of tweens wandering around with dark clothes and rainbow hair.

“Those are the Shivery Tales fans,” Tim said.

“The what?”

“Shivery Tales. The series?”

“Never heard of them.”

“I read them all.” Tim opened his blazer, displaying a graphic book cover T-shirt. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Your reading taste stopped in middle school, did it?” Sam asked.

Tim smiled, either unoffended or too well-mannered to let it show. Frustrating, that. “Gross-out humor and cheap thrills, that was me.”

“I never read them, either,” Dee confessed.

“His earlier stuff is better. I’ll loan you one,” Tim said.

Point to him, Sam thought. If anyone was keeping score.

They went inside and found four seats together. Sam sat on the aisle. Dee was next to him, Reeti on her other side. Not Tim, Sam noticed with satisfaction.

There were the usual droning introductions before Oscar Diggs bounded to the lectern, a gnomish little man with wispy hair and sharp eyes.

“Snakes. Spiders. Monsters. Death.” He twinkled around at the audience. “These are human fears. Universal fears. My Irish granny used to tell me bedtime stories about banshees and hobgoblins.” Diggs chuckled. “No wonder I had nightmares as a child.”

The audience laughed politely.

He was a bit of a humbug, Sam thought. Like every tourist who had a great-grandmother from the old country and thought that made them Irish. He saw them in the shop all the time.

“As adults, we know that what we really fear is extinction,” Diggs continued. “Not simply loss of life, but loss of self, loss of control, loss of connection, all the things that make life worth living. And this, my dear friends, is the stuff of fiction, from Shakespeare and Orwell to horror greats like Stephen King. Even little stories such as mine can reveal not just the boogeyman hiding in the closet but our own monstrous insecurities.”

Sam slouched in his seat, watching Dee’s profile. Better that than listening to some stranger talk about primal fears and man’s evolutionary instincts.

Diggs knew how to play to his audience, though. He skipped nimbly from haunted houses to The Walking Dead, from campfire tales about ghosts and serial killers to modern anxieties about climate change and system collapse.

“Fear is cathartic. To be scared from the safety of the couch or reading under the covers at night . . .” He waved his hands, winding up for the big finish. “What could be more fun? But the story is not the fear. The story is about surviving the danger. About facing your fears. About defeating your monsters!”

Lots of clapping for that.

The audience rose like a flock of pigeons, flapping, cooing, and puffing their chests. The tweens surged forward. Diggs perched on the edge of the stage, signing books and posing for selfies.

The four of them left the hall together. Somehow, without much discussion or decision, they found their way to a pub near campus, Sam swept up and pulled along like a leaf in the gutter.

He went out sometimes. He didn’t spend every night working, reading behind the register, or alone in his room. But this felt different from grabbing a drink with his mates or scouting for a spot of sex.

The pub was all right, eighteenth-century exposed beams and flat-screens over the bar. A few creatures of the night on the prowl, a girl group celebrating a birthday, posh lads with beards or beanies throwing darts. Tim bought a round of overpriced drinks. Sam nursed his Guinness, listening to the others talk.

They were all so bloody secure in their privilege, confident in their opinions and their right to be heard. Even Dee.

She sat with her drink—white wine, terrible choice—her face shining in the golden glow of the bar. “Wasn’t he paraphrasing Neil Gaiman at the end? That stuff about facing your fears?”

“From Coraline,” Tim said. Trying to impress, the sod. “ ‘Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.’ ”

Sam absolutely did not need to show off. He had nothing to prove to anybody. “It was Chesterton,” he said. “Originally.”

“What?” Reeti asked.

“The quote. ‘The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.’ ” He took a sip of Guinness. “G. K. Chesterton.”

Dee grinned at him. She was a nice person. Too good for him. He pushed the thought away.

Tim inclined his head, acknowledging the point. “Another case of great artists steal, lesser artists copy.”

“Who said that?” Reeti demanded.

“Steve Jobs,” Tim said at the same time Sam replied, “Picasso.”

It wasn’t a contest, Sam reminded himself. But it felt like one. How much sprang from his egalitarian desire to puncture Tim’s privilege and how much was due to Dee he hadn’t figured out.

The dart players moved on, probably to do heavier drinking at a livelier club.

“Fancy a game?” Sam asked Tim.

Tim held his gaze. Challenge met. “All right.” And then he turned to the girls. “You in?”

Dee smiled and started to get up.

“Unlike the male of the species, we do not need to whip out our shafts to have a good time.” Reeti waggled her fingers, dismissing them. “Go play your game. I want to talk to Dee.”

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Sam heard Reeti say as he got up to play. “How are things going with Dr. Ward?”

Dr. Ward. Maeve Ward. The name conjured memories of a broomstick of a woman at his father’s funeral, the only one of his instructors to attend, wearing black and carrying a black umbrella. They’d all worn black, except for Aoife, who was only a year old, and Grace, in her First Communion dress. Even Jack wore a little black tie. Janette made Sam put on one of his father’s two suits, the one he wasn’t being buried in. It was too big on Sam everywhere but the shoulders. He kept tugging on the jacket, conscious of everyone staring.

Dr. Ward came up to him after Mass. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said.

Which is what everyone said. Sam hadn’t cared. His da was dead, and his mother looked like death, and Fiadh was red-faced with crying. Sam had wanted to cry, too.

She’d written him a letter that summer, he remembered. Ward. After he’d rejected the fellowship and notified the college he wasn’t coming back. He’d never responded. She would have forgotten him by now, one more faceless undergrad who had taken a single class with her nine years ago.

Tim gestured to Sam to go first.

He threw, just missing the double ring.

“Bad luck,” Tim said.

Condescending bastard. Or maybe he was genuinely a good sport. A decent guy. He doubled in on the first throw, hitting a five and a twenty with his next two darts.

Fuck. Sam went up to the line again, focusing this time. Double twenty. Double fifteen. Outer bull’s-eye.

Tim gave him a nod as he stepped back. He scored two decent shots and then a triple nineteen on the last throw.

Sam lifted an eyebrow. “Play a lot?”

“I did. Years ago.”

“A man of leisure.”

Tim gave him a straight look. “Not much else to do on deployment.”

“Lisburn?” In Northern Ireland.

“Kabul.”

Which made Sam feel like a right arsehole. The score went back and forth. At some point, the girls stopped talking to watch. Sam won, checking out with a double eighteen. Gratifying, that.

“Good game,” Tim said, as if they were schoolboys on the pitch.

Dee was smiling. “Very Ted Lasso,” she said, which made Reeti snort. Sam didn’t know what she was talking about.

Tim looked pained or maybe amused. He was so damn British it was hard to tell.

“Another?” Sam asked, signaling their server.

Tim pulled out his wallet. “I’ve got it.”

Sam didn’t want his charity. “You bought the last round.”

“Loser pays.”

“Actually, I should go,” Dee said. “I have to get the girls off to school tomorrow.”

“Poor Cinderella,” Reeti said.

“I’ll take you,” Tim said.

Sam finished his beer in one smooth swallow. “I’ll do it. Have to get up myself in the morning.”

Dee and Reeti exchanged glances, messaging each other in that mysterious way girls did.

“You can take me home,” Reeti said to Tim. “Since we live in the same building and all.”

So Sam left with Dee. It felt like another win.

Rain spangled the pavement. Dee walked like a tourist, looking about her, not checking her phone or her reflection in the shop windows as they passed. They did not hold hands.

“I hope you had a good time tonight,” she said finally. A sideways look. “Especially since you’re not a Shivery Tales fan.”

“Maybe you’ve converted me. I might even pick up one of his books now. For Aoife,” he added.

Dee laughed. “Sophie loves them.”

“You should have brought her, then.”

“I’d already asked you.” Hard to tell in the light of the streetlamps, but he thought she blushed. “Besides, it’s my night off.”

He didn’t get why she was working at all. She must have money. She couldn’t afford to be here otherwise. Trinity didn’t lavish financial aid on foreign graduate students.

“You said you were just helping out your professor.”

“I was. At first. But I needed a place to stay and Glenda—Glenda Norton—needed someone to take care of the girls after school, so this seemed like a good solution for everyone.”

“I hope the pay is good.”

“It’s fine.”

Which meant it was shit. “So, it’s really only a good deal for her.”

“No, I like the girls. Her home is lovely. And working for Glenda . . . It’s sort of a protection in the program.”

“You make it sound like the Mafia. Lots of criminal violence in academic circles, is there?”

“You’d be surprised,” Dee said ruefully. “I got pretty roughed up on my last critique. That quote we were talking about? That’s my workshop instructor.”

“Dr. Ward.”

“You know her?”

He shook off the memory of his father’s funeral. “I had a class with her once. She’s your dragon that needs defeating?”

“I don’t . . . Maybe? I meant the quote about how bad artists copy. She thinks I’m copying another writer.”

He couldn’t imagine why she was telling him this. Unless she wasn’t worried about trying to impress him. “Plagiarism.”

That was serious. Academic misconduct. You could be disciplined for that, although hardly anyone was. But Sam wrote—notebooks full of entries that no one ever saw, fragments of ideas, snatches of dialogue, observations about his family, descriptions of characters who came into the shop. The thought of someone using them as their own made him slightly sick.

Dee winced. “Not plagiarism. More like a depressing lack of originality. She thinks I’m copying his style.”

That was better. “Easy enough to take on the style of someone you admire,” Sam said. He’d done it himself, when he was younger. “Who is it?”

She marched along the sidewalk, her boots fragmenting the puddles into rainbow shards of light. “Grayson Kettering. He . . . He was at KU when I was in the program there.”

“But you left.”

She averted her face. “To get away from him.”

Him. Grayson Kettering.

“Wait.” Sam lengthened his stride to catch up. He owned a newsagents. He read the papers he stocked, including the books and entertainment sections. “Dee Gale. You’re never . . . ?”

She stopped then, in front of one of the fancy houses lining the street, her eyes dark in her pale face. “Destiny Gayle.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. We did.” Her gaze dropped to her boots. “So . . .”

He had to say something. “Good for you. Leaving, I mean. You don’t want to be in Kansas anyway. Not when you could be in Ireland.” She didn’t look at him. “All the great writers are Irish,” he added.

That dragged her head up. “I’m not great.” Her smile was wan. “According to Dr. Ward, I’m barely competent.”

“At least you’re writing,” Sam pointed out. “You didn’t let that bastard stop you from doing what you want. Going after what you want.” It was more than Sam had ever done. But he didn’t say that.

Dee frowned, as if she’d heard him anyway. “You could, too,” she said. “If you reapplied now, you could—”

He kissed her, which at least shut her up.

There was a desperation to this kiss that hadn’t been there before. Clutching hands, open mouths. As if they both needed to get something right and for one moment it was this. His heart pounded in his ears. She inhaled, quick and sharp, as she broke away.

Sam watched as she ran up the stairs, Cinderella in reverse.

He had never felt less like a prince in his life.