Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Sargent,” says Mr. Busey, four minutes past the first bell. “You’re late. That’s a bad look on the first day.”

Blue doesn’t cringe, but it’s a near thing. 300 Fox Way is always chaotic on the first day of school, and she's lucky, in her opinion, to only be four minutes late.

"Sorry," she mutters and flees to the nearest available seat.

There's a "tsk-tsk" behind her as she sits. She turns, furious, ready to rip into whatever condescending asshole thought he was making a cute joke.

And she comes up short. Because smiling beatifically back at her is Ronan Lynch.

There's something absurd about seeing Ronan - Ronan with his black shirt and shaved head and icy eyes - sitting in the vaguely shabby and very familiar space of Mr. Busey's science classroom. It's like a bad Photoshop. She's stunned.

But there Ronan is, and it looks like he's already started to carve his initials into the desk.

She casts a careful eye to the front of the room; Busey is distributing his infamous, massive study guides. She's safe, for the moment.

"What are you doing here?" she demands.

Ronan leans back in his chair. A smile flickers across his face, and then his eyes go sad and dark, mock-hurt.

“Blue,” he says, clasping his hands on his desk. “I’m here to learn.”

"Did you drop out of Aglionby?"

The corner of Ronan's mouth twitches, like he's trying to turn a frown into a sneer. So that would be a yes.

"Obviously," he snarls. "Or I wouldn't be here."

There's a discreet cough, and Blue looks up, horrified. She's never gotten in trouble twice in a class before, and she feels an immediate surge of resentment at that thought. Too much has happened since April for her to care about getting in trouble in class. But Busey just hands her a study guide.

"I see you two are already acquainted," he says mildly, and he continues down the row.

Ronan smirks at her, and Blue turns to face the front of the room. She doesn't say anything for the rest of the period.

***

“Sargent, a word,” says Busey, after the dismissal bell rings.

Blue sinks back down into her seat. Ronan spares her a glance. He almost seems to linger at the door, adjusting the straps on his no doubt extremely expensive and handmade backpack, but the crush of students forces him out.

"Yes?" says Blue, walking to Busey's desk. It's too early in the year for him to be giving out detentions.

It's too early in her life, she thinks with an edge of hysteria, for Ronan goddamn Lynch to suddenly be a student at her school.

“You’re in pre-calculus this year,” says Busey.

Blue nods.

“I usually require students to be in calculus in order to take this class.”

Blue nods again.

He sighs. Blue already knows he’s made an exception for her. She wouldn’t have managed to get AP Physics onto her schedule if he hadn’t.

“But you’re a good student, Sargent, and, considering who your mother is, you need all the science you can get.”

She takes the insult in the spirit it's intended. At last year's parent-teacher night, Busey and Maura had gotten into a roaring fight about objectivity, and then gone out for drinks afterward. Maura left insulting notes on Blue's AP Bio homework for the rest of the year, even when Blue went through the trouble of hiding her homework beforehand.

"I'll pass that on to her," says Blue. "I'm sure she'll be very happy to hear it."

She doesn't tell him that Maura's missing.

It's not like he could help.

"Just let me know if you're struggling with the math," says Busey, and he makes a gesture that means she can go; he's ready to terrorize the next crop of students.

Ronan is still outside, leaning against the lockers like he belongs there. He looks like the dirtbag protagonist from a teen movie where all the actors are twenty-five.

Connor Davies, student body president, is standing at his elbow, glowing with the pompous excitability Connor always does when he's found something else to take responsibility for.

"The thing about the Buse, you have to realize," Blue overhears as she approaches, "is that he's terrifying, but he's a genius. Last year, everyone in the AP Bio class got at least a four and that's unheard - "

"Ronan Lynch," says Blue, cutting Connor off. She puts her hands on her hips and stares Ronan down.

Ronan grins back at her and unpeels himself from the lockers.

"You," he says, looking at Connor for what Blue assumes is the first time in the conversation. "Scram."

Connor looks like someone's just done something unthinkable, like slapped him with a fish, and he reels back into the passing throngs of students. Blue is torn between a kind of glee at seeing Ronan sic’d on one of her more insufferable classmate and an odd, irritated protectiveness.

Ronan doesn't seem to notice.

"Was that your Gansey?"

"What?" says Blue.

But then she thinks about it. Connor and Gansey share certain qualities: popular, well-groomed, show too many teeth when they smile sometimes. Connor's rich, too, though that was Henrietta rich, the kind of the money that people like the Ganseys smile at politely and Blue can't even dream of.

"I guess so," she admits.

"Huh," says Ronan. "I guess public school really is as bad as everyone says it is," and then he brandishes his schedule at Blue before she can react.

“Now where the fuck is room 104?”

Blue narrows her eyes. “That’s the AP English classroom.”

She snatches Ronan’s schedule from him and stares at it.

“Are you serious? You're in AP everything.”

“Yeah. What’s that mean? Gansey-lite kept going on about it."

“It means they think you’re smart. Probably because you went to Aglionby.”

"You don't think I'm smart, Sargent?"

Blue thrusts the paper back at Ronan, suddenly angry. Of course the administration would think an Aglionby Academy student – even a disgraced ex-student – would be smarter than the townies.

Blue has never really thought one way or another about her school or her classmates, for all school is a place she’s obligated to be seven hours a day, five days a week and that she’s known many of her peers since kindergarten. But watching Ronan here, his eyes cool and narrowed, makes her feel suddenly and definitively defensive. This may not be Aglionby. They may not offer Latin. But it’s hers.

"I think you're smart enough to figure out where room 104 is," she snaps at him. "Good luck."

***

“Blue! Blue!” Kiki Phillips kicks the back of her chair in third period pre-calc. Blue turns angrily.

“What?”

“You, like, know the new guy,” breathes Kiki. “How? I heard he’s from Aglionby. He’s so cute. Are you guys dating?”

“Oh my God,” says Blue, and she turns right back around and hunches over her syllabus. She’s going to need a graphing calculator. She doesn’t know where she’s going to get the money.

But Kiki isn’t the only one to barrage her with questions. Marc Nunez wants to know if it's true the BMW in the senior parking lot is Ronan's. Ellie McCleod wants to know if it's true Ronan got kicked out of Aglionby for running drugs. Sam Chisolm has heard a rumor that Ronan's actually a narc and dropping out of Aglionby is just his cover.

Everyone wants to know if Ronan and Blue are dating.

"That's so cool," says Bea Miller, when Blue tells her they're just friends - sort of. "You guys are so alternative."

Blue feels her eye start to twitch.

She spends lunch in the library. She's not that hungry. And by final bell of the day, she all but runs to the bike stands.

Ronan is waiting for her by her bike. Chainsaw sits on his shoulder, and Blue can only wonder what raft of rumors that will set afloat.

“Hey, maggot,” he says casually, like she didn’t leave him stranded in the middle of school that morning.

“Ronan,” she says, exhausted. She is also strangely touched that he waited.

"Have a good first day?" he asks, and it would sound pleasant, coming from anyone but him. Maybe that is pleasant for Ronan.

Blue doesn't respond. She crouches by her bike and starts taking off the bike lock. She takes extra time. She's thinking. She's upset that Mountain View just assumed Ronan would naturally be in all AP classes, and she's annoyed at her fellow students' insistence she and Ronan are dating, but she's not actually mad at Ronan for any reason, other than his general Ronan-ness.

But there is one thing that bothers her.

“None of you said anything,” she says, finally finishing with her lock.

Ronan looks at her blankly, and she thinks, for once, he’s not shitting her.

“About?”

“About you coming here this year.”

“We were kinda busy this summer.” He makes a face. “And I didn’t tell anyone. Richard only found out because he thinks he’s my fucking mother.”

Blue straightens up and pulls her bike from the rack.

"That's not surprising," she says neutrally.

Ronan laughs, sharp and bitter.

“Gansey and Declan are both acting like my life is fucking over. Like it fucking matters if I even graduate high school.”

Blue has to admit he has a point, though it’s a point that rankles. Ronan already has more than anyone could ever need, and he can dream up anything he could ever want.

“So why are you here?” she asks.

Ronan’s too slow in responding. By the time he gets out a vicious, “Because I wanted to see how you plebes live,” Blue knows he’s hiding something, and the grimace he gives her as he finishes speaking means he knows she’s onto him.

She looks at him levelly. To anyone watching them, she thinks with dismay, they must look like they’re having a very strange lover’s tiff.

"I have to get going," she says. "Calla needs me to help her with something."

It's not even a very good lie, but Ronan doesn't call her out on it. He just shrugs.

"All right. I'll give you a ride."

"I don't need a ride, Lynch."

"What? Your bike will fit."

"It's not about my bike!"

Ronan snorts. "God, you and Adam are both such weirdos about this shit."

"I guess it's a poor people thing," she snaps, and, suddenly, she is annoyed at Ronan again. At least it's mostly his fault this time.

She gets on her bike and pedals off, leaving Ronan behind for the second time that day.

***

The next morning, she's on time, but Ronan still manages to get to school before her. He’s already chaining up a bike of his own as she rides up.

She coasts to a stop beside him and stares at the bike. It sort of makes Blue’s head hurt. The bike is black and covered in silver spikes, and, while it has a bike chain, the chain seems more aesthetic than functional. Blue has no idea how Ronan’s bike actually works, which means it must be a dream.

"Have you ever even looked at a bike before?" she says, laughing.

"Some of us never needed one," says Ronan loftily, but he's smiling, too.

They walk to class together, and Blue feels something loosen up in her chest in a bit. She's even able to ignore the curious looks Ronan leaves in his wake.

“Can I ask you something?” says Ronan, as they're settling in.

“Yeah?”

“How do you get on the roof?”

Blue stares at him. She's not sure what she was expecting Ronan to ask, but it definitely wasn't that. The main building of Mountain View is large, block-shaped, and made of red brick. It's roof is completely flat, so it's possible someone could get on it. But she's never actually thought about; she's never actually, really noticed what the school looks like before. It's not distinctive enough to stand out, and too familiar to have ever warranted further scrutiny. But apparently that's not the case for Ronan.

"I have no idea," she says. "Are you trying to get up there?"

Ronan just smiles, and the bell rings for class to start.

***

Ronan slams his tray down next to her at lunch, and she starts, looking up from her math syllabus.

“I didn’t realize you were cool," he says, by way of hello.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” says Blue

She shoves her syllabus away. Maybe Adam has a graphing calculator she'll be able to borrow.

Ronan shrugs. “I figured everyone thought you were a lame freak, and that’s why you never talked about any friends or anything. But, no. People think you’re cool. Public school is weird.”

“People don’t think I’m cool!” protests Blue. “People leave me alone!”

Ronan raises a skeptical eyebrow at her. Around her, the cafeteria bustles with its usual noise and settles into its usual cliques. Like with the school building itself, she's never really stopped to think about the students. She's never really tried to get to know them. And she's certainly never thought much about how they view her. Which, maybe that's what it means to be cool, but it suddenly leaves Blue feeling a little bit like a jerk.

"Like you were friends with most of the guys at Aglionby," she mutters.

Ronan snorts and stabs at the food on his plate. She's surprised he bought lunch, but, she guesses she's never seen anyone at Monmouth cook, and it's not like Ronan would be thoughtful enough to dream something up. She's packed her lunch - a sandwich and a yogurt like she has since first grade, when Maura stopped making lunch for her. She wonders if Aurora ever made lunch for Ronan, and she tries to picture Ronan as a first grader, with missing front teeth and a new lunchbox. She can't.

She realizes then that she doesn’t know anything about Ronan’s life prior to Aglionby. So maybe her classmates aren't the only people Blue's been neglecting.

"Where did you go before Aglionby?" she asks.

“I was home-schooled,” he says. He eyeballs the cafeteria. "I've only ever seen shit like this in movies."

"So this is your first time in general population? Because Aglionby doesn't count."

He snorts. "Yeah. I guess so."

She steals a fry from off his plate.

"Jeez, Lynch. No wonder you're feral."

***

"Homecoming court?" mouths Ronan, confusion obvious on his face as he reads the flyer that was handed to him as he and Blue left the cafeteria.

"Yes!" says Bea Miller, turning swiftly enough that her backpack almost knocks another student to the ground. Her eyes latch onto Blue's.

"Can you believe it? Our last homecoming!"

"Yeah. It's hard to believe," says Blue, trying to call on her newfound resolve to interact with her classmates. It's already hard. She doesn't care about homecoming, and she really doesn't care for the faint fatalism that seems to have infected so much of the senior class. "Our last first day," "our last homecoming," "our last chance."

They're graduating, not dying. Well, Blue thinks guiltily of Gansey. Most of them aren't. She wonders if the Aglionby seniors are similarly infected - what are their lasts? Their last first ritualized hazing of freshmen? Their last massive tuition payment?

Bea is unperturbed by Blue's lack of enthusiasm.

"You should run!" she says to Ronan. "You'd definitely win!"

"What?" says Ronan.

"I'm going to nominate you right now," says Bea, and she whirls away.

"What?" says Ronan.

***

To Blue’s surprise, she actually begins to enjoy having Ronan at school with her. It's nice having someone to eat lunch with, even if most of it is spent in silence, feeding Chainsaw, insulting each other, or with Ronan plotting how to get onto the roof.

They bike together after school most days as well. Ronan goes with her all the way to 300 Fox Way, though he never comes inside, or to whatever job she's working at that night. Usually, though, they end up at Monmouth.

It's still hard not to think of this as her real life, hard not to feel like she’d been asleep her whole life until she met the four of them. There’s the ley line to strengthen and Maura to find and a suspicious new Latin teacher at Aglionby and a friend of Gansey’s traveling from Britain. And all of that is more important than pre-calculus or college or rumors.

Glendower is more important, because once they’ve found Glendower, they can save Gansey.

It makes a certain kind of perverse sense, then, that Ronan is the one who can travel with Blue from her dreaming world to this waking one.

But the dreaming world still has its demands. She nods off one night at Monmouth over her homework, and Noah shakes her gently awake.

“Hey,” she says, smiling when she sees him. Noah’s been scarce lately, erratic when he has been around.

“Hey,” he says, smiling back at her. "It's late."

He flickers and disappears, like a light turning off.

Blue sighs and straightens up, rubbing her arm absentmindedly where the buttons from Adam's graphing calculator pressed into it while she napped. And then she hears Ronan raise his voice. She twists around in her seat. Gansey and Ronan are in the kitchen, standing close together. Ronan's body language is furious but constrained, like a dog at the end of its leash. Gansey's crossed his arms over his chest. Looking, well, looking like somebody's mother.

"I'm just saying, Ronan. It's bad enough you wouldn't do your homework at Aglionby, and now you're not doing it at Mountain View either?"

"You're as bad as fucking Declan! I can fucking shit money, Gansey! Why the hell does it matter?"

Gansey flushes purple.

"You can dream money," he snaps, like that's any kind of comeback.

"Technically," says Adam dryly, from behind his Latin textbook, "he could dream that he shits money."

There's a second where it seems like that might be enough to suck the tension out of the room. Both Ronan and Gansey look on the verge of laughing, but then something closes up in Ronan's face. He's decided to be angry about this.

"Yeah, we don't all need brains like Parrish," he snarls, and he storms out, banging the door to Monmouth behind him like a poltergeist.

Adam sighs and sets his book down.

"You probably shouldn't," he tells Gansey, as Gansey moves to follow.

He stands and follows Ronan out instead. Gansey stares after him, something defeated to the line of his shoulders. It's odd to see him like this, and Blue wonders if he still thinks she's asleep. She's not about to poor little rich boy Richard Gansey the Third, but her chest aches a little. Gansey's overbearing, but she's never known someone who cares so much about their friends. She gets up and goes to stand behind him, pressing her shoulder against his arm.

"Oh, Jane," he says. He takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. "I hope we didn't wake you up."

He can't quite cover how tired he sounds.

"No, Noah did," she says. "It's late anyway. I should be getting home."

"I can give you a ride, if you'd like."

"I'll allow it," says Blue, with a tentative smile. Gansey doesn't need another argument, and, for once, she's not in the mood to argue either.

In the parking lot, there's no sign of Adam or Ronan, and the BMW is gone. She's not sure about these new alliances that are forming: her and Gansey, Adam and Ronan, Noah wherever Noah is. She doesn't like the idea of them shuttling off into separate groups. Maybe that's another benefit of Ronan going to school with her.

"I don't think he's doing that badly," says Blue, once they're in the Pig. "He answered a question in class the other day."

"I just worry," says Gansey, after a moment, and there feels like there should be more, like there's a lot Blue doesn't know contained in that word, 'worry.' There's a lot she doesn't know about what Ronan was like before she met him, in that long dark time after his father died.

Gansey smiles at her, open and disarming.

"But I'm glad you're looking out for him."

***

For the second year in a row, Blue has peer counseling fourth period. She likes it; it's like getting to be a psychic without actually being psychic. It also lines up well with the lowerclassmen's lunch, and that's who comes in, though it doesn't seem like she's going to get any visitors today.

Their problems are mundane, usually. They need help with their schedule, or they're fighting with their mom, or they think they want to break up with their boyfriend.

Most of the problems of the people who go to 300 Fox Way are pretty mundane, too.

"Their problems are big to them," Maura told her once, when Blue had scoffed at the sad sacks who came for advice. She rapped Blue lightly on the hand.

"Just like your problems are big to you."

She closes her eyes. It's hard to imagine problems bigger than hers right now. Her mother is missing. Ronan's father is dead, and his mother is a dream. Adam's father is a monster, and a forest owns him. Gansey is going to die. Noah is already dead.

But she and her boys don't have a lock on heartbreak, she reminds herself. For all the banalities, she's also heard just as bad or worse in this room, if nothing as magical. She thinks, sometimes, between what she learns from the students in peer counseling and what the psychics learn from their parents at 300 Fox Way that they could make a map of all Henrietta's tragedies. Maybe they could lay it over Gansey's model town and show him humans live here, too.

There's a knock on the door. She opens her eyes.

"Come in," she says.

Ronan walks through the door, looking shifty. Blue raises her eyebrows at him. She hadn't seen him in class that morning.

The peer counseling room is a small space, barely more than a closet, just off the real counseling offices. There's only room enough for one small table and two chairs. Ronan drops into the chair across from her and doesn't look at her.

"Hey," he says. "Do you just sit here all period? That's a pretty sweet set-up." 

Blue looks at him patiently, and he lets out a long exhale. From anyone else, it would be a sigh. From Ronan, it sounds like steam being released. He keeps shifting in his seat, his hands constantly moving.

"I got this for you," he says, after a long moment of silence. He pulls a graphing calculator out of his bag and shoves it across the table towards Blue. It's hot pink, and has "Blue" emblazoned on its cover in a truly horrible cursive font, because Ronan isn't even able to do something nice without being an asshole.

"You know I'm not going to take this," she tells him. Her chest feels tight. She's had this conversation with Ronan and Gansey too many times.

"It didn't cost me anything," says Ronan. "And I know you need it."

Blue frowns at him. "If I accept it, can we talk about why you're here?" 

"I'm here to give you the fucking calculator."

Blue fold her hands neatly on the table. Ronan scowls at her.

"How are you today?" she asks. "You seemed pretty upset last night."

Ronan continues to scowl at her. Blue looks back at him. The graphing calculator sits between them. Finally, Ronan tilts back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling.

He releases more steam and then says, "Do you ever fuck up just so you can see who really cares about you after?"

"No," says Blue honestly. Maura and Calla and Persephone's love may all be strange and prickly, each in its own way, but their love is also unquestionable. But then, Blue's never lost anything the way Ronan has.

"Is that why you dropped out of Aglionby?" she asks.

"No," says Ronan. He drops his chair back flat onto the ground and looks at Blue. "I flunked out of Aglionby, because I stopped giving a shit. But, yeah. Maybe it was a bonus to see who still gave a shit about me."

Maybe that's Ronan in a nutshell, thinks Blue: he'll keep daring you to care about him even when he has no intention of caring about himself.

“How come you keep showing up here then?” she asks. It had been odd that morning, to not walk with Ronan from the bike racks to first period and not have him sitting behind her, muttering swears.

Ronan shifts in the seat again, looking deeply uncomfortable. He doesn’t say anything. But Blue keeps her eyes on him, firm.

“Gansey’s worried about you,” he admits.

Blue’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Excuse me?”

Ronan shrugs defensively.

“Just, with your mom missing, and all. I know what it's like to lose a parent."

Her mouth tightens.

"I haven't lost her," she snaps. "I just don't know where she is."

"That's kind of the definition of 'lost'."

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she says, struggling to word her anger. “That’s patronizing – ”

Ronan touches her arm and gives her a strange look.

“Blue, we look out for you because you’re our friend.”

Blue shuts up. They are friends. It's a dumb, obvious, true thing to say. It's also new. But if Gansey can worry about Ronan, then Blue guesses it's only fair that Gansey can worry about her, too. That Ronan can worry about her. That's what friends do.

"Sorry," she says, with a short laugh. "I guess I'm not used to having friends."

Slowly, Ronan starts to smile at her.

"Yeah, well," he lets go of her arm and leans back in his chair again. "That's because you're fucking terrifying, you know."

"I could say the same about you," she says dryly. She looks at the calculator and sighs, then unzips her backpack to put it in. "Thanks for this."

***

She’s forgotten that their homecoming pep rally is that afternoon. She spots Ronan as she walks over to the gym with her seventh period economics class. He's walking purposely in the opposite direction, and she goes out of her way to stand in front of him.

"You're not trying to ditch, are you?" she asks.

She grabs his arm and starts pulling him back the way he came. There's a second of resistance during which Blue's sure Ronan will shake her off, but then he shrugs.

"Guess not," he mutters, and he turns to walk with her.

"Are you nervous?" she asks.

"About what?"

She grins at him. "About getting elected. I think you've got in the bag. You're the most interesting thing to happen here since Peter Harrington stole a school bus."

She doesn't actually think Ronan's going to win. He hasn't campaigned at all, but she had checked his name when they voted on Wednesday, mainly to make herself laugh.

"What did he do with it?" asks Ronan, obviously committed to ignoring her needling.

"That's it," says Blue. "He got maybe a block with it. It was for a senior prank. He wasn't about to commit grand theft auto."

"Huh," says Ronan, his eyes narrowed.

He looks up at the roof.

They find a place to sit at the top of one of the bleachers. The rally goes like basically all pep rallies go: cheerleaders, painfully earnest jokes and skits from some of the more game teachers, cheering as one of the sports teams (in this case, the football team) runs in formation across the gym floor, a reminder that next week is Spirit Week and to wear school colors on Monday. Like all pep rallies, it sort of makes Blue want to take a drill to her head, but having Ronan next to her, muttering an increasingly hostile and incredulous commentary is almost enough to make up for it.

And then it's time to announce the Homecoming Court. Blue straightens up with interest. She's never actually cared who won before, for any dance. Ronan lets out a small groan and leans his head back against the wall. He looks like he's about ready to chew a limb off to escape.

"And your Homecoming King is..." announces Katie McCallum, after spending an eternity going through the lower grades first: baron, baroness, duke, duchess, prince, princess.

She looks at the small piece of paper in her hand.

"Ronan Lynch! Congratulations, Ronan!"

There's a wave of applause, just like with all the other announcements. But, unlike the other announcements, there's also a rippling murmur of interest.

Katie squints into the audience.

"Is Ronan here?"

Almost as one, the crowd locks onto Ronan's location, and it seems like every face is staring up at them. Blue can barely look at Ronan.

"What the fuck," he says loudly, and the students around him burst into laughter.

"You have to go," Blue whispers, hands over her mouth, barely able to contain her own laughter. "You have to go down there with everyone else."

“Fuck you," says Ronan. His head whips around and he fixes her with a lizard stare. "I’m not going to the fucking dance unless you do.”

Blue pauses. She's assiduously avoided every high school dance, on the unimpeachable grounds that they're stupid. But there’s a dare in Ronan’s eyes, and Blue won’t give him the satisfaction of backing down.

“Fine,” she says.

Ronan nods, something self-satisfied and savage in the shape of his mouth, and he makes his way down to the rest of the court. The crowd on the bleachers part around him.

Blue never hears who's announced as Homecoming Queen. She's laughing too hard.

***

She picks out an old prom dress at the Goodwill. It’s bright green and horrifically tacky, the bodice sparkly and sleeveless and the skirt a mass of gauzy tulle.

She cuts the skirt into strips and sews the top half of an old black t-shirt to the inside of the bodice, wears the whole thing over silver leggings she’s trimmed with ribbons and a pair of combat boots. She scowls when she sees herself in the mirror, satisfied, and smiles when Orla presses a hand to her forehead in despair.

Ronan picks her up in his BMW. Blue had thought about biking to the dance, but decided against it when she realized her skirt might get caught in the chain.

“Mom’s gonna want a picture of us together,” says Ronan as she slides into the passenger seat.

Blue grins.

“Gansey’s going to have to learn to live with disappointment.”

The cafeteria has been transformed into a cafeteria covered in streamers and balloons. Tables with bowls of punch line the back and front wall. Ronan eyes them.

"You are not going to spike the punch bowls," say Blue firmly.

Ronan gives her one of his famous, feral grins. "I wouldn't want to waste the good stuff, anyway," he says, and that's hardly comforting, thinks Blue.

She narrows her eyes at him. "What are you planning?"

"You'll see," says Ronan, smirking. "Now I gotta go do king shit, peasant. See ya later."

"Ronan Lynch!" snaps Blue, but he's already making his way across the cafeteria, past the other early arrivals.

Blue lets out a sigh of defeat and sags against the wall. Maybe she hasn't actually thought this through. Ronan's going to be busy with the court for most of the start of the dance, and there's no one else Blue really wants to talk to. Maybe she should have invited Adam or Gansey along, too.

"Holy shit, Blue, I love your dress," says a voice to Blue's right. She looks up. Bea Miller grins at her.

"Oh," says Blue. "Uh, thanks. I got it at Goodwill."

"You have amazing style," says Bea. She leans against the wall next to Blue. "Have you been to the thrift store on Oak?"

"Yeah, I have," says Blue, and suddenly she's having an actual conversation. Bea is way more tolerable when it comes to talking thrifting and sewing, and one of her friends drifts over and joins them. They all pause to watch the dance between Ronan and the homecoming queen, Karen Chen. It's exquisitely awkward.

"You have to send me that," says Blue, watching the recording on Bea's friend's phone and laughing all over again.

"Yeah, find me on Facebook," says the friend - Sophie. At Blue's blank look, Bea shakes her head and looks at the friend. "Just e-mail her."

Blue smiles at both of them. Maybe her classmates aren't so awful after all.

Ronan finds her half an hour later, still talking to Bea and Sophie. He cocks an eyebrow at her and then tilts his head, gesturing to the door. She makes her excuses and turns to him.

"What? Are you asking me to dance?"

"No way. I'd just step on you. I need to be able to actually see whoever it is I'm dancing with."

"So what was your excuse with Karen?"

"My excuse is, fuck you, Sargent."

Blue laughs. "You're a terrible date."

"I don't know why you'd expect otherwise," says Ronan. He glances over his shoulder, like he's expecting something.

It's at that moment that the murder squash song starts to play.

"You didn't!" cries Blue. Around her, her classmates are having mixed reactions of shock and hilarity.

Ronan smirks at her. "Come on. That's our cue."

"Our cue for what?"

"Our cue to get the hell out of here."

He walks away without waiting to see if she'll follow. With a shake of her head, Blue follows. She has a million questions, but she keeps them to herself. She figures Ronan will let her know what's up soon enough. He strides confidently down the hallway, towards the direction of the exit. Then he takes a right turn and stops at a door Blue's never noticed before. He opens it up, to reveal a set of narrow stairs.

Blue immediately knows where they go to. Could he have dreamed this, too? Or has she really just never seen what was in plain sight?

“How did you find this?” she asks her.

“I’ve been looking," says Ronan with a shrug, and she knows that's all she's ever going to get from him on the subject. "Now you are coming or what?”

She doesn't hesitate.

"Yes," she says.

They walk up together. It's three flights before they come to a metal ladder that leads, at last, to the roof.

The night air is pleasantly cool, and a light breeze makes the shreds of Blue's skirt dance. She stands with her hands on her hips and takes in the view. There's enough light from the moon and the streetlights that she can see all three parking lots - students', seniors', and staff - and the gym and the portables on the edge of campus and the grassy lawn where everyone lingers in the morning and afternoon and where she and Ronan usually eat lunch. Beyond that, there are the neat, small homes and the big Evangelical church that make up most of the neighborhood around the school. And then the town just keeps going. Blue's never noticed before that Mountain View is on a bit of a hill, and that, plus being three stories up, means she can see most of Henrietta, and even, far in the distance, the dim, dark shapes of the mountains.

Ronan makes a pleased noise in his throat and goes to sit on the edge of the roof. He raises his hand. Chainsaw flies out from a nearby tree and perches on Ronan's hand. Ronan rubs her head. He looks, thinks Blue with a soft sense of surprise, content. She's never known Ronan, all jangling energy and harsh lines, to be just content, just quiet.

"What do you think?" he asks, turning back to look at her. He takes off the cheap metal homecoming crown and places it behind him, passes his hand over the fine fuzz of his scalp.

Blue smiles at him fondly. "It's all right. I just don't think this is as impressive as stealing a bus."

Ronan laughs.

"I'm working up to it," he says. "I just need an accomplice."

He pats the space next to him, and Blue moves to sit beside him. Her legs swing over the ledge. They're not even that high up, but it's still exhilarating, and her stomach gives a little swoop every time she looks down. Ronan passes her a bottle of liquor. After a second's hesitation, she takes a sip. It's bitter and sharp, but it goes down smoothly enough that it doesn't make her cough. It feels wonderfully warm inside her.

Henrietta spreads out in a soft glow ahead of them. Gansey's right, she thinks, maybe Henrietta is beautiful. At least, up here it is, where she doesn't know every bad thing that's happened, where she can pretend like it's not built on a supernatural time bomb that's threatening to destroy everything she loves. It just looks like a town. They could be anywhere.

She passes the bottle back to Ronan. She's just going to enjoy tonight, she tells herself. She's just going to enjoy the clean, early autumn air, and the alcohol, and her friend.

"An accomplice?" she asks, and it's easy to smile, sitting on the roof with Ronan. "Do you have anyone in mind?"

Ronan raises the bottle and salutes her with it.

"As a matter of fact, Sargent, I think I do."