Chapter 3. Fever

Wren POV

Madison Pryce couldn't look at me.

I noticed it the second I walked into Writing 101. She was in her usual seat, phone out, friends on both sides. When I came through the door, she went stiff, then very carefully studied her nails.

Her friends did the same.

Nobody blinked twice at me. Nobody signed anything fake. When the professor asked us to pair up, Madison got up and moved to the other side of the circle without a word.

It should have felt like relief.

It felt like standing on a frozen lake and hearing the ice crack somewhere you couldn't see.

I texted under my desk.

ME: What did you do to her?

UNKNOWN: Nothing that hurt her.

ME: That's not an answer.

UNKNOWN: It's the one you're getting.

ME: I didn't ask you to do anything.

UNKNOWN: I know.

I put the phone face down and stared at the whiteboard until the words stopped swimming.

Someone was watching me closely enough to know who'd hurt me. Close enough to do something about it overnight. Close enough to know which window was mine.

And the only person I knew who'd been told to follow me had looked at me like I was a chore.

It didn't make sense. Silas didn't want to be near me. He'd said so himself.

Unless he hadn't been the only one told.

By eleven, I had a headache. By noon, my skin felt too tight.

I knew this feeling. I'd had it every few months since I was eighteen. Mom called them my bad weeks. Fever, aches, a restlessness so strong I couldn't sit still, and every sense turned up until even the hum of the fridge felt like a drill. She'd tuck me into bed with ice packs and painkillers and sit in the hallway until it passed.

A strange cycle, the doctor at home had said. Hormonal. Nothing to worry about.

But it wasn't supposed to come for another month.

I counted the days in my head as I walked into the biggest lecture hall I'd ever seen. Intro to Human Biology. Three hundred seats in a steep half-circle, all facing a tiny professor and a giant screen.

I took a seat near the end of a row, halfway up, and put my headphones in my lap.

Then I smelled him.

Woodsmoke. Frost. Black pepper.

I didn't turn around. I didn't have to. I knew exactly where he was, the way you know where the sun is with your eyes closed. Somewhere behind me and above. The back row.

What was a hockey star doing in an intro class full of first-years?

Babysitting, a nasty voice in my head answered.

The professor started talking about cell membranes. I opened my laptop. I typed one sentence of notes.

Then the fever hit me like a wave.

It rolled up from my stomach and broke over my whole body at once. Sweat broke out along my hairline. The lights went white and sharp. The professor's voice was suddenly inside my skull, every word scraping. Three hundred heartbeats. Three hundred people breathing, chewing, shifting, their shampoo and coffee and sweat all crashing into me at once.

And under all of it, stronger than everything, him.

I wanted to turn around.

No. I wanted to stand up, climb over every row between us and press my face against his throat until the burning stopped.

The thought was so clear and so not mine that I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

What is wrong with me?

Under my skin, the thing I'd spent two years ignoring was pacing. Not sleeping. Not rolling over. Pacing, back and forth, back and forth, like an animal that had just realized the cage door was unlocked.

My fingers dug into the edge of the desk.

I couldn't help it. I looked back.

Silas was sitting in the very last row, alone, one arm over the back of the empty seat beside him. Or he had been. Now he was completely still. Not relaxed-still. Hunting-still. His pen had snapped in half in his hand, and he didn't seem to notice the ink running down his fingers.

He was staring straight at me.

His face had gone white. His nostrils flared, once, like he'd breathed in something that burned.

Then something moved in his eyes that I had no name for.

I grabbed my bag and ran.

I didn't care who saw. I stumbled down the steps, out the side door and into the corridor, the cool air hitting my skin like a slap. The restroom was at the end of the hall. I made it into the last stall, locked it and slid down the wall until I was sitting on the tiles.

The floor was cold. It wasn't enough.

I pressed my forehead against my knees. My whole body was shaking. My hands were shaking too hard to sign, not that there was anyone to sign to. My heart was going so fast I thought it might actually stop.

This wasn't a bad week. This was something else.

This was the room. This was the night my bones broke.

It's happening again.

No. Please. Not here. Not in a bathroom stall at a university I'd begged for two years to go to. Not when I'd finally gotten out.

My phone buzzed against the tile.

I almost didn't look. When I did, the screen swam in front of me.

UNKNOWN: Are you hurt?

My thumbs shook so badly it took three tries.

ME: Burning up. Everything hurts. What's happening to me?

UNKNOWN: I know what this is. You're going to be okay.

UNKNOWN: Stay where you are. Help is coming.

ME: You don't even know where I am.

UNKNOWN: Last stall. Don't open it for anyone except a girl named Juno.

I stopped breathing.

He knew. Whoever he was, he knew exactly where I was, right now, on the floor of a locked stall. He knew what was happening to me better than I did.

How?

The restroom door swung open.

Footsteps. Sneakers squeaking on tile. I pressed both hands over my mouth, even though I couldn't have made a sound if I'd tried.

"Hey," a girl's voice said. "Purple sweater. You in here?"

The footsteps stopped outside my stall.

"I'm Juno. I sit two rows below you in Bio. You looked like you were about to pass out, and then you ran out like the building was on fire, so." A pause. "Can you open the door? You don't have to talk. Just knock once if you're alive."

I knocked once.

"Great. Love that for us. Knock twice if you need an ambulance."

I didn't knock.

"Okay. Can you open it?"

It took me three tries to slide the lock. When the door swung open, a girl crouched in front of me: dark brown skin, a silver septum ring, braids piled on top of her head and a nursing-school lanyard around her neck. She took one look at me and put the back of her hand to my forehead.

"Oh, wow. No. You're burning up." She pulled her phone out. "We're going to the clinic. It's two buildings over. Can you stand if I help?"

I nodded.

She got me up. Every step felt like walking through fire, and I couldn't stop shivering. Juno talked the whole way, about nothing, about the weather and her terrible roommate, and I clung to the sound of her voice like a rope.

The campus clinic was a low building under the pines. The woman at the front desk took one look at me and stood up so fast her chair rolled into the wall.

"Dr. Asher!"

A door opened down the hall. A gray-haired woman in a cardigan walked out, reading glasses pushed up into her hair. She stopped three feet away from me.

And she breathed in.

Just once. Slowly. The same way Silas had.

Her eyebrows went up.

"Well," she said calmly. "How long has your heat been coming on, honey?"