Chapter 110: Amber

POV: Georgia

I spend the rest of that day waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After the dance studio, I go back to my room and sit on my bed with my ankle wrapped in a heating pad. I stare at the door, not knowing what I expect. Bianca, maybe, standing there with her hands folded and her blank, polished face. Or a knock, or a note slid underneath.

Nothing comes. Mandi wakes up, complains about her hair, and drags me to breakfast. Bella isn’t there. Neither is Bianca. Their usual table by the window sits empty, with two chairs pushed in too neatly.

I eat half a piece of toast and taste none of it.

By the afternoon I’ve decided I’m not going to chase her. Chasing Bella down would only draw Bianca’s eyes to both of us, and I’ve seen enough now to know what that costs. Better to let her come to me when she can slip away unnoticed. So I’ll do what I did before: make myself easy to find. Bella knows where I’ll be. If she has anything left in her, she’ll come.

My last class lets out at three. I take the east hallway of the science building, the long one with the cracked green tiles and the trophy cases nobody looks at. It’s the quiet way back, and it’s also the way that passes the supply closet by the chemistry labs. I’m halfway down it, cane tapping, thinking - as I so often do now - about the night before the Classic, the last time my skates felt right beneath me, when a hand shoots out of the dark gap of the closet door and wraps around my sleeve.

I almost scream. I get as far as a sharp breath before the hand tugs me sideways, gently, and I see who it is.

"It’s me," Bella whispers. "It’s just me."

"You can’t grab people like that," I whisper back, my heart hammering.

"I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to do it."

She lets go of my sleeve. The closet is narrow and smells like floor cleaner and old chalk. A single bare bulb hangs overhead, swinging a little from the door’s movement. Mops lean in a bucket in the corner. Bella stands with her back against a metal shelf stacked with paper towels, trying, it seems, to take up as little space as possible.

She looks even worse than this morning - braid undone, blazer inside out with the tag poking up at her collar, fingers picking at her cuff, the shelf, each other in a restless loop that never stops.

"Are you okay?" I ask. It’s a stupid question. I ask it anyway.

"No." She almost laughs. "No, I’m really not."

"What happened this morning? After she took you out of the studio?"

Bella shakes her head fast. "Nothing. She didn’t say anything. She never does. She just walked me back to our room and sat on her bed and watched me." Her voice wobbles. "She watched me for two hours, Georgia. Then she said she hoped I’d slept well."

A chill runs down my arms. It’s the most frightening thing I’ve heard anyone say about her sister, and Bella says it like it’s a weather report.

"I have my phone again," she goes on, pulling it halfway out of her pocket to show me, then jamming it back in like it burns her. "She gave it back. She said I must have dropped it. She smiled when she said it."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because I can’t stop." She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. "I tried. I tried all day. I sat in class and thought, just don’t, just keep your head down, it’ll be easier. And then I thought about you falling, and I could hear the sound again, and I..."

She stops.

Her hands drop from her face. She’s looking at me, and her eyes are changing.

It starts at the edges - a thin ring of gold creeping around her pupils, soft at first, then spreading until the brown melts away and what’s left is deep, glowing amber. The bare bulb swings above us, and the light catches in her eyes and throws back two small, steady fires.

I don’t step back. I don’t look away.

I think about the first time I saw this, in the hallway, when I tried to tell myself it was a trick of the light. I think about how many times I’ve explained something away in this place. I’m not doing that anymore.

I just look at her. One second. Two.

Bella realizes what’s happening. I see it land. Her hand flies up like she’s going to cover her face. Then it stops halfway. It hangs in the air between us, trembling, and slowly drops back to her side.

Three seconds. The amber stays right where it is.

"You see it," she says. It isn’t a question.

"Yes."

"You’re not going to say it was the light."

"No." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I’m not."

She lets out a long, shuddering breath, and her shoulders sag, like someone put down a bag she’s been dragging for miles. "I’m so tired of hiding it from you."

"You don’t have to hide it from me."

"That’s the problem." She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist. "I do. Everywhere else. Just not here."

Her eyes slowly fade back to brown, the gold draining out like water from a basin. But something has changed between us. She looks at me differently, like I’m a door she’s decided to open.

"Georgia, the night before the Classic," she says, stepping forward, and the shelf rattles behind her. "I was in the locker room. It was late, everyone was gone, and I... I was there when your blade got cut."

Her mouth keeps moving. She’s right there. I can see the whole sentence climbing up her throat. I lean in without meaning to, my hand tightening on the head of my cane.

"I was the one who..."

A phone buzzes.

It’s loud in the tiny closet, a sharp, vicious rattle against the quiet. Bella’s whole body jerks. The sentence dies in her mouth. She fumbles at her pocket with shaking fingers and drags the phone out.

The screen is bright. A single name glows across it.

BIANCA.

It buzzes again in her palm. She stares down at it. I watch her face and see the whole fight happening there, plain as anything. One half of her wants to answer it. The other half wants to throw it against the wall.

Her thumb hovers over the glass.

Then she looks up at me.

I have never seen anyone look so torn. She’s caught between two forces, and she’s terrified of both. One is the sister who watches her sleep. The other is the truth, which is sitting between us in a supply closet and getting heavier every second.

The phone buzzes a third time.

"Soon," Bella whispers. "I promise. Soon."

She ducks past me, pushes open the closet door, and slips out into the hallway. By the time I get my cane under me and limp after her, all I can see is the swing of a blazer turning the far corner.