Chapter 7: The Tree

[Lily]

By the time I made it back to where Nyx had been sitting, she was long gone. There isn’t even a trace that she has been sitting here. I checked our dorm room, but there was no sign that she had made it back there yet. If seeing me sitting with the Legacies irritated her this badly, there is only one place she would go. 

And that is exactly where I found her. She is sitting underneath the only walnut tree on school property, a giant of a tree, both wide and tall, it has branches that extend in all directions, creating a large canopy of shade in the summer and a wealth of walnuts in the fall. Once upon a time, the land the school sits on was a walnut orchard with walnut trees in all directions, as far as the eye could see. 

But they were all chopped down to build this school. They somehow missed this one.

Like us, this tree is a survivor.

Without saying anything, I take a seat next to Nyx who is on the ground, her head upturned and her eyes closed. Our backs resting against the bark, we sit together in silence. We have been meeting by this tree since we were freshmen together. It is where we go when the world becomes too hard or stops making sense. Closing my eyes, I listen to the sound of the birds feasting and dancing around on the branches above us. 

Eventually, she speaks, her voice clear and sharp. “So what did they say?”

I take a moment to think before I respond. “It was really weird,” I confess. “They asked me to give them a chance to make things better between us and offered me a real seat at their table--as a Legacy.” It sounds even more ridiculous when I say it out loud. And yet part of me hopes it is real.

“And you believed them?” Nyx interrogates me, the beads at the ends of her braids clicking together as she sits up to glare at me. Even with my eyes closed I can feel her intense gaze on my face. “Please tell me that you didn’t believe them.”

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. Since speaking with Veronica and the rest of the Seven, my heart and my head are not in agreement. One wants me to flee, the other wants me to stay, and neither knows if they can trust anything anymore. 

“You know they can’t be trusted, right?” She reminds me.

“You know, It’s funny but they told me you’d say that,” I laugh. “They said you’d be jealous of their attention and warn me to not believe them and stay far far away from them.”

It grows quiet between us again, but this time the quiet isn’t personable and it isn’t friendly.

The silence is aggressive. A weapon made of quiet pauses. 

“Do you think this is funny?” she stands over me and I snap my eyes open at the chilly nature of her response. “Is that what you think, Liliana Adare?”

 I’ve never heard her sound so angry or hurt before. “ Do you remember how I warned you about them our first year? Especially Atticus. That’s because I went to middle school with those jerks, only back then I was their favorite target.” She paces back and forth staring at the ground. 

“Nyx, you don’t need to explain…”

“No,” she interrupts me, a single finger raised to quiet me as her face glows red with both anger and embarrassment at the memories from her past. “I think you need to hear this. I think you need to hear how horrible it can be before you make the wrong choice.” 

“Atticus Preston is the absolute worst human on the planet. I’m not just stating that as an opinion, I know it for a fact to be true.”

Nyx pauses and then begins her story. “When I first met him, I was a new student in a new town. My father and I had just moved here from LA and I didn’t know anyone.”

“\My father sent me to this expensive private middle school because he had heard it was the best school in New York State and he wanted me to have only the best of everything. He meant well, he had the best intentions, but what he didn’t understand was that fancy rich kids can be just as cruel as poor kids.”

“My father made sure I arrived in style. But after I had been on campus for a day, it was obvious that I didn’t belong. Everything from the way I dress to my California accent was ridiculed and mocked. That wasn’t the worst part. I could live with a little teasing. What I couldn’t handle was them talking about my mom and dad, their divorce, and all the nasty details of my family life.”

“Atticus,” she hisses, “hired an investigator to dig up my family secrets. What kind of 12-year-old wastes their time and money researching the private life of another student? Anyway, he used his newfound information to harass me and then spread the information throughout the student body.  When my father brought it up to the principal and demanded to know what the school was going to do to make the bullying stop, the principal laughed in his face.”

“My father threatened to sue them, to have the school shut down. And he meant it. But do you know what the principal said? He told my dad that he was more afraid of Maximillion Preston III than he was of anything my father could do. Max Preston didn’t just own the school, he owned the land it sat on, and made donations that paid all of their salaries. If you cross Max Preston, you don’t get a second chance. He destroys you.”

“That’s the kind of power they have, Lily. They have so much money and power that anyone who isn’t one of them is just a pawn in one of their sick little games.”

“Don’t be a pawn, Lily,” Nyx begs. She is crying now, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t care if you take them up on their offer or not. Do whatever it is you are going to do. Just don’t let them play you. Because they will, if you give them the chance.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” I scoff. “‘Don’t let them play you?’ Do you think I’m so dumb that I don’t see that this is probably a trick? Do you really have such a low opinion of my judgment?”

“No,” Nyx, sighs. “I love you, Lily. You’re my best friend. I will love you forever, you know that. I just worry that you will let your heart lead you down a path that will end with you broken, all because they offer you something you find impossible to resist.” She looks back at the school, her mind somewhere else. “I just can’t watch you destroy yourself.”

I watch her walk away from me and my heart grows heavy with guilt. My best friend in the world just poured out her heart and revealed one of her hardest memories to me and all I can think of is how in some ways, Veronica was right. Nyx is jealous. I’m being offered something she has always been denied.

Acceptance and power. 

But can I take that power if it means becoming someone else? Someone terrible?

Confused even more than I was before I came out here,  I sit under that tree for the rest of the morning. The more I think, the harder it is for me to make sense of any of it. 

At some point, I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know, I am being shaken awake by a strong but gentle hand.

“Nyx, I’m so sorry,” I apologize. “I know you don’t mean to sound jealous, it's just that…”

“Liliana,” he says softly, sounding different than I have ever heard him sound as he lets the syllables of my name roll off his tongue like honey. “Can I take you out for lunch?”