AU: All right, new reply! Thanks, Sorcha! I guess I'll move forward on this after all.

8

"'The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else. In that livid spot there are shades, but there are no longer any secrets.' Now, who can tell me what a 'shade' is in this context?" Mr. Bates brandished his ragged copy of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables like an assault rifle, pointing it at the class one by one until someone cracked.

"It's a ghost," said a boy named Nathan.

The assault novel went back on the desk, damage done. "Very good!" said Mr. Bates. "A shade is a ghost. Are we talking about a literal ghost here?" This time he didn't wait for a response. "No—of course not. We're talking about the moral specters that haunt Jean Valjean. You see, just as the sewer is a metaphor for the conscience of Paris, it's also a metaphor for his journey in the novel. Now what I'd like you all to do for me next week. . ."

I jotted down a few notes. Shade=ghost. Sewer=Valjean's conscience. Mr. Bates slapped an assignment on the board and I jotted that down, too. We were supposed to identify the "ghosts" in one of the characters' lives and talk about the metaphorical ways in which they manifested themselves in the next few chapters.

I'd read this book before. Seen the play, too, at least four times. We were doing it now because the theater department was putting on a show this semester, and Mr. Bates wanted us to go see it and write an essay about the accuracy of the adaptation. (Or lack thereof.) Although I was looking forward to shredding the differences in the Eponine character between page and stage, the classes were a bit tedious.

I packed up my things and followed the rest of the class out the door. Mike, a spikey-haired, vest-wearing junior that I affectionately referred to as my gay boyfriend, fell into step beside me. "You're gonna shred Eponine, aren't you?" he asked.

I laughed. "Am I really that predictable?"

"Only to me. What classes have you got left?"

"Um, just French, but it's way the hell across campus so it's gonna eat up twice as much time as it needs to."

"Damn, that sucks. I'm done for the day."

"You're such a punk. I hate you."

Mike laughed at me and looped his arm through mine. "Let's go get Thai food for lunch," he said. "This place downtown has a special on sweet and sour chicken on Thursdays."

"You buying?"

"Hell no, but I'll drive you to your French class afterwards."

"Deal."

It was overcast and gloomy that day, so I was glad to get off-campus for a while. Also I hadn't gotten a chance to tell Mike about my break-up yet. He indulged me with unpleasant hissing noises when I explained what had happened with Kyle, and assured me that I'd done the right thing by dissing him on the air. Then he started to grill me about "that creepy new kid," meaning Jasper.

"He's all right," I said. "I know how he seems, but I think he's nice."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "Nice?" he repeated. "He's a hottie, sure, but I dunno. I just get a weird vibe from him."

I shrugged and didn't retaliate.

Mike dropped me at the curb by the language arts building and rolled down the window when I got out. "Hang in there, honey," he said. "I'm here if you need a movie buddy, okay?"

"I know. Thanks."

Mike drove off and I trudged up the small incline to the back entrance; the French room was on the basement level, and the stairs were easier to get to from outside. But when I got to the mouth of the stairwell, I stopped: Jasper. He was waiting for me.

No—that was silly. He'd probably just gotten out of class himself. Still, that didn't explain the way he was standing, stiff right in front of the staircase, the pockets of his jacket puffing up and flattening as he clenched and unclenched his hands inside them. There was something funny about his eyes, too, something almost feral.

I cleared my throat. "Hi," I said.

"Hello," said Jasper. "You're here for the French lab?"

I nodded. "You too?"

"No. I placed out of the language requirement. The admin here asked me to tutor for Spanish."

"Oh, good for you. A little extra cash, huh?"

He smiled. "Right."

I cleared my throat again, and was about to try to squeeze past him when he spoke up.

"Alice told me about your dormitory," he said.

"Oh yeah?"

"I'd like to see it."

I crossed my arms, suddenly realizing how chilly it was out here. And where the hell were the other students? "Um," I said, "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

A warm, tingly feeling spread over my face and torso, and my body relaxed. "I just. . ."

Jasper waited.

"Maybe some other time," I said. "Tonight's not good for me."

Jasper nodded. "Some other night, then."

And he slipped away. I ran downstairs as fast I could the second he was out of sight.