Everything I couldn't tell you

Chapter 2

She catches Blade outside the toilets. His tall form lounges against the wall, long arm resting over a knee, a ball of paper shoved into his nostril. His left eye is swollen, but the right one glances up at her, sharp like a crystal. Even battered and bruised he looks like a model, features strong underneath the last vestiges of baby fat.

Ksenija quirks a smile.

"Did Agda finally fight back?"

He rolls his normal eye.

"I shouldn't even have to go to that fucking class," he says in that gravel voice, like rocks scraping togheter.

"You'd think being British would help you pass. You're an embarrassment to your people."

He scoffs.

"Dignifying that atrocity with my presence would be an embarrassment to my people."

She could ask who he fought this time, but rumors travel fast and Feliciano will be better at recounting the story anyway.

"So," she says. "Last semester. Well, for the rest of us anyway. Tell me, did you pass any of your classes? You know, by accident."

He pulls the paper out of his nose. It comes out red and she thinks of the night before. Vampire blood flowing down her hand, along her arm, soaking into her coat. He shoves a fresh ball into his nose.

"High school is a joke anyway. I'll get in somewhere, everyone does."

"You aced the chem test last year, without attending any classes. You literally peaked at the book just before we went in. You could do so much more than crossing your fingers, praying a shitty program will accept you."

Blade pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

"Really?" Ksenija says. "In the hallway?"

He puts a cig in the corner of his mouth.

"The Swedish education system is a fucking hoax," he says, patting the pockets of his leather jacket for the lighter. "They just want us to get a mediocre job, with a mediocre pay, buying shit we don't need to impress other mediocre people."

Well, that's one problem she doesn't have to worry about. Being a magician, even a shitty half blood, does have its perks.

"That's why you should use that brain of yours to get into an awesome school and get an awesome job with an awesome pay. So you can make all the mediocre people jealous."

He lights the cigarette, because of course he does. Blade takes a deep drag and blows. She refuses to turn her head away, won't give him the satisfaction of coughing. Her eyes itch.

"With a fucking face like this, I don't have to study."

The smoke curls in the air and it smells like shit, it always does. At Least the hallway is empty. Where's the usual entourage at anyway?

"You're not that cute," Ksenija says, which isn't a lie, strictly speaking. Blade might be many things - handsome, sexy, offensively gorgeous - but cute is not one of them. "Do your homework Blade."

"That's what Fel is for."

Ksenija has taken a lot shit from him over the years. Sometimes their back and forth is fun, toeing the line of what is acceptable. But then he goes and says something like this.

"What? No."

He continues staring out the hallway, blowing a ring. Blade isn't even saying it to provoke her. It's just a statement. Just a thing he says because it's true, like "the sky is grey" or "the bathroom wall is mouldy" or "Feliciano needs more friends".