Fallen Read Free Page B

she was supposed to be flattered or unnerved by the way Arriane assumed she could have whatever she wanted, even if what she wanted belonged to someone else. "Where are we going to get—"
    "Ta-da!" Arriane reached into her bag and pulled out the pink Swiss Army knife Gabbe had tossed into the Hazard Box. "What?" she said, seeing Luce's reaction. "I always bring my sticky fingers on new-student drop-off days. The idea alone gets me through the dog days of Sword & Cross internment… er… summer camp."
    "You spent the whole summer… here?" Luce winced.
    "Ha! Spoken like a true newbie. You're probably expecting a spring break." She tossed Luce the Swiss Army knife. "We don't get to leave this hellhole. Ever. Now cut."
    "What about the reds?" Luce asked, glancing around with the knife in her hand. There were bound to be cameras somewhere out here.
    Arriane shook her head. "I refuse to associate with pansies. Can you handle it or not?"
    Luce nodded.
    "And 
don't 
tell me you've never cut hair before." Arriane grabbed the Swiss Army knife back from Luce, pulled out the scissor tool, and handed it back. "Not another word until you tell me how fantastic I look."
    In the «salon» of her parents' bathtub, Luce's mother had tugged the remains of her long hair into a messy pony-tail before lopping the whole thing off. Luce was sure there had to be a more strategic method of cutting hair, but as a lifelong haircut avoider, the chopped-off pony was about all she knew. She gathered Arriane's hair in her hands, wrapped an elastic band from her wrist around it, held the small scissors firmly, and began to hack.
    The ponytail fell to her feet and Arriane gasped and whipped around. She picked it up and held it to the sun. Luce's heart constricted at the sight. She still agonized over her own lost hair, and all the other losses it symbolized. But Arriane just let a thin smile spread across her lips. She ran her fingers through the ponytail once, then dropped it into her bag.
    "Awesome," she said. "Keep going."
    "Arriane," Luce whispered before she could stop herself. "Your neck. It's all—"
    "Scarred?" Arriane finished. "You can say it."
    The skin on Arriane's neck, from the back of her left ear all the way down to her collarbone, was jagged and marbled and shiny. Luce's mind went to Trevor—to those awful pictures. Even her own parents wouldn't look at her after they saw them. She was having a hard time looking at Arriane now.
    Arriane grabbed Luce's hand and pressed it to the skin. It was hot and cold at the same time. It was smooth and rough.
    "I'm not afraid of it," Arriane said. "Are you?"
    "No," Luce said, though she wished Arriane would take her hand away so Luce could take hers away, too. Her stomach churned as she wondered whether this was how Trevor's skin would have felt.
    "Are you afraid of who you really are, Luce?"
    "No," Luce said again quickly. It must be so obvious that she was lying. She closed her eyes. All she wanted from Sword & Cross was a fresh start, a place where people didn't look at her the way Arriane was looking at her right now. At the school's gates that morning, when her father had whispered the Price family motto in her ear—"Prices never crash" — it had felt possible, but already Luce felt so run down and exposed. She tugged her hand away. "So how'd it happen?" she asked, looking down.
    "Remember how I didn't press you when you clammed up about what you did to get here?" Arriane asked, raising her eyebrows.
    Luce nodded.
    Arriane gestured to the scissors. "Touch it up in the back, okay? Make me look real pretty. Make me look like you."
    Even with the same exact cut, Arriane would still only look like a very undernourished version of Luce. While Luce attempted to even out the first haircut she'd ever given, Arriane delved into the complexities of life at Sword & Cross.
    "That cell block over there is Augustine. It's where we have our so-called Social events on Wednesday nights. And all of our classes,"