The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Roof

They gave me a desk in the corner of the library annex, with a proctor beside it and a plastic clock on the wall.

Three hours.

The sealed envelope was cut open in front of me, the way it was cut open in front of every senior.

I looked at the first question, and I stopped being afraid.

I wrote until my hand ached.

At the far end of the annex Camille sat with her back straight and her pen moving in clean, fast strokes.

Once, near the end, she looked up and found me looking.

She smiled, and I smiled back, and we both went back to our papers.

I handed mine in at 12:58.

Nobody told me how I'd done.

That night I climbed the back stairs of the chapel to the roof, because Hattie had told me it was the one place at Ellsworth with no cameras.

The air up there was cold and clean and smelled of woodsmoke.

Below me the lights of the school lay scattered across the hills.

I had been sitting on the flat gravel for about ten minutes when I heard the door scrape.

"You told Hattie," Nash said.

"I told Hattie I needed air."

"She told me."

He sat down beside me, not touching, with his knees up and his jacket collar turned against the wind.

For a while neither of us talked.

"I'm sorry about this morning," he said. "I should have done something."

"You walked in and said 'you can't.' In front of the chairman."

"I should have done more."

"You would have been thrown out of the room."

"I'd have been thrown out of the room happily."

I smiled at the dark.

"Tell me something true," I said.

"Like what?"

"Anything. You've told me three. I've been counting."

He didn't laugh.

He put his chin on his knee and looked out at the lake.

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