Scott McCall's Arc

Chapter 20 of 30

Morning came gray and slow. Scott carried his tray outside and sat at the long wooden table behind the school, expecting the relief of having survived the river. It didn't come. The food sat untouched — biscuit cold, juice sweating into the metal. His notebook lay open beside it, one word written in careful letters. Allison. Below it, nothing. He had no idea what came next. Across the table, Stiles talked fast and bright, mapping it out for Lydia and Kira. "It can be resisted. Scott proved that. So we work the pattern. We find what it uses, we cut the cord, we move." Lydia nodded. Kira watched Scott instead of Stiles. Scott tried to track the words, but his eyes kept drifting back to the open page. A shadow fell across the tray. Malik sat down on the bench beside him without asking. "Walk with me." Scott followed him a few steps from the table, out of earshot. Malik did not soften his voice. "You didn't resist the river last night. You let go. There's a difference." "No." Scott shook his head hard. "Letting go means forgetting her. I'm not doing that." Malik's gold-flecked eyes held steady. "Love and grief are not the same thing. As long as you confuse them, the river finds the door. It will keep finding it. Next face, next voice. Until you stop feeding the wrong one." He waited. Scott had no answer. Malik turned and walked. Scott stood there a long second. The lacrosse season opener was three days out. He had been hunting a monster in the woods. The real fight was smaller and closer — the things inside him the Acheron could still reach for. He went back to the table and closed the notebook over Allison's name. Not gone. Just set down. Kira had been watching the whole time. "Everything alright?" she asked. "Yeah," Scott said. She tilted her head, eyes soft and unconvinced. She knew better than that. She didn't push. She just slid her hand over his on the wood and held it there, and Scott let her, and that was the first thing all morning that felt true.