The Unbound by Victoria Schwab Page A

building comes into sight. “But it’s not nearly as bad as Wesley’s.”
    “What do you mean?” I ask.
    Cash gives me a look, like I should know. Then, when it’s obvious I don’t, he starts to backtrack.
    “Nothing. I forgot you two haven’t known each other that long.”
    My steps slow on the path. “What are you talking about?”
    “Well, it’s just…Wesley’s name isn’t really Wesley. That’s his middle name.”
    I frown. “Then what’s his first name?”
    Cash shakes his head. “Can’t say.”
    “That bad?”
    “ He thinks so.”
    “Come on, I’ve got to have some ammunition.”
    “No way, he’d kill me.”
    I laugh and let it drop as we reach the admin building’s doors. “You guys seem close,” I say as he holds them open for me.
    “We are,” says Cash with a kind of simple certainty that makes my stomach hurt.
    With Wes haunting the Coronado halls all summer, I just assumed that he lived the way I did: at a distance. But he has a life . Friends. Good friends. I have Lyndsey, but we’re close because she doesn’t make me lie. She never asks questions. But I should have asked Wes. I should have wondered.
    “We grew up together,” explains Cash as we make our way toward the glass lobby. “Met him at Hartford. That’s the K-through-eight that leads into Hyde. Saf and I showed up in the fourth grade—third for her—and Wes just kind of took us in. When things started going south with his parents a few years back, we tried to return the favor. He’s not very good at taking help, though.”
    I nod. “He always bounces it back.”
    “Exactly,” he says, sounding genuinely frustrated. “But then his mom left and things went from bad to worse.”
    “What happened?” I press.
    The question jars him, and he seems to realize he shouldn’t be sharing this much. He hesitates, then says, “He went to stay with his aunt Joan.”
    “Great-aunt,” I correct absently.
    “He told you about her?”
    “A little,” I say. Joan was the woman who passed her key and her job on to Wesley. The one the Archive cut full of holes when she retired just to make sure its secrets were safe. The fact that I’ve heard of Joan seems to satisfy something in Cash, and his reluctance dissolves.
    “Yeah, well, he was supposed to go stay with her for the summer,” he says, “to get away from the divorce—it was brutal—but Hyde started back up in the fall, and he wasn’t here. Our whole sophomore year, it was like he didn’t exist. You have to understand—he didn’t call, didn’t write. There was just this void.” Cash shakes his head. “He’s loud in that way you don’t really notice till he’s gone. Anyway, sophomore year comes and goes without him. And then summer break comes and goes without him. And finally junior year comes around, and there he is at lunch, leaning up against the Alchemist like he never left.”
    “Was he different?” I ask as we reach the office door at the mouth of the glass lobby. That was the year he became a Keeper.
    Cash stops with his fingers on the handle. “Apart from the black eye I gave him? Not really. If anything, he seemed… happier . And I was just glad to have him back, so I didn’t pry. Wait here, I’ll grab you some prospective student pamphlets.”
    He vanishes into the office, and I glance absently around the hall. It’s covered in photographs—though covered suggests chaos, and these are all immaculately hung, each frame perfectly level and perfectly equidistant from the others. Each one has a small, elegant date etched into the top. In every picture, a group of students stands, shoulders touching, in several even rows. Senior classes, judging by the gold stripes in the more recent color photos. The years count backward along both walls, with the most recent years here by the mouth of the lobby and the older ones trailing away down the hall. Like most of the posh private schools, Hyde hasn’t always been coed. As I backtrack through the