Chapter 21: Chapter 21: The Body Near School

Chapter 21: The Body Near School

Working nights at The Full Moon Lounge was not hard in the way most jobs were hard. The music stayed low, the lights stayed warm, and the customers mostly came in tired rather than loud. Even so, a shift that ended late was still a shift that ended late.

For Cyrus Calder, who had somehow become a student with homework, grades, teachers, and a body that expected sleep, the missing hours had to be stolen from somewhere.

Class was the easiest place to take them back. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

By Friday morning, the clouds from the day before still had not left Grayhaven. They hung over the city in thick layers, restless and heavy, refusing to rain but also refusing to let the sun through. The whole sky looked undecided.

Cyrus appreciated that.

A sunless morning meant less heat pressing against his skin. Less heat meant fewer problems. If the storm wanted to sit above the city all day without making up its mind, he had no complaint.

He arrived at St. Alder Academy the way he usually did, hair low over his eyes, bag on one shoulder, steps slow enough that nobody would mistake him for a person excited to be there. But the moment he entered the classroom, he noticed something was wrong.

The room was too subdued.

His advisory was usually noisy before the first bell. Someone was always arguing over homework, somebody else was always laughing too loudly, and Owen Keats usually had two or three people around him asking questions because he looked like the kind of person who knew where things were, what was due, and who needed to sign what form.

Today, even Owen’s group had dropped its volume.

A few students leaned over their desks, speaking in low voices. Another group near the windows had stopped laughing the moment Cyrus stepped inside, though not because of him. Across the room, two girls were whispering with their phones face down on the desk between them, as if the screen itself might overhear.

Something had happened.

Cyrus stood by the door for half a breath, then continued to his seat.

Whatever it was, it probably had nothing to do with him.

That was the correct attitude toward most school disasters. If people were whispering, let them whisper. If someone had done something stupid, let them handle it. The safest place in any messy situation was usually the edge, preferably with his head down and his name out of everyone’s mouth.

He sat, set his bag down, and yawned.

Before he could lower his head onto his arms, the eraser on the desk in front of him slipped off the edge and landed near his shoe.

Faye Larkin, the girl who sat in front of him, started to turn around.

Cyrus was already bending down. He picked up the eraser and placed it in her waiting hands.

Faye accepted it with both palms held carefully forward, leaving enough space that their fingers did not brush.

"Thank you, Cyrus."

"It was easy to reach."

Faye gave a small nod and turned back around.

Cyrus looked at the back of her head for a little longer than usual. In a way, Faye was similar to him. She sat near the corner. Her hair was long enough to hide parts of her face, and she wore large glasses that made it hard to read her expression. She did not draw attention. She did not chase it either.

Unlike Cyrus, though, Faye sat straight all day.

Her posture was almost impressive. Even when she was silent, she stayed neatly upright in the seat in front of him, and that had helped him more than once. Teachers standing at the board could not always see whether Cyrus’s eyes were open behind her.

He had no idea if she was hiding anything under the hair and glasses. He also had no reason to care.

People had their own reasons for staying unnoticed.

If money were not a problem, Cyrus would have happily hidden his appearance for the entire school year. He would have kept his bangs long, his clothes plain, his head down, and his life so dull that nobody remembered his name.

Unfortunately, rent, food, medicine, and the lounge all existed at the same time.

If he did not have a face worth using at work, he might currently be studying the trash cans behind restaurants with the dedication of a scholar. Since he did have one, he used it when he had to and hid it when he could.

That was not vanity. That was budgeting.

His eyelids grew heavier while the classroom murmured around him.

He had decided to study seriously. That decision remained true. Unfortunately, his body had made a separate decision about sleep, and it had more voting power.

Some subjects were already too far ahead for him to follow by force. If he stayed awake only to understand nothing, that was not learning. That was suffering with better posture.

Since things had reached this point, he might as well sleep first.

Cyrus folded his arms on the desk and lowered his head.

The morning passed in broken pieces.

A bell rang. A teacher spoke. Pages turned. Someone coughed near the door. Owen nudged him once when a worksheet came back, then left him alone after Cyrus made a faint sound to prove he was conscious. The low mood in the room did not lift, even when the classes changed.

By lunch, Cyrus finally had enough energy to sit up.

Friday meant the weekend was near. That deserved a proper meal.

He did not go to the campus store for a packaged roll today. Instead, he made his way to the dining hall.

St. Alder’s dining hall had two student floors and more food than Cyrus had managed to understand when he first arrived. There were stations for pasta, sandwiches, hot plates, salads, soup, desserts, breakfast items served too late in the day, and a rotating menu that seemed designed to personally challenge him.

Cyrus had a small dream.

He wanted to eat through the entire menu.

He had not even finished the first column.

That was fine. Some ambitions required patience.

After checking the menu board, he ordered the next affordable item in his personal sequence, a chicken-and-vegetable plate with sauce and enough steam rising from it to make the tray feel promising. He paid, took his food, and found an open seat.

The dining hall was crowded enough that finding space took effort. Cyrus had barely sat down when someone took the seat diagonally across from him.

Audra Sloane had chosen his table.

The attention around them shifted at once.

Students who had no reason to care suddenly found reasons to glance over. A few voices near the next table lowered. Someone farther down the aisle looked at Audra, looked at Cyrus, then looked back at their food with the exaggerated innocence of a person who absolutely planned to discuss this later.

Cyrus did not react.

There were not many seats left. Audra sitting here did not mean anything by itself.

More importantly, Audra’s tray was much more interesting than the attention.

In front of her was a bowl of red pepper pasta so aggressively bright that it looked like it had been designed as a dare. The sauce was deep red, glossy, and dotted with chili flakes. Cyrus watched her take a bite with a calm face.

That was impressive enough to remember.

When his turn came to that menu item, he would add extra chili too. If Audra could eat it without flinching, it was probably manageable.

He lowered his head and focused on his own plate.

Across from him, Audra noticed.

This was the first time she had seen Cyrus in the dining hall since she started paying attention to him. He usually slept through lunch or bought something cheap from the campus store. Even now, the food in front of him was one of the less expensive hot meals.

So his family situation was probably not good.

Audra kept that thought to herself.

She ate quietly, expression composed, while the students around them tried and failed to be subtle. Attention followed her everywhere. Usually, she ignored it because there was no point responding to something that would happen again tomorrow.

The boy across from her was different.

Most people became self-conscious when they sat near her. Cyrus, apparently, had judged her and found her less important than lunch.

That should have been insulting.

It was also why she found him interesting.

By the time Cyrus had nearly cleared his plate, Audra had already finished. She waited until he set down his fork before speaking in a voice low enough that only he would hear.

"Are you planning to sleep through lunch again?"

Cyrus looked up. "Why are you asking?"

"Come to Room 405 before lunch ends. I have something to tell you."

He did not ask what she meant.

"All right, I can do that."

Audra rose with her tray.

Cyrus watched her leave, then looked back at the red pasta bowl.

Extra chili was now confirmed.

After lunch, the fourth floor was quieter than the rest of the school. Most of the rooms there were used for clubs, spare study spaces, and meetings that only happened when a teacher remembered to unlock the door.

Cyrus went to Room 405 as agreed.

Audra did not drag the conversation out. She gave him a notebook and a worksheet.

The notebook was clean, organized, and almost offensively neat. Important parts were marked. Examples were written out step by step. The handwriting was sharp enough to make the page look printed, but not so perfect that it lost the feeling of a real person’s hand.

Audra pointed to the first section. "Read the marked parts first. Try to understand the examples, then do the matching problems on the worksheet. Do not rush through it."

Cyrus flipped through the pages.

This was not casual help. She had prepared.

Stubborn people were truly frightening when they found a direction.

"All right," he said. "I will try it."

"Bring it back after school."

"I understand what you mean."

She left him with the notebook and the worksheet, and that was the end of it.

During the afternoon classes he could not follow, Cyrus opened Audra’s notes instead.

The early sections were clear. Annoyingly clear. She had written the kind of explanations that assumed the reader was not stupid, merely missing steps. That distinction mattered more than he expected.

By the time the final bell rang, he had finished about a third of the worksheet.

Owen looked over from the next seat and stared at him.

Cyrus ignored it for three seconds.

Owen kept staring.

Cyrus turned his head. "What is it?"

"Are you really Cyrus Calder?"

"I am obviously still me."

"Then what got into you?"

Cyrus followed Owen’s attention to the worksheet on his desk. He understood the reaction. He had spent most of the past weeks sleeping, eating cheap lunches, working late, and treating school like a building he was passing through until the next shift.

Now he was voluntarily doing math.

That did look suspicious.

Instead of explaining, Cyrus lifted his pencil and pointed toward the motivational poster above the whiteboard. The poster said something cheerful about effort, goals, and the future, in the exact tone adults used when they wanted students to suffer productively.

"I am acting like a student for once."

Owen’s face twisted with amusement. "That is a terrifying development."

"It happens sometimes."

"I thought you had work after school."

"I will handle things as they come."

That was the best answer Cyrus had.

If his grades really improved, that could become useful. A better transcript meant more choices. More choices meant more places to go. Maybe college, if he managed it, could become another hiding place. A larger campus, more buildings, more people, more ways to disappear into a normal life.

No one at St. Alder had figured out what he was.

College should not be impossible either.

The thought made the worksheet look slightly less hostile.

Owen leaned closer, lowering his voice as the last few students left the room.

"Oh, right. Cyrus, did you hear about the body they found in the alley near school?"