Red Glove Read Online Free PDF

(laugh if you must), French 4, and Photoshop.
    I am studying the slip of paper as I head out of Smythe House and walk into the Finke Academic Center. Probability & Statistics is on the third floor, so I make for the stairs.
    Lila Zacharov is walking through the hallway in the Wallingford girl’s uniform: jacket, pleated skirt, and white oxford shirt. Her short blond hair shines like the woven gold of the crest. When she sees me, the expression on her face is some kind of mingled hope and horror.
    I can’t even imagine my own face. “Lila?” I say.
    She turns away, head down.
    In a few quick steps I’ve grabbed hold of her arm, like I’m afraid she’s not real. She freezes at the touch of my gloved hand.
    “What are you doing here?” I ask, turning her roughly toward me, which is maybe not an okay way to behave, but I’m too astonished to think straight.
    She looks like I slapped her.
    Good job, me. I’m a real charmer.
    “I knew you’d be mad,” she says. Her face is pale and drawn, all her usual ruthlessness washed from it.
    “It’s not about that,” I say. But for the life of me, in that moment, I have no idea what it is about. I know she’s not supposed to be here. And I know I don’t want her to leave.
    “I can’t help—,” she says, and her voice breaks. Her face is full of despair. “I tried to stop thinking about you, Cassel. I tried all summer long. I almost came to see you a hundred times. I would sink my nails into my skin until I could stay away.”
    I remember sitting on the steps in my mother’s house last March, begging Lila to believe she’d been worked. I remember the slow way the horror spread over her features. I remember her denials, her final defeated agreement that we shouldn’t see each other until the curse ended. I remember everything.
    Lila’s a dream worker. I hope that means she’s sleeping better than I am.
    “But if you’re here—,” I start, not sure how I can finish.
    “It hurts not to be near you,” she says quietly, carefully, like the words cost her something. “You have no idea how much.”
    I want to tell her that I have some idea what it feels like to love someone I can’t have. But maybe I don’t. Maybe being in love with me really is worse than I can imagine.
    “I couldn’t keep—I wasn’t strong enough.” Her eyes are wet and her mouth is slightly parted.
    “It’s been almost six months. Don’t you feel any different?” The curse should have begun to fade, surely.
    “Worse,” she says. “I feel worse. What if this never stops?”
    “It will. Soon. We have to wait this thing out, and it’s better if—,” I start, but it’s hard to concentrate on the words with her looking at me like that.
    “You liked me before,” she says. “And I liked you. I loved you, Cassel. Before the curse. I always loved you. And I don’t mind—”
    There is nothing I want more than to believe her. But I can’t. I don’t.
    I knew this conversation would happen, eventually. No matter how much I tried to avoid it. And I know what I have to say. I even planned it out, knowing that otherwise I couldn’t say the words. “I didn’t love you, though. And I still don’t.”
    The change is immediate and terrible. She pulls back from me. Her face looks pale and shuttered. “But that night in your room. You told me that you missed me and that you—”
    “I’m not crazy,” I say, trying to keep my tells to a minimum. She’s known a lot of liars. “I said whatever I thought would make you sleep with me.”
    She takes a quick, sharp breath of air. “That hurts,” she says. “You’re just saying it to hurt me.”
    It’s not supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to disgust her. “Believe what you want, but it’s the truth.”
    “So why didn’t you?” she asks. “Why don’t you? If all you wanted was some ass, it’s not like I’m going to say no. I can’t say no to you.”
    The bell rings somewhere, distantly.
    “I’m sorry,” I say, which