Adam Parrish Quotes

His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match.

I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said. Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?" "Maybe I dreamt you," he said. "Thanks for the straight teeth, then," Adam replied.

Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

Ronan's second secret was Adam Parrish.

I guess now would be a good time to tell you," He said. "I took Chainsaw out of my dreams.

Making Ronan Lynch smile felt as charged as making a bargain with Cabeswater. These were not forces to play with.

Adam had once told Gansey, "Rags to riches isn't a story anyone wants to hear until after it's done.

Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master. This was the important thing. It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.

As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan’s eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practiced but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes.

He left bloody fingerprints on the rock, but there was something satisfying about that. I was here. I exist. I’m alive, because I bleed.

You're asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me," Gansey said. "Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don't want to suffocate. Why do we eat? Because we don't want to starve. How do I know I love her? Because I can sleep after I talk to her. Why?

Where do you live?" Adam's mouth was very set. "A place made for leaving" "That's not really an answer." "It's not really a place.

It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.

Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck. Maybe it was good that the world forgot every lesson, every good and bad memory, every triumph and failure, all of it dying with each generation. Perhaps this cultural amnesia spared them all. Perhaps if they remembered everything, hope would die instead.

The ocean burned.

The choice was death or hurting Adam, which wasn’t much of a choice at all.

Are you going to lock your shitbox?" Adam said, "No point. Hooligans got in anyway." The hooligan in question smiled thinly.

Inside, they pretended they would dream, but they did not. They sprawled on the living room sofa and Adam studied the tattoo that covered Ronan's back: all the sharp edges that hooked wondrously and fearfully into each other. 'Unguibus et rostro,' Adam said. Ronan put Adam's fingers to his mouth. He was never sleeping again.

From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of … Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.

There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome. One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment , but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself. Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some.

It should have been impossible. No one should have been able to dream any of these thing, much less all of them. But Adam had seen what Ronan could do. He'd read the dreamt will and ridden in the dreamt Camaro and been terrified by the dreamt night terror. It was possible that there were two gods in this church.

I know you are not the same as him, Adam said. But in my head, everything is always so tangled. I am such a damaged thing.

Above him, the stars were brutal and clear.

Adam finally sat down on one of the pews. Laying his cheek against the smooth back of it, he looked at Ronan. Strangely enough, Ronan belonged here, too, just as he had at the Barns. This noisy, lush religion had created him just as much as his father's world of dreams; it seemed impossible for all of Ronan to exist in one person. Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him. The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he'd been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.

What an impossible and miraculous and hideous thing this was. An ugly plan hatched by an ugly boy now dreamt into ugly life. From dream to reality. How appropiate it was that Ronan, left to his own devices, manifested beautiful cars and beautiful birds and tenderhearted brothers, while Adam, when given the power, manifested a filthy string of perverse murders.

But what [Gansey] said was, "I'm going to need everyone to be straight with each other from now on. No more games. This isn't just for Blue, either. All of us." Ronan said, "I'm always straight." Adam replied, "Oh, man, that's the biggest lie you've ever told." Blue said, "Okay.

Ronan's second secret was Adam Parrish. Adam was different since making the bargain with Cabeswater. Stronger, Stranger, farther away. It was hard not to stare at the odd elegant lines of his face.

I want it too much," Adam said. That sentence, Ronan thought, was enough to undo all bad feeling he might have had meeting Adam's Harvard friends, all bad feeling about looking like a loser, all bad feeling about feeling stuck, all bad feeling, ever. Adam Parrish wanted him, and he wanted Adam Parrish.

Adam Parrish – magician and puzzle, student and logician, man and boy.

Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he's seen. What a frightened monster she was.

How arrogant we are, Adam thought, to deliver babies who can't walk or talk or feed themselves. How sure we are that nothing will destroy them before they can take care of themselves. How fragile they were, how easily abandoned and neglected and beaten and hated. Prey animals were born afraid.

His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he’d let them overflow and now there wasn’t a damn place in the ocean that wouldn’t catch fire if he dropped a match. <...> “Headlights? That’s hardcore, Parrish.” Ronan held out his hand; Adam took it. Ronan hauled him up, his mind all palm against palm, thumb crossed over thumb, fingers pressed into wrist bone – and then Adam was facing him and he released his hand. The ocean burned.

You look like a super villain with your familiar," Adam said. Ronan’s smile cut his face, but he looked kinder than Blue had ever seen him, like the raven in his hand was his heart, finally laid bare.

It was possible that there were two gods in this church.

Adam retreated to sit beside Mary as Ronan stretched out on the pew, rubbing out the dingy plan with the legs of his jeans. Something about his stillness on the pew and the funereal quality of the light reminded Adam of the effigy of Glendower they'd seen at the tomb. A king, sleeping. Adam couldn't imagine, though, the strange, wild kingdom that Ronan might rule. "Stop watching me," Ronan said, though his eyes were closed.

Ronans second secret was Adam Parrish

Adam didn't look at him when he said, finally, "It doesn't matter how you say it. It's what you wanted, in the end. All your things in one place, all under your roof. Everything you own right where you can see...

Tamquam,’ said Adam. 'Wait,’ said Ronan. 'Tamquam,’ he said again, gently. 'Alter idem,’ Ronan said, and found himself alone.

Light, or something like light, reflected off it onto Ronan's chin and cheeks, rendering him stark and handsome and terrifying and someone else. Then he blew on it. His breath passed through the word, the mirror, the unwritten line. Adam heard a whisper in his ear. Something moved and stirred inside him. Ronan's eyelashes fluttered darkly. What are we doing -

Ronan hadn't known anything about who Adam was then and, if possible, he'd known even less about who he himself was, but as they drove away from the boy with the bicycle, this was how it had begun: Ronan leaning back against his seat and closing his eyes and sending up a simple, inexplicable, desperate prayer to God: Please.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Adam Parrish and his band of merry men,” Mr. Gray admitted. “And this dangerous world they tread.” “That’s a strange way of putting it. I would have said Richard Gansey and his band of merry men.” He inclined his head as if he could see her point of view as well, even if he didn’t share it.

Do you think you're a train wreck?" "That would mean I was on the tracks to start with.

Gansey hurried on. "Let me introduce you. These are my friends: Ronan, Adam Parrish, and Jane." ... "Blue," Blue corrected. "Oh, yes, you are blue," Malory agreed. "How perceptive you are. Was was the name? Jane? This is the lady I spoke to on the phone all those months ago, right? How small she is. Are you done growing?" "What!" Blue said. -Page 37 :P

The two-minute disparity prematurely aged Adam Parrish. He liked it when people knew how to do their jobs. "Say something," Gansey said. "That bell." "Everything is terrible," agreed Gansey.

If you combined these two things – the unfathomable and the practical – you were most of the way to understanding Adam Parrish.

I don't have a brother, ma'am," Adam replied. But Blue saw his eyes dart to Gansey.

Sometimes, Gansey forgot how much he liked school and how good he was at it. But he couldn't forget it on mornings like this one—fall fog rising out of the fields and lifting in front of the mountains, the Pig running cool and loud, Ronan climbing out of the passenger seat and knocking knuckles on the roof with teeth flashing, dewy grass misting the black toes of his shoes, bag slung over his blazer, narrow-eyed Adam bumping fists as they met on the sidewalk, boys around them laughing and calling to one another, making space for the three of them because this had been a thing for so long: Gansey-Lynch-Parrish.

There's such thing as an emotional cost,” Adam said. “Investing in someone else's survival isn't free, and some people's emotional banks are already overdrawn.

You know, when I first met Gansey,I couldn't figure out why he was friends with someone like Ronan. Gansey was always in class, always getting stuff done, always a teacher's pet. And here was Ronan, like a heart attack that never stopped.

Neither Ronan nor Adam had been trained in the difficult and nuanced art of having a future. They had only ever learned the art of surviving the past.

Leaves,” Ronan Lynch’s voice said, full of intention. “Dust,” Adam Parrish said. “Wind,” Blue Sargent said. “Shit,” Henry Cheng added.

As they scuffled in the grass, Adam closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He could nearly scry just like this. The quiet and the cold breeze on his throat would take him away and the dampness of his toes in his shoes and the scent of living creatures would keep him here. Within and without. He couldn’t tell if he was letting himself idolize this place or Ronan, and he wasn’t sure there was a difference. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Ronan was looking at him, as he had been looking at him for months. Adam looked back, as he had been looking back for months.

Adam pronounced love very carefully, as if it were an unfamiliar element on the periodic table.

Now Gansey grinned, the warmth of discovery starting to course through him. "So, pop quiz, Mr Parrish. Three things that appear in the vicinity of ley lines?" "Black dogs," Adam said indulgently. "Demonic presences." "Camaros," Ronan inserted. Gansey continued as if he hadn't spoken. "And ghosts. Ronan, queue up the evidence if you would.

Although Adam suspected there was a god, he also suspected it didn't actually matter.

He was Adam Parrish, army of one.

Adam didn’t need his father to go to jail. He had merely needed someone outside the situation to look at it and confirm that yes, a crime had been committed. Adam had not invented it, spurred it, deserved it. It said so on the court paperwork. Robert Parrish, guilty. Adam Parrish, free.

It was easy to read him as shy or uncertain, she thought, but he really wasn’t either. Noah was. But Adam was just quiet. He wasn’t lost for words; he was observing.

I thought I was hallucinating,” Adam said, next to the lockers, an announcement droning on over the hall speakers. “Ronan Lynch in the halls of Aglionby.” Ronan slammed his locker. He had not put anything in it and had no reason to open or close it, but he liked the satisfying bang of the metal down the hall, the way it drowned out the announcements. He did it again for good measure. “Is this a real conversation, Parrish?” Adam didn’t bother to reply. He merely exchanged three textbooks for his gym hoodie. Ronan wrenched his tie loose. “You working after school?” “With a dreamer.” He held Ronan’s gaze over his locker door. School had improved. Adam gently closed his locker. “I’m done at four thirty. If you’re up for brainstorming some repair of your dream forest. Unless you have homework.” “Asshole,” Ronan said. Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

You will be one of those gods without magic powers. What are they called? “I don’t think there is a word.” King. Probably.

Adam Parrish and the Crying Club.

Why are we here?" he asked. "Wrong devil," Adam replied quietly.

It shouldn't have happened at all, but their friendship had been cemented in only the time it took to get to school that morning - Adam demonstrating how to fasten the Camaro's ground wire more securely, Gansey lifting Adam's bike halfway into the trunk so they could ride to school together, Adam confessing he worked at a mechanic's to put himself through Aglionby, and Gansey turning to the passenger seat and asking, "What do you know about Welsh kings?

Adam was crouched in front of it, staring unflinchingly into the headlights’ brilliance. His fingers were spread on the asphalt and his feet braced like a runner waiting for the starting shot. Three tarot cards splayed before him. He’d taken one of the floor mats out of the car to crouch on to keep from dirtying his uniform trousers. If you combined these two things – the unfathomable and the practical – you were most of the way to understanding Adam Parrish.

You're like me. We're not really like the others. [...] We're really better in our own company, Persephone said. It makes it hard sometimes, for others, when they can't understand us.

He had had his own feelings hurt over and over by Adam, even when Adam had meant no harm. Some of the worst fractures had appeared because Adam hadn't realized the he was causing them.

Blue got herself back together and then turned on the radio. Adam hadn't even realized the ancient tape deck worked, but after a hissing few seconds, a tape inside jangled a tune. Noah began to sing along at once. 'Squash one, squash two-' Adam pawed for the radio at the same time as Blue. The tape ejected with enough force that Noah stretched a hand to catch it. 'That song. What are you doing with that in your player?' Demanded Blue. 'Do you listen to that recreationally? How did that song escape from the Internet?' Noah cackled and showed them the cassette. It boasted a handmade label marked with Ronan's handwriting: PARRISH'S HONDAYOTA ALONE TIME. The other side was A SHITBOX SINGALONG. 'Play it! Play it!' Noah said gaily, waving the tape. 'Noah. Noah! Take that away from him,' Adam said.

Gansey thought of one hundred things that he could say to Adam about how it would be all right, how it was for the best, how Adam Parrish had been his own man before he’d met Gansey and there was no way he’d stop being his own man just by changing the roof over his head, how some days Gansey wished that he could be him, because Adam was so very real and true in a way that Gansey couldn’t ever seem to be. But Gansey’s words had somehow become unwitting weapons, and he didn’t trust himself to not accidentally discharge them again.

If he went in by himself, it was nothing but this: Adam Parrish. In a way, it had always been that. Sometimes the scenery changed. Sometimes the weather was better. But in the end, all he had was this: Adam Parrish.

Because Adam practised at many things, Adam was good at many things, but this – what was it even called? Scrying, sensing, magic, magic, magic. He was not only good at it, but he longed for it, wanted it, loved it in a way that nearly overwhelmed him with gratitude. He had not known that he could love, not really. Gansey and he had fought about it, once – Gansey had said, with disgust, Stop saying privilege. Love isn’t privilege. But Gansey had always had love, had always been capable of love. Now that Adam had discovered this feeling in himself, he was more certain than ever that he was right. Need was Adam’s baseline, his resting pulse. Love was a privilege. Adam was privileged; he did not want to give it up. He wanted to remember again and again how it felt.

Adam Parrish was lonesome. There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome. One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment, but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself. Lonesome means a state of being apart. Of being other. Alone-some. Adam was not always alone, but he was always lonesome. Even in a group, he was slowly perfecting the skill of holding himself separate. It was easier than one might expect; the others allowed him to do it. He knew he was different since aligning himself more tightly with the ley line this summer. He was himself, but more powerful. Himself, but less human. If he were them, he would silently watch him draw away, too. It was better this way. He had not fought with anyone for so long. He had not been angry for weeks.

Adam twisted off the lid. Inside was a colorless lotion that smelled of mist and moss. Replacing the lid with a frown, he turned the container over, looking for more identifying features. On the bottom, Ronan's handwriting labeled it merely: manibus. For your hands.

I am unknowable, Ronan Lynch.

Both of the boys were unsettling — Adam Parrish, in particular, had a curious face. Not as in, he was a curious person. But rather that there was something peculiar about his facial features. He was an alien, handsome specimen of this western Virginia species; feather-boned, hollow-cheeked, eyebrows fair and barely visible. He was feral and raw-boned by way of those Civil War portraits. Brother fought brother while their farms ran to ruins — And Ronan Lynch looked like Niall Lynch, which was to say, he looked like an asshole. Oh, youth.

Adam was beginning to realize he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him. The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he'd been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.

Every time I can’t tell where someone’s calling me from in a room and every time I accidentally start to put my earbuds in both ears I think about you.

Gansey could see precisely the argument that it was heaving toward. Adam would shoot something cool and truthful over the bow, Ronan would fire back a profanity cannon, Adam would drip gasoline in the path of the projectile, and then everything would be on fire for hours.

What happened to your face?" Blue asked. Adam shrugged ruefully. Either he or Ronan smelled like a parking garage. His voice was self-deprecating. "Do you think it makes me look tougher?" What it did was make him look more fragile and dirty, somehow, like a teacup unearthed from the soil, but Blue didn't say that. Ronan said, "It makes you look like a loser." "Ronan," said Gansey. "I need everyone to sit down!" shouted Maura.

Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he'd seen. What a frightened monster she was

His fatigued brain slid out from under him.

It was hidden in things Adam already knew, half-glimpsed behind a forest made of thoughts.

He couldn't remember the last time someone had touched him, and it was strangely grounding.

They were always coming together in surprising moments, going from easygoing to urgent in the space of a few breaths. She watched them kiss messily in the car in the driveway and she watched them tangle around each other in the laundry room and she watched Adam unbuckle Ronan’s belt and slide his hand against skin. With intellectual curiosity, she watched ribs and hips and arms and legs and spines.

Where do you live?" Adam's mouth was very set. "A place made for leaving

Right,' he said. 'So it stands to reason there's something about the line that fortifies or protects a corpse. The soul. The ... animus. The quiddity of it.' 'Gansey, seriously,' Adam interrupted, to Blue's relief. 'Nobody knows what quiddity is.' 'The whatness, Adam. Whatever it is that makes a person who they are.

What he truly wanted was to be left to his own devices. Not by his actual father, who could no longer truly intrude on Adam’s life, but by the idea of his father, a more powerful thing in every way.

Look," Adam said. He rubbed a finger over the dust of the back window. Next to a Blink-182 sticker was an Aglionby decal.

Unlike Ronan, Adam's Aglionby jumper was second-hand, but he'd taken great care to be certain it was impeccable. He was slim and tall, with dusty hair unevenly cropped above a fine-boned, tanned face. He was a sepia photograph.

Not like this. At least you have a place to go. 'End of the world' ... What is your problem, Adam? I mean, is there something about my place that's too repugnant for you to imagine living there? Why is it that everything kind I do is pity to you? Everything is charity. Well, here it is: I'm sick of tiptoeing around your principles." "God, I'm sick of your condescension, Gansey," Adam said. "Don't try to make me feel stupid. Who whips out repugnant? Don't pretend you're not trying to make me feel stupid." "This is the way I talk. I'm sorry your father never taught you the meaning of repugnant. He was too busy smashing your head against the wall of your trailer while you apologized for being alive." Both of them stopped breathing. Gansey knew he'd gone too far. It was too far, too late, too much.

Do you know what keeps poor people down, Mr. Parrish? It’s not a lack of income. It’s a poverty of imagination. The trailer park dreams of the suburbs, and the suburbs dreams of the city, the city dreams of the stars, so on and so forth. The poor can imagine the throne, but not being kingly. Poverty of imagination.

Adam’s father just stood there, looking. And they sat there, looking back. Ronan was coiled and simmering, one hand resting on his door. “Don’t,” said Adam. But Ronan merely hit the window button. The tinted glass hissed down. Ronan hooked his elbow on the edge of the door and continued gazing out the window. Adam knew that Ronan was fully aware of how malevolent he could appear, and he did not soften himself as he stared across the patchy dark grass at Robert Parrish. Ronan Lynch’s stare was a snake on the pavement where you wanted to walk. It was a match left on your pillow. It was pressing your lips together and tasting your own blood.

Ronan pointed at the cart. "Get in there." "What?" He just continued pointing. Adam said, "Give me a break. This is a public parking lot." "Don't make this ugly, Parrish." As an old lady headed past them, Adam sighed and climbed into the basket of the shopping cart. He drew his knees up so that he would fit. He was full of the knowledge that this was probably going to end with scabs. Ronan gripped the handle with the skittish concentration of a motorcycle racer and eyed the line between them and the BMW parked on the far side of the lot. "What do you think the grade is on this parking lot?" "C plus, maybe a B. Oh. I don't know. Ten degrees?" Adam held the sides of the cart and then thought better of it. He held himself instead. With a savage smile, Ronan shoved the cart off the curb and belted towards the BMW. As they picked up speed, Ronan called out a joyful and awful swear and then jumped on to the back of the cart himself. As they hurtled towards the BMW, Adam realised that Ronan, as usual, had no intention of stopping before something bad happened. He cupped a hand over his nose just as they glanced off the side of the BMW. The unseated cart wobbled once, twice, and then tipped catastrophically on to its side. It kept skidding, the boys skidding along with it. The three of them came to a stop. "Oh, God," Adam said, touching the road burn on his elbow. It wasn't that bad, really. "God, God. I can feel my teeth." Ronan lay on his back a few feet away. A box of toothpaste rested on his chest and the cart keeled beside him. He looked profoundly happy. "You should tell me what you've found out about Greenmantle," Ronan said, "so that I can get started on my dreaming." Adam picked himself up before he got driven over. "When?" Ronan grinned.

While they waited, Ronan decided to finally take up the task of teaching Adam how to drive a stick shift. For several minutes, it seemed to be going well, as the BMW had an easy clutch, Ronan was brief and to the point with his instruction, and Adam was a quick study with no ego to get in the way. From a safe vantage point beside the building, Gansey and Noah huddled and watched as Adam began to make ever quicker circles around the parking lot. Every so often their hoots were audible through the open windows of the BMW. Then—it had to happen eventually—Adam stalled the car. It was a pretty magnificent beast, as far as stalls went, with lots of noise and death spasms on the part of the car. From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounding than when he didn’t swear. Ronan finished with, “For the love of . . . Parrish, take some care, this is not your mother’s 1971 Honda Civic.” Adam lifted his head and said, “They didn’t start making the Civic until ’73.” There was a flash of fangs from the passenger seat, but before Ronan truly had time to strike, they both heard Gansey call warmly, “Jane! I thought you’d never show up. Ronan is tutoring Adam in the ways of manual transmissions.” Blue, her hair pulled every which way by the wind, stuck her head in the driver’s side window. The scent of wildflowers accompanied her presence. As Adam catalogued the scent in the mental file of things that made Blue attractive, she said brightly, “Looks like it’s going well. Is that what that smell is?” Without replying, Ronan climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Noah appeared beside Blue. He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever. Noah had decided almost immediately that he would do anything for Blue, a fact that would’ve needled Adam if it had been anyone other than Noah. Blue permitted Noah to pet the crazy tufts of her hair, something Adam would have also liked to do, but felt would mean something far different coming from him.

Adam had taken the cassette from Ronan's hand, working Ronan's fingers loose and putting his own fingers between them. For a moment, Opal hidden, had thought they were going to kiss. But instead, Ronan pressed his face against Adam's neck and Adam quietly put his head on top of Ronan's head and they did not move for a long time.

Ronan,” said Declan. The word was loaded with additional meaning: I see you’ve only just come out of school and already your uniform looks like hell; nothing is shocking here. He gestured to the Volvo. “Join me in my office.” Ronan did not want to join him in his office. Ronan wanted to stop feeling like he had drunk battery acid. “What do you need with Ronan?” Gansey asked. His “Ronan” was loaded with additional meaning, too: Was this prearranged and tell me what is happening and do you need me to intervene? “Just a little family chat,” Declan said. Ronan looked at Gansey entreatingly. “Is it a family chat that could happen on the way to Fox Way?” Gansey asked, all polite power. “Because he and I were just headed over there.” Ordinarily, Declan would have stepped off at the slightest pressure from Gansey, but he said, “Oh, I can drop him off there after we’re done. Just a few minutes.” “Ronan!” Matthew reached his hand out the window towards Ronan. His ebullient “Ronan” was another version of please. Trapped. “Miseria fortes viros, Ronan,” Adam said. When he said “Ronan,” it meant: Ronan.

Probably, Adam had made the connection between his rent change and the tuition raise. It wasn’t a complicated assumption, and he was clever. It was easy, too, to hang it on Gansey. If Adam had been thinking straight, though, he would’ve considered how it was Ronan who had infinite connections to St. Agnes. And how whoever was behind the rent change would have had to enter a church office with both a wad of cash and a burning intention to persuade a church lady to lie about a fake tax assessment. Taken apart that way, it seemed to have Ronan written all over it. But one of the marvelous things about being Ronan Lynch was that no one ever expected him to do anything nice for anyone.

Some people envied Ronan’s money. Adam envied his time. To be as rich as Ronan was to be able to go to school and do nothing else, to have luxurious swathes of time in which to study and write papers and sleep. Adam wouldn’t admit it to anyone, least of all Gansey, but he was tired. He was tired of squeezing homework in between his part-time jobs, of squeezing in sleep, squeezing in the hunt for Glendower. The jobs felt like so much wasted time: In five years, no one would care if he’d worked at a trailer factory. They’d only care if he’d graduated from Aglionby with perfect grades, or if he’d found Glendower, or if he was still alive. And Ronan didn’t have to worry about any of that.

In the story, there'd been a magical salmon who would confer happiness on the person who ate it. Or perhaps it was wisdom, not happiness. In any case, the old man had been too lazy or busy or on a business trip to spend the time to trying to catch the salmon, and so he had set the boy on catching it for him. When the boy caught it, he was to cook it and bring it to the old man. The boy did as he was told, since he was just as clever as the old wizard, but as he'd cooked up the salmon, he'd burned himself. Before he thought about it, he put his burned finger in his mouth and thus got the salmon's magic for himself. Ronan felt that he had caught the happiness without meaning to. He could do anything.

Granddad said I needed to get some muscles because I was looking gay these days. No, he didn't really say that. Speaking of which, here's Parrish.' Someone cuffed the back of Adam's head. He blinked up. One way, then the other. His assailant had come up on Adam's deaf side. 'Oh,' Adam said. It was Tad Carruthers, whose worst fault was that Adam didn't like him and Tad couldn't tell. 'Oh,' mimicked Tad benevolently, as if Adam's standoffish-ness charmed him. Adam wanted desperately and masochistically for Tad to ask him where he had summered. Instead, Tad turned to where Ronan was still reclined with his eyes closed. He lifted a hand to cuff Ronan's head but lost his nerve an inch into the swing. Instead, he just drummed on Ronan's desk and moved on.