physical appearance quotes

[mintly]

April was a bad time for the Aglionby boys; as it warmed up, the convertibles appeared, bearing boys in shorts so tacky that only the rich would dare to wear them. During the school week, they all wore the Aglionby uniform: khaki pants and a V-­neck sweater with a raven emblem. It was an easy way to identify the advancing army. Raven boys.

***

Gansey was not an unpleasant ­looking boy and the Camaro was not too hard on the eyes, either, but this attention had less to do with comeliness and more to do with the novelty of an Aglionby boy broken down by the side of the road in an impudently orange car. Gansey was well aware that there was nothing little Henrietta, Virginia, preferred over seeing humiliating things happen to Aglionby boys, unless it was seeing humiliating things happen to their families.

***

Gansey, owing to his official title of Richard “Dick” Campbell Gansey III, was fairly immune to posh names, but even he had to admit there wasn’t much forgivable about Barrington Whelk.

***

As always, there was an all­-American war hero look to him, coded in his tousled brown hair, his summer-­narrowed hazel eyes, the straight nose that ancient Anglo-­Saxons had graciously passed on to him. Everything about him suggested valor and power and a firm handshake. Girlfriend stared. Adam remembered finding him intimidating when he first met him. There were two Ganseys: the one who lived inside his skin, and the one Gansey put on in the morning when he slid his wallet into the back pocket of his chinos. The former was troubled and passionate, with no discernible accent to Adam’s ears, and the latter bristled with latent power as he greeted people with the slippery, handsome accent of old Virginia money. It was a mystery to Adam how he could not seem to see both versions of Gansey at the same time. “I didn’t hear you knock,” Gansey said unnecessarily. He knocked fists with Adam. Coming from Gansey, the gesture was at once charming and self­conscious, a borrowed phrase of a another language.

***

You?” Before her stood the multitasking cell phone Aglionby boy, looking tidy and presidential. His watch looked as if it cost more than her mother’s car, and every area of exposed skin was a flattering shade of tan. Blue had never figured out how Aglionby boys managed to tan earlier than locals. It probably had something to do with things like spring break and places like Costa Rica and the Spanish coast. President Cell Phone had probably been closer to a pygmy tyrant than she would ever be. “I certainly hope so,” he said, in a way that indicated less hope and more certainty. He had to speak loudly to be heard, and he had to incline his head to meet her eyes. There was something annoyingly impressive about him, an impression that he was very tall, although he was no taller than most boys.

***

Three sets of shoulders: one square, one built, one wiry. “Sorry that I’m late,” said the boy in front, with the square shoulders. The scent of mint rolled in with him, just as it had in the churchyard. “Will it be a problem?” Blue knew that voice. She reached for the railing of the stairs to keep her balance as President Cell Phone stepped into the hallway. Oh no. Not him. ... But now that she put two and two together, it seemed obvious. In their hallway, he looked slightly less presidential, but only because the heat had made him messily roll up the sleeves of his button­down shirt and remove his tie. His dusty brown hair was mussed, too, in that way that Virginia warmth always managed. But the watch was still there, large enough to knock out bank robbers, and he still had that handsome glow. The glow that meant that not only had he never been poor, but his father hadn’t, nor his father’s father, nor his father’s father’s father. She couldn’t tell if he was actually tremendously good-­looking or merely tremendously wealthy. Perhaps they were the same thing. Gansey. This was Gansey.

***

There was a faint, amused smile on Gansey’s face that meant he knew they were lying. It was a strangely wise expression; once again Blue got the sense that he seemed older than the boys he’d brought with him. “I’ll look into it,” Maura said. “If you leave your number, I can give you a call if I find out anything about it.” Gansey replied, coolly polite, “Oh, that’s quite all right."

***

A few minutes later, when Gansey climbed into the front seat beside the pilot, she saw that he was grinning, effusive and earnest, incredibly excited to be going wherever they were going. It was nothing like his previous, polished demeanor. It was some private joy that she managed to be in on by virtue of being in the helicopter and, just like that, Blue was excited, too. Adam leaned toward her as if he was about to say something, but ultimately, he just shook his head, smiling, like Gansey was a joke that was too complicated to explain.

***

“ARE YOU LISTENING, GLENDOWER? I AM COMING TO FIND YOU!” Gansey’s voice, ebullient and ringing, echoed off the tree-­covered slopes around the field. Adam and Blue found him standing in the middle of a clear, pale path, his arms stretched out and his head tilted back as he shouted into the air. Adam’s mouth made the soundless shape of a laugh. Gansey grinned at them both. He was hard to resist in this form: glowing with rows and rows of white teeth, a college brochure in the making.

***

Gansey looked up to them, and she saw in his face that he loved this place. His bald expression held something new: not the raw delight of finding the ley line or the sly pleasure of teasing Blue. She recognized the strange happiness that came from loving something without knowing why you did, that strange happiness that was sometimes so big that it felt like sadness. It was the way she felt when she looked at the stars. Just like that, he was a little bit closer to the Gansey that Blue had seen in the churchyard, and she found she couldn’t bear to look at him.

***

A few feet away in the cavity, Gansey’s head was bowed. He looked like a statue in a church, his hands clasped in front of him. There was something very ancient about him just then, with the tree arched over him and his eyelids rendered colorless in the shadows. He was himself, but he was something else, too — that something that Blue had first seen in him at the boys’ reading, that sense of otherness, of something more, seemed to radiate from that still portrait of Gansey enshrined in the dark tree.

***