Ashley, I am so sorry you had to hear that. Extremely sorry, in fact.”
I looked up from my spaghetti. Barrett sat directly across from me at the lunchroom table, his burger and shrimp still steaming on his tray. He wore a very apologetic look on his face, his lips twisted into a frown that made me feel bad for him.
“It’s fine, Barrett,” I said as I sipped my bottled water, which tasted a lot fresher than the bottled water back at the Academy. “It isn’t like you made that law, after all.”
“I wasn’t apologizing for that,” said Barrett, shaking his head. “If I’d known ahead of time that Mr. Sycamore was going to say something like that, I would have warned you.”
“I said it’s fine,” I said. I rested my bottled water on the tray next to my spaghetti. “And I mean, they haven’t forced me to
