“I’ll be quick,” I tell Elodie, kissing her on the temple.
“Please. This storm is freaking me out. The forest looks so creepy out there.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back before you know it.”
***
“I swear to God,I’m never going to understand women. If she felt so bad, then why wouldn’t she stay back at the house and rest like I told her to?” Pax grumbles, hiking double-speed up the grassy slope that leads back to Wolf Hall.
“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s because youtoldher to do something rather than asking her,” Dash suggests. “In case you haven’t noticed, women aren’t huge fans of being told what to do. Unless it’s in the bedroom. In which case—”
“I’m gonna go ahead and stop you right there, Lord Lovett,” Pax says. “Last thing I need is a rundown on the power dynamic between you and your girlfriend. I can’t think of anything worse right now.”
“Oh, I can think of plenty of things that are worse. How about trudging through the icy rain on the hunt for a bag ofCheetos?” Dash fires back.
“I’ll giveyoufucking Cheetos.”
“Please don’t. I’m more of a Fritos type of guy. All I’m trying to say is that you kinda asked for this. If you hadn’t demanded that Presley stay at the house, she’d probably have said she wasn’t feeling great and would have opted to stay of her own volition. Instead, you riled her up and—”
“What the fuck, Lovett. It was a rhetorical question. I didn’t mean for you to give me the teen agony aunt response—”
Oh, how I’ve missed this. It’s been months since the three of us have been together. I didn’t realize how accustomed I was to these two taking shots at one another, but their familiar bickering is making me sort of sentimental. Even so, better to nip it in the bud now before they start roughhousing. “Fuck the vending machine. The outhouse is too far away. I vote we kick in a window and head straight for the kitchens,” I say, changing the subject. “And if your girlfriend complains, you can blame me. I’m not staying out in this any longer than I have to.”
“I was gonna do that and blame you anyway,” Pax says nonchalantly. “We won’t have to kick a window in, though. What’s the betting that the vent by the laundry is still open, Lovett?”
“High, I’m sure. Now thatyou’renot here anymore, the faculty probably don’t have to worry about students breaking out of the academy in the middle of the day anymore. This lot probably behave themselves.”
It turns out the grate by the laundryisstill open. Pax prizes the mesh guard away from the wall, pulling it out and propping it up against the wall, and then he wriggles forward on his belly, squeezing through the gap inside the building.
“Wait. Isn’t this where he got poison oak?” I ask, casting about for any suspicious-looking plants.
“Sure is. He got so angry about it, he came back here and ripped it all up last year. Doesn’t seem to have grown back, thankfully,” Dash says. He goes next, sliding through the vent and dropping down into the laundry. I’m right on his heels.
Inside, the three of us prowl around the laundry room, raising eyebrows at each other as we wait for the ear-splitting alarm to start wailing somewhere. But no alarm comes. “Maybe it’s a silent alarm,” Pax hypothesizes.
“Or maybe there’s no alarm because there’s no power,” I suggest.
“Be a pretty shit security system if it stopped working the moment the power grid went out. How the hell would it alert the cops of a break-in if all they had to do was kill the electricity to the building?” Dash opens the door to the laundry room, sticking his head out in the hallway. Still no alarm. He glances left, and he glances right. “No night guard,” he confirms. We knew there wouldn’t be. If therewereany guards up here for the break, they would have seen us at the gate, and then walking the perimeter of the school, looking for lightning damage. So…we’re on our own, and there’s no alarm. Great.
“All right. Let’s get in and out. I want to get Chase down to the urgent care as soon as possible.”
“Couldn’t agree more. Being back in this place is giving me flashbacks. And not the fun kind.” I lead the way, hurrying toward the kitchens, the boys following behind; the sound of our soles striking stone echoes around the eerily empty hallways, though our footfall is slightly muffled by all of the mud caked on our boots. Someone’s going to be very confused when they open this place up again next week and find all of the dirty footprints we’ve left behind.
We hurry past the science rooms, technology rooms, history…
None of us makes a peep as we pass the door of our old English room. Fitz’s room. He’d decked the place out like a members-only club, the space filled with book stacks and quirky stools, armchairs, couches and beanbags, indecorous chaise lounges, and a battered old tan leather sofa under the north-facing window, which I had claimed as my own personal property. We all have history in that room. The thought of it haunts me sometimes…
Faster, we move at a steady clip until we reach our destination. Dash lights the way with the flashlight on his cell. Pax stalks to the pantry by the walk-in fridges and immediately begins to grab items from the shelves. Granola bars. Cartons of juice. He finds a huge, catering-sized bag of Cheetos, which he lobs at Dash’s head, sticking out his tongue when Dash flips him the bird.
I stand in the doorway, checking my phone, trying to coax a single bar of reception out of it—
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
“What the fuck wasthat?” I spin around, searching the kitchen, hunting for the source of the strange tapping sound. Dash has disappeared into the walk-in refrigerator, so he doesn’t even hear my question. Pax heard me fine, though. “Just the rain, by the sounds of things. I have everything I need, so we—”
