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“I just told him that Sam and I had a project to do together and that the common room was too noisy. He said as long as we kept the door open and actually studied, he didn’t mind.”
“Nerds get away with everything,” Sam says.
Daneca grins. “Don’t we just.”
I smile back, but if there’s one thing I know, it’s that eventually we all get caught.
* * *
Even though I’m exhausted, I can’t sleep. I pored over the files once Daneca left, and I run through the details again and again in my mind, trying to remember some part of what happened. I keep twisting on my bed, making the springs squeak. My body feels wrong, hot and uncomfortable.
Finally I grab my phone and text Lila.
U awake? I type.
Then I actually look at the screen and realize it’s three thirty in the morning. I punch my pillow and flop down onto it, face forward.
My phone chirrups. I roll over and snatch it up.
Bad dreams, it says. Always awake.
Sneak out, I text back, and pull on a pair of jeans.
The great thing about a room on the ground floor is that you can just push open your window and hop right into the bushes. Sam moans at the creak of the wooden frame, kicks at his blankets, and goes back to snoring.
I’m not sure which dorm is hers, so I stand in the middle of the quad.
The night air is still and heavy. Nothing feels real. I wonder if this was what it was like when we waited outside someone’s house for the victim to walk right into our arms. The whole world seems dead already.
After a few moments I see a rope dangle from a low window in Gilbert House. I pad over and realize Lila has somehow managed to jam a grappling hook into the sill. Which means she thought to bring a grappling hook to school and managed to hide it in her room. I am all admiration.
She spiders down and then drops, barefoot, still in her pajamas. She’s grinning, but when she sees my face, her smile fades.
“What’s wrong?” Lila asks.
“Come on,” I say softly. “We have to get away from the dorms.”
She nods and follows me without saying anything else. This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.
I go out to the track. Nearby are only tennis courts and the patch of woods that separates the Wallingford campus from a stretch of suburban homes.
“So, what do you think of it here?” I ask her.
“School’s school,” she says with a shrug. “A girl on my hall wanted me to go shopping with her and her friends. I didn’t go. Now she’s always on my case about being stuck up.”
“How come you didn’t—?”
Lila is looking at me uncertainly. I can see the hope in her face, along with the dread. “Who cares?” she asks finally. “Well, what? Why are we here?” Her pajamas are blue, covered in stars.
“Okay. I want to ask you about what we did—about what I did. The murders or whatever you want to call them.” I don’t look at her, so instead I look back at Wallingford. Just some old brick buildings. I have no idea how I thought they were going to shelter me from my own life.
“That’s what you brought me all the way out here to talk about?” she says, her voice hard.
“This is definitely not where I would take someone for a romantic rendezvous.” When she flinches, I keep going. “I saw some files. Some names. I want you to tell me if they’re the ones.”
“Fine,” she says. “But it’s not going to help you to know.”
“Antanas Kalvis?”
