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"Avery?" she asked. "Avery Bardot?"
"The one and only," I told her before she steered me into an empty classroom and onto an empty seat to wait for more guards.
It took them eleven minutes to arrive, or at least that's what the clock on the wall told me. I was restrained in wrist and ankle hobbles and walked like a dog on a leash to Headmistress's office. I thought the lady was going to blow a gasket when she saw me in person. I don't recall ever actually seeing a human being turn that shade of red, but she put a lid on her anger for now. Granted, it's probably going to bubble up and hit the ceiling at some point.
At her direction, a guard steered me into a chair in front of her desk. She didn't waste a second in calling my parents to let them know I had been located. I could hear my father on the other end of the line yelling as another guard knocked on the door, informing her that the sheriff's department had advised them that they were on their way to campus. She told my parents she had to call them back and moved so fast I think she might have even traveled at lightspeed before she telephoned the police, letting them know my disappearance was, as she put it,a giant misunderstanding, but that I had been safely located.
As my parents boarded the first plane here, Headmistress made me recount where I had gone. I recited the story Gabe and I practiced, one that would line up with everything his friends had done to frame my disappearance. I told her I had run away, and at first, I had gone into the woods, but that I wasn't prepared for the weather. I knew it would be cold, but not that cold, and I had to come back inside the building. I explained how I had heard about the tunnels beneath the Asylum and how I thought they might lead me somewhere away from this place. I told her I had found the door to the stairwell unlocked and said I had gone down there, looking for a way out, and finding no way, I stayed until I ran out of food.
It won't be hard for her to confirm the story, at least the part about staying in the basement. Gabe and I disassembled almost everything that he had put together down there. The bed frame is torn apart and scattered into pieces, and the mirrors are gone, smashed to bits throughout the room. The mattress and the bucket remain in the cell. We're going to have one thousand years of bad luck for breaking the mirrors if you believe in that sort of thing. I don't, though. Plus, if luck is real, then mine's always been fucked since the day I was born to my mother.
Headmistress asked a few questions but appears to have bought my story. It helps that I'm still dirty. I have rust from pulling on the cell bars caked beneath my fingernails and my clothes are torn, not from the forest surrounding campus or surviving in the elements, but from Gabe. She doesn't know that, though, or if she suspects it, she doesn't call me out on it.
When they cordon off the entrance to the basement, Gabe will lose his access to the lower levels of the Asylum, but he said that was all right and that it was worth it for me to be here with him instead. Still, I'd like to be there—or anywhere—with him right now rather than locked up in the administrative office about to meet with my mother and father. At least they took off my restraints, I guess.
Hell, I'm surprised my parents cared enough to board a plane. Then again, it's only an hour flight from Massachusetts, and their only child was missing for the past four days, so really, it was about the least they could've done.
I can't remember the last time they both came to see me or even sat in on the same video chat with me. My father visits me in school occasionally, but even Christmas isn't a guarantee anymore. He says my mother has a hard time at home when he's not there with her, and she never comes to visit because, I'm guessing, I remind her too much of her failures. Or maybe she just cares that little. Now that I think about it, it's definitely the latter.
"Sweet pea," my father says as I'm steered from the waiting area and back into Headmistress's private office. He's frozen for a moment. By the looks of it, both of them are, apparently, before he jumps to his feet and walks over to me. He wraps me in his arms and squeezes me tight enough to wring the water out of a sponge and leave it bone-dry. He hasn't called me that in years, probably since I was six or seven years old.
"We were worried about you," he tells me.
I doubt that. Maybe he was.
He pushes away from me and looks me up and down as if to check that I'm still here in front of him. Then he brings me in for another hug. I stand there unmoving as he holds me. He smells like coffee and soap as the fabric of his pea coat scratches at the side of my face.
"Are you okay?" he asks me, backing away from me again but keeping his hands on my shoulders. He looks me over once more, assuring himself that I am in one piece.
Headmistress closes the door to her office as my father continues to study me.
"I'm fine," I tell him as Headmistress walks around her desk to sit in her tall leather chair.
"As I explained on the phone, your daughter is quite fine, Mr. Bardot," she says as my mother remembers she's supposed to act like one, stands, and walks over to us. She brings me in for a tight hug that I also don't reciprocate.
"Avery, dear," she says, her thin arms firm around me, "we were so worried about you."
To her credit, she does actually sound worried, which is impressive, well, for my mother, at least. I wasn't sure she had the emotional capacity to worry about anyone except herself.
"Are you sure you're feeling well?" my father asks.
"I'm fine," I tell him. There's no emotion behind my words. I want this over with.
They haven't cared for years, but now when they think I ran away, they act like they give a shit. Fucking figures.
"As I said on the phone," Headmistress says, "your daughter is fine. However, there is the issue of what we should do with her now."
"Now?" my father goes rigid as his face flushes to the color of ripe beets. "Now? Are you kidding me, Ms. Graves? You lost her! There is no now! Our arrangement is over!"
My heart plummets to my feet and keeps on digging. I can't leave Gabe, not after everything. I need the fire freak, and the fire freak needs his firefly.
"Please," Headmistress says, gesturing at the chairs, "sit. We are adults. Let's be civilized."
There's nothing my father hates more than someone implying that he's acting unreasonably. He bristles, and his face reddens even further. I think I spot the moment when a capillary bursts across the bridge of his nose.
I sit first, choosing the chair farthest from Headmistress.
My father falls into the chair beside me, landing with a murmured curse. My mother moves to sit in the seat beside him.
