Aiden craned his neck, sticking it outward through the hole in the bleachers. It looked like the hooded figure had disappeared from the entrance. But as he exhaled, he heard a soft crunch, then another, then another. Footsteps, getting louder as they got closer, making their way along the fence. They were slow and uneven, kicking up mud around them, snapping twigs as they got closer.
Aiden swallowed, watching as a hand, translucent in the light, slid along the fence toward them, its owner blocked by the bleachers. It sounded like they were mumbling, groaning under their breath.
“Shut up,” Peter whispered, crouching farther back into the darkness. His leg was bouncing uncomfortably against the bench, making a metallic click.
The figure passed through a break in the bleachers, and yellow light found its face.
“Eddy?” Aiden asked.
As soon as Eddy heard his name, he stopped.
“What are you doing here?”
Aiden stood, but the noise must have frightened Eddy because he spun immediately, running off-balance in the opposite direction.
“Eddy, what are you . . . ?” They watched him go to the other side of the fence, disappearing down the nearest path toward the school.
“Fucking weird, man,” Peter whispered under his breath. “Well, write it down, I guess. Who knows what’s got him all fucked up.”
Aiden stared after the spot where Eddy had disappeared. “He freaked out last night, remember?”
“Yeah, I doubt he’s forgot either, the way you fucking railed him.”
“Somebody had to stop him,” Aiden snapped back.
“Yeah,” Peter muttered. “Tell yourself that . . .”
They were interrupted by the bottom of the fence sliding against the concrete. They both readied themselves, ducking to get a look at the far end of the court. It was another hooded figure, this one in blue jeans and black hoodie, the hood fully drawn over its face. It ambled to the center of the court and stopped in the middle circle.
“It’s them,” Aiden whispered.
“You got the bag ready, just in case?”
Aiden held it up.
They didn’t have to wait long—two more people showed up, also wearing black hoods and moving slowly. One was short, and taking slow, purposeful steps, and another was thick. They didn’t say anything as they followed in the same path to the center of the court.
“Fucking hell,” Peter whispered. “They’re not even talking to each other.”
Three more people showed up in the exact same attire, walked the exact same path, and took their place around the rim of the center circle. None of them interacted. None of them looked surprised. None of them showed their faces.
“Here.” Peter handed him the camera. “Get a picture.”
Aiden nodded and leaned out of the break in the bleachers. He could hear Peter breathing excitedly behind him. He balanced himself, waiting for a few of the hooded figures to turn in his direction. The snap and hiss of the camera rang out across the court, but none of them moved. Aiden crouched back down into the hole. “What do we do now?”
Another set of footsteps approached the gate. Aiden watched for them, but no one entered. Instead, a mass of figures huddled behind the fence. They weren’t wearing the black hoodies; they were in gray suits. Footsteps crunched around Aiden and Peter as the figures spread out around the fenced-in area. “Those aren’t students,” he whispered. “They’re maintenance.”
Peter’s body language had changed. He was nervous now, gripping the bottom of the bleacher in front of them. “Why would they come out here?” he asked. “What are they doing?”
One of the maintenance workers had entered the court and was walking straight up to the group in the center. They noticed him approaching and began to shuffle, their heads snapping around anxiously. As they turned, Aiden noticed beneath one of their hoods a thick pair of wire-rimmed glasses.
“On my signal, we run,” Peter whispered, nodding to a hole in the fence behind them. He’d picked this spot on purpose, Aiden realized. It came with an exit strategy.
“All of you.” The maintenance worker on the court started to speak. “Stay exactly where you are. Put your hands on the ground—”
“Now!” Peter screamed. The hoods in the center of the court must have heard the voice and thought it was one of their own, because they scattered on his command. Around them, the gray suits sprang into action, blocking the exits, angling toward the other hooded students. Aiden stared in horror as a maintenance worker in the center sprang after the escaping hood with the glasses, reaching for his belt, and pointed a small device.
“Let’s go!” Peter grabbed him and pulled, but just before he turned, he saw it. Tiny lines flew from the man’s hand at the hooded figure, connecting with their back and gripping them in shock, sending them crashing and convulsing down to the wet ground.
Aiden took off, forcing his way through the fence, slicing the back of his neck against an exposed edge. He ignored it, sprinting away down the only path he could see in front of him. He could hear Peter a few steps behind, and another set of footsteps behind that. “Stop!” a voice barked, but Aiden was faster than any maintenance worker. He sprinted farther away from the court and into the darkness. He could still hear shouting over his shoulder, but it got quieter, and eventually the only footsteps he could hear were his own.
He slowed himself to a stop, turning to check his position. In the distance, he could see the yellow light at the top of the wooden cross, and even farther than that, the school. The first cut of the forest was only a few feet away. There were no flashlights near him, and all the sound was a million miles away.
He fell back onto a rock, panting. Whoever it was who showed up tonight, they weren’t regular students. The way they dressed, the way they acted, Peter was right. They were organized.
And the men in the gray suits, they were dressed as maintenance workers, but that wasn’t their job tonight. They looked more like riot control. One of them fired a taser at a student. He’d often thought the school had too many maintenance workers—they were always overstaffing functions and referring them to situations where they weren’t necessary. Maybe some of them weren’t maintenance workers at all. Maybe they were security. But why wouldn’t the school just say that?
He reached for his bag, unsure of how to log all this information into his theories page. Did what happened tonight have something to do with Emma? Or was it something else, something much larger that he’d stumbled into? His hand found the corner of the bag and swept to the other corner, past his notebook.
The Apex was gone.
Evan.
THE DRIP-DRIP-DRIP ON the window of late-arriving rain kept him awake, lying in his bed.
The vines of notes sprawled across his wall were starting to inch together, growing so thick with details that they threatened to fall inward, bringing the whole system down.
His clock ticked past 10:00 p.m. and the school’s buzzer sounded for curfew. On a program he once watched on the Public Broadcasting System, it said after twenty-four hours, the odds of a missing person ever being found dropped from 75 percent to 10 percent. It said that 78 percent of missing persons who are killed are killed within the first twenty-four hours. Emma had been missing for twenty-six.
He pulled the skin of his eyelid off his eye and released it. It had been over thirty-six hours since he’d slept, but his eyes wouldn’t stay closed. Even if they could, it wouldn’t shut down the system. The second he left his brain to its own unconscious devices, he’d be flooded with images of her. Wandering scared across the campus. Locked in a closet. Despondent in the armchair in his living room. Lost in the forest. Alone on a hospital bed.
The school had given him medication for his arm, a separated shoulder, Dr. Simon said, and the edges of his vision were losing focus, blurring his real and imagined worlds.
He rolled over and felt a biting pain in his shoulder. He would be in a cast for eight to nine weeks. When he landed, there she was, staring outwa
rd from the middle of the wall. It was a photo she probably didn’t even know existed, an outtake from a school photographer who had been covering the talent show on May fourteenth. She was biting her lip, nervously approaching the microphone. The photographer stepped in front of her, drawing her attention just long enough to freeze the moment forever. He stared back at her. She was still out there. She still needed his help.
He slid out of bed and pulled his spinning chair to the middle of the floor, moving with the details as he examined the wall.
He returned to the absolute basics. Emma had a predetermined pattern, an obvious rhythm to her life. She had lived in it with minimal interruption for almost three months. He’d built the board around this pattern. Thursdays were Compassion Lab, lunch, Groupthink lecture, assessment, dinner, evening mass, prayer, Aiden, sleep. For twelve Thursdays, she’d checked every box.
Then, two weeks ago, things started to change. The pattern had lost its consistency. She’d started sleeping, all the time. She doubled up on her assessments and skipped her meals. Less time with Aiden, more time with strangers. Still, she checked the boxes. She moved in rhythm.
Finally, last night, the pattern fully snapped. Instead of dinner, she made a phone call to a sex hotline. She dropped in on Zaza’s dorm, and rushed from school to the church. She brushed off Aiden. She disappeared.
Someone knocked on his door.
He held his breath. Post-curfew, no one was supposed to be in the halls. He waited for them to go away but they knocked again.
He rolled out of bed and flew wall to wall, pinning up the posters. He shoved his clothes under his bed and Emma’s journal with them, taking one deep breath before opening the door.
In the hallway, Neesha Shah was smiling.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re Evan, right?”
Every piece of information in his brain chased in a different direction, a thousand patterns trying to solve the S3 riddle. Why was Emma’s roommate at his door?
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I had a question I wanted to ask you. Do you mind if I come in?”
“What question?”
“It’s going to take a second, is it alright if I . . .” She nudged the door forward.
“Whoa, what happened?” she asked, and pointed to his cast.
“I fell.”
“That’s it, you fell? Come on, dude, give me details.”
Evan shook his head. “That’s all.”
She surveyed the room. “You’ve got a lot of Jazz posters in here. I doubt John Stockton’s mom has this many. Here’s a harmless question: Do you feel pressure to surround yourself with traditional examples of masculinity, or do you really love the Utah Jazz that much?”
“I like the Jazz. What’s your question?” He stepped between her and the most fragile poster as she reached out to touch it.
“Right,” she said, leaning against his desk. “My friend Zaza, he was telling me that you were going around trying to find Emma.”
He didn’t answer.
“And I just wanted to know, how that’s going?”
“Good,” he said. “Why?”
“Just curious,” she said. “She was my roommate, you know?”
“Is your roommate.”
“Right. Yeah, is my roommate. Which is why I was kind of curious if you needed help?”
Evan stood taller. “Why?”
“Well, I figured she just ran away, and they were going to find her in a day or two, but then I got this message on my door, and . . .” She held something back, behind her teeth. “I just really need to find her. And I figured the fastest way was working together.”
He heard the poster behind him starting to curl against the wall. If he helped Neesha, he risked sharing information, maybe even something he wasn’t supposed to share. She wouldn’t understand his methods.
But Neesha would have information of her own. And no strategy.
“Okay,” he said. “We can do it.”
“Awesome, that’s so—”
He took two steps forward, pushing her toward the door.
“Oh, that’s it?”
“It’s late,” he said.
“Right, I guess we start tomorrow.” Neesha looked around the room, stalling in the doorway for a second.
“What?” he asked.
She looked to her own door across the hall and back. “Do you really think she’s in danger?”
Evan balanced his theories on his tongue. “Probably. Yes.”
“People keep saying she was skittish the night she went missing. Like somebody was following her. Do you think she was being skittish?”
“Do you?”
“I didn’t think so.” She sighed. “But after Yanis asked me, and Zaza asked me . . . I kept remembering things. Like, in the church, when the bells started, she basically jumped out of her skin. I didn’t think it was weird at the time, but . . .”
Evan froze, holding the door in place. “Wait. What bells?”
“The chapel ones. For when the candle person lights the candles—”
“The acolyte.”
“Sure.”
Evan felt like his brain was shaking, fuzzy memories growing clearer. The interaction with Yanis at Emma’s dorm was blurry in his memory. His brain had been so overcome by panic, so clouded by worst-case scenarios, that he’d failed to properly log the information in front of him, but as he played it back in his head, he remembered one thing, distinctly, cutting through his confusion: the bells.
“Okay, well. See you tomorrow,” she said, and she disappeared into her own door across the hall.
Evan stumbled back into the room, a lump forming in his throat as he laid the timelines on top of each other.
If she jumped at the bells, that meant she was still in the chapel, where the entire school could see her. Which meant there was only one explanation—
Yanis was looking for her before she went missing.
Part IV.
Rats in Cages.
Testimonial: Emmalynn Donahue.
Year 1995–1996. Day 32.
I’m not sure what this is supposed to accomplish, but I’ll give it a try—
I can hear Dad humming.
It’s a Hank Williams Jr. song and I think it’s the only song he remembers.
He hums it while he drives, bumping the truck along one of the dozens of roads that no one in the world knows, but they’re the only thing he knows in the world. When I was a kid, he would steer into the bumps to send me flying, and we’d laugh as the suspension of the truck shook. Now I imagine he avoids the bumps as he drives the roads, every day.
I can hear he’s tired; I imagine he spends most of his life tired, looking only for an every-so-often moment when he can relax, and just sit, and watch something that means nothing, like sports. I imagine him drinking a beer, because drinking a beer is the ultimate act of not having anywhere else to be, and I imagine him having several, because some days, he needs help convincing himself that he absolutely doesn’t have anywhere else to be.
I can hear him at 2:00 a.m., shouting about the decision he has to make to people who have no sympathy, the closed door and the smell of fuel from the station next door. A “rambling man,” like the song, a son of the blues. I imagine he has to make this decision often, to drive the roads he knows so well, so his family doesn’t have to be without a father for the night; or to sleep in the truck, even though it’s less than twenty-five degrees in Hayes.
I can hear him humming as he drives, no slower than usual, because to drive slower would be an admission that he’s not himself. I can hear the truck on the other side of the narrow road. I imagine him completely sure of himself, not slowing down or pulling off because these are his roads and to slow down or pull off would be an admission that he doesn’t know these roads and that he’s not himself. But he can’t avoid the bumps.
I feel the car rolling three times. I feel the paralyzing panic of screaming chaos, the car suspended in midair long enough
to consider what the end result may be; long enough to worry about the cost of the truck and the cost of the insurance before the front right bumper makes contact with frozen ground; long enough to worry about his wife and his neck after that. I feel the moment of stillness, after the car finally rocks to a stop. I feel the cold, dark side of the highway. I feel the other man, clinging to life in the cab of his truck. I feel the wreckage, the smell of twisted metal, and the screaming of chickens. The truck was carrying chickens, and now the truck is on its side and the chickens are spread out across the highway.
I can hear my mother, calling me because she has to. “There’s been an accident,” she says, as though it’s the twentieth time today she’s said it. “Your father nearly killed himself. He isn’t going to be able to move for a while. You’re on your own out there.”
And then I can feel nothing. I’m on my own out here.
There.
Done.
I’m not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but I can feel it, all of it. I’m in the car, on my bed, in the ditch, in the truck, on my pillow, in the deeper reservoir of pain. I know this is the part of expanding that’s supposed to feel like contracting; the part of moving forward that’s supposed to feel like being dragged back into everything else. I know this is the part I’m supposed to master, to understand and choose to rise above.
I control my proximity. I know where I stand.
emma donahue investigation.
neesha shah—year 4.
transcription by MONKEY voice-to-text software.
YANIS (Administration) _ You didn’t see anyone near your room tonight.
NEESHA SHAH (Student) _ I wasn’t even near my room. I was in class.
Y _ At night.
NS _ It was a special session. We were testing an experiment we built in class.
Y _ Who knew you were in this class.
NS _ I don’t know. Everyone. All you have to do is look in the window.
Y _ Tell me about the message.
NS _ I think it’s pretty self explanatory.
Y _ Do you think they’re talking about Emma.
Redemption Prep Page 11
