by Eva Chase
He picked up a couple of shards of the fiberglass that had made up the diving board, one of which had broken with a notch in the middle. With a few absent movements, he brushed the dirt off the slick surface and fit one piece into the other so they interlocked. Just like that, he’d produced a makeshift spinning top. He spun it on the concrete between us, and it whirled with a faint rasp.
The motion drew up a memory from ages ago: the old pocket watch my birth mother had treasured with its unusual tree-shaped etching on the gold case. The only thing of any value she’d held on to through all the scrambles for drug money. Hell, she’d cared more about that thing than me. As a preschooler, I’d dug it out of her boxes once and spun it from my hand, watching the light blink off it like the glints that caught on Ryo’s creation. When Mom had caught me, she’d clenched my hand so hard as she’d yelled at me that I hadn’t been able to hold a crayon for a week.
Not what I wanted to be thinking about right now—or ever again. I’d left her and so much other awfulness behind, thanks to Cade.
I kicked the heels of my combat boots against the pool’s crumbling interior with hollow-sounding thuds. “I just… Anything I do that isn’t toward figuring out what happened to Cade, it feels like I’m letting him down.”
“You’re not,” Ryo said. “I promise you you’re not. How are you supposed to do all that figuring out if you never take the time to breathe and cut yourself a little slack?”
There was a rawness to those words under his gentle tone. The sense hit me that this was the first thing I’d heard him say totally honestly.
The fiberglass top wobbled to a stop. Ryo’s hand shifted across the tiles toward mine and stopped a few inches away, as if he’d meant to take my hand but thought better of it at the last second. That was probably for the best. How could he really understand any of it?
“Let’s pretend it’s July,” he said a moment later, leaning his weight back again. “Sun beaming down, sparkling off a full pool, the air so warm you can’t wait to slip into the water. First thing I’d do is a cannonball. How about you?”
I couldn’t stop the corner of my mouth from jumping upward. It was a nice thought—I’d give him that. I was about to play along just for a moment when a totally un-sunny sound split the air.
It sounded like a moan, stretched out low and guttural, rising up from the forest across the lawn. Goose bumps rippled across my arms despite the protection of my jacket. My head jerked toward the trees, my legs freezing in place. “What the hell is that?”
Ryo’s smile fell away completely. “Another good reason not to go wandering into the woods. We’ve got some interesting wildlife around here.”
What, had that been a wolf’s howl? I hadn’t exactly encountered a wolf in the wild before, but the sound hadn’t fit the movies I’d seen. Of course, movies lied.
The sound carried across campus a second time, louder than before. Nerves jittering, I pushed myself onto my feet. “I think I’ll take that as my cue that I’ve had enough fresh air and it’s time to get back to work.”
Chapter Seven
Trix
I came down to the second-floor landing for my second math class at Roseborne College and found Jenson Wynter staked out by the door with a small cluster of his fans. Oh, great.
The guy who’d started heckling me from the first moment I’d approached Roseborne College obviously wasn’t an asshole to everyone. Whenever I saw him around school, he had at least a couple of other students with him, all grins and guffaws. In those moments when I saw him before he saw me, with his eyes lit up and his mouth curved with an easy grin of his own, I remembered my first impression of him: intriguingly good-looking.
But as soon as he did set eyes on me, the only intrigue in the air was why the hell he’d made it his personal mission to remind me I was here through atypical—and he seemed to think unworthy—circumstances. I watched the transformation happen in front of me right now. His gaze caught on me, and it was like a cold wind passed over his expression, hardening every part of it.
“Haven’t gotten your fill yet, huh?” he shot at me as I came over. “Having fun playing tourist while we work our asses off?”
His jabs were never all that specific, but somehow he managed to hit the right sensitive spots to make me wince inwardly. I had been watching everyone, engaging in classes only from something of a distance, knowing I was going to be out of here the second I’d gotten what I needed. When he put it that way, it seemed kind of slimy.
“I’m doing the work too,” I said blandly, even though I’d gotten away with avoiding quite a bit of it so far. But what was the point in arguing with this guy about it?
Unfortunately, the way he was standing, I’d have to brush past him close enough to touch to get through the door to math class. I hesitated at the edge of his group of friends, looking pointedly at the classroom. A couple of the girls shifted out of the way with little smirks, but Jenson stayed where he was, the jerk.
He crossed his arms and tipped his head to one side innocently. “Oh, am I in your way? I didn’t mean to interrupt your gawking.” He stayed right where he was.
I glowered at him. I was about to push right past him, as little as I wanted to step that close, but at that moment the math teacher appeared in the doorway behind him.
“That’s enough,” he said to Jenson in an authoritative tone. “Move off to wherever you’re supposed to be.”
Jenson smiled at the other guy brightly, if a little brittlely. “Sure thing, teach.”
That looked just great—having the teacher come to my rescue. Of course, he turned away and stalked back into the room the second Jenson eased to the side, not waiting for a thank you from me or even acknowledging my presence. Maybe that confrontation had been more about him disliking Jenson than caring what anyone said to me.
I took the same desk I had during my first math class, in the back corner, and studied the teacher as he wrote today’s problem on the board. There was something kind of odd about the guy in general. He dressed professionally enough, his broad shoulders and buff chest perpetually covered though not completely disguised by a suit and tie, but unlike all the other staff I’d met here so far, he was young—no older than mid-twenties if I had to guess. His tan, strong-jawed face was smooth, not even a hint of stubble, let alone any wrinkles. No gray flecked his close-cropped, coffee-brown hair.
The other students didn’t react to him the same way they did our other professors either. I wouldn’t say anyone appeared to enjoy this class, but no one cringed when he looked their way. At the end of class, they didn’t flee the room at the same speed I’d usually seen.
Also weird—he hadn’t looked my way at all that I could remember. I wasn’t even sure of his name, since he hadn’t bothered to introduce himself or ask where the hell I’d come from. My schedule said DeLeon, but I hadn’t heard anyone using that name in class. A couple of the other students had called him “Elias” without any “Professor” or even “Mr.” in front of it, which was a hell of a lot more casual than the other professors accepted.
Well, what did I expect from him? It wasn’t as if my arrival had to be exciting news to everyone on campus. He’d probably heard the basics from the other staff before I’d turned up in his class. I’d rather he ignored me than turned a spotlight on my presence.
Unlike Friday of my first week here, Ryo wasn’t in my second-week Monday class. I didn’t know the girl who’d ended up sitting at my left. When the teacher—Elias? Professor DeLeon?—announced what page we’d be working from, I flipped open the textbook that had been waiting on the desk. Jenson’s accusation about playing spectator while the regular students got down to work was still pricking at me from the inside. I could put in an effort to participate, if only just to prove him wrong.
The problem on the page was the same as the one Elias had written on the board. I eyed it, taking in the form of the numbers and lines. Math didn’t come super easily to me, but I’d hammered plenty of it into my
brain during my last couple of years of high school. I hadn’t been sure I’d even apply to college, but if I wanted a chance at some kind of botany program so I could get paid to commune with plants on a professional level, I needed my math and sciences covered.
When I’d staked out a table in the library, Cade had always found me there. He’d sit across from me with his legs stretched out, his ankle resting against mine, as he studied whatever schematics—cars, appliances, industrial equipment—he was poring over that day. He’d always had a knack for taking mechanical things apart and putting them back together, so he’d figured he might as well get paid for it. Which would have worked out fine if he’d managed not to get into so many arguments with his bosses and customers.
The teacher’s voice broke through my memories. He was explaining something about the specific functions involved in this equation. I forced myself to follow the words, tying them in my head to the problem on the page. One comment he made included a term I didn’t recognize. I hesitated and then raised my hand.
When I lifted my gaze a second later, Elias had turned away to scrawl something on the board. I waited, my skin creeping with each passing moment I kept my arm in the air like a flag for attention, and then decided it wasn’t worth it and jerked it back down. I’d probably be able to figure out what was going on from the context.
At least, I should have been able to. The first few steps of the problem flowed out coherently enough with each student who came up to add their bit. By the third part, I felt confident enough to raise my hand to volunteer—take that, Jenson Jerkface—but Elias’s gaze slipped right over me as if he didn’t even see me. The same thing happened when I offered for the fourth step.
I lowered my hand after he called up a guy from the other side of the room, my skin creeping for a different reason now. His icing me out was starting to feel deliberate. He wasn’t just avoiding acknowledging me when he didn’t need to—he was making an active effort to ignore me. Why wouldn’t he want to check what the new student could do?
Maybe, like Jenson, he’d decided that if I wasn’t an officially verified student, there was no point in treating me like I belonged. A flicker of irritation seared the edges of my discomfort. Shouldn’t the teachers be a little more professional than that?
The guy he’d called up paused when he reached the board, and the numbers there distracted me from my frustration. Wait, that wasn’t the equation we’d started with, was it? I could have sworn there’d been something to the power of three…
I glanced at my textbook, but the figures there reflected the ones on the board. So much for paying attention. I rubbed my eyes as the guy started scraping his chalk across the dark surface.
But it wasn’t just me. Elias considered the board and launched into another explanation of the process that I’d swear didn’t line up with the instructions he’d walked us through to begin with. As if we were suddenly dealing with a different sort of problem than we’d been faced with previously.
He altered a couple of the numbers on the chalkboard with quick swipes of the eraser and filled them in with different ones. There was nothing accusing or critical in his voice, nothing to indicate he thought the students who’d contributed had done anything wrong. I frowned, watching closely—and one of the functions blurred before my eyes. A nine became an eight. A new set of brackets formed around a fraction. What the hell?
This time I didn’t hesitate—my hand shot into the air. Our teacher had to have seen that, right? He’d been staring right at it. Staring at the figures while they’d outright shifted as if they had a life of their own. A shiver ran down my back.
Elias turned back toward us and blindly rambled on with his lecture, his gaze never traveling all the way to me. I gritted my teeth. He couldn’t just pretend everything was okay, no matter what he thought about me.
“Sir,” I said, tired of waiting. “Sir.”
A few of my classmates glanced over. Elias’s jaw tensed as he finally let his eyes rest on me. “Yes?” he said in a terse voice.
“The numbers on the board just changed,” I said. Hell, everyone must have noticed by now.
He blinked at me, schooling his face into mild confusion that I didn’t believe for a second. “I think your mind must have wandered. Or you might want to look into getting glasses. This is what we’ve got to work with.” He motioned toward the board.
No one else said a peep. I sank back into my chair, resisting the urge to throw my textbook at his falsely oblivious head.
So what? One more piece of weirdness in an already incredibly strange place. But the fact that I’d actually been trying to follow along and been foiled by whatever the hell was going on in this class made this particular affront niggle deeper.
If it’d been a different professor, I’d have kept my mouth shut. It was obvious they didn’t give a shit how any of us felt about the paces they put us through. But Elias wasn’t quite like the others, even if he had some specific issue with me. He felt more present—more human. So when class let out, I hurried straight to the front of the class to insist he give me a real answer. I was tired of being left in the dark.
He must have seen me coming or suspected I’d make that move. I was only halfway down the aisle when I spotted his dark hair vanishing past the doorway.
Fuck that. I hustled over as quickly as I could amid the other students, but by the time I reached the halls outside, Elias had slipped out of view.
It wasn’t important anyway, I told myself. What happened in a math class had nothing to do with finding Cade. But how could I know that for sure when nothing here made any sense?
The vibration of my phone against my chest woke me up in the darkened bedroom. Staying flat on the bed, I pulled the phone out from where I’d carefully tucked it inside my camisole pajama top and turned off the silent alarm. I glanced at the signal bars, but just like every other time I’d checked them, I was completely out of service range. At least the device’s other functions still worked.
I sat up carefully and yawned. Three hours wasn’t anywhere near enough sleep. In the darkness, my roommates were little more than vague lumps along the walls. A blanket rustled here; a rough murmur carried from over there.
Beyond the high window, the wavering moan I’d heard by the pool the other day split the air. My skin twitched at it, my senses snapping fully alert. A couple of the other girls turned over, but the sound didn’t appear to have woken anyone up.
Good. I didn’t want any questions about this specific nighttime quest.
I slipped out of the bedroom on my socked feet, pulling a sweater over my camisole as I went. A long time ago, I’d learned the trick of walking down the stairs along the edge of the wall to avoid creaks. I’d just reached the second floor by the girl’s bathroom when a figure came into view over by the classrooms, striding through the shadows.
I froze, my pulse stuttering. My eyes had adjusted to the dimness enough for me to make out broad shoulders on a tall form topped with a bristling of short, thick hair.
Was that Elias the math teacher? My forehead furrowing, I risked easing a little farther down the side hall to get a better view.
He passed through a streak of faint moonlight on his way to the hall opposite me, and the glimpse I got of his chiseled face confirmed it. He walked on as if he were going exactly where he was supposed to be, up the stairs to the male students’ bedrooms.
I waited for a few minutes after he’d vanished up there to be sure he wasn’t going to march back down, escorting some guy who’d gotten into trouble. Elias didn’t return. Did he sleep up there with the students? I’d noticed he didn’t totally fit in with the other professors, but I’d assumed he was still part of the staff with whatever benefits they got.
What had he been doing up this late?
When the coast appeared clear, I pushed those questions aside and got on with my own quest. I slunk across the landing past the classroom doors, down the main staircase with its sweeping grandeur, and into the
thick shadows around the foyer.
Despite the sparse blooms on the wall-climbing bushes, the smell of roses still lingered in the air. It was always a little stronger down here than in the bedrooms, where I could forget it if I wasn’t thinking about it. It tickled my nose as I crept to the door of the dean’s office.
I stopped there and held still for a moment, listening to the sounds of the building. There was a faint creak like the walls settling. A gust of wind warbled past the front door. No sign that anyone other than me was up and awake.
I dug the coffee shop reward card that I’d decided to potentially sacrifice to this cause out of the pocket of my pajama pants. I hadn’t taken a close look at the mechanisms on the dean’s door when I’d arrived, but I’d had plenty of time to consider the other inner doors since I’d started attending classes. Like everything else in this place, the planes of wood and the locks built into them were old, verging on antique—nothing I couldn’t tackle. I’d popped my first lock when I was only ten, to steal back a treasured figurine my fifth grade teacher had taken from me.
The card eased between the door and the frame easily enough. I wiggled it against the bolt until I liked what I felt, and then dragged at it while twisting the knob.
I hadn’t lost my touch. The lock clicked over, and the door swung open at my nudge.
Just in case someone got up for a midnight snack and came by this way, I closed the door behind me. Turning on the main lights didn’t seem wise, but I tapped on the flashlight function on my phone so I could actually see for this search.
If there were records of Cade’s time at Roseborne College anywhere, they’d be in the dean’s possession. Maybe he’d lied to me; maybe he’d forgotten they existed—either way, I’d track them down.
