by Blair Drake
Since the whispering started, mostly among the older kids, he became more curious about why. And there he was, flat against the floor, with his ear against the ornate metal heating grate. As he listened, he imagined the tangle of ducts spreading throughout the mansion. Gray Cliffs didn’t even use the entire building, which had more rooms than he cared to count.
He lay there in pajamas he wouldn’t even wear if he didn’t have a tattletale of a roommate. He’d already been turned in for hanging out in his own room in his boxers. Then he heard it. The voices. He knew who they were. Alex, Conan, Dexter, and Brian. They were seniors. He’d heard their conversations several times. He didn’t know exactly where they were coming from because the senior dorms weren’t even on that side of the school.
“It’s happening,” Alex said.
“It’s too early,” Conan responded in his Irish brogue. “It’s at least a month away.”
Dylan could hear his own breathing and racing heart. He heard talk of this thing before, but he didn’t know what it was about.
They continued, but the voices were mumbling too much to hear clearly. Damn it. He pressed his ear so close to the grate he’d have an imprint. Then he closed his eyes tight, willing himself closer.
The next thing he heard was a banging at the door of his dorm room. “Dylan Streetman, open this door. If you don’t, I’ll call the headmaster. Dylan!”
Crap. Dylan scrambled to his feet. He looked at the clock. What? Had he fallen asleep? More than an hour passed. That couldn’t be.
He straightened his light blue pajamas. “Coming. Don’t get your boxers in a wad.”
Dylan was a scrawny seventeen-year-old with red hair and fair skin with lots of freckles, and looked downright brawny and tanned next to his freshman roommate. Sometimes he wondered if he looked that young and stupid when he arrived at the school. Did it matter? And those seniors he overheard now and then would soon be gone and he’d move to that wing, with no snot-nosed whiny freshman to make his life miserable.
Dylan had to wrench the chair from under the door handle. Rex must have shoved against the door for some time. He opened the door, and Rex Folkerts stood there, wearing only torn boxers. His skin was so pale it looked almost blue, and he had a cut over his eye and a fat lip.
“What the hell happened to you?” Dylan said as he pushed the chair behind him, toward his desk.
“Never mind. What were you doing in here? It smells funny.” Rex sniffed with his little pug nose as he grabbed his shower caddy from the floor.
“I think it’s you who smells funny. Were you outside?” Dylan asked as he walked back to his bed and slowly pushed it back in place, hoping Rex wouldn’t notice.
Dylan flopped on top of his bed, crossed his legs and put his hands behind his head as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Even though he was talking to Rex, his mind was racing. How had so much time passed? He was listening to the guys talk about what was to come. But he couldn’t remember anything they said.
“We aren’t allowed to go outside after dark, at least not for now. Besides, we couldn’t get out if we wanted. The doors won’t budge.” Rex rifled around in his drawers for clean clothes.
“It’s been dark nearly twenty-four-seven for weeks,” Dylan said.
“Whatever. You know what I mean,” Rex said.
“Where are your clothes?” Dylan didn’t really care, but he was trying to be a good roommate.
He’d only roomed with Rex for a couple of months. In fact, it was just after Rex moved in that he was able to hear through the grate. It started a week later. Rex was shuffled around three times before landing in Dylan’s room.
Dylan’s previous roommate left the school early. From the scuttlebutt around the dinner hall, he wouldn’t be coming back. Too bad, Dylan liked him. Maybe not him exactly, but that he was quiet and kept to himself, spending more time in the library than their room.
“I left my clothes in the bathroom. I’m going to wash them in the shower.” Rex placed his pajamas over his arm and picked up his shower caddy again.
Dylan rolled over onto his side, bent his arm up and rested his head on his hand. “Come on, tell me. I won’t snitch on you.”
Rex glanced at Dylan with a pleading look in his eyes. Dylan could tell he wanted to say something, so he waited. But Rex didn’t say a word. He opened the door and walked out of the room with his stuff in hand, slamming it behind him.
“Well, that was nice,” Dylan said to himself and rolled back over on the bed.
As soon as Rex was out of the room, Dylan’s thoughts went back to how he could have fallen asleep on the floor. How did he lose an hour? He wasn’t even tired, so how did he fall asleep? Who falls asleep when they are concentrating on a conversation?
But he felt like he remembered something. Like he was at the other end of the ductwork, looking at the guys who were talking. But he couldn’t recall the conversation. It was weird that in his mind, he could see through the grate on the other end, as if he was sitting there. But he couldn’t have been, because he’d have to be the size of a rat to fit.
Speaking of rats, he felt bad for Rex, because no one seemed to like him. He wasn’t such a bad kid. He was just a tattletale. He snitched on everyone for anything. Dylan figured he did it for the attention. And he was just the opposite, wanting to avoid any attention.
Rex was that kid with the helicopter parents, though. His mom was constantly calling the school and checking on him. She sent care packages Rex just gave away. He couldn’t do anything for himself. Heck, Dylan wondered if he even knew how to wash clothes. He probably ditched the clothes in the trash and called his mommy to get another uniform.
Deciding to call it a night, Dylan got up off the bed and pulled the covers back. He climbed back on the bed and pulled the covers over himself, lying on his side. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was again sitting at the end of a grate that looked just like the one in his room. But he was not in the room, he was above it, behind the grate. He could barely see, but it looked like a maintenance room of some kind. Where was his mind taking him?
A flash of light lit the room and he could see Alex, Conan, Dexter and Brian. Brian held the light in his hand, but it wasn’t a flashlight. The light emanated from his hand. He could see the other boys by the light of whatever was in Brian’s hand, and they looked scared. He heard Conan say, “Did you hear that?”
Before Dylan could hear the answer, he heard loud banging. He sat straight up in bed. What the hell? The banging was someone knocking on his door again.
“Jeez, Rex, didn’t you take your room key?” Dylan yelled as he dragged himself out of bed.
When he got up, he looked across the room. Rex was curled in the fetal position in his bed, his uniform hanging over the back of his desk chair. Dylan looked at his watch. Nine o’clock? How was it earlier than when he went to bed?
He opened the door, and Miss Hollerine looked him up and down. “Were you planning to attend your classes today?”
He looked down too, thinking maybe he wet himself because of the disgusted look she had on her face. “What do you mean today? I just barely fell asleep.”
Miss Hollerine was a tiny thing, standing at least a foot shorter than Dylan’s six-two, and she’d be lucky to weight ninety pounds after a gut-splitting meal. Her black hair was always pulled into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, and it reminded Dylan of the ballerinas he saw when his parents dragged him to see Swan Lake. Snoozer, just like Miss Hollerine, who taught math. Dylan thought it weird her eyes were as black as her hair, like she was on drugs, and the pupils so dilated her eyes had no color. He imagined her eyes would be gray if they had any color.
Her favorite thing to do was tap her watch, which she was doing. “You already missed first period.”
Dylan looked back into his room. “Then so did Rex, because he’s still asleep.”
“Just don’t you worry about Rex. Worry about yourself. Get showered and dressed. I want you in Headmaster Auster’s office
in twenty minutes.”
With that, she pivoted and marched down the hallway.
“Wait, just for missing first period? I could teach that lame class,” he hollered down the hall, but Miss Hollerine didn’t answer, and when he blinked, she was gone.
Dylan looked over at Rex, who was still in the fetal position, with his blankets wrapped tight around him. He wondered if he was really asleep or just faking it.
