by Meg Cabot
“Doesn’t it feel good,” she asks me, “to know you’re making such a difference in people’s lives, Heather?”
“Um,” I say. “Sure.”
Although I’m pretty sure the people whose lives I’m making the biggest difference in—the student workers—just wish Justine would come back.
While Rachel winds down from her Pansy-induced high, I get on the phone and take care of a few things that I feel I’ve been neglecting.
First I call Amber in her room. When her sleepy voice croaks, “Yeah?” into the phone, I gently put the receiver back into the cradle. Okay, Amber’s still alive. Check.
Then I call St. Vincent’s to see how Jordan is doing. He is, I learn, doing better, but they still want to hold him for observation for another night. I don’t really want to, but I figure I should speak to him—you know, seeing as how it’s my fault he got hurt in the first place.
But when the switchboard puts my call through to his room, a woman answers. Tania. I can’t deal with fiancées early in the morning, so I hang up. I feel guilty about it though, and order a half-dozen get well balloons from a local florist, instructing them to be delivered to St. Vincent’s with the highly personal message,Get Well Soon, Jordan. From Heather. Likely they will get lost in all of the other gifts his fans are no doubt sending him—an overnight candlelight vigil also took place outside St. Vincent’s ambulance bay, apparently—but at least I can say I tried.
Thinking about Jordan and his cracked skull reminds me of Christopher Allington. A real detective would, of course, follow up on the conversation we’d had the night before.
So I decide to take another crack at him. I tell Rachel I’m going to the bathroom. But really I go to the elevator and take it up to the twentieth floor.
No one’s supposed to go up to the twentieth floor but the Allingtons and their guests, which is why the carpet in the hallway outside the penthouse is really one big motion detector that goes off whenever somebody steps on it, including the Allingtons. This alarm causes a camera to be switched on, which then conveys an image of the interloper on a viewing screen at the guard’s desk in the lobby.
But since the guard on duty that day is Pete, I’m not too worried about being busted. We’ve caught any number of freshmen on the twentieth floor, most of whom have been sent there by conniving upper classmen in search of the “Fischer Hall pool.” The elusive Fischer Hall pool did once exist, but in the basement, not the penthouse, and it’s a favorite senior prank to send unsuspecting first-years to the twentieth floor in search of it, knowing they’ll trigger the motion detectors and get busted for being outside the president’s apartment.
I step boldly onto the nondescript carpeting and lift a finger to poke at the doorbell to the Allingtons’ apartment. I can hear a strange whistling sound beyond the door, and realize that this must be Mrs. Allington’s birds, the cockatoos about whom she worries so incessantly when she’s had too much to drink. When I press on the doorbell, the whistling turns into maniacal shrieking, and for a minute, I panic. Really. I forget all about being a detective slash novelist slash physician slash jewelry designer, and want to run back to the elevator…
But before I have a chance to ding and ditch, the door swings open, and Mrs. Allington, bleary-eyed and dressed in a green velour caftan, blinks at me.
“Yes?” she demands, in a remarkably unfriendly manner, considering the fact that just two weeks or so ago, I’d held her hand while she barfed into one of the lobby planters. Behind her, I catch a glimpse of a six-foot-tall wicker cage, within which two large white birds scream at me.
“Uh, hi,” I say brightly. “Is Christopher here?”
Mrs. Allington’s puffy eyelids widen a little, then go back to normal. “What?”
“Chris,” I repeat. “Your son, Christopher. Is he here?”
Mrs. Allington looks truly pissed off. At first I think it’s because I’ve woken her up, but it turns out that’s only part of it.
No, what I’ve really done is outrage Mrs. Allington’s sense of propriety.
I know! Who even knew she had one? But it turns out she does.
She says, enunciating as carefully as if I were a foreigner, “No, Chris is not here, Justine. And if you had been raised properly, you’d know that it is considered highly inappropriate for young women to pursue boys so avidly.”
Then she slams the door very hard, causing her birds to shriek even more loudly in surprise.
I stand staring at the closed door for a minute or so. I have to admit, my feelings are kind of hurt. I mean, I’d thought Mrs. Allington and I were close.
And yet she’s still calling me Justine.
I probably should have just gone away. But, you know. I still needed to know where Chris was.
So I reach out and ring the bell again. The birds’ screaming rises to fever-pitch, and when Mrs. Allington pulls open the door this time, she looks not only pissed off, but practically homicidal.
“What?” she demands.
“Sorry,” I say, as politely as I can. “I really don’t mean to bother you. But could you just tell me where I might find Chris?”
Mrs. Allington has a lot of loose skin on her face. A lift here and there might have done the trick, but she really isn’t the nip-and-tuck type. She’s more the never-move-your-mouth-when-you-speak old money New England type. Kind of like Mrs. Cartwright. Only scarier.
Anyway, some of that loose skin beneath her chin trembles a little as she glares at me.
Finally she says, “Can’t you girls just leave him alone? You’re always chasing after him, causing him trouble. Can’t you just go after some other boy? Aren’t there plenty in this dorm?”
“Residence hall,” I correct her.
“What?”
“It’s a residence hall,” I remind her. “You said dorm. But it’s actually a—”
“Go to hell,” Mrs. Allington says, and she slams the door in my face again.
Wow. Talk about hostile. Instead of psychoanalyzing me all day, Sarah should maybe turn her attention to the Allingtons. They have way more problems.
Sighing, I turn around and press the down button for the elevator. I can’t be sure, but I think Mrs. Allington has maybe already been at the bottle… and it isn’t even ten o’clock in the morning yet! I wonder if she’s always soused this early, or if this is a special occasion. Like to celebrate Rachel’s Pansy Award, maybe.
When I get back downstairs, I nearly ram into this skinny girl in the hallway. She’s headed into Rachel’s office, so I start to ask if I can help her, but when she turns around, I see that it’s Amber.
That’s right.
Chris Allington’s Amber, from Idaho. The one I just woke up.
“Oh,” she says, recognizing me. “Hi.” Herhi is less than enthusiastic. That’s on account of her still being half asleep. She’s even in her pajamas. “You’re not—you’re not the hall director, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m her assistant. Why?”
“ ’Cause I just got a call saying I have to come down here this mornin’ for a mandatory meeting with Rachel Walcott—”
At that moment, Rachel comes click-clacking out of our office, clutching a file folder to her chest.
“Oh, Heather, there you are,” she says, brightly. “Cooper’s here.”
I think I must have made some sort of disbelieving noise, because Rachel peers at me curiously and says, “Yes, he is.” Then her attention turns to the girl next to me. “Amber?” Rachel asks.
“Yes, ma’am.” Amber sounds subdued. Well, and what eighteen-year-old freshman who’d been forced to wake up at ten o’clock in the morning for a meeting with the residence hall director wouldn’t sound subdued?
“This way, Amber,” Rachel says, laying hold of Amber’s elbow. “Heather, if you could just hold all my calls for a few minutes—“
“Sure,” I say, and go into our office. Where, sure enough, I find Cooper shaking his head at the jar of condoms on my desk.
; “Hi, Cooper,” I say, a little warily. Which I think is understandable, given, you know, that the last time he’d shown up in my office, it had been to tell me that my ex-boyfriend was engaged to someone else. What could have happened now?
Then I feel a stab of panic, remembering Marian Braithwaite. Oh God. She and Cooper have made up. They’ve made up, and are getting married, and Cooper is here to tell me he needs the apartment back because they’re going to put the nanny in there—
“Hi, Heather,” Cooper says, looking much more like his normal self in jeans and his leather jacket than he had in that tux. “Got a minute?”
Hi, Heather, got a minute? Hi, Heather, got a minute?What kind of way is THAT to start a conversation? Could there be three other words in the English language more effective at striking terror deep within the heart than Got a minute? No. No, I do NOT have a minute! Not if you’re going to tell me what I think you’re going to tell me. Why her? WHY? Just because she’s smart and accomplished and pretty and thin—
“Sure,” I say, in what I hope sounds like a cool, assured voice, but which I’m pretty sure comes out sounding more like a bleat. I gesture for Cooper to sit down, and curl up in my desk chair, wishing I could have a bottle of whatever it was Mrs. Allington had been nipping at all morning.
“Listen, Heather,” Cooper says. “About last night… ”
No! Because if there are three words in the English language worse than Got a minute? they can only be About last night…
And now I’ve had all six of them, one right after the other. It isn’t fair!
And what had even happened last night? Nothing! I’d gotten out of the cab Cooper had put me in and gone straight inside to bed.
Okay, maybe I’d stayed up for an hour or so working on a new song.
And maybe that song had been about him.
But he couldn’t have heard it. I played super softly. And I never even heard him come in.
Oh, why me? WHY ME???
“I think I owe you an explanation” is the next unexpected thing out of his mouth.
But wait.I owe you an explanation? That doesn’t sound like a prelude to asking me to move out. In fact, it almost sounds like an apology. But what on earth does Cooper have to apologize for?
“I met with a friend from the coroner’s office last night after we left the ball,” he begins. “And she said—”
Wait a minute.She said? Cooper ditched me for another girl?
“That’s where you went?” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. “To meet a girl?”
Oh… my… God. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be cool and self-assured like… well, like Rachel? Why do I have to be such a complete spaz all the time?
Fortunately Cooper, being completely ignorant of my plans for him (you know, the fact that he’s going to marry me and be the father of my three as yet unborn children and the inspiration for my Nobel Prize—winning medical career), doesn’t catch on that I’m jealous. He seems to think I’m still angry because he made me leave the party early.
“I didn’t want to say anything to you before,” he says. “You know, in case she didn’t have anything to tell me. But the fact is, therewas something a little strange about those girls’ bodies.”
I just stare at him. Because I can’t believe it. Not that his “friend” in the coroner’s office had found something strange about Elizabeth’s and Roberta’s bodies. But that he’d bothered to consult with her on my behalf in the first place.
“B-but,” I stammer. “But I thought… you thought… I was just making the whole thing up. Because of missing the thrill of performing… ”
“I do,” Cooper says, with a shrug. “I mean, I did. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”
“And?” I lean forward eagerly. “What is it? Drugs? Were they drugged? Because I thought Detective Canavan said no drugs were detected in their systems.”
“None were,” Cooper says. “It wasn’t drugs. It’s burns.”
I stare at him. “Burns? What kind of burns? Like… cigarette burns?”
“No,” Cooper says. “Angie isn’t sure.” Angie? Cooper knows someone in the coroner’s office named Angie? Just how had he and Angie met, anyway? Angie didn’t sound like the kind of name a medical examiner would have. An exotic dancer, maybe. But not a doctor…
“And you have to take into account that those bodies,” Cooper goes on. “Well, they’re kind of a mess. But Angie says they did find burn marks on both girls’s backs, marks they can’t explain. It’s not enough for them to change the coroner’s ruling—you know, that the deaths weren’t accidental. But it is… strange.”
“Strange,” I repeat.
“Yeah,” Cooper says. “Strange.”
“So… ” I can’t look him in the eye. Because I can’t believe he’s actually taking me seriously.Me, Heather Wells, of “Sugar Rush” fame!
And all it had taken were a couple of murders…
“So maybe I’m not just making it all up out of displaced aggression toward my mother?” I ask.
Cooped looks taken aback. “I never said you were.”
Oh, right. That had been Sarah.
“But you believe me now?” I prod him. “I’m not just your little brother’s crazy ex-girlfriend? But maybe, like, a rational human being?”
“I’ve never thought of you as anything but,” Cooper says, a flash of annoyance in his blue eyes. Then, seeing my expression, he says, “Well, crazy, maybe. But I never thought of you as irrational. Honest, Heather, I don’t know where you get this stuff. I’ve always thought of you as one of the—”
Most beautiful, ravishing creatures you’ve ever met? Most intelligent, stunningly gorgeous women of your acquaintance?
Sadly, before he gets a chance to tell me what he’s always thought of me—or to fall to one knee and ask me to be his bride (I know. Still, a girl can dream), the phone rings.
“Hold that thought,” I say to Cooper, and pick up the receiver. “Fischer Hall, this is Heather.”
“Heather?” It’s Tina, the desk worker on duty. “Hold on, Julio wants to talk to you.”
Julio gets on the line. “Oh, Haythar, I sorry,” he says. “But he’s doing it again.”
“Who’s doing what again?” I ask.
“That boy, Gavin. Ms. Walcott told me—”
“Okay, Julio,” I say, careful not to let Cooper catch on, considering what happened last time. “I’ll meet you at the usual place.” Then I hang up.
Talk about bad timing! Right when Cooper had been about to tell me what he really thinks about me!
Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure I want to know. Because most likely it’s going to be something like “one of the best data-entry typists I’ve ever known.”
“Stay right here,” I say to Cooper.
“Is something wrong?” Cooper asks, looking concerned.
“Nothing I can’t handle in a jiffy,” I say. Oh my God, did I just say jiffy? Well, whatever. “I’ll be right back.”
Before he can say another word, I hightail it from the office, running for the service elevator, where I tell Julio, who meets me there, to take the control lever, and Go, go, go!
Because the sooner we get back, the sooner I can find out if, you know, there’s a chance for me where Cooper is concerned, or if I should just give up on men already. Maybe New York College offers a major in being a nun. You know, giving up guys completely, and embracing celibacy. Because that’s seriously starting to look like it might be the way to go for me.
As Julio takes me up to the tenth floor, I climb the elevator walls and slide through the open ceiling panel. Up in the elevator shaft, it’s warm and quiet, as usual.
Except that I can’t actually hear Gavin laughing, though, which is not usual. Maybe he’s finally gotten his head cut off by a snapping cable, as Rachel has so often warned him he might. Or maybe he’s fallen. Oh, God please don’t tell me he’s at the bottom of the shaft…
I’m reflecting upon this—wha
t I’m going to do if all I find on top of Elevator 1 is Gavin’s headless corpse—as the service elevator approaches the two other cars, which are both sitting in front of the tenth floor.
As we rise above them, I see no sign of Gavin—not even his headless corpse. No empty beer bottles, no chortling laughter, nothing. It’s almost as if Gavin had never been there…
The next thing I know, a thunderclap shakes the shaft, leaving a roaring in my ears, like the sound of ocean waves, only magnified a thousand times.
I’ve stood up—a little unsteadily—to get a better look at the roofs of the cabs below, and when I feel the explosion rip beneath my feet, I grab instinctively—but blindly—for something—anything—to hold on to.
Something that feels like a thousand razor blades slices my hands, and I realize I’m holding a metal rope that’s vibrating crazily from the force of the explosion. Still, I hold on to the bucking steel cable, because it’s the only thing that separates me from the oblivion of the dark shaft below. Because there’s nothing else beneath my feet. One minute I’m standing on the roof of the service cab, and the next, the roof has caved in beneath my feet, crumpling like a can of Pringles.
Hmmm. Pringles.
It’s funny what you end up thinking about right before you die.
I avoid getting hit by the rain of steel from above by sheer luck alone. The cable I’ve grabbed hold of continues to buck wildly, but I cling to it with both my hands and legs, wrapping one foot around the other.
Something strikes me hard enough on the shoulder as it plunges past to make me loosen my grip on the cable, stunned breathless by the impact.
That’s when I look down, wild-eyed, and see that the service car is gone.
Well, not gone, exactly. It’s free-falling below me like a soda can someone has thrown down a trash chute, the loosened cables—all but the one I’m holding—trailing behind it like ribbons on a bridal veil.
