Sugar & Squall

by J. Round

  I rolled over and looked at the digital clock beside the bed. Eight a.m. – too early for thoughts so serious. I was about to go back to sleep, when I noticed Jemma’s bed was empty.

  My stomach tightened at the sight of the vacant space. The idea Logan might have suffered the same mysterious fate as the rest of the school populous pushed toward the forefront of my brain. I was trying to hold it off and think things through when I noticed the note.

  It was folded over once and placed just under his pillow, hard to miss being bright pink and all.

  I threw my quilt off, swiveled my legs over the side of the bed and reached out for it, but the sudden movement made me faint and dizzy. My arm was like a tractor beam. I held it there in midair while I took a breath and regained consciousness before picking up the note. I eagerly devoured its contents.

  Morning, sleepy head. Guess what? No one’s around, so get dressed and come down to the dining hall. I made you breakfast. – L.

  There was no grand prose here hinting at any kind of non-Platonic relationship, but that wasn’t about to stop my imagination skipping and bounding away from me. I folded the note up and placed it under my pillow. I’d find an appropriate place (read: frame) for it later.

  As I dressed, I noted the room itself failed to provide any clues as to anyone else’s whereabouts. Jemma’s clothes still dotted the floor. Amy’s teddy still sat on her dresser, its single black button of an eye giving the illusion it was eternally peeking about. I patted it on the head before walking out and down to the dining hall.

  Moving along, the lack of noise was as disconcerting as ever. We’d been alone for days now. Even if it were weeks I doubted I would ever get used to it. Although I’d tried not to dwell on this, I couldn’t help but speculate where everyone had gone. I’d even considered I’d died out there on the beach and was now stuck in some kind of limbo awaiting Jennifer Love Hewitt to send me to the light. But then there was last night with Logan, and that was nothing if not vividly real.

  He wasn’t in the dining hall. I walked around for a while, finally noticing the middle table, the one we’d been sitting at prior, was made up. There was a glass of orange juice, a bowl of cereal and toast to the side, but it was another pink note weighed down with a fork that drew me toward it.

  I smiled. It wasn’t forced. I hoped Logan was watching. In fact, I was certain he was, and I imagined he’d be able to see the sincerity in it and sneak a little smile himself.

  I opened the note.

  I had planned to do scrambled eggs, but woke up late. I couldn’t find any in the fridge, and there aren’t any free-range chickens outside, sorry. I’ll be in the gym. – L

  I didn’t eat much. For one, it just felt weird slurping away on cereal in such a cavernous space with only long-faced windows to watch your every move. Two, I had the jitters – bad. I hadn’t taken him for the spontaneous, on-a-whim kind, though he had proved me very, very wrong last night.

  I gulped down a single mouthful of OJ, because I couldn’t bear to leave it there untouched with the toast, and stood.

  The gym was the newest part of the school and a contrast to everything else because it looked like it had been plastic-wrapped and literally dumped there at the back. One of the senior girls had toured me and two younger newbies around the day I arrived. The gym had been first on the list, so I knew my way there fine enough. We’d searched it before. Nothing came up.

  Access was via a short hall that ran down from the dining area. Soon I was standing at the double doors to the gym itself, my heart bouncing in my chest and a tingling sensation running over every inch of my body. The gas strut on the door wheezed as I pushed it open.

  The lights were out. The only windows were up near the top of the roof. What little light there was blanketed only the tops of objects so all I could make out was maybe a scoreboard up on the far wall, the bleachers on either side, and something in the middle.

  There was a whirring sound and the lights flickered on, forcing me to squint given the horrid combination of the hour and their overpowering brightness.

  At the center of the gym stood a replica of Stonehenge made out of gym mats and giant foam blocks all covered in thick blue vinyl. The industrial lights above gave it an otherworldly glow. It was like a crazy art installation, some post-modernist mumbo-jumbo you’d see a whole bunch of intellectuals standing around going ‘ah’ and ‘mmm’. The floor was freshly waxed, turning it to water, and the soft Stonehenge looked mirror-imaged because of it. Pretty damn clever, all considered.

  Visit Stonehenge – number two on the DNB. Mom had set off when she was seventeen and travelled the world before meeting Dad. Her first stop was Ireland, one of the few countries I’d never been.

  “What do you think?” Logan asked, walking over from the corner behind me.

  “Since when was Stonehenge blue?” It was all I could think of.

  “Do you know how long this took to put together?” He was pacing around his creation’s perimeter. “Getting the proportions and scale right, the correct number of blocks, dragging them all out of there.” He pointed at the storeroom in the corner.

  I gave him a curious look. He put his hands up in surrender. “Fine, so I got bored and it took me half an hour, but still, impressive, no?”

  “Very impressive,” I said, pacing around it. And it was. If you squinted it did indeed look like the real thing. There may have been glossy floorboards instead of meadow grass underneath, and I doubted this structure would be around for three millennia, but yes, it was impressive.

  “Is it or is it not the best megalith you’ve ever seen?” He was practically beaming with pride.

  “I can’t say I’ve seen that many.”

  “At least you can cross something else off your list.”

  “You’re really going to help me cross them off, one by one?”

  He folded his arms. “That was the plan. By my count, there are three to go.”

  “You memorized them?”

  “Sure. My memory does function, you know.”

  “I didn’t say–”

  “I know. Look, let’s just bask in this glorious creation, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  So we stood there looking at the makeshift Stonehenge a half-yard apart. That had somehow become the new uniform distance we abided by. I subtly tried to step closer, but it looked obvious, so I pretended I was correcting my balance instead.

  Logan had one arm across his chest, the other stroking the stubble on his chin. “In this light they remind me of hay bales.”

  “Hay bales? I thought you had a memory. Have you ever seen hay bales? They look nothing like this.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “Sure they don’t,” and I tacked “stupid” onto the end for good measure.

  “You can’t talk… bully girl.”

  I laughed out loud. “Bully girl? Is that the best you’ve got? My dad could come up with better insults.”

  Logan turned away. “Hey, I don’t know how to insult girls. I’m not into all that ‘treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ crap. In my books, a lady should be treated like a lady.”

  I really had to steady myself now, such was the laughter ensuing.

  “You’re calling me a lady. Man have you got a lot to learn.”

  Logan circled around in front of me. “All I’m saying is that the opposite sex should be treated with respect. I’d never hit a girl, for instance.”

  “What if the girl hit you?” I shoved him in the chest.

  I’d put in a lot of force, more than I’d realized. He bounced and staggered around before over-correcting and stumbling backwards into Stonehenge. The large foam block closest to him cushioned his fall, but it lost its top, starting a domino effect. Each block bowed and knocked into the next. Within ten seconds the entire masterpiece resembled a giant bucket of blue Legos emptied out onto the floor.

  I stood there while Logan emerged. I couldn’t tell whether he was about to break out in laughter or bur
st into tears. He flung one of the smaller blocks from out behind his back. It caught me right in the left leg, sending me spinning over onto the floor.

  “Hey!” I stammered, trying to stand up, but failing miserably and falling back onto my bum. “I thought you didn’t hit girls.”

  “I’d hardly call your actions ‘girly,’” he replied, half-covered in blue blocks.

  “That’s it,” I said, dragging the thrown block up off the ground and heading his way. I swung it down upon him. He deftly kicked it away with his right leg. I lost my balance, falling forward. He caught me around the ribs and rolled me onto the next block, bumping my elbow, sending tingles up and down my arm.

  I half-laughed, half-cried somewhere between pain and joy. He was laughing, too, piling more blocks on top of me until I felt for all intents and purposes like the meat in a giant foam sandwich.

  I burst from them to my feet. “I’m a black belt in ka-ra-te, you know.”

  “Wipe-on, wipe-off. That kind of stuff?”

  I smirked and tackled him onto the floor, but he was too quick, rolling over until he had me pinned completely, my arms caught under his thighs. He raised his head up, away from striking distance.

  “You’ve got me,” I said. “Now what?”

  “I haven’t got you at all,” he replied. “All you need to do is create some space, a bridge and then a diversion.

  “Flash you my boobs, I guess.”

  He laughed. “If you must. Roll your hips and shoulders.”

  I did as he said and his legs wavered, trying to maintain balance.

  “It’s no good,” I said. “You’re too strong.”

  “Says the sensei. Come on, try harder. Roll and then distract me.”

  Okay, I thought. You want it. You got it.

  I rolled hard, enough to get some space between us and bring my head up, where I playfully bit his shoulder.

  He jumped back, more from surprise then pain.

  “Jesus, I didn’t say bite me!” he laughed. “But okay, that works.” He stumbled back and I followed Nosferatu-like into the center of Foamhenge.

  It was stupid, highly immature, but no one cared. We could do anything. If I wanted to roll around in a demolished pile of blocks with a boy, then damn it, that’s just what I was going to do.

  After lunch, Logan informed me he had something to do, that we split up for the afternoon. I protested internally.

  Truthfully, I couldn’t bear to spend even a second away from him at the moment, but I let him go, careful not to come across overly clingy or wanting. As he so deftly pointed out, if I really needed something there was the school PA system; something I wouldn’t use in a million years. The sound of my own voice was bad enough, let alone amplified through a hundred speakers.

  I decided to do some snooping. I was curious to see what my competition was like, what made these Carver girls tick.

  The staff rooms were first, separated from the main dorm. One of the cooks was kind of kinky. She had a whole drawer full of dildos.

  Her neighbor was a family man. He had photos of his wife and kids in gold-gilded frames on the shelf, his stationary neatly arranged on the desk. English teacher, maybe. The only sign of dishevelment was his bed, the mattress having slid off onto the floor.

  The janitor’s room was completely barren. There were schematics and maps of the school pinned to the wall, and that was it. I studied them, looking for anything we might have missed, a secret hatch or stargate. Unlike the others, his bed was made up. Wherever he’d been during the disappearance, it hadn’t been here.

  Entering into the girls’ dorm, I started at the first room. Its occupants seemed particularly bonded. Pictures and posters were banned, but they’d gone one step further, a large board on the wall jam-packed with photos, concert tickets, things ripped out of magazines. I noticed one of the girls from the ferry. She’d had her hair tied up with two chopsticks. I’d always wanted to do that. Some pap would take of a shot of it and then the Chinese ambassador would be on the phone, blah, blah, international crisis.

  This girl looked cheerful with her friends in the pictures. I reached out and touched her face like you would a loved one. It was weird, being able to connect to something, or someone, that wasn’t there.

  The rest of the room was like any other. Clothes were hiding or strewn in every corner, hanging off any makeshift hook possible.

  The bed nearest the window had one of those lacy, doily U-pillows. It was something you’d see in a nursing home. The next bed’s sheets were tangled up into knots.

  Over the course of the afternoon, I made my way up and down the hall looking through the rooms. Each looked similar at face value, but they were miles apart when you looked closer, just as the girls that inhabited them were clearly individuals. Some showed cohesion, themes even. Others were sparse and minimalistic. Some were two-in-one – goth and emo on one side and prissy prom-ish on the other.

  I was in the last room on the hall. It was by far the messiest of them all. Every drawer was pulled open, clothes spilling from their woody mouths. I walked around the perimeter, admiring the nicks and nacks.

  There was a detailed map of the school discarded on the floor, an A4 version of one I’d seen pinned up in the janitor’s room. I picked it up. It wasn’t in English. The characters were foreign and I couldn’t quite pick the language. It was probably for some international student to find her way around. I let it float back to the floor and noticed an open diary nearby. I bent down to read it.

  It was thorough. Every date was filled with a brief summary of the day, with XOXO written at the end of each. I cringed.

  I flicked through the pages, laughing a little at the squabbles laid out in exacting detail, the author’s crushes, wants, and worries.

  The last entry was different. Every page before had perfect handwriting, symmetry, but this was clearly written in a rush. I started to read just as a voice boomed over the PA.

  “Kat Collins, report to the dining hall. I repeat, Kat Collins, report to the dining hall.” Shaking with fright, I muttered obscenities to the speaker.

  A bedside clock showed six p.m. The sun would be on its way out. I hadn’t realized I’d been up here so long, spying and prodding through everyone’s personal life, literally trudging unabated through their dirty laundry.

  I tore the page out and shoved it into my jeans’ pocket – I’d read the rest of it later – and headed to the hall.

  #

  The heavy rain that had been rolling over the last few days subsided come nightfall. We’d been locked in our own little world all day. The mystery surrounding everyone’s disappearance hadn’t come knocking on our door quite as often as it had in days gone by, so when Logan said we should head to the pier after dinner to check for boats, I knew it was an excuse to get me outdoors more than anything else, probably so I would stop pestering him about where he’d been all afternoon. The moon was waning gibbous, so it was plausible there would be something to see.

  I’d dressed up for the occasion. I’d found the jeans a day before rummaging around in the other girls’ rooms. They were label, a couple of sizes too small. I put on a sweater, something athletic.

  Outside, I took the lead. I was glad I’d worn a sweater. The wind was whipping around in a fervor. It had a distinctly fresh chill about it. I could feel the tip of my nose reddening.

  “At least it’s not raining,” Logan declared in optimism, raising his voice over the weather.

  “Maybe we’ll see something out there tonight. But then what are we going to do? Send up smoke signals?”

  “It’s an option.”

  We walked on, down the hill toward the pier.

  “You know, everyone’s still missing and everything, but I had fun today,” he said.

  I nodded. “I don’t know if I want to be found, rescued, whatever.”

  I hoped for a response along the lines of ‘I don’t want to be found either,’ but there was only wind singing in my ears.

  The
re was plenty of light. We were, however, careful where we placed our footing as we made our way down the hill. The ground was rocky, and there was little medical aid should one of us fall and break something.

  Eventually, we stood side by side looking down the length of the pier. A string of lights ran down the right-hand side, but one was out in the middle, giving the impression there were, in fact, two piers with a break in the middle.

  Logan was concentrating, eyes locked on the ocean, which rushed in and away from the rocky beach beside us. “Can you see anything?”

  I couldn’t. There were clouds, cumulus, if I remembered correctly. That was all. The ocean stretched out ahead, empty and barren.

  Logan spoke. “Maybe we should walk to the end. It looks a bit lighter up there.”

  “Sure,” I agreed. I’d skip to the moon and back if it meant being by his side.

  We started walking up the pier. I jumped ahead again. The wind shifted and hit me directly in the face, forcing me to look sideways. I pulled my arms inwards to fend off the temperature drop and tilted my head away, walking blindly.

  I was halfway down the pier, right in the area where the light was out, when I stepped on something. It slid out from under my foot and was enough to throw me off balance. I began to fall right. My arms went out trying to regain balance, but I was too far gone.

  The railing was close. I knew that. As I fell, I reached for it with my right hand. It connected, solid, my full weight following behind. And then there was a sharp wince before the railing broke free completely and gravity took hold.

  I felt myself fall further, without control, my left arm catching on something in my periphery. I hit water and spiraled down into the darkness. The mass and temperature around me pushed the air out of lungs. My bones pulled together like purse-strings in shock. I struggled, but the weight of my clothes dragged me deeper.

  I spun, unable to stabilize myself in the wash and black. Screaming in silence, I breathed out a string of bubbles and watched them climb through the water. I followed them in instinct, thrusting past each as their shapes bloated and distorted like airy sea jellies. I broke through the surface and into the night. I gasped, my chest filling and burning all at once.