Maya smiled. Counted the seconds she should hold it. “I just don’t have long, okay?”
“Then stop wasting precious time and get over here.”
Maya heard voices coming from down the hall. A pair of boys rounded the corner—
Eli.
Walking with that same slouchy kid, side by side, sharing a set of earbuds from the other kid’s phone. Maya and Eli locked eyes, neither speaking. He recognized her. No doubt—
“Come on, already.” Janice’s hand closed on Maya’s upper arm, her fingers digging in. Yanked her. Maya stumbled, one last glance at Eli, flames licking her vision, before she was pulled down the hall and through the doorway into the closet. Stumbled past Janice, grabbing on to a rack of costumes to keep herself upright.
Wait! Go talk to him! But of course she couldn’t. She should have given him a sign or something! But how?
“Hey!” Janice was leaning back into the hall. “Move along, pervs.”
She shut the door, slicing Maya in half.
The closet was dimly lit, deep shadows and a weak bulb, the mothball smell of the costume racks and garment bags and now the sweetness of Janice’s Candy Mint lip balm right by her ear.
She held Maya by the shoulders. “So, what do you think?”
“What?” said Maya, picturing Eli, all the walls on fire. Her arm throbbed where Janice had grabbed her.
“Duh.” Janice pinched Maya’s chin, dipped it down toward her costume.
“Hot,” Maya managed to say. “Is this for the play?”
“Nah, I just found it in here. I think it’s Guinevere, or Juliette—we’re star-crossed lovers, doomed to die together! Or maybe it’s just sexy witch number three.” She ran a finger along Maya’s sternum. “Boo, where’s that hot red top?”
I like this outfit.
“Sorry,” Maya mumbled through the noise and fire in her head. Observations were slipping through: Janice’s hair tumbling over bare shoulders, hourglass corset curves, the pile of her clothes on the floor near her bare feet. Definitely hot, but Maya felt like she was watching it from a distance, like on a TV in the corner of a room. Instead, all she pictured was Eli coming toward her. Run! But no, not away from him. Run after him! Before it was too late. Was he still out in the hall? Had to grab him and hang on before this blast got any worse.
Why the blast? Why now? Was it Eli? Or something about here, about Janice.
“Hey! Earth to Maya!” Janice gripped Maya’s wrists, put Maya’s hands on her waist. “I’m stuck in this costume and I can’t get out.”
“Yeah.” Maya looked at the floor. “You look great.”
“I’m going to look even better in a minute.”
Maya gritted her teeth, pushed her lips into a smile. You should want this. Of course. But…She glanced at the door. Who was that other boy? What was it like for Eli to see her? Was he okay?
“Hey.” Janice kissed her hard. Put her hands on Maya’s cheeks, holding her in place, the pressure just enough to make her cheekbones ache. Touched her nose with her own. “Come here.” Her breath hot. Close.
Maya shook her head. She was being stupid. “I’m just…”
“You’ve been so out of it. So distant. Ignoring all my texts for like an hour.”
“Sorry.” I had band. It was important to me. But maybe she had been kind of wrapped up in her own head. There had been that break halfway through when every other kid had checked their phone, but Maya had stayed away from hers, making small talk with Trevor instead. Just trying to make new friends.
Or avoiding. Neglectful.
Janice pressed her against the wall. Cold concrete, painted off-white. “This is good, right?”
“It’s just that I told my mom I’d be home by five and—”
Janice’s hands tightened around her shoulders. “Come on, are you really going to be that girl again?” Her smile cooling. Her eyes sparkling, glacial.
“No,” Maya said quietly. I don’t want to be that girl.
Which girl?
Ice girl.
Dead girl.
Blowing-up girl.
Eli…Stop thinking about Eli! You are so messed up and you’re ruining this!
“You need the Doctor,” said Janice. She bent, and returned with her flask.
Maya took it. Willed her fingers not to tremble.
You should want this.
For just a moment she heard a screaming in her head, all white noise and anger like a bomb, like walls disintegrating—she wanted to thrash, to take both hands and hang herself by her hair until it all tore free, and then rip the little hairs from her eyebrows and legs, everywhere, go at it with tweezers, with tape, with shears, with a steak knife, a lawn mower—
She put the flask to her lips. Tilt. Burn. Fought the tingle of oncoming tears.
“There you go,” said Janice, moving against her.
Another swig. Where was her Serenitab? That would help. But it was in her backpack. Miles away.
“Now shush.” Janice rubbed her hands over Maya’s hat, down around her neck. “We’re going to have a bio class of our own. Janice will make it all better.” She unlaced her top. Let it fall open, started kissing Maya’s neck.
Hands under Maya’s hoodie.
It feels good, she told herself. She turned her head so the tears could finally leak free. You don’t feel it but you should.
She made her hands move. At the same time, sank away. Some last flickers of the feeling of control, of bubbling possibility. I played well.
They just laugh at you in class.
Janice never laughs at you.
She moved her hands more.
“Mmmm,” said Janice in her ear, her hands busy.
Where was Eli now? Didn’t matter. Some feelings were feeling better. The moving. The effects of Dr. Pom. Set her adrift just enough to let her slip along with whatever current was strongest. It had been like this with Todd, with Nilo and Walsh. She’d get by.
Not my choice.
Hush.
This wouldn’t take that long.
September 19
“Holy shit,” said Graham, yanking out his earbud, which had been blaring Sideshow Fantasy. “Did you see that?”
He had.
Maya.
Slick sweat inside the wolf’s mask, his vision narrowing to the eyeholes, the grip of her clammy hands, how the blood from her thumb had dripped onto his, but not letting go, in the DOL, in his dreams since:
I got you.
And now she was ten feet away, staring back at him, eyes wide.
She looked terrified.
He wanted to say something. Anything. Hi. How are you? I’m sorry—
But whoosh she was pulled one way and he was pulled the other.
“We gotta haul ass,” said Graham, bolting through the double doors that led onto the stage. Eli struggled to keep up, feet shotgunning on the old wooden boards. Graham pushed through the gap in the curtain and leaped off the stage front, landing in the carpeted aisle. “Come on!” he called over his shoulder.
Eli knelt and braced himself with his hands, hopped off the stage, but still stumbled sideways when he landed, slamming his thigh against the wooden armrest of a seat.
“I thought we were getting the spotlights,” he called, his lungs already burning as he followed Graham up the aisle. Eli had been part of the Tech Squad for all of twenty-four hours, after Mr. McNaulty had found him in Mr. Caletti’s office yesterday afternoon. On Monday, Graham had said that the roster was full, but apparently not long after that, Mr. McNaulty had been promoted to essential personnel and found a way to add a spot.
Eli hadn’t seen Graham over the weekend. Mom had dismissed the idea of the game convention. She was glad Eli had made a friend—Eli had insisted that Graham had no idea who he really was, coul
dn’t imagine having to deal with Mom about that—but the convention was too big, too many people. Melissa had stuck up for him, and so Mom reluctantly ran it by Detective Pearson, but she said they couldn’t spare the personnel anyway.
“We can do the bulbs in a minute,” Graham said over his shoulder. “First we’re going on a sortie.”
A what?
Graham led the way up through the door at the rear of the auditorium. They climbed a steep, narrow staircase that ended at a short hallway. There was a small square door in the wall, padlocked shut. Graham produced a set of keys and opened it. “I can’t believe your girl is hooking up with Janice!” He crawled through the little door.
Eli stared in. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and a vast interstitial space revealed itself. It seemed to go and go, a shadow realm above the real world. A catwalk led away from the door, suspended by metal poles from the girders above. Below, a grid of perforated white ceiling panels. Gaps here and there where the light banks hung down.
“Come on!” Graham hissed. He’d become a silhouette.
What about the harnesses? Eli climbed slowly in. The catwalk had railings, but the gaps were still big enough to slip through, and it seemed unlikely that those ceiling panels would stop a fall. Graham was speeding along in a crouch, the entire catwalk vibrating in his wake. Eli crawled, his palms scraping on the cold metal grating.
He reached an intersection at the center of the auditorium and turned left toward the stage, the catwalk sloping slightly to match the angle of the ceiling. The farther down he went, the more the catwalk swayed. Eli peered through the gaps around the light banks, and his stomach clenched. The seats so far below.
He caught up with Graham at another T intersection, this one at the front of the auditorium, right beside the top of the thick red curtain, so close he could run his fingers over the felt.
“Where are we going?” Eli whispered. His hands and knees ached.
“You’ll see,” said Graham, winded. “Isn’t this awesome?”
Maybe, Eli thought. He felt hidden, secretive. Secrets require the belt. Except it was different from that—thrilling.
“It’s even better when there’s an assembly,” said Graham. “All the ants down there. Totally unaware. And you’re up here above them all.” He smiled. “Sometimes I drop shit on them, like little spitballs. Or even if you just spit, it breaks into lots of small drops on the way down, so you get maximum casualties.”
“You don’t get caught?” Eli asked.
“Everybody’s so stupid. They never look up. They figure someone behind them did it. I made an actual fight break out once. Like Zeus, moving the people to your will. Sometimes I imagine what would happen if the whole thing came down on them.”
Came down?
“Can you imagine that? This whole roof? Like BAM. That would shut them up.” Eli waited for a smile or something, a sign that Graham meant it as a joke, but he just stared down through the gap by the lights, his expression serious. Then he slapped the scaffolding with his palms. “We gotta keep moving. You ready?”
Eli nodded. For what?
They headed along the curtain, to the front corner of the auditorium. There was another square door in the wall. Graham pushed it open. “Just through here. This is the critical part of the sortie. Gotta be super-quiet now, okay?”
Okay.
Graham put his legs through the hole and twisted around. He took hold of two bars and climbed down a ladder on the other side, raising his eyebrows at Eli.
Eli slid through, banging his head on the top of the doorway. Clumsy, out of shape, bound to fall to his death at any minute. Keep it together! He gripped the worn metal rungs and climbed down.
He crouched beside Graham. They’d come down about twenty feet. In front of them was a more cramped ceiling space with light bleeding up from below. Graham put a finger to his lips, then started inching along a plywood walkway, about three feet wide, that rested on a thick steel support beam. To the right was a brick wall. To the left, girders ran out across pools of white ceiling panels to a cinder block wall. Pinholes of light shone up through some of the panels, while others were already dark.
Graham crept a little ways ahead and then began easing himself onto one of the girders. He inched out over a lighted area of the ceiling, holding on to metal supports that drew triangles between the girder and the roof beams above them. He stopped about ten feet out, made a motion with his hand to his ear like he was listening below, and then smiled at Eli and waved for him to join.
Eli looked at the narrow girder, the ceiling below. There was no way. He could barely jump off a stage without injuring himself.
Graham waved to him more emphatically, then he kneeled and extended a leg behind him until his foot found the next girder. He braced himself in a push-up position, stretched his other leg, and lay down, his sneakers hooked on the one girder, the other beneath his chest. He slipped his fingers underneath the edge of the ceiling panel below and carefully lifted it. A triangle of light burst upward.
Graham peered through the gap. Looked at Eli with a wide-eyed grin.
Eli’s heart hammered. Maybe he should go back.
Graham waved to him again.
Sound wafted up from the room below. Rustling. Then a moan, like a girl. Eli’s blood went hot.
He wanted to leave.
He wanted to see.
Graham waved more emphatically. Come ON!
Do as you’re told, Jacob.
Eli took hold of the closest support beam and inched his way onto the girder. Grabbed the next beam, shuffled toward Graham. He caught a view through the gap: a student-made poster on the wall. It had a big palm tree and said SOUTH PACIFIC. He moved farther out. Saw costume racks—
And the bare back of that girl Janice. Another sighing sound.
He wobbled, gripped the support beam tighter with clammy fingers. Graham tugged on his sleeve, motioned that he should get in the same position. Eli knelt, thought about lying down like Graham had, but froze. This was far enough.
Graham leaned away from the hole and motioned for Eli to take a turn.
Don’t look, this is wrong. But he leaned over. He knew what he was seeing. Screamed at himself to leave and felt himself getting hard all at once.
Janice’s flowing hair, a silky costume ruffled around her waist. Leaning against the wall, against Maya whose shirt was also off. A lavender-colored bra. Her black hat still on.
Eli winced. Rock-hard now. No! He couldn’t have these feelings. In the red dark they had to be hidden—but also it was her and it wasn’t right! Then again, she didn’t know, and he was so hard it hurt, pressing against his jeans, a shiver coursing through his body—
Graham tapped his shoulder, smiling big and nodding. He leaned over for another turn.
Eli sat back, face burning. Glad to lose the view. Craving more of it.
Graham’s pelvis was moving. He’d unbuttoned his jeans, his hand down there working.
A heavy sigh from below. Eli shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. His urges like enemies. He knew what it felt like when someone came into your space uninvited. He also remembered the sounds through the ceiling. But this was different. Nothing wrong with what these girls were doing. But something wrong with what we’re doing.
They don’t mind, Gabriel said. They’re drowning in sin and they like it.
“Oh yeah,” Graham suddenly said at a normal volume.
Eli slapped Graham’s shoulder. Why’d you do that?
The rustling of costume ceased.
“Did you say something?” Janice asked.
Graham started snickering to himself. Held up a finger to Eli, as if to say wait, and then put a hand half over his mouth. “Finish the job!”
“Oh shit!” Maya had spotted them. She lunged toward the racks of costumes.
Jan
ice whirled, her eyes finding the ceiling gap. “What the hell?”
We have to go! Eli scrambled, pivoting toward the walkway. He grabbed Graham’s shoulder. Come on!
Graham yanked himself free. “What are you—”
Eli wobbled, lost his grip on the support beam. One foot slid off the girder. He threw himself sideways, reaching, flailing—
He crashed into Graham and they both went down.
The ceiling smashed apart. Supports tearing free, panels splintering—
He almost landed on his feet, but his right leg crumpled under him, pain spiking up from his ankle. His shoulder slammed into the tiled floor, and then he was on the ground, his head falling on top of Graham’s chest.
“Oh my God!” Janice shouted.
Graham scrambled from under him, wheezing. Eli rolled onto his side, his shoulder burning, his arm going dead, trying to suck in air. Like his lungs wouldn’t work. Blinked in the dust from the ceiling.
Janice was yanking her dress up. Maya had thrust herself beneath and behind a costume rack. She sat on the floor, her back against the wall, hidden in the shadows of the hanging garments, a hand thrown across her chest but shit, he shouldn’t look there, or at her bare navel—
Looking isn’t wrong—but no, we weren’t invited! She didn’t ask for this, just like I didn’t—
Her pants unbuttoned so he could see a bit of her teal underwear. It had white dots and ahhh, he was still hard, he wanted to touch her, he wanted to cry, to take her hand and run, could they run? But where?
“You little dick, Graham!” Janice shouted.
Graham was struggling to sit up, cradling one arm with the other. His face was bright red and his pants were halfway down his butt, his erection poking from his boxers.
“Get the fuck out of here!”
“God, calm down, Janice!” Graham pulled at his pants. “What’s the big deal?”
“You’re a creep, how about that?” Janice lunged for the door, yanked it open, grabbed Graham by his wounded arm and dragged him to his feet.
“Ow, stop!” Janice was taller than him and he’d barely gotten his balance when she shoved him. “No, wait!”
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