by Anita Oh
"Sam's in his room," he said when we got inside, then he left me standing by the door and walked away.
I watched him for a moment, not sure what he was playing at. Was he annoyed at me for some reason? Arguing was our thing; it was how we communicated. If he wasn't snarking at me, how was I supposed to know what he was thinking?
I sighed and headed up the stairs to see Sam. Tennyson wasn't my priority right now.
As I got to Sam's door, my heart pounded. I didn't want to do this, to rake over all those feelings and put everything out in the open to be scrutinized. That was the actual worst. Feelings should be tightly compressed in a hidden place; that was the best way to deal with them. Everyone knew that.
I knocked on the door, worried maybe I'd throw up.
He called for me to come in, and I creaked the door open warily. Every instinct in my body said to run, but I forced myself to go into the room.
Sam was sitting at his desk with his back to me. For a moment, I watched him: the broad stretch of muscles across his back, the way his hair curled against the nape of his neck. It made the churning in my stomach twist into something else, something sharp but not entirely unpleasant.
"We need to talk," I said, echoing his words back to him.
He startled and jumped up from his seat.
"Lucy!" he said. "Is everything okay?"
I nodded. "I'm fine. I just wanted to clear a few things up."
I followed him over to the window seat and sat down facing him. I didn't even know where to start. I took a deep breath and just let it all spill out.
"I meant what I said the other day. I might've been a little harsh about it, but the basics were true."
He nodded, staring down at his hands.
"And I know it's not your fault if I was seeing things that weren't there. Between us, I mean." I looked up at the ceiling, trying to pretend I was somewhere else, anywhere else. This was so awkward and horrible.
"Lucy…"
I shook my head. "Let me keep going, or I won't get this all out." I couldn't listen to him try to explain his feelings, to tell me kindly that he didn't think of me that way. It was obvious, even without the words being lodged into my brain for the rest of my life. I took a deep breath. "Whatever else happens, you were the first friend I ever had. For a long time, the only friend. That's the only thing that should matter, right? Even though I’m still mad at you, I'm not ready for our friendship to end. I’ll work on trying to forgive you."
He grabbed me up into a crushing hug.
"I thought you hated me," he said into my hair. "I thought I'd ruined everything."
"You dummy."
I clutched at his sleeve, the warmth of his body seeping into my skin. The twisting in my stomach got sharper, more painful, but there was a sweetness to it as well. Even if Sam didn't feel the same way about me, at least I had him in my life.
"I should go and let you study," I said, pulling away from him.
He shook his head. "I was only trying to distract myself," he said. "Stay a while. Tell me about your summer."
There wasn't much to tell, but we chatted for a while. I wasn't sure how to steer the conversation around to Hannah or where she might be. I didn't want Sam to think that was the only reason I'd made up with him, not when things were still so fragile between us. Even if it was mostly the truth.
"So, I was talking to my dad," I said during a lull in the conversation. So smooth.
He raised his eyebrows.
"I'm not trying to pick a fight," I said.
"Are you still mad at him?"
"Do you even need to ask? It's not even the same planet of angry. What he did to us isn't something that can be forgiven."
Sam didn't say anything, but he looked as if he wanted to.
"Anyway, that's not the point. The point is, I wanted to talk to him about Hannah Morgan. I need to find her, Sam. It's my fault she got taken." My voice cracked on the last word, and I looked away.
Sam shook his head. "How can you think that? It's nobody's fault. The Others, they have a plan, Lucy. No matter what you had done, or your father or me or Hannah or anyone, they were always going to come for her on that day, at that time."
"You know a lot about them?" I said softly.
"No," he whispered, biting his lip. "I don't remember."
I reached out and took his hand. "Sam, you can tell me anything."
He glanced up at me and then out the window. "It's nothing, really. Just flashes of things. Nothing that could help her."
I squeezed his hand. "My dad thinks she's being kept at the same place that they took you."
There was fear in his eyes when he looked at me. "That place," he whispered. "It's hell."
"We need to save her," I said. "She might have tried to hurt us, but she doesn't deserve that. She's just a girl."
He held on to my hand so tightly that I thought my fingers would snap.
"Everything was gray," he said, sounding a whole world away. "Hopeless. Endless. There was only gray and pain." He shuddered. "I wasn't awake a lot of the time, but when I was, they were doing things to me. Experiments." He closed his eyes, wincing. "I don't remember anything. Only one word. Establishment."
Chapter 5
The word seemed to echo in the room for the longest time. I had no idea why, but I felt as if it held some strange power that I didn't understand. Establishment. The word seemed to hook on to something inside of me, pulling it to the surface from the murkiest depths.
"I need to go," I told Sam, pulling my hand out of his grasp. For some reason, it seemed wrong for him to be touching me, but I couldn't understand why. "I'm sorry. I just feel so strange all of a sudden."
I got to my feet and stumbled.
"Lucy, what's wrong?"
I shook my head. I felt as if as soon as I tried to speak, that hook would pull that thing up from inside of me and out into the open.
"You can't go out there alone if you're not feeling well."
I staggered away from him to the door, trying to get away from Sam. That word. Establishment. What was the significance of it? And if it had something to do with the Others, why was I reacting to it?
I could see Sam pulling on his shoes to follow me and hurried out. Somehow, I got down the steps without injuring myself, then made a dash for the front door. I could hear Sam behind me, so I moved faster, but before I could get outside, I barreled right into Althea. That seemed to be a pattern with me lately.
"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, taking me by the forearms.
She glanced over my shoulder at Sam and gave him a nod. Then she led me into the Golden common room and sat me down on a comfortable sofa. I barely knew what was happening.
"Stay there, and I'll make a pot of tea."
I nodded vaguely. The strange feeling was fading a little, but I chased it, wanting to follow it to see where it had come from, to see what it was. It frightened me, but at the same time, I craved it as well. The rest of the world seemed to exist on the other side of a curtain, hazy and not quite real. Then, suddenly, it snapped back into focus.
"Althea, what's happening here?"
Tennyson was standing in the doorway, staring at me although he was speaking to Althea. The hook tugged at me again, but this time I tried to ignore it, to fight it.
"Everything's fine, Tennyson. You don't need to worry." Althea appeared again with a teapot and cups on a tray. "Tea?"
Tennyson stared at the teapot for a strangely long time. It was a pretty teapot with gold edging and cherry blossoms, but I wasn't sure it warranted that level of attention. Maybe he had super conflicting feelings about tea. Eventually, he shook his head.
"No. Thank you."
He didn't look at me again as he left the room. Weirdo.
Althea poured the tea and handed me a cup. "It's a special blend," she said. "It will help to calm you."
I sniffed it. It smelled strongly of licorice and a little minty. I wrinkled my nose as I took a sip, but it wasn't that bad.
/>
"So," said Althea. "What just happened?"
I opened my mouth to tell her but found I couldn't explain. I didn't know myself.
"I've been talking to my father, trying to find out where Hannah could be. He told me to talk to Sam, and I suppose I just freaked out."
Althea's face was hidden by her cup, so I couldn't read her expression. "A panic attack?"
I shrugged. "I'm not sure. I haven't had a panic attack before, so, maybe?"
"Pounding heart? Chills? Trouble breathing?"
I shook my head. That sounded awful, but it wasn't what had happened. "It was more like a hook inside of me, trying to drag something out."
Althea lowered her cup a little to blow on her tea, and steam rose up around her. "And you think it was something that Sam said that caused it? Something about the Others?"
I didn't want to think about it. I couldn't bring that word to my mind and risk it happening again. I sipped my tea while I tried to form an answer.
"I don't know," I told her eventually. "I thought it was, but it might have been a coincidence."
"Do you still feel it?"
I shook my head. I'd started feeling much calmer as soon as Althea came near me. The tea was helping, too. She should be a therapist or something.
"It's more like the echo of it," I said. "Or a shadow. I can feel where it was, but I can't actually feel it."
"Have you felt anything else strange since you've been back at school?"
I thought about the bruise on my leg but shook my head. "No, nothing important."
Althea smiled at me. "I'll do some reading, but I've never heard of anything like this before. If something strange is happening, I'll help you figure it out. Don't worry." She set her cup back down on the tray. “Our information about Hannah Morgan — I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet, have I?”
I shook my head and sipped at my tea as she told me about more disappearances, other people who had been taken by the Others. Even though the tea was settling my nerves, her news was really distressing.
“I’ll forward you the information. Maybe you can find some pattern in it, something that might give us a clue to where they’ve all been taken.”
That word whispered inside my head again, but I pushed it away and focused on Althea.
"Now, tell me all about your week. I haven't seen you at all!"
"I think my new roommate is evil," I said, and started telling her all about Katie Canterbury, relieved at the change in subject.
Katie was awake when I got back to my room. I still felt a bit odd and just wanted to sleep and forget the whole night, but she was bright-eyed and full of questions.
"Where have you been?" she asked, sitting up in bed with her laptop open in front of her. "I was getting so worried!"
If there had been anywhere else to go, I would have turned around and walked out.
"I'm fine," I told her. It was a lie, but that was none of her business.
She set her laptop aside and swung her long legs out of the bed. "You don't look fine. You look all flushed and weird!" Her eyes went big, and she gasped. "Did you sneak out to meet with your secret lover?"
I rolled my eyes and stomped over to my bed. "No."
"You can trust me, you know. I won't tell anyone."
"You'd say that if you were untrustworthy," I told her, getting a pair of clean pajamas out of the drawer. "Saying you’re trustworthy means nothing."
"Okay, that's fair."
I could hear her moving around behind me, but I didn't look to see what she was doing. I peeled off my clothes and got changed into my PJs, then flopped back onto my bed.
"I'll earn your trust, though," Katie said. "We've got all year. Neither of us is going anywhere."
"Why do you even care?" I asked, staring up at the ceiling.
"Because I want us to be friends. A lot of the people at this school don't seem very nice. To be honest, you don't seem very nice either, but in a different way. I think if you were my friend, you would be nice and we'd have fun."
I lifted my head to look over at her. "Who says stuff like that?"
She shrugged. "I always say what I mean. You'll appreciate it once we're friends."
I snorted and stared back up at the ceiling. So many things had happened that I didn't know if I'd be able to get to sleep. My brain was whirring, and there was still the shadow of that hook in my chest. I felt like something had changed irrevocably, but I couldn't pinpoint what.
"Was it Tennyson Wilde?" Katie asked.
"What?"
"Your secret lover. I read online that you guys had a torrid affair last year but broke up because his mother didn't approve."
The thought of Tennyson doing anything torridly was kind of amusing, but still. Ew.
"No, Katie. Tennyson Wilde is not my secret lover. I don't have a secret lover."
"That's a shame," she said. "He's super hot. You could do worse, you know."
I wiggled up the bed and reached over to turn out the light.
"Goodnight, Katie."
Chapter 6
Even though I'd been sure I wouldn't be able to sleep, I drifted off as soon as Katie stopped asking me stupid questions.
The dream I fell into was the most vivid I had ever had. It seemed ultra-real, more real than reality.
I was in a long underground tunnel. The walls were tiled with mosaics of the brightest colors, forming pictures that I couldn't quite decipher, though I knew in that dreamlike way that they held some special significance. I followed the tunnel down a slope until I reached a set of doors carved with intricate silver patterns. The doors swung inward as I approached as if it was welcoming me, but I hesitated before entering. I knew that I was dreaming — and yet it wasn't a dream, and I didn't know if whatever was in that room would be able to hurt me.
Wind rushed through the tunnel behind me, so strong that it pushed me into the room. The doors slammed behind me, and I was plunged into darkness. Then I noticed the tiniest speck of light, like a distant star. The light grew bigger and bigger, pulsating like a firefly, until it grew bright enough to see by. The room seemed big, though I couldn't see enough to tell what kind of room it was, and I could hear dripping water that echoed in the vast space. As I tried to adjust my eyes enough to see properly, I noticed there was someone else in the room with me. My body tensed, but the expected spike of fear at being alone in the dark with a strange figure never came. Instead, it seemed reassuring, somehow. As if I was protected.
"Hello?" I called out. My voice echoed in the cavernous space.
"Lucy?"
I would recognize Tennyson Wilde's scoffing voice anywhere, though I didn't often hear him say my name. The sound of it gave me a strange feeling that I couldn't exactly describe, though it wasn't unpleasant.
"Why are you in my dream?" he asked.
I rolled my eyes, even though he probably couldn't see.
"What is this place?" I asked, more for something to say than because I expected him to have any answers.
"It's the first temple of Lycaon," Tennyson said.
I snorted. "The dude who fed Zeus his son and got you all turned into wolves? That seems like a good sign."
"The myth isn't true, but the man was real," Tennyson said. "There are records in our family library. Lycaon was the first of our kind."
The spark of light continued to get brighter until I could see the expression on Tennyson's face. He looked around in wonder, and I realized that with his wolfy eyes, he could probably see much better than I could.
He started moving away, walking toward something in the darkness. I followed him, not wanting to be left there alone.
"Next, you'll be telling me that Zeus was a real guy."
"Of course not," he said, though he sounded distracted. "Zeus is a mythological god. Lycaon is one of my ancestors. One of all our ancestors."
"So, it's a hereditary medical condition," I said, thinking aloud. "My dad was right."
"It's still the topic of much deba
te, but I think this place might contain the answers."
He reached a wall and stopped walking, looking up at it. I could tell there was a flat surface, but nothing more.
"This is amazing," he whispered, running his hands over the wall.
The light became brighter, and I glimpsed something of what he could see. More mosaics, intricately designed to tell a great story. In the shadows, it was impossible to get a sense of what the story was about, only that the scope of it was epic. The picture right in front of me was of a girl and a black wolf. The wolf was standing on its hind legs, its paw placed in the palm of the girl’s hand. They were surrounded by flames, but neither looked very concerned about it.
I became impatient for the light to get brighter so I could see more of the story of the girl and her wolf, but, before I could see any more, a jarring sound broke through the stillness. The tinny sound of a ringtone, one of those annoying songs that gets stuck in your head. It sounded far away, from a whole other world.
"Is that…" I looked at Tennyson in surprise.
His eyes were wide. "Nikolai?"
"He's here?"
Tennyson shook his head. "He was studying in my room when I fell asleep."
I laughed. "Very funny."
He raised an eyebrow.
"This isn't actually your dream," I explained. "There's no reason why we'd be hearing Nikolai's phone in my bedroom. If anything, it would be Katie jibber-jabbering at me again."
"Who's Katie?" he asked.
"Does this even feel like a dream to you?" I asked him.
"Do dreams ever?" he asked. "Do you think this is part of our bond?"
"We don't have a bond."
The temple started to fade around me.
"I'm waking up," Tennyson said. "If this is really your dream, come and see me and use the word 'budgerigar'. I'll respond with the word 'portable', and we'll both know that this is real."
I thought that was a stupid idea, but before I could tell him that, I woke up in my bed.
I sat up and looked around. Katie was fast asleep, definitely not playing that stupid song. Predawn light was filtering into the room, and I shivered as I climbed out of bed and pulled on a sweatshirt and some boots.
