Truly Devious

by Maureen Johnson

  “Where are you guys going?” she asked.

  “To the sunken garden,” Nate said. “To move a ramp. Or something. I don’t know. I thought I just had to write.”

  “Can I come?”

  “You want to move a ramp?” Stevie said.

  “It’s everyone’s dream,” Nate said, tugging his backpack higher on his shoulders. “Come to Ellingham Academy, move a ramp out of a hole in the dark.”

  “I just want to see what you’re doing,” Germaine said.

  “More Hayes news?” Stevie said.

  “I got fifty thousand views on that last one.”

  “That would be good on a tombstone,” Stevie said. “I got fifty thousand views on that last one.”

  “Say what you want,” Germaine said, a frosty edge in her voice. “I honestly don’t care.”

  When people say they honestly don’t care, they care. Germaine hadn’t done anything to Stevie. There was no reason to be spiky with her. Sure, it was a little unsavory what she was doing, but it didn’t seem to be hurting Hayes any. If anything, he literally had a new girlfriend running after him right now, in front of them, in the gathering dark.

  “Sorry,” Stevie said. “Just kidding.”

  “It’s fine,” Germaine replied crisply. It did not seem fine.

  The last lightning bugs of the season were dancing over the lawn as they entered through the gate. The hole in the ground looked a bit more ominous in the dark, and the dirty glass of the observatory caught the rising moon. There were piles of poles, and folded tarps, and the ramp.

  “Hayes?” Maris called.

  No reply. An unseen bird rustled in the treetops overhead.

  “Where is he?” Maris said.

  “Who knows?” Dash said. “He’s probably on the phone somewhere and left us with this to clean up. Come on.”

  “He’s got to be here somewhere,” Maris said. “Hayes!”

  Her bright, operatic voice rang from end to end of the garden.

  “You’ll figure this out fast,” Dash said, picking up some poles. “Hayes is never around to do the dishes.”

  Maris shifted around, and for the first time, Stevie saw a first year like herself, someone who’d fallen for someone fast and was rapidly realizing things were not equal on both sides.

  On their return home that evening, Nate went right to his room. Stevie decided to sit in the hammock chair in the common room and wait for Hayes to return. She could not fully explain why she did this. Maybe it was irritation. Maybe it had something to do with the tunnel. Had Hayes gone back there? Why had he turned like that and gone off on his own so deliberately?

  Whatever the case, the hammock chair was a good place to sit and watch some episodes of Stormy Weather. She had earned them. The hours passed. Nine became ten, which was when Janelle returned, her face flushed.

  “Hey,” she said, dropping to the floor by Stevie’s feet with a wide grin. “I was just doing some work with Vi. I saw you brought my poles back.”

  “I’ll always have your pole,” Stevie said. “And working with Vi?”

  “Studying,” said Janelle. “In the yurt.”

  “Yurt studying?”

  Janelle smacked Stevie’s shins playfully with the cord of her headphones.

  “I’ll get my stuff,” Janelle said. “I’ll sit with you.”

  Ten became ten thirty. Curfew was eleven, and there was no Hayes yet. Stevie began to think more about the tunnel. Hayes had clearly been in it before. Was it stable? It had been packed with dirt for many decades. It had been through all kinds of weather. It was locked. There were cracks. What if he’d gone down alone? What if it had gone down on his head?

  No. Hayes was just being Hayes.

  He wasn’t with Maris, though. Maybe he was with Gretchen?

  It didn’t matter where he was. So why was she so anxious?

  Because she had anxiety.

  Pix also moved into the common room wearing a flowing pair of cotton pants and a black tank top showing off her muscular arms as she knitted away and watched a documentary on her computer. Ellie and David floated in at just before eleven, both grinning. They dropped onto the sofa together.

  “So,” David said to Stevie, “exciting Saturday night?”

  “What’s the matter?” Ellie said. “You look kind of freaked out.”

  Before Stevie could reply, Pix pulled off her headphones and looked at the group.

  “Anyone know where Hayes is?” she asked. “He’s about to be late.”

  Everyone else replied in the negative. Stevie decided to look blank and ignore the question.

  Pix pulled out her phone and started texting.

  Stevie felt the electric zing of anxiety shoot down her arms. He would come in at any second. He was just being stupid. Don’t mention the tunnel. It would get everyone into trouble, probably, for no reason.

  Eleven became eleven thirty.

  “I hate calling Larry because people are late,” she said. “He’s not answering my texts. He didn’t tell anyone where he was?”

  Stevie felt a vein beating in her forehead.

  “Look,” Stevie said, “I don’t know where Hayes went—I don’t—but a couple nights ago? We went in the tunnel.”

  David and Ellie jerked their heads up at this. Janelle had headphones on and did not hear.

  “You need to be more specific,” Pix said. “There are a lot of tunnels.”

  “The one under the sunken garden.”

  “That one is filled in,” Pix said.

  “Not anymore,” Stevie said. “It was fine, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe he went back there?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Pix said. “Oh God.”

  Ten minutes later, Larry was at the door of Minerva.

  “Mark is already on his way to the tunnel,” he said to Pix. “Stevie, coat on. Come with me.”

  A few minutes later, Stevie was out in the cold alongside Larry, their breath puffing out in front of them, their flashlights making long, dancing dots on the ground.

  “I knew someone would try to get in there,” Larry said, gesturing for Stevie to get into the waiting golf cart. “I knew we should have welded it shut.”

  Stevie wrapped her arms tight around herself as the cart rumbled down the path.

  “At least you had the sense to tell us,” Larry said. “Jesus.”

  “It was fine,” Stevie said, though her voice sounded small. “It seemed okay.”

  “That thing isn’t sound,” Larry said. “It probably wasn’t sound when it was built and eighty years of burial couldn’t have helped. I told them to seal it. If he’s not in there, we’re going to go around to everywhere else you’ve been working, because I am going to find him and talk to him. Jesus, that tunnel . . .”

  Stevie’s heart began to thud as they drove along. They met another other cart containing Mark and the nurse, Ms. Hix, as they drove alongside the garden wall, then around into the woods. They parked on the dirt maintenance road.

  “Stay here,” Larry said to Stevie.

  Mark hopped out of his cart with a hard hat on. Ms. Hix was wearing a large puffer coat and had a fluorescent-orange emergency bag over her shoulder. The three moved into the woods. Stevie huddled inside of her coat.

  “Hatch is unlocked,” Larry said. It groaned as he pulled the door open. He started down the steps, shining his tactical flashlight into the space.

  “Hayes?” he shouted. “Hayes, speak up if you’re in there!”

  No reply.

  “I’m going in,” he said to Mark. “Stand by.”

  The dark crowded around Stevie. Her fingers started to go numb from the tips down. Alone, in this cart under the thick dome of trees, Stevie felt a creeping dread, the kind that comes from cold, untamed spaces and uninterrupted dark and trouble that had no name. There would be trouble tonight. How did they punish people at Ellingham? Why was the night so wide? What the hell lived in the trees and undergrowth that made that much rustling? Did bats attack the heads of pe
ople in golf carts?

  A shout pierced her devolving thoughts. It was Larry.

  “Mary! Mark, call 911! Tell them we need the chopper!”

  The words hit her like a bolt. Ms. Hix hurried into the tunnel. Mark stepped into a clearing to make the call. Stevie got out of the cart, taking every step deliberately, slowly, as though the ground itself might give way, and moved toward the opening in the ground. She heard muffled voices now. They were deep inside the tunnel, and something was very wrong.

  She didn’t have her big flashlight, but her phone was in her pocket, so she used that as a light. Carefully, with an ever-increasing pulse, she climbed down the steps. She could hear feverish conversation deep within—they were all the way down in the liquor room. Stevie stepped forward like she was walking into a dream, her tiny light guiding the way. She ignored everything Larry had said about the instability of the tunnel. Something was happening, and some force was pulling her in to face some grim unknown.

  As she approached the door, she heard the nurse use the words unresponsive, cold, cyanotic. Larry turned and flashed his light on her as she approached.

  “What happened?” Stevie heard herself ask.

  Larry walked toward her. He did not run. You ran when you needed help. You walked when you had to start carefully containing the scene.

  Larry’s powerful flashlight was pointed down, focused on something on the ground. A mass, unmoving. It took a moment for Stevie to register that the thing was Hayes, his feet toward the door. He was in a semi-fetal position, one leg outstretched. His skin was a purple blue.

  “Stevie,” Larry said, blocking the door with his body.

  But she had seen all she needed to. You know death when you see it.

  16

  SHOCK IS A FUNNY THING. THINGS GET BOTH SHARP AND FUZZY. TIME stretches and distorts. Things come rushing into focus and seem larger than they are. Other things vanish to a single point.

  “Come with me,” Larry said, turning Stevie by the shoulders gently and leading her out of the tunnel and back to the cart.

  “He’s dead,” Stevie said, looking up at the sky and taking a deep breath of cool air. “Hayes is dead.”

  Larry continued to lead her toward the cart for a moment before speaking. He settled her into the passenger’s seat and looked her in the face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Just tell me if I’m right.”

  Larry exhaled slowly.

  “He’s dead,” he said.

  “Why?” she asked. She sounded simple, like a child.

  “I don’t know,” Larry said. “Do you? What was he doing down there tonight, Stevie? You need to tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” Stevie said. “Really. I don’t know.”

  Larry studied her face for a moment then seemed to accept her answer. Stevie felt like she was gently hovering over the scene like in a recurring dream she had in which she floated from room to room of a neighbor’s house, watching them do mundane things. A ghost in someone else’s home.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  Again, what a weird question. Inside Stevie could think. Outside Stevie was hugging herself and saying weird things.

  “I’m going to take you back to Minerva,” Larry said.

  They said nothing as they drove back. Ellingham Academy rolled past her, looking like movie footage. Nothing was real. There was a far-off noise, a rupture in the air. Larry leaned forward and looked up as the lights of a helicopter appeared overhead and landed on the green. The ambulance had come, but the patient was gone.

  She had wanted to see a dead body—but not this, not a real someone. Not sneakers upturned at the end of those legs, the legs that had been squatting so stupidly on Stevie’s floor only days before. The kneecaps—the patellae—the real human who was now still and cold, and somewhere behind them in the dark.

  When they arrived at Minerva, Larry told Stevie to wait a moment, so she waited. He spoke to Pix just outside the door. Stevie saw Pix put her hand over her mouth as she got the news, and then she came over to the cart and grabbed Stevie’s hands.

  “I’m okay,” Stevie said.

  “Stevie.” Larry leaned in from the driver’s side, his hand on the roof of the cart. “I’m going to ask you not to say anything to anyone else in the house right now, just for a little bit. Do you understand?”

  “You don’t want to cause panic and you need to keep the area clear to investigate what happened,” Stevie said.

  “That’s right,” Larry said. “That’s real good, Stevie.”

  “Stevie,” Pix said. “I’ll take you up to my rooms. . . .”

  “If you take me upstairs, the others will know,” Stevie said. “I’ll just go to my room. I’m okay. I can do this.”

  Larry nodded.

  “She’s doing good,” he said. “You just go to your room and get into bed, Stevie. Just stay there and I’ll be back for you in a while. We’ll need you again.”

  Stevie tested the ground before she stepped out of the cart and found that her legs were steady. She resisted Pix’s offer of an arm around her shoulders. Once inside, the common room now seemed very bright. The wall vibed red and the moose on the wall seemed grotesque. Janelle had gone but Ellie and David were still on the sofa, their feet facing each other, laughing at something. They stopped when Pix and Stevie came in.

  “What’s up?” Ellie said. “Is Hayes in trouble?”

  “No,” Pix said quietly.

  David was looking at Stevie. She saw him peeling away her blank expression and attempting to go through her thoughts.

  “I’m heading for bed,” Stevie said, turning away.

  David followed her with his eyes. Then she heard his phone chirp.

  “Someone saw a helicopter,” he said to Pix.

  “I thought I heard something weird,” Ellie said.

  “Pix, is there a helicopter landing?” David asked.

  “It’s fine,” Pix said.

  Stevie hurried to her room and shut the door. She leaned against it, her head banging against the hook. A wave of nausea passed over her, and she moved to the trash can in preparation, but it passed. She climbed into bed fully dressed and pulled the comforter up around her.

  Six had gone up the mountain, and then there were five.

  Maybe she would go to sleep . . .

  Shock. She was slipping into it. She sat up straight. Paper. She needed paper now. She went to her desk and snatched her anatomy notebook. She needed to write everything down, now, fresh. What had she seen? What did she know? Just write down everything, plain, without thinking about what any of it could have meant.

  There was a knock at her door, and it creaked open before she could reply.

  “Hey,” David said. There was no humor in his face now. “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t,” Stevie said, bending over the notebook, her brow furrowed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Can’t. Talk.”

  “What?” he said.

  “It messes with your memory,” she said impatiently.

  “Something is going on,” he said. “There are only a few reasons they send a helicopter. You also look like you just had three pints of blood removed. What the hell is happening?”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I need to write it down now. Stories can change accidentally once you start to talk so I can’t talk. Please, just shut the door.”

  There was a faint tremble in her hand. She balled it into a fist to steady it and jammed it under the covers. David backed away slowly, closing the door behind him.

  Stevie pressed on her mind. Just list it. What did you see, Stevie? She let herself write. It started Thursday.

  • Moved ramp and supplies to the garden

  • Set up fog machines

  More granular, Stevie. Put it in order.

  • A few nights before, we went into the tunnel. We

  No.

  • We I broke the lock to get in


  There was noise outside and in. She heard the drone of the helicopter as it flew away, the sound of voices from the common room. She put on headphones to muffle them. The information was traveling and soon everything would be chaos. She had to get her thoughts together now. When she was sure she had recorded all she knew, she ripped out the page. Then she got up, removed her red coat from the closet, and put it on, taking refuge in the stiff vinyl. She put one Ativan in the left pocket and the folded list in the right. Then she sat on the edge of her bed, hands on her lap, until Larry came for her.

  It was maybe an hour later. Stevie wasn’t sure. Time was slippery now. Stevie passed through the common room like a ghost, not looking at the others. Outside, there seemed to be red and blue lights everywhere, winking through the trees, echoing into the sky and throwing strange shadows all around. The temperature felt like it had dropped about ten degrees. Nate was waiting outside with Pix. He looked blank and gray.

  Larry drove Stevie and Nate to the Great House. He and Stevie sat side by side behind Larry in the cart, taking a bit of warmth from each other. A state-police cruiser was parked under the portico and the officer inside was entering information into the computer. There were more officers inside. Several faculty members were crowded on the balcony, looking down. Maris and Dash were already in the hall, sitting by the massive fireplace. Maris was sobbing and Dash was glazed over, staring at his phone.

  “I think I may throw up,” Nate said.

  “Deep breaths,” Stevie said, taking his hand. “With me.”

  She sat down with Nate on the bottom step of the grand staircase.

  “The trick,” Stevie said, “is to make the exhale longer than the inhale. So we’re going to breathe in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Do it with me. I’ll count. One, two, three, four . . .”

  Nate breathed with Stevie, slowing the response, slowing the fear.

  This was the funny thing about Stevie’s anxiety—when she encountered someone else who felt more anxious than she did, she leveled out. She’d first made this discovery a few years ago, when she got trapped on an elevator with another person in a hotel on one of the few Bell family vacations. The hotel was twenty stories high. Stevie and another woman got on at the eighteenth floor. The doors closed and the elevator went down, then the car dropped suddenly about a story, juddered, and stopped. Stevie’s heart almost flew out of her mouth, but when she saw the woman cry out and sink into the corner of the elevator in panic, something new set in. The woman spent the next half hour sitting on the floor in the corner, half in tears, shaking. Stevie talked her through it, and when they were rescued, the woman had nothing but good things to say about Stevie and bought her a giant cupcake and a coffee from the café in the lobby.