“Which is why I showed up when I did to present my radical plan. Don’t. Go. When they come to get you, be somewhere else. Shut off your phones. Wait. Eventually, the storm will start and the coaches will go.”
The idea was so simple, Stevie almost laughed. Just don’t go. Stay.
“Imagine it,” he said. “All of us, together for the best snowed-in weekend in a mountain hideout. There’s plenty of food, blankets . . . syrup. If nothing else, don’t you want to leave Ellingham in style? What are they going to do? Kick you out for not leaving when the school shuts down? How is it your fault if you were in another building saying good-bye and lost track of the time? Not yours. There is nothing they can do to you.”
“My parents would kill me,” Nate said. “There’s that.”
“Mine too,” Janelle said, but her tone had shifted very slightly.
“Again,” David said, “we, us, right here, right now, have the ability to stop a bad, bad person from becoming president. Think about what you could be stopping—someone who uses racist policies to hurt or kill people. Someone who could do untold damage to the environment. Someone who could start an illegal war to distract from his political problems. You know, Vi, that he’s capable of that.”
Vi inclined their head slightly.
“Stevie,” he said, looking directly at her at last, “your parents help with his campaign. You could undo all they’ve done and more. And I will happily go down in a column of flame for it, except I won’t because I’m his son and I’m a rich, white asshole, so I’ll get a slap on the wrist or sent to school in God knows where, but it will be worth it. Because believe it or not, this is the right thing to do. It’s not easy. But it’s right. So what’s the bigger deal? What’s worth it?”
“How do you even know he’s doing something illegal?” Janelle asked. “Something that would stop him? Because people have tried to block him before.”
“Because he is my dad,” David said. “I know how he lives. And like I said, he likes a quick-and-dirty solution.”
The group was silent for a moment.
“Well, I’m convinced,” Hunter said.
“Can we trust this guy?” David asked.
“Too late on that front,” Hunter replied. “But I hate the dude, and I’m not going anywhere anyway.”
“I’m staying,” Vi said.
“Vi . . .” Janelle went over to her partner.
“David’s right. This is worth it, if he really has something. This is about the greater good. And me. This is the kind of person I am. I want to stay and do this, because it’s right. Stay with me.”
The wind whistled and snapped at the windows.
Janelle let out a long exhale through her nose and looked at Stevie.
“Stevie?” she said, her voice pleading.
Stevie’s body had gone numb from overload. She looked to David, at his peaked brows, the swing of his coat, the curl of his hair. Larry’s words echoed hollowly through her mind—he’s not right; he was in town; be careful . . .
“I . . . yeah. I’ll stay.”
David’s mouth twisted into a smile.
“Nate?” he asked.
Nate waved a dismissive hand. “I got nowhere to be. Might as well. I’m sure it’s only sort of illegal. What’s a few years in federal prison?”
All eyes were on Janelle now. She shifted from foot to foot and rolled her shoulders back, struggling with herself.
“God help me,” she said. “Fine. Okay. Fine. Let’s do this. Because someone with some sense should be here.”
“Right.” David rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Time to go underground.”
11
“OKAY, CAMPERS,” DAVID SAID, PUTTING EVERYTHING BACK IN HIS BAG. “Pix is going to be back any minute, so we need to go. Time to hide.”
“Where?” Vi asked.
“The gym,” he said. “Already scoped it out. It has the least security and it’s probably going to be the first building they lock up and the last place they’d look for anyone. We’ll go around the back way, through the woods. We’ll stay there until everyone’s gone. Let’s go.”
“Now?” Nate said.
“Now,” he said.
“What should I do?” Hunter said, looking around. “I’m allowed to be here.”
“You can do whatever you want. Just don’t narc.”
“Wait,” Janelle said. “If we’re going to strand ourselves here, we’re going to do it safely. Everyone brings a flashlight and an extra layer, water, snack bars . . .”
“We have to go . . . ,” David said.
“Snack bars,” Janelle repeated slowly. “There’s a box in the kitchen. I’ll go and get it.”
“We don’t need those. We’ll be back—”
“We need”—Janelle fixed him with a stare that could have blown a hole in a wall—“food, water, flashlights, and extra layers.”
Everyone was given a few minutes to run to their respective rooms. Stevie hastily shoved stuff into her backpack—her computer, the tin, her medication, and her copy of And Then There Were None. She wasn’t sure why she grabbed the last item, but she knew it had to come along. She pulled on her coat—the heavy one she never really used—and shoved gloves in her pockets. Janelle was gathering things as well but seemed to be moving at a much slower pace, picking through her scarves, putting a sweater into her bag, then her computer, looking at her phone. Vi rocked from their heels to their toes impatiently.
“Thanks for the help, Freckles,” David said to Hunter. “We’ll meet you when the coast is clear. Keep Pix distracted for a few minutes when she gets back, okay?”
“Are you seriously going to call me Freckles?” Hunter replied.
“Give me all your IDs,” David went on. “The security posts can ping them as you pass. I don’t want them showing up when I turn the system back on.”
Again, Janelle looked very hesitant, but things were moving now. They passed over the cards. David dropped them into Janelle’s bath caddy.
“The security system is about to go down. Ready? Three, two, one.”
He put his phone back in his coat pocket. It was impossible for Stevie to ignore the fact that security-shutting-off David was sexy.
“It’s off. Time to move.”
They pushed open the door and stepped out into a world of gently falling snow. The sky was an extraordinary color, a kind of pink steel. It had barely been an hour, but already about two inches had gathered on the ground and the trees, and this was not even the storm itself. Stevie could hear the coaches and the voices of fellow students carried on the wind, as people said good-bye and cried and began to go.
A little flash ran through her mind—this had happened here before. In April 1936, the morning after the kidnapping, when Albert Ellingham ordered all the students to be evacuated because of the events of the night before. Just like this. Perhaps Ellingham was never meant to be. Perhaps it was always designed as a place that had to be abandoned because of death and danger.
“We’re going the long way around,” David said, waving them toward the back of Minerva.
The group walked past the circle of stone heads, then veered toward the woods, away from the yurt. They kept along the line of the woods, tramping over rocks and sticks. They passed a statue of a man in a classical stance. This was the statue Ellie had climbed on their first night here, as they went to the party at the yurt. She had painted THIS IS ART on his torso. It had been scrubbed clean, but Stevie suspected that if she got up close, she would be able to see the outline of the letters.
Every contact leaves a trace.
David went ahead, leading the way. Vi and Janelle, normally entwined and constantly talking, now walked side by side in silence. Janelle’s gaze was fixed firmly and miserably ahead; Vi had their chin up defiantly.
“I’m trying to figure out if this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Nate said as he kept up the rear with Stevie. “I don’t think it is, and that worries me.”
�
�It probably isn’t.”
“I mean, the thing with the files is crazy. I honestly don’t even know if I’m going to look at them.”
“Then why did you stay?” she asked.
“Because,” Nate said, tipping his head toward David, “when you and he get together, something bad happens to you.”
Stevie swallowed down a lump in her throat. She wanted to reach over and grab Nate’s hand at that moment, except that Nate would probably receive the gesture with as much enthusiasm as a handful of spiders.
“Are you going to tell him what you told me?” he asked. “About how you solved the case?”
“I don’t know,” Stevie said as her breath puffed out in front of her like a feather of frost. “No. I don’t know. Maybe. No. And if I stay, it’s more time to get what I need—anything I can find to bolster the case.”
“Well,” Nate said, “now that we belong to The Shining reenactment society, you might as well go for it. Last chance.”
There is one thing about talking about doing something—and then there is going into the mountain woods as you see your classmates carrying their bags out and going to coaches and crying and hugging each other. Stevie got to see a little bit of this as they hid among the statuary. In particular, she could see Maris, in a flash of red, running from person to person. Dash was with her, in his long, sweeping coat. Stevie had known them a bit—had experienced a death with them—and now, she would likely never see them again. Mudge was there as well, getting help, as his right arm was casted and slung over his chest. All of them departing, while she and her friends were here in the trees.
They wound behind the art barn, walked into the woods opposite the maintenance road, past the entrance to the tunnel that led to the dome. From there, David waved them down sloping, uneven ground laced with tree roots and filled with leaf pits of unknown depth. They slid and stumbled down to the river, which was running low and fast. Through the bare trees, on the rise above, Stevie could see the top of the library, and a bit of Artemis and Dionysus, the gym. Three coaches were making their way past the entrance sphinxes and around the drive.
“This way,” David said, leading them around the back of the building where a window had been propped open. They each climbed through, Stevie awkwardly throwing her leg over the sill and getting her pack jammed as she pressed her way inside. It was not a graceful way for any of them, but it was an entrance.
“System is back on,” David said once they were all securely through the window.
“Now what?” Janelle said.
“We bunk down. I recommend the pool-supply room. I slept there last night. Very private. Lots of towels. And pool noodles. Did you know we had pool noodles?”
Stevie hadn’t spent much time in Dionysus. She had been here on the tour on the first day of school and had made a few quick trips to the costume room upstairs. It was a strange building. The theater was there—a small space with a painted entrance wall that looked like a temple. There was a modern room full of exercise machines with rubber matting on the floor, and some changing rooms. The building smelled of chlorine.
“We’re going to go upstairs,” Vi said. The message was clear—Janelle and Vi needed some more time to talk.
“We’ll be in the pool,” David said. “Don’t leave without us. No phones.”
Nate, David, and Stevie continued on to the pool area, which encompassed most of the ground floor of the building. The pool was accessed by a beautiful old wooden door, with the original POOL written on it in gold paint. The room was tiled in a vibrant aqua with white. There were additional decorative smiles with bas-relief faces in them—gods or goddesses or assorted Romans or Greeks peering out like silent lifeguards. The room had a magnificent glass roof that curved down, the top of which already had a white cap of snow. Snow nestled in the crook of every square of glass. There was a mosaic of Neptune at the bottom of the pool. He stared up at them through the water.
“In here,” David said, his voice booming as it bounced off the tiles.
Their hiding place was the supply closet, stacked with blue towels, hampers, jugs of chemicals, and safety equipment. There was a small nest on the side—David’s sleeping bag, with a pile of towels serving as a pillow. There was a bag of food and remains—sandwich wrappers, Doritos, packaged cupcakes, and what seemed to be several containers from the dining hall.
“How long have you been here?” Nate asked.
“Only since last night. Welcome. Get comfy. The towels are very plush. I recommend them.”
Stevie and Nate found space on the floor away from the sleeping bag. She grabbed a few towels to sit on.
“All good?” David asked. “Okay.”
He switched off the lights.
“Seriously?” Nate said.
“In case they search the building or look in the window.”
David crossed the room, his feet bumping into Stevie’s leg as he passed.
“So,” he said. “How’s everybody been?”
“I hate this,” Nate said.
“Nothing new there. How’s the book?”
“I’m leaving,” Nate replied.
“Nate . . . ,” Stevie said.
“There has to be somewhere else. A trash room or something.”
“Nothing this nice,” David replied. “Sit. We have to play this out. I’ll be good. Promise.”
Silence.
“So how are you, Stevie?” David said.
“It’s been busy,” she replied.
Nate sighed loudly.
“Why don’t you tell me more about what you’ve been doing?” Stevie said. “That seems more interesting.”
“Well,” he said. “After I got beat up, my friend drove me to Harrisburg. I slept in our neighbor’s shed. Got into the house. Took what I needed. Got back. Crawled up through the woods like a goddamned mountain man, slept in the pool room, and then got you guys. And now, here we are.”
“What about those tablets and stuff?” Nate said.
“I’ve been picking those up for a while. An operation like this requires advance preparation. Ideally, I wanted some more time, but I heard about the accident last night and about the storm that was coming—seemed like things were about to go really wrong here. So I had to improvise.”
“You didn’t improvise that speech back there,” she said. “How long were you working on that?”
“Day or two. Got a bunch of it from The West Wing. That was the only show I was never allowed to watch when I was a kid, so it’s my favorite. I wonder who my dad will have as VP if he gets into the White House? I’m rooting for a cloud of bats. What about you, Stevie? You know him better than I do.”
“Anywhere,” Nate said. “A boiler room? Something connected with sewage?”
After about a half hour, Vi and Janelle rejoined them. Whatever they had been doing upstairs, it had not resulted in things being worked out. They came into the tiny pool room, Janelle taking a seat next to Stevie and Vi pressing in by Nate. Janelle insisted on turning on the light, which almost blinded Stevie.
“Good to have you back,” David said, holding up his hand to his eyes.
“Here,” Janelle said, passing out snack bars and small foil packets.
“What’s this?” Nate said. “Tinfoil?”
“Mylar blankets,” she replied. “The kind they give people after marathons.”
“Why do you have Mylar blankets?” Nate asked.
“I wasn’t coming up a mountain without proper safety gear,” she replied. “Besides, they’re cheap and about as big as a pack of tissues. They’re for when the power and heat go out in here, which they probably will.”
Janelle’s powers of anticipation were almost beyond comprehension.
“I have more questions,” she said. “Like how did getting yourself beaten up help? Doesn’t that make your dad want to find you?”
“That’s what would happen in your family, probably,” David said. “My family is different. My dad expects the worst of me, so that’
s what I gave him. I ran off, got into a fight, put it online to make sure he saw that I was a loose cannon, and vanished, into what I am sure he assumed was a cloud of vape smoke on a pile of beanbags somewhere. I wanted to make myself a little radioactive so he wouldn’t seek me out, at least for a few days.”
This entirely checked out with things David had told Stevie about his parents.
“And thanks, Stevie, for taking part.”
“What?” It erupted from her mouth.
“You think you walked in on that beatdown by accident?” he said. “I needed you to see it. I followed you to Burlington and paid those dudes. Then I made sure we were in your path and started the beating right on time. That way you could let everyone know that not only did I get beat up and take off, but I paid people to do it and uploaded it myself. That’s a double layer of weird and crazy. It would keep everyone wondering for long enough. I needed to seem all . . .”
He jazz-handed around his head.
“And why do you think there’s something on those drives?” Janelle said.
“I have my sources,” he said. “Now, who wants a tablet? We need to get started.”
“Me,” Vi said loudly.
David passed them one, along with a device to connect the drive.
“Nate?”
“I’m good for now,” Nate said. “I’d like to do this one violation at a time.”
David shrugged expansively as if to say, “Suit yourself.”
“I’m assuming that’s a no, Janelle, or . . .”
“It’s a no,” Janelle said, looking at Vi, who was already working away on the tablet.
“Fine, then. Let’s get to it.”
“What about me?” Stevie asked.
“Oh, you want one?” David said. He got out one of the tablets and held it toward Stevie, but as she reached for it, he drew it back.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he said.
He put it back in his bag. Nate put his head down so hard it looked like he was trying to crawl into his computer. Janelle shook her head.
“You’re better off,” she said.
And so, each member of the group turned to their own task in the little closet near the pool, while the snow fell and the wind blew and Ellingham emptied. Stevie reached into her bag and got out And Then There Were None, the story of ten strangers gathered on an island and murdered one by one.
The Hand on the Wall Page 11
