Bury the Lead

by Mischa Thrace

  The auditorium doors are locked, the lights off, but I don’t trust that to mean anything. Peering through the window, I find a blackness so dense that I can’t even see the stage. My heart races as I slip down the hallway, sticking close to the wall, to check the side door. There’s no movement, no sign of life at all. I use the master key to let myself in, holding the door so it shuts as softly as possible. The clouds shift and weak moonlight filters through the skylights, offering just enough light to see as I dart up the stage stairs, staying close to the heavy velvet drapes.

  I don’t want to imagine Kylie’s lifeless body on the stage, not when I’m looking for my best friend, but the image intrudes anyway, impossible to ignore. I lean into the horror, give it a moment of full attention, then box it up and set it aside.

  There’s no evidence on the stage that anyone has been here, no dropped phone or scrap of clothing. I duck behind the curtains into total darkness and creep forward, letting my ears do the work of searching. I hear nothing except the pounding of my own pulse.

  Back in the hall, with so many possible places to go, every heartbeat urges me to run, to search everywhere as fast as possible. But I remember searching for Emma and how methodical it was. I have to do the same now. I’ll start on the first floor and work my way up.

  I start with a sweep of the office and almost scream when I come face-to-face with a tall, shadowy figure that turns out to be nothing more than a coatrack draped with Ms. Larson’s long wool coat.

  Next, I take the hall between the office and auditorium, looking into every classroom, trying every knob. At the end, I turn left, away from the gym, and ping-pong off the walls as I check rooms on both sides of the hall. I bypass the stairs to the second floor and go down the hall that leads to the cafeteria and the library beyond that.

  The change in light is so subtle that I think I’m imagining it—a shifting cloud, perhaps, or my eyes adjusting further to the gloom. But as I creep down the hall, it grows brighter. My stomach clenches with an animal sense of dread.

  From beneath a windowless door marked Boiler Access, a brilliant wash of light spills across the tiled floor like blood.

  The light coming from under the door wavers, grows dark in patches, and regains its uniform glow.

  My heart rattles in its cage of bones as something moves within the room.

  I press my ear to the door, the copper taste of fear rising in my throat like bile. A soft sound, like an exhalation of breath, then a low whine turns my knees to noodles.

  With shaking hands, I feel for the keyhole. I have no plan for once I get the door open, but the time for dithering is over. I take a deep breath, set the fear aside, and twist the key.

  The fluorescent light is blinding after the dimness of the hall, and I blink hard, unable to wrap my head around what I’m seeing.

  It’s Henry, stretched out on his belly with his head on his paws. His tail thumps a happy hello when he sees me, and he stretches languidly before climbing to his feet and trotting over.

  My breath is ragged and far too loud in the echoing room. If Henry’s here, that must mean Ms. Larson is too. I sway under the weight of the realization that I now have two lives resting on my shoulders. I pray Priya got word to the Burmans and that help is on the way.

  The boiler room is like an alien planet with its rumbling machinery and hulking metal pipes big enough to crawl through snaking along the ceiling. The room is easily twice as long as it is wide, maybe more, and there are countless places for someone to hide.

  With my back to the wall, I drop to a crouch and try to get a look under the machines, but too many have parts that are flat on the cement floor to see across the space. Henry tries to stick his head in my lap, but I push him away and stand, searching for something to use as a weapon. The light should be comforting after so much time searching in the dark, but I feel horribly exposed and have to fight the urge to duck down as I move.

  My eye catches on a small fire extinguisher mounted on the wall across the room. I run for it, staying on my toes to make less noise, then hear the machine-gun rattle of Henry’s nails as he follows. So much for stealth. I yank the extinguisher from its bracket and test its weight. It’ll do for bludgeoning.

  Henry looks up at me like he’s waiting to see what we’re doing next, and I realize he might know more than I do. I lean in close to his head and whisper, “Where’s Mommy, Henry? Where is she? Go find Mommy.”

  The dog licks my face, gives a shake that makes his jingling tags crash like cymbals, and trots off. I trail after him, sticking close to the machinery and watching for any sign of movement.

  Henry keeps glancing back, like he can’t figure out what’s taking me so long, and a flash of panic hits me that I could be putting his life in danger by sending him on ahead like this. I set the thought aside; there’s nothing that can be done about it now.

  As we near the end of the room, I wonder if it’s possible that Henry has been locked in here just to get him out of the way. Maybe Peter has no problem killing people, but hurting animals makes him squeamish. But the dog disappears around the final machine—some sort of massive metal tank—and barks twice.

  I flatten myself against the side of the tank, certain Peter is about to emerge, drawn by the barking, but the only sound is the burble of machinery

  I tiptoe around the tank to follow the dog and find him nosing at the edge of an unmarked door.

  “In there?”

  He sits and looks at me expectantly. The door is wooden, dark with age, and bears a simple knob with no keyhole. A closet, then. That can’t bode well.

  I steel myself, taking short, sharp breaths in through my nose. Whatever is in there, I can deal with it. I’ll have to.

  I turn the knob, and the door opens with a squeal of ungreased hinges. Henry shoots inside.

  And promptly vanishes.

  Where I had expected to find mops and buckets—and okay, maybe bodies—there’s a hallway.

  The claustrophobic passage stretches out before me, barely wider than the doorway, with a sloping concrete floor that seems to descend into the very depths of hell. A soft pool of light illuminates the distant end, and I catch a glimpse of Henry’s tail as he turns a corner at the bottom.

  I adjust my sweaty grip on the fire extinguisher and listen, but it’s hard to hear anything over the sound of my own instincts telling me to run. But Henry hasn’t yelped pain, hasn’t given any indication that there’s danger. Go find Mommy is a command he knows, and I have to trust him.

  I cross the threshold, leaving the door to the boiler room open to provide at least a bit of light, and try to ignore the hammering in my chest.

  At the bottom of the ramp, I hesitate, because although the light is brighter here, I’m wary of coming around a blind corner. The urge to turn back is almost overwhelming, like that feeling you get when you turn the light off in the basement and can’t help sprinting up the stairs, even though you know there aren’t any monsters.

  I really need to stop thinking about monsters.

  Hefting the fire extinguisher to my shoulder like a club, I take a steadying breath and peek around the corner. All caution evaporates the instant I see Ravi sprawled lifeless in the center of the strange room beyond.

  I drop the fire extinguisher with a deafening crash and race forward, screaming his name.

  I’m still screaming when a pair of hands grabs me from behind, when a strong arm locks around my windpipe, when I’m wrenched off my feet. I struggle with every ounce of rage and despair in me, but it’s futile. I’m still screaming Ravi’s name as spots flare at the edges of my vision and the world goes black around me.

  I come to sitting upright, and the only thing keeping me from falling over when the first wave of dizziness hits is the fact that my hands are tied behind my back around a fat metal pole. Not a pole, a Lally column, my brain supplies uselessly. I know without looking that the pole reaches the ceiling and will be impossible to break. That knowledge sets the world to spinning a
gain, and I close my eyes.

  Focus. I have to focus.

  I start with my feet, staring at them until they stop swaying, then let my eyes crawl up, taking in the sight before me. It’s a weird room, with the proportions all wrong. Too long. Way too long. Faded white lines are painted on the scuffed floor. No, not lines. Lanes. Shooting lanes.

  So, the range wasn’t a myth after all.

  I turn my head slowly, taking in the row of metal columns that run the width of the room. Some have small wooden platforms attached to them like waist-high side tables.

  There’s a rustle of movement behind me, and a disembodied female voice says, “Welcome back.”

  I whip my head around to find the source and regret it instantly, the dizziness forcing my eyes closed again as my stomach heaves. Slow movements. Slow movements are better.

  But something about the motion dislodges the memory of how I got here in the first place, and I throw myself against my bonds like a rabid dog.

  “Ravi?” Where is he? Why can’t I see him? “Ravi!” I struggle to my knees, ignoring the spinning of the room, and get my feet under me. “Ravi!”

  Henry butts his head against my leg, whining softly at my distress, but I ignore him as I struggle to stand. It’s awkward, and my shoulders strain like they want to dislocate, but I’m driven by a panic that doesn’t care.

  Standing, I shuffle my feet, moving around the pole until I’m facing the part of the range that had been at my back. I almost sink back to the ground, weak with relief, because there he is, awake and sitting on a low wooden stage at the end of the room. Shadowy animal shapes that must be targets lurk behind him. The scene makes no sense to my addled brain, but it doesn’t matter. He’s there, and he’s alive, and he’s not tied up. I’m so overcome with joy that I can’t find words, any words, other than his name.

  But something is wrong. He isn’t looking at me, even as I shout for him. His gaze is fixed on something beyond my shoulder. “This doesn’t involve her,” he says, voice harder than I’ve ever heard it. “Let her go.”

  I turn to see who he’s speaking to and am again struck by a wave of relief that threatens to take my legs away. “Ms. Larson. Oh, thank god.” I lean against the column, letting it support me. “When I saw Henry, I thought he’d taken you too. Can you move? We have to get out of here.” I shuffle around to get a better look at her but freeze when I see the gun she has pointed at the stage.

  At Ravi.

  Ms. Larson laughs, a throaty chuckle that sends a chill down my spine. I used to tell Cassidy those shivers mean someone is walking over your grave, and for the first time, I believe it.

  My heartbeat is erratic and impossibly loud as Ms. Larson strides down the gun range and positions herself halfway to the stage, where we can each see each other like three points of a triangle. I wonder if I’m still unconscious, if this whole scene is the result of oxygen deprivation, but the pain in my arms is too sharp for a dream.

  “What’s going on?” I barely recognize my own voice. I have to calm down. I have to breathe. “Where’s Peter?”

  Ravi opens his mouth to say something, but Ms. Larson waggles the gun at him. “You don’t speak yet.” She keeps the weapon raised but gives me her full attention. “I’m almost disappointed,” she says. “You were so close. I thought if anyone would figure it out, it would be you. It’s okay though. You’re here now. You’re still going to get the scoop first.”

  I look at Ravi, and he meets my eyes now. His mouth is a hard line, but his eyes are the ones I know better than my own, even across this distance, and I make him my anchor. He takes an exaggerated breath, and I mirror it. Acknowledge the fear, set it aside. Panic will not get us out of this.

  “Do you want to take one more crack at it?” Ms. Larson asks, drawing my gaze back around.

  I don’t let my eyes linger on the gun this time but look straight at her. “A crack at what?”

  “Solving the mystery, of course. You do have all the pieces, after all. C’mon, puzzle it out.”

  I hesitate, trying to assemble what I know, but I take too long.

  “Okay, never mind.” Ms. Larson’s voice is disconcertingly upbeat, like she’s addressing a classroom full of inattentive kindergartners. “You were never meant to be a part of this, but I’m going to give you a gift. I’m going to tell you a story—a story about how someone winds up with this much blood on their hands and why it’s all so very worth it. You’re going to get the whole scoop, straight from the horse’s mouth.

  “See, the thing no one tells you about real vengeance is how much self-control it takes. It’s worth it though, in the end. I think that’s a story people need to hear. Just how much it’s worth it.

  “To make you understand, I need to start at the beginning.

  “This isn’t the story about who I am today—the one with the power, the one with blood on my hands. It’s the story of a boy who grew up in a world that ground him down.

  “It’s the origin story of a monster.”

  I don’t know how long I stand there listening to Ms. Larson recount her and her brother’s childhood, but it’s longer than I need for the missing piece to slot into place.

  James Henry Blackwell. Namesake of Henry the golden retriever, who had unwittingly led me to this very room.

  “You’re Jennifer Blackwell, the sister,” I say. “But how? How has no one known who you really are?”

  She laughs, but there’s no humor in it, only scorn. “It’s amazing how far a little hair dye and makeup will get you if you want to hide in plain sight. Everyone’s memories have qualifiers, shortcuts for the people they catalog, and they’re not the pithy sayings you’ve had students writing on whiteboards. They’re shorter, more honest. For example, I was the freckled, frizzy-headed ginger. But take that away, and I could be anyone. I could change my last name and disappear even further. Add a job where everyone is programmed to trust you, and the world becomes your oyster.”

  As Ms. Larson talks, I twist my wrists this way and that, trying to loosen the stranglehold of the ropes, but the struggle only increases the numbness in my hands.

  “And I deserved an oyster,” Ms. Larson says. “Losing James shattered us. I stopped sleeping because the only thing I saw when I closed my eyes was his body. It’s like I was haunted by him as punishment for not being there to save him. I stopped going to school, which my mother never even noticed.” She snorts, lips pulled back in a vicious sneer. “She disappeared. James was barely in the ground, and she was gone. My father said she ran away, and we never found a body, but I will believe until I die that she chose to go with James. She chose him over the family she still had left. My father couldn’t take it. I had to watch as he withered before my eyes. At first, he still went to work and only drank on the way home. Then it was a drink in the morning to get going, and eventually, he just made drinking his job. He’d start fights at the bar with anyone he could. He never hit me, but he had all this rage coiled up inside him like a snake.”

  I wonder if Ms. Larson realizes that she fits that description too, but I don’t ask. The ropes bite into my wrists as I search for the knot.

  “One night, he went after the wrong guy—an off-duty cop—and landed in prison. I was seventeen. No one wanted to foster a kid that age, especially one with a ‘troubled background’ as they put it.” Ms. Larson flicks the gun up like she’s shooing the phrase away, as if it were an annoying fly. “I ended up in care. A group home in Lawrence. I was there for less than a month when I was told my father had died. Official cause of death was a heart attack, but I think he just gave up.

  “And just like that, in the space of a single phone call, I became an orphan. I was adrift. I was no longer anyone’s twin or anyone’s daughter. I could be anything. I could be the avenging angel my family needed.”

  “Bull. Shit,” Ravi growls from the stage.

  Ms. Larson whirls, gun raised, and storms across the room.

  I throw myself against the ropes, screaming, “No
! Please don’t. Please don’t.”

  Even Henry scrambles to his feet, but Ms. Larson advances on Ravi with the inexorable force of a tidal wave and levels the gun at his chest. He glowers at her and refuses to shrink back.

  “This is not how it goes,” Ms. Larson says. “I’m sorry we have to do it this way, but this story is for her.” She stabs a finger in my direction without turning around. “She’s going to need it. It’s the only thing I can give her. If you interrupt me again, I will make you regret it.”

  “Please,” I beg, not sure if I’m talking to Ms. Larson or Ravi.

  Ravi’s mouth twitches, but he swallows whatever words were there, his teeth bared in a silent snarl. The air crackles with tension as Ms. Larson backs away, returning to a midpoint in the room.

  “As I was saying, I could become anything. I wasn’t going to give up like my father did. I started going back to school. I graduated on time, with good grades. I became a chameleon, fading into the background so no one would notice the rage that fueled my every action.

  “The Fucking Four never left my mind. I used them to write the essay that earned me a full ride to UMass Amherst, where I promptly stopped referring to my past and created an idyllic fictional family that had moved across country for my father’s job, leaving me alone on the East Coast, and while my classmates were freaking out over Y2K and presidential blow jobs, I was planning a long game.”

  An irrational bubble of laughter boils at the sound of Ms. Larson saying blow job, but I bite it back. This isn’t my principal anymore. It’s a monster wearing a principal-shaped mask.

  “It took a frat boy, of all things, to make me see my full potential. Jared, his name was, and he enjoyed spiking the drinks of unsuspecting freshman girls. I watched him do it four times before I planted myself in his path, deliberately acting younger than I was, and let nature take its course. I didn’t drink the roofied drink, but swapped it for his and led him back to his room—a trick that shouldn’t have worked, but did, like a charm. While he was passed out on his bed, I realized I could do the world a favor and end him then and there. All it took was a grocery bag and about six minutes, and I saved countless girls from being raped. It was intoxicating.”