In the Hall with the Knife

by Diana Peterfreund

  Somehow, Scarlett refrained from rolling her eyes. That would not be her problem. She’d already be gone, if it weren’t for this stupid storm. She should have left days ago, but she’d had commitments as student body president. And she’d had plans that had seemed, at the moment, to take precedence over travel arrangements.

  She hadn’t counted on being cut off from all communication by this storm. What would her followers think?

  Orchid, the only other straggler in the house, seemed overjoyed by their isolation. Scarlett’s actual friends in Tudor House—Nisha and Atherton—had been able to leave campus early, along with Faith and Cadence, so Scarlett had resigned herself to sitting in awkward silence with their remaining housemate, Orchid McKee, until it was time for them, too, to return to civilization.

  Orchid wasn’t exactly talkative under the best conditions, and she’d spent the last two days in what could only be described as a deep funk. Scarlett had figured it was due to the weather, but weirdly, Orchid’s spirits had lifted the moment they’d received the news that no one was getting in or out of town in this storm. She probably thought no one had noticed.

  Scarlett was very good at noticing things. Like the way the townie still hadn’t managed to explain what he was doing in his mismatched socks in their house, other than polishing off three bowls of stew and practically undressing right there in the lounge. Long underwear was still underwear, dude. It was right there in the name.

  But Mrs. White had seemed pleased to see him. Mrs. White, who usually responded to boys breaching her inner sanctum as if it were an actual invasion. That was probably left over from the girls’ reform school days, too. But for the townie, it was as if all bets were off.

  “You can’t go back now,” Mrs. White was saying to Vaughn as he tucked into soup bowl number four. Scarlett wondered if they ought to ration food, especially since it didn’t look like anyone was getting to a supermarket anytime soon. “The storm surge will have flooded the ravine by now. You can stay here.”

  “Where?” Scarlett asked. The other girls in Tudor House might have gone home for the holidays, but she doubted highly they’d want Vaughn and his stack of damp, musty coats and snow pants and things gunking up their rooms. She could imagine the fit Nisha would pull if he left ravine gravel on her cashmere rug. She pictured the passive-aggressive texts she’d get from Atherton if he used her face cream.

  “He could stay here, in the lounge,” Orchid offered, as if she had the right to do so. “That couch is super comfy. I’ve fallen asleep on it loads of times.”

  Mrs. White had a firm no-boys-past-nine rule, one which had ruined Scarlett and Finn’s marathon study sessions loads of times. Her fingers itched to text him this latest outrage, but then she remembered that her phone was dead.

  Finn might as well be dead. She hadn’t heard from him since before the storm started, which was a little weird, now that she thought about it. He didn’t usually go dark on her, even when he had his head in one of his experiments. The last she’d heard from him was three days ago, that flurry of messages about seeing Orchid in Headmaster Boddy’s office, followed swiftly by the bombshell that Peacock had had some sort of nervous breakdown in front of everyone.

  But he’d had to sign off before she’d gotten any of the really good gossip about what was happening, and, of course, Orchid hadn’t been forthcoming with the info, either. Scarlett’s most annoying housemate had just retreated to her room with the excuse that she had a history paper to finish.

  She clutched her phone, thinking about Finn.

  “Maybe Vaughn could go stay in one of the boys’ dorms,” she suggested. She may not want him here, but she couldn’t deny he might have skills that could come in handy during a storm of this magnitude. Skills that Finn, for all his scientific genius, was utterly lacking.

  But Vaughn didn’t seem to like that idea. “I won’t be any trouble, Mrs. White, really.”

  Yeah right. The townie had never been anything but trouble. Like last year, when they’d butted heads over her Campus Beautification Committee project. Vaughn was from the end of the freaking world. What did he know about how to put this school on the map? As if he were an expert on what Blackbrook needed, just because he grew up across the ravine.

  In Scarlett’s opinion, that was half the point of the ravine—to keep the Rocky Point people on their own side.

  “You’re never any trouble,” Mrs. White replied, and it was possible she actually smiled. At a male. Scarlett blinked in astonishment. That had to be a first. Maybe there were more benefits to being a townie than she’d realized. “And you’re not going anywhere. Not in this weather.”

  Great. So instead of riding out the storm and bingeing on TV and snacks with Nisha, she was stuck in Tudor House with the two people in the whole school she liked the least.

  There was a bang as the front door opened, and the roar of wind went from dull and distant to deafening. Vaughn had really walked here from town? In this?

  The new arrival looked like a hobo as he shoved the door shut. He wore a patched down coat and scuffed work boots, and scarves wrapped around his face to his eyelids. But the ancient plaid woolen hat the color of water stains was unmistakable. Rusty Nayler, the head of the Blackbrook custodial staff, had returned.

  He didn’t even bother unwinding his scarf before he addressed them.

  “Pipes burst in Baylor House, and Boddy thinks the surge is going to flood out Dockery Hall and the chemistry lab.”

  “What do you think?” Mrs. White asked without missing a beat.

  “I think it’ll flood a lot more than that.” He caught sight of Vaughn. “Green? What are you doing here?”

  “Wanted to check on you and see if there was any way I could help.”

  Rusty harrumphed. “Mess isn’t done getting made, and you want to work?”

  Right. Vaughn Green worked with the janitors, too, when he wasn’t acting holier-than-thou about every blade of grass on this campus. Or maybe that’s the reason he was so unbearable about it.

  “But I’ll bet there’s plenty to handle after,” Rusty added. “Might even be some work for your brother.”

  Vaughn’s grunted reply wasn’t even decipherable as words this time.

  “Boddy wants to move everyone left to higher ground.”

  “What does that mean?” Scarlett asked, suddenly suspicious.

  Mrs. White sighed. “That means us.”

  4

  Plum

  The flood could only be a good thing. Finn Plum forced himself to cling to that notion as he packed up his computer, his important paperwork, and the digital scale he’d begged his parents to purchase for his birthday. No evidence meant no further inquiries, and Boddy would be so busy with whatever followed this disaster that their little conversation might be totally forgotten.

  And if it wasn’t . . . Well, Finn could cry, or mope, and pretend to be offended by the very idea that he might have done something wrong. Those tactics always worked before.

  They had been instructed to evacuate straight to Tudor House on the hill at the edge of campus, but Finn had one stop to make first. The chemistry lab was down the hill, closer to the water, and he slipped on the ice three times before he got there.

  The flood had already surrounded the building with an ankle-deep moat of slush and ice that Finn wasn’t willing to risk his electronics to. Pulling out one of many garbage bags he’d brought for the purpose, he quickly shoved his backpack in one, stowed it somewhere safe, then swathed each leg in a garbage bag to protect his shoes and pants from the swirling eddies of the storm surge.

  The move did nothing to help the bottom of his boots keep from slipping on the mud, however, and by the time he reached the lab, he wondered why he’d bothered. His feet were soaked through and numb with cold.

  The door would be locked, of course, and Finn doubted he could open it with all the water there, anyway. But he wasn’t going in the front way. He never did, except for official lab hours.

 
; Around the right side of the building was the fire escape, and the long ladder Finn had climbed in rain and snow and the middle of the night. He kicked at the rungs, knocking loose the column of ice around every metal crossbar, before he attempted to put his weight on them. Clang! He wrapped his arms up to his elbows around the higher rungs, ignoring the bite of the cold metal into the down of his coat, and prayed he didn’t slip to his death. Clang! It was good the campus was all but abandoned. Clang! The sound was deafening, even against the howl of the storm.

  This had never been the plan. There was a reason Finn studied chemistry and not geology or one of the other field sciences. He wasn’t Indiana Jones. He liked labs, not oil rigs. He liked fluorescent lights and climate control.

  But there was one thing he liked more, and it was hidden behind the air vent in room 203.

  The lock in the window had never worked properly, not since Finn had first discovered it freshman year. Security at Blackbrook was a total joke, probably because the administration expected the remote location to do most of the work for them. And yet they encouraged him to do world-class science here; science that might be stolen by any idiot who also knew the third window to the left had a broken lock?

  Yeah, right.

  It took him less than five minutes, in and out. He eased himself through the window and carefully lowered himself onto the fire escape platform. If this scientist thing didn’t work out, maybe he’d become a cat burglar.

  CLANG! The sound of his boots hitting the metal grate echoed across the rising water.

  Then again, maybe not. In the distance, on the raised path, he saw a lone figure in an unmistakably bright blue coat stop in her tracks and turn in the direction of the lab, as if searching for the source of the sound.

  Finn froze. Of course! Of course she would be the one to catch him.

  Maybe she wouldn’t see him through all this sleet. Maybe if he stood perfectly still, she wouldn’t see him at all. Like how dinosaurs or birds of prey were better at seeing movement. Peacock could catch a speeding tennis ball, but not Phineas Plum.

  Behind her rose the walls of Dockery Hall, the girls’ dorm most of them wanted because it looked out over the sea. They’d be paying for that choice now, Finn figured, what with the flood. From his perch he could see that the seaward floor of the building had been completely flooded out. She must have escaped via a back door up on the slope. Even now, he could see the waves crashing against the walls and sending massive cascades of water up onto the land with every breath.

  He waited, still as stone, for her to move on.

  But she didn’t move. The water swirled about her powerful calves and she stood there as if she didn’t even feel it, her legs spread in what he knew she thought of as her power stance. The one that made the opponents across the net quake in their pricey tennis shoes. It occurred to him that she probably didn’t care at all about the sea view from her dorm. He’d bet money she only chose it because of its proximity to the tennis courts. She was the only girl he’d ever met with a firmer sense of purpose than himself.

  Finn never had uncovered what she’d been in to see Headmaster Boddy about, back before the storm. He’d set Scarlett to the task, but had been too distracted to follow up, and then the power had gone out and there’d been no chance to find out.

  He hoped it was nothing serious. More than that, he hoped it had nothing to do with him.

  Just then, a gray wall of water rose up over the seawall, collided with the building, and crested its roof.

  Finn didn’t hesitate. “Beth!” he screamed, and pointed to the danger behind her.

  But Beth didn’t look at the wave. She looked at him. Their eyes met for a single second, and then the water hit her and she was knocked off her feet.

  “No!” Finn half slid down the ladder. Clangity-clang-clang-clang. The water was almost up to his thighs now. No point in the garbage bags. He hissed in pain as the freezing water hit his most sensitive zones and he splashed toward where she’d fallen. She was already pushing herself to her feet. Her many bags and boxes were flung far and wide.

  One was floating away with the undertow. Finn lunged for it and caught it before it headed out to sea.

  “Are you okay?” he gasped when he reached her, holding out the sodden sports duffel in her signature blue.

  She scowled at him and flung her wet hair over her shoulder. “Get your hands off my stuff,” she growled.

  “Excuse me?” He thrust the bag at her. “I saved your stupid gym shorts.”

  “No one asked for your help.”

  “Fine.” He began to swing the bag back at the raging water, but she grabbed the strap and glared daggers at him.

  “Don’t be even more of a jerk than usual.”

  Last time he tried to do anything for her. He dropped the bag into the mud and tromped back up the hill toward where he’d stowed his backpack. “Get your own luggage.”

  “What a gentleman!” she screamed at him.

  It was impossible to give someone the finger in thick mittens. He clenched his jaw—mostly to keep from shivering—and thought seriously about returning to his dorm room, flooding or no. She was probably being evacuated to Tudor also, and he didn’t exactly want to get stuck in that house with a fuming Peacock.

  Finn knew well what a disaster that could be.

  Another deafening crash of the waves, and icy shards of seawater pummeled down on him, almost knocking him off his feet. When the onslaught stopped, he steadied himself, slouching even deeper into the still-dry parts of his coat.

  Don’t look back.

  He looked back.

  Beth looked like a bright blue drowned rat. She still wore the backpack and carried the sodden box, but now dragged the watery duffel by a broken strap.

  Finn sighed and trudged back down the icy path.

  “I hate you,” she said as she handed him the duffel.

  “Back at you,” he said, and together they headed up the hill toward Tudor House. The duffel was heavy and slapped wetly against Finn’s soaking leg. Its repetitive thwap was the only way he knew he had a leg. Everything below the knee was numb, and the parts of his body he could still feel were screaming in pain. His glasses were spattered with chips of ice and mud.

  Beth was wet through. He could see icicles forming on the ends of her wet, blue-streaked hair. Her lips had turned the same shade of blue.

  “We should hurry before we freeze.”

  “I’m only waiting for you,” she said, and starting walking quickly enough that Finn did indeed struggle to keep up.

  Tudor House appeared before them, a dark mass in the stormy distance. Had it always been this far across campus? Ahead of them, a peal of laughter cut through the squall and the cold descending on Finn like a blanket. A girl in a metallic coat squealed as a figure in a dun-colored jacket swung her up over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and dashed for the front steps of Tudor. Behind her, another girl in another metallic jacket waited for her turn.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Beth drawled beside him.

  “Carrying you?” It even hurt to talk.

  “No, asking me to carry you.”

  The muscleman materialized in front of them, breathing hard. Up close, Finn could see he was almost painfully clean-cut, with neatly combed black hair and darkly tan skin. Also not much taller than Finn himself—the newcomer was built like the kind of football player who went to a school that spent its enormous budget on athletics instead of electron microscopes. He and Beth should get along great.

  “Hey, you look like you got out just in time,” the handsome football player person said in a booming voice. “Need a hand?”

  “No,” said Finn.

  “Sure,” said Beth, and before Finn could protest, the new guy had swiped all their bags and was headed back to the porch of Tudor House. Then, faster than Finn would have thought possible, he rejoined them and, quick as a wink, swept Beth off her feet, too, and was jogging toward the house.

  Finn jogg
ed behind him, lest the new guy decide to pick him up next.

  The Tudor House proctor was directing traffic in the shadowy hall, telling everyone to deposit their wet things in an enormous pile by the door and head in one direction for dry blankets and in another for warm soup.

  All of Finn’s things were wet, and he was not about to let them out of his sight.

  “Mrs. White,” he said, “can you just tell me where I’ll be staying?”

  He didn’t understand how the tiny woman managed to look down her nose at him, but she did. Mrs. White had always had it in for him, for some reason. Every time he and Scarlett got together to drill flash cards, the second the clock struck nine, you’d think he’d turned into a pumpkin.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Plum. You’ll be on the floor in the billiards room.”

  “Floor.” Got it. At least he knew where he stood. Or lay, as it were.

  “There are some spare blankets to make a bedroll. Please do not track all your wet things through my hall. The parquet dates to 1892.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” But he didn’t put anything down, and as soon as her attention was elsewhere, he headed to the billiards room, bags and all.

  The new guy was already in there, shucking his foul-weather gear.

  “Oh,” said Finn, feeling uncharacteristically stupid. Of course they’d be sharing rooms. With strangers. And no private place to stash valuables.

  “Hey,” said the new guy, his white teeth flashing in his broad smile. “You must be Plum.”

  His handshake seemed strong enough to crush Finn’s bones, but all Finn could feel through the frozen numbness was pins and needles. He couldn’t call up enough sensation or control to squeeze back.

  “I’m Samuel Maestor, but you can call me Mustard.”

  “Can I, though?” Finn couldn’t stop himself from saying.

  This guy was kidding, right?

  Mustard?

  5

  Mustard

  Samuel “Mustard” Maestor had slept in worse places. Two years ago, during freshman boot camp, they’d been dropped off in the middle of the high desert and given seventy-two hours to find their way back to the barracks through a wasteland of sinkhole-pocked tundra and deadly crevasses. The race had been concocted to form a sort of pecking order within the class. The boys would all know who was hard and smart and scary, and who . . . wasn’t.