“Go, go, go!” chants Henry, leaping up to point to a jump on the right side of the screen. I take it, but Grayson plows through the wall, taking a hidden shortcut none of us have seen before.
“What is that?” Sam objects. “Hold on. What just happened?”
“It’s a shortcut,” Grayson says. “Aren’t gamers supposed to know this stuff?”
“Not everyone’s trying to rush to the finish line,” says Charlotte, wiggling her brows.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch Sam drag her to the ground, and her squeals of laughter rise over the game.
“Trying to focus here,” I call.
We’re in the final stretch, the finish line in view, when Grayson reaches across us with his left hand and covers my eyes.
“No!” I elbow his arm away, but he’s laughing, and we both spin out. My fingers tap against the buttons as fast as I can. My tongue sticks out the side of my mouth in concentration. By the time we’re back on track, the others are shouting our names. I know Grayson’s going to try to knock me out again, so I scramble up to my knees and block his view of the TV with my back.
His left arm latches around my waist, but he doesn’t toss me back to my seat—he pulls me down on his lap, holding me there so he can see over my shoulder.
Part of me knows I shouldn’t be doing this—that my back against his chest, and my legs over his, isn’t right, but I can’t stop. This is the game we’re playing, both on the screen and in real life. My number eight car can still pull this out, and with one final effort I beat both thumbs against the controller, chanting, “Come on, come on, come on!”
He hits me from behind at the last second, and we both explode inches from the finish line.
It’s then that I realize Charlotte and Sam are quiet, and Henry’s back to finger-combing his hair.
I feel Caleb’s presence before I see him. It’s like a change in the atmosphere, a thinning of the air. I know he’s watching me, that he sees me half-strewn over Grayson’s lap, and I’m sick now with what this looks like.
“What was that?” His voice is different. I’ve heard it before—it’s the tone he uses when he’s on assignment. When the people he cons call him Ryan.
Trying not to make a big deal of it, I slip off Grayson’s lap, carefully putting a few extra inches between us. Henry smashes himself against the armrest to make room.
“That … was awesome,” says Sam, recovering faster than the rest of us. “He found a new shortcut.”
Everyone exhales.
Caleb comes around the couch, taking Charlotte’s old seat at the edge. “Who’s got next?” He barely looks at me.
Henry loosens at my side. This is fine. Caleb knows how to play this.
Grayson tosses him the controller, and Caleb and I battle it out on the desert course. This time I win by a mile, but I’m pretty sure he lets it happen.
We take turns playing again and again until nightfall. We cheer for each other, and laugh, and eat the celery and carrots and chips that Ms. Maddox has left on the bar at the back of the room.
If Caleb notices Grayson’s hand on my knee when he gets up to switch seats, or how he keeps glancing at me while we play, he doesn’t say a thing.
And neither do I.
CHAPTER 10
I tell Caleb to meet me on the roof that night, but he texts just before ten to say Belk is working on a leaky faucet in the guest bathroom on their floor, which means his path to the attic is blocked. I heard Joel talking about the dripping sound that kept him awake last night, but I can’t help thinking it has something to do with what happened earlier in the pit.
I know he’s not mad—this is my assignment—but it can’t be easy watching me flirt with someone he hates right in front of his face.
I’m making myself blush with creative ways I’ll make it up to him tomorrow when there’s a quiet knock on my door just after midnight.
Already in my sleep shirt and flannel boxer shorts, I turn on my nightstand light and tiptoe toward the sound, careful to avoid the creaky spot in the carpet near my desk. A giddy rush fills my veins as I peel back the door.
Caleb’s snuck out to see me after all. And he’s going to be in my room.
But Caleb isn’t standing in the threshold. Instead, glowing in the pale light from my lamp is a small silver pig, waiting, like a dog, to be let in from outside.
“Petal?”
From the hall comes a creak in the floor, and when I crane my head outside, I find Grayson leaning against the wall beside the door.
“That’s a relief,” he says. “I had your room narrowed down to one of three. If you didn’t answer, I was going to make a run for it.”
I snatch Petal off the floor, then grab Grayson’s shirtsleeve and drag him inside.
“Quiet,” I hiss, shutting the door behind him.
“Wow.” His gaze makes a slow path down my body. “Unexpected, but I’m game.”
He steps closer. I cross my arms over my chest, halting his approach. Petal’s locked in the death-grip of my right fist.
“We have a curfew, you know. You’re not even supposed to be in this hall.”
“You came to my side earlier.”
It isn’t his “side.” He’s only here for a little while.
“That was different.”
“How?”
His steel-blue eyes gleam in the low light. From only a foot away, I can see the sharp lines of his jaw, and how his slim T-shirt fits against his chest and waist. He’s still wearing jeans, but his feet are bare.
He crosses his arms, mimicking me.
“I was seeing if you were all right,” I say.
“The pig and I were doing the same,” he replies. “We thought you might be lonely.”
Still wary, I drop my guarded stance, holding Petal between us. Grayson’s here now, which means I’m on.
“How’d you do it?” I ask.
He grins. “Waited until everyone went to class, then snuck into her room.”
“Not very sneaky,” I say. “She caught you.”
“After the deed was done.”
I smirk.
I’ve never actually held Petal, and doing so now, in my dark room in the middle of the night, feels wrong in all the best ways. The coveted Platinum Pig, the prize of Vale Hall, is currently in my possession.
“What are you going to do with it?” Grayson asks.
“Her,” I correct.
“Weird,” he says.
My finger trails over Petal’s pointed ear, where the paint has grown thin, revealing the pink plastic beneath. As much as I’d like to keep her, I have no doubts Geri will find out and report me for stealing.
“I’ve got an idea,” I say, and add, “You wish,” when he glances hopefully at the bed.
Grabbing a scrap of paper and marker from my desk, I use my left hand to write a note, hoping no one will be able to read my penmanship, then show it to Grayson.
“Again,” he says. “Weird.”
I giggle and grab his elbow, leading him into the hall. One finger pressed to my lips, I urge him on until we’re both jogging toward the catwalk opposite the girls’ wing, which leads to Belk’s and Moore’s rooms.
The house is quiet now, all the lights off. The carpet is soft beneath my padding feet as I slow to a stop. Hunkering against a wall, I pull him beside me and point to the nearest door.
“Put it outside that one,” I whisper.
“Why am I doing this?” he asks, but in the dark I can see the gleam of his teeth and I know he’s smiling.
Taking the pig and the note, he creeps toward Belk’s door and places them on the floor before it. Then he knocks once and runs.
A dark thrill surges through me—I didn’t tell him to knock, but now that he has, we need to get out of here before we’re caught. Running for the stairs that separate the two wings, I hear his stifled laughter and swear under my breath when a door behind us cracks open.
Dodging around the bannister, we huddle on the step
s as Belk appears in the threshold of his room, shirtless. His gut overlaps the waistband of his basketball shorts, and his loose black hair hangs down his neck.
With a grunt, he looks right, and left, then down at Petal. He scratches his belly, then picks her up.
A moment later, he’s back inside his room, door closed.
“Nice,” I whisper, and then realize I’m alone, in the dark, with half my body pressed against a guy who is definitely not my secret boyfriend.
Subtly, I put a few inches between us.
“What now?” he asks, his voice floating through the dark.
“Now we go to bed. Our own beds,” I add when I hear him snicker.
“No way,” he says. “I passed the test. I get to pick the next game.”
Wariness crawls over my excitement, and I sink onto the steps.
“It’s late,” I say.
“Technically, it’s early.”
I think of Caleb, asleep in his bed right now. He didn’t try very hard to sneak out to see me. If Grayson, the king of subtlety, could manage it, I’m sure a trained con artist could make it happen.
I push the thought away.
“What’d you have in mind?”
Again, I see the dull glow of Grayson’s teeth as his mouth cracks into a smile.
“The director’s office.”
Cold fingers trace down my spine.
“What about it?”
“Let’s go check it out.”
“It’s locked.”
“You scared?”
“No,” I say, genuinely irritated.
“So let’s go.”
There’s no way I’m getting out of this. If I refuse, I ruin the fun. But if I do it, and we get caught, I’m in trouble.
Dr. O’s office is off-limits to students when he’s not around. He’s made that clear.
But Grayson’s not really a student. And if I’m helping him, it’s only because I’m following Dr. O’s orders of making him comfortable, anyway.
“Fine,” I whisper.
We make our way down the spiral staircase, and when we reach the bottom, the cold from the marble seeps through my feet and up my legs. The outside light sends a glimmer through the foyer, highlighting the twin black ravens on the pillars bracketing the office door. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I swear their black stone eyes are watching every move we make.
Grayson pulls something small and metallic out of his pocket, and as I step closer, I see that it’s a hairpin.
“Where’d you get that?” I whisper.
“Piper’s room.” He frowns. “I mean … Geri? She said she goes by her middle name now.”
“She changes names like she changes outfits,” I say with a weak laugh. “You’ll get used to it.”
“A lot of that going on here,” he says, giving me a look that says he hasn’t forgotten that I used to be Sarah.
“Don’t you ever want to be someone else?” I ask. He doesn’t seem too suspicious, but I need to steer him away from the truth about this place, just in case.
“Just every second of every day,” he says quietly.
He stares at the curved door handle, trying to find a place to stick the hairpin. Kneeling, he nudges me out of the light with his elbow and examines the lock more closely.
I wonder how many movies he’s seen where this actually works.
“You need a credit card,” I finally tell him.
“How do you know?”
“It’s a spring lock.” I sigh, remembering our bathroom door at home that always managed to lock from the inside. Mom taught me how to get it open when I was five years old, a skill that may or may not have come in handy over the years.
Grayson stands and pulls a leather wallet out of his back pocket, slipping one of the many cards free. I glance over my shoulder, almost hoping to hear Ms. Maddox on some midnight cleaning mission so we can call this off.
I’m out of luck. She probably went to sleep hours ago.
“I’m not sure it’ll work.” I can always fake it and pretend I can’t pop the lock. He’ll never know the difference.
“Is that defeat I hear?” he whispers. “If you’re not good enough…”
It’s an echo from our past, from the first night we met. His party, when I planted licorice on Caleb while we were dancing and challenged Grayson to find his own mark.
I snatch the card from his hand. “I didn’t say that.”
He wants to play, fine. We’ll play.
But he’s not taking anything.
I press the card between the jamb and the door until it bumps against the lock. Then I push away, the card nearly breaking as I jiggle the handle.
With a click, it opens.
Beaming, Grayson strides through the door.
I check back over my shoulder, hugging my arms against my body. It’s colder down here, the air like an icy breath over my skin. Passing the tablet with the school’s motto, he heads toward the desk.
“What are you…”
We both freeze at the same time, caught by a soft snore near the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. My eyes have adjusted to the dark, but even so, it’s hard to make out the figure lying on the couch in front of Susan Griffin’s portrait.
Another murmur, and this time I’m certain it’s the director. He’s hidden by the back of the couch, but a blanket drapes over the side beside his pale, limp hand.
He’s asleep, and I don’t ask myself why he’s crashing here when he has a house across the property. I back away slowly, keeping my feet silent and my breath still. Grayson’s doing the same, his eyes pinned on the director.
Slowly, carefully, we retreat, my heart pounding in my throat as we reach the door and close it softly behind us. I don’t breathe until it’s shut, and even then, I stop Grayson from speaking with a pointed look. We shouldn’t have done this. Even if I have a built-in excuse, it feels like tempting fate. Dr. O gave me a future; I can’t risk it doing something stupid like breaking into his office in the middle of the night.
I motion toward the stairs. We climb each step in silence, and once we reach the top, my pulse has slowed enough that I can think.
I didn’t know Dr. O slept here—if it was a onetime thing, or if he does it often. All I know is Grayson broke into an office just to see if he could do it, and he looks like he won a million bucks. The boy who’s running from his father couldn’t be farther away.
This might not have been so stupid after all.
He leans close, and this time I don’t back away when he whispers, “I guess you get to pick the next game.”
With a grin, he rolls his shoulders back, and leaves me staring at his back as he heads upstairs.
CHAPTER 11
Caleb’s waiting for me the next morning at breakfast, but we don’t get a chance to talk. Grayson rolls in like a hungover zombie and sits beside me at the dining room table. His presence creates a shift in the atmosphere, turns us all into actors in some reality show. Charlotte, still keeping up the hotel heiress front, complains about the food, saying her private chef in their Boston penthouse only uses organics and non-GMOs. Sam puts on headphones and challenges Joel and Paz to his newest fake game. Caleb asks Grayson about cars, and Grayson grudgingly admits he had a Porsche, which cues Caleb to launch into a story about how his father liked to sketch car engines in his spare time and taught him all the parts by drawing them.
I’m not sure if it’s made up or not, but I kind of want it to be true. Still, I’m not sure which is worse—holding on to those memories when your father’s strapped to a hospital bed on life support, or barely having any memories of him at all.
“Yeah, that’s a sweet story.” Grayson leans over his bowl of cereal, resting his head in his hand as he cuts Caleb out of the conversation. “So, last night was fun. What are we doing today?”
My toast gets lodged in my throat, and I cough to swallow. Grayson’s tone, and the way his eyes are dipping a little too low, makes it seem like something less than innoce
nt happened last night, but just as I’m about to correct him, my brain overrides the reaction and the words stay trapped behind my teeth.
I’ve always been able to call Grayson out when he’s acting like a jerk, but things are different now. Despite last night, he is more fragile, and he’s on my turf. I can’t push him away.
Caleb’s jaw clenches, then unclenches, and in a blink, the annoyance has vanished from his face. He’s good at this—pretending things are fine when they’re not, when our home is being invaded by an intruder whom he believes is an active threat to the safety of his girlfriend.
Secret girlfriend.
I shove Grayson playfully. “First, don’t be rude. Second, this is a school. I have class.”
Caleb leans back in his seat, gaze narrowed on my mark. “You should come.”
Grayson scoffs. “No thanks.” Lifting his chin, he glances across the table to Caleb, then turns a razor-sharp smile my direction. “Ditch. I’ll make it worth your while.”
There’s a clear intent to his voice, a challenge I’m almost sure isn’t reserved for me. Three months ago we were friends—at least, kind of—but it seems he’s forgotten that.
I should say something clever, or flirty, anything. But I feel pulled in two different directions, and any way I lean will be wrong.
“Students, listen up.”
I turn to find Belk striding into the kitchen. He’s wearing a shirt, thank everything holy, but I still can’t quite shake the image of him answering the door topless last night. From his right hand hangs a plastic supermarket bag.
“First of all, I’d like to remind everyone that curfew is eleven p.m., and you’re to be in your rooms, lights out, by midnight on weekdays.”
“Yes, sir,” says Henry, standing beside him.
“Also, upperclassmen, you need to be working on your form for PE. Next week you’ll be tested on the waltz before moving to the paso doble. The winning couple…” He pauses to remove the item from the bag he’s holding, and a collective gasp fills the room when the silver pig appears in his broad palm. “… will be the proud new caretakers of our little mascot.”
Henry gasps loud enough to make Belk startle. “Petal,” he whispers reverently.
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