“I want to go past,” I say.
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We need to talk,” says Fender. “About what just happened.”
I shake my head. “No need.”
“Please.” I’ve never heard Fender say that word before, certainly not to me. “Come with me.”
Fender leads the way to their room and holds the door open. “Just for a minute.”
I hesitate. What if he attacks me again?
But then I remember what Claus said. I can run away from Fender, but on Monday I’ll be back in the classroom with him.
“Fine,” I say. “But yeah, just for a minute.”
I walk into the room and sit down in an easy chair. Fender lingers at the door.
“I…I want to apologize. For…”
“For trying to strangle me,” I say, finishing his sentence for him.
Fender blushes a little. That’s a first too.
“Yes,” he says then. “Yes, that.”
There’s another silence.
Where are Kate and Lucas? Still in the bar? I’m starting to get impatient.
“Was there anything else?”
Fender hooks his fingers together. “No, no, nothing.”
“Good. Then there’s something I’d like to say.”
“Oh.”
“You are such a jerk.” The words come out less forcefully than I intended, but their effect is strong enough.
Fender’s mouth falls open and he stares at me in disbelief. A muscle beside his eye is twitching.
“It’s bad enough that you attack me with words every day, but if you ever put your hands on me again…”
I’m shaking, but now I can’t stop.
“You went too far, and I’m not going to stand for it. You can’t treat people like that.”
Fender nods slowly but still doesn’t say a word.
He’s actually not that scary at all. Why didn’t I see that before?
“Okay. Then I’d like to leave now.” I stand up.
Fender stands between me and the door.
“I want to go to my room.”
“You can’t.” Fender holds out his arms to block the way.
“It’s my room!”
“Just stay here for a while.”
What is going on? I try to get around Fender, but he just moves with me.
“Let me past,” I say.
“No.”
My heart is pounding faster and faster. I can feel my whole body heating up.
No, please, not now…
I glance back, but there’s only a window. The only way out is this one.
“Get out of the way.”
My hands are sweating, my head is tingling, my lungs are wheezing. Everything in my body is changing so quickly that I can’t keep up with it.
I push against Fender’s chest, but he’s like a block of concrete.
“I…”
“Linnea?” I hear him say, but my name falls, along with me, into a black hole.
Linnea collapses. I grab hold of her upper arms, but too late. She collapses to the floor, with her right leg bent under her.
“Linnea?!”
I rest my index and middle fingers on her neck and feel her heartbeat. She’s still breathing.
Did she faint? But why?
I look around. She can’t stay on the floor like that. I have to move her to the bed.
Linnea feels as heavy as lead, as if her whole body is working against me. With all my strength, I heave her up. As I lay her on the bed, her head flops onto my pillow. Her blond braid lies to one side.
She looks like her.
I don’t want to see the resemblance, but it’s there.
They have the same full lips, the same color hair, and the same freckles around their noses. Why did I never notice that before?
Linnea groans quietly.
I hurry to the bathroom and, as I’m coming back with a glass of water, Linnea’s eyes flutter open. They roll back in her head twice, but then focus on me.
“Fender?”
I take a step back.
“I…I didn’t do anything,” I say quickly. “You just collapsed.”
Linnea mumbles something.
“Do you want some water?” I say, handing her the glass. “Can you sit up?”
Linnea pushes herself up from the mattress and drinks a few sips. “Could you…Could you fetch Kate?”
Kate?
I’m about to say yes, but then I remember that she’s next door.
In a room full of writing.
With mascara running down her face.
“She’s still in the bar,” I lie. “We can go there in a minute. I just need to…”
“You’re not leaving me here alone.” Linnea grabs my wrist.
I sit back down on the bed. “Okay.”
Linnea drinks the rest of the water and then puts the empty glass on the nightstand. Unsteadily, she sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the bed.
“What are you doing?”
“I really need to…” Linnea nods at the bathroom door.
“Oh, right,” I say. “Can you manage on your own?”
Linnea raises her eyebrows.
“Go on,” I say quickly. When Linnea locks the door, I give a deep sigh. Kate and Lucas are waiting next door. They’re probably wondering where I am.
The toilet flushes and Linnea comes back into the room. More color is slowly appearing on her cheeks.
“Did I give you a fright?” she asks quietly.
“A bit,” I admit. “Do you often faint?”
Linnea nods. “Sometimes. It usually happens when I feel trapped.”
I blocked her way.
Now I understand. “So that’s why you steer clear of elevators.”
Linnea nods. “I hate them.”
“Why?”
“I just do.”
“No one hates something for no reason,” I say.
“Except you hating me, right?”
She says it casually, as if it’s nothing. I pretend not to hear her and take her glass back to the bathroom.
“When I was ten, I was allowed to go visit my grandpa and grandma on my own for the first time,” I suddenly hear Linnea say. I stay in the bathroom, as I’m scared she’ll stop telling her story otherwise.
“I took the elevator, because they lived on the sixth floor. I thought it would be much quicker than the stairs. But then it got stuck. I was in there for an hour and a half.”
My breath catches in my throat. An hour and a half?!
“That’s why I’ll never use an elevator again.”
“I get it,” I say. My voice echoes off the tiles.
“What about you?” asks Linnea. “Is there anything you’ll never do again?”
“Me? I’ll never love anyone again,” I blurt out.
Why did I say that? No one knows that. I didn’t even know it myself until now.
I’m about to yell that it was just a joke, but at that moment there are three knocks on the door.
“Room service!”
Fender runs out of the bathroom. “Stay there!”
I look at him in surprise. “Why? Did you order something?”
“Just do as I say.”
“Why are you whispering?”
Fender puts his hand on my shoulder and pushes me back onto the bed. He looks wired, like he might attack me again at any minute.
Fender walks to the door and looks through the peephole. Why is he acting so over the top? Anyone would think a serial murderer had just knocked on the door.
Fender swings the door open. He stands in the doorway for a few seconds and then stoops to pick s
omething up. I hear the rustle of paper.
Then he quickly shuts the door and comes back to me.
“What was it?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
He’s lying. I thought he was finally being honest with me. The way he just answered my question about what he’d never do again, it came straight from the heart. Even though I couldn’t see his face when he said it, I could feel the pain in his reply.
“Would you empty your pockets?”
Fender looks like he’s been stung by a wasp. “Why?”
“What did room service bring?”
“Nothing. It was a mistake.”
“So it’s something to do with that Isolde, right?”
And again Fender immediately reacts to the name. His face flushes red and he clenches his jaw. I can see that he’s trying to come up with an answer, but no matter what he says, I doubt I’ll believe him.
“I’m going to see Kate.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Kate’s my best friend too,” I say. “And I’ll do what I like. Maybe she can tell me who Isolde is.”
“Leave her alone.” Again, I see the Fender I saw outside the hotel.
It’s like Fender is made up of lots of different Fenders. And each one is completely different.
“Why? What could be so bad?” I get up off the bed. “Is Isolde dead or something?”
I blurt out the words, but then I see Fender’s reaction. His face is like a candle slowly flickering out.
So Isolde is dead.
Kate and Lucas must know about it, and they’ve kept it a secret from me. But why? What’s so bad that they can’t tell me?
“She was one of us.” Fender suddenly starts talking. “She was my girlfriend and Kate’s best friend. The four of us were always together.”
So Isolde was part of their gang. Claus was right.
“How…” I weigh my words carefully. “How did it happen?”
“Suicide.”
My heart thumps painfully against my ribs. Fender stares out the window, as if he can see something particularly interesting out there.
“Suicide?” I echo.
“Yes.” Fender clutches the windowsill. “It happened this week. But she’s actually been dead for 364 days.”
For a moment, I think Fender must have been keeping count, but then I realize.
“So it was on Kate’s birthday last year…”
“Something went very wrong.”
I wanted to know the truth, but now that it’s coming closer and closer, I feel more like running away.
“There’s someone in the hotel who wants to punish us for last year.”
I look at him. “What do you mean?”
“That room service just now. Someone’s threatening us, sending us messages.” Fender sighs. “We weren’t going to tell you.”
I was right. All three of them have been keeping it from me. I obviously knew they’d been friends for ages before I came along, but I had no idea there was something so huge going on.
“Tell me everything,” I say.
Fender looks at me. “Are you sure?”
No.
“Yes,” I say. “Certain.”
Fender gives a deep sigh as he takes a gold envelope out of his pocket.
“This was just delivered by someone who calls himself Room Service. We don’t know his real name, only that he’s here in the hotel. He’s been sending us messages, like her suicide note and the death notice from the newspaper. This message was under the cloche just now.”
“The what?”
“Cloche. Like that one over there.” Fender points at the silver dome in the corner of the room.
It was there when we came back from the pool.
We found Fender surrounded by chaos.
Had this already started then?
I point at the gold envelope in Fender’s hand. “What’s in there?”
“I haven’t opened it yet.” Fender looks at me. “But there’s something else you need to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Before, it just had the names of Lucas, Kate, and me on it, but…” Fender turns the envelope to show me. “Now yours is there too.”
I stare at the six letters in front of me.
“How…” I stammer. “How does he know my name?”
“He knows everything.” Fender puts the envelope back into his pocket.
“I’m going to the bar.” I walk to the door. I want to hear the whole story from Kate. I need to know what happened last year.
“They’re not in the bar.” Fender blushes a little. “They’re next door.”
“In our room?”
So that’s why I wasn’t allowed in there. Were they having a meeting to discuss how to keep me out of everything?
I feel tears prickling my eyes. Am I worth nothing at all to them?
I thought Kate and I were friends! I felt like Lucas and I were getting closer lately, but clearly not close enough for him to tell me the truth.
“Come on.” Fender holds the door open for me. “Now that you know, I’ll show you.”
We go out into the hallway. Fender knocks on our door twice.
“Fender?” comes a voice.
“Yeah.”
The door swings open, and Lucas is standing there. He pauses when he sees me, but then he lays into Fender.
“What are you doing? We were going to keep her out of this!”
I can feel myself getting smaller and smaller. Lucas is talking about me as if I’m not here. Why are they doing this? What could be so bad that they don’t dare trust me?
But then I see the room.
Our beautiful room.
There’s nothing left of it.
It reminds me of the bridge downtown, completely covered in graffiti.
Individual words, scraps of sentences, and my friends’ names are written all over the room. I stare at the words above the bed.
KATE, FENDER, AND LUCAS.
MY SO-CALLED BEST FRIENDS.
“It’s from the suicide note.” Fender is standing behind me. “Room Service left this here for us.”
“What are you doing?” cries Lucas.
“She already knows,” hisses Fender. “So what difference does it make?”
I read all the words and try to solve the puzzle, but at the same time I’m not sure I really want to.
My name isn’t on the wall, but it is on the envelope. Why does Room Service think I have something to do with this? I wasn’t even around last year on Kate’s birthday! He has the wrong person.
I turn on my heels.
“What are you doing?” asks Fender.
“Going home,” I say. “This is your past, not mine.”
I should have left straightaway, before I went with Claus to his room. I don’t want anything to do with this. This is some really sick stuff.
“Good,” Fender says. “You go.”
“Wh-what?” Lucas stammers in surprise.
“She’s right.” Fender looks at him. “She has nothing to do with this. If she wants to go, she can go.”
I look at Kate. Her eyes are so puffy. It looks like she’s cried gallons of tears.
Why did she never tell me anything about Isolde?
She was her best friend!
And what happened last year that made Room Service want to punish them?
I remember what Lucas said in the bar.
Kate thinks we’re all best friends forever.
Are there other things I don’t know? It’s like this is just the tip of the iceberg, and the rest is still underwater.
I look at the words above the bed again.
My so-called best friends.
Did they betray Isolde
? But how? Did she feel as lonely within the gang as I do? Maybe she was an outsider too.
I look at Kate again. She’s staring at her sneakers. Who are my “friends” really? How can they call themselves friends if they can lie to me like that? An hour ago, Lucas even claimed not to know Isolde at all!
The hallway is calling to me. Leave. This is your chance! Go!
But if I go now, I’ll never get answers to the questions I haven’t even asked yet.
“He has us in a corner, but he doesn’t have anything to attack you with,” says Fender. He is still holding the door open.
Yes, he does, I want to say, but I swallow my words.
“Close it.” I cross my arms. “I’m staying.”
Something tells me this is the most stupid choice I could make, but I need answers. I have to know what the three of them have been hiding from me all this time. And if anything about the past nine months was real.
“Are you sure?” Am I just imagining it or was there a hint of respect in Fender’s voice?
“Absolutely certain.”
“Okay.” Fender closes the door. “In that case: welcome aboard.”
She’s staying.
“Linnea, I…” Kate starts to say something, but Linnea cuts her off.
“I want to know what’s inside that envelope.”
It’s like she’s standing straighter and straighter. There’s nothing left of the Linnea I know, who was always hiding in the background.
“What envelope?” asks Kate.
I hold it up. It’s like throwing a hand grenade into the room. Her eyes grow wide with panic.
“Another delivery from Room Service?”
I nod and open the envelope. All my muscles tense as I take out the paper.
They’re torn-out pages with a cartoonish picture of a mouse on them. The paper looks vaguely familiar.
I feel a stabbing pain in my chest, as if something is trying to claw its way out from inside.
Suddenly I remember where I’ve seen this paper before.
It’s from her diary.
Happy birthday to Kate.
Tomorrow.
I don’t want to go.
I want to pull the covers over my head and pretend I’m sick.
But she’s my best friend and the boys will be there too.
I can’t cancel.
Room Service Page 6