The Scarlets

by Madeleine Roux

  He made his way to Fallon’s door and knocked under the plastic dry-erase board. He saw that someone had left her a note in green marker.

  Hey Fal, stopped by. Miss ur cute fais. Check the subreddit, k?—Holly

  And above that, in curlicue script: No Admittance Except on Party Business.

  Cal knocked again, leaning in and calling through the door, “I’m not on party business, but we had a session scheduled.”

  He heard the latch go, and the door opened a second later. Fallon didn’t greet him, so he elbowed his way inside, sighing and letting his book bag droop down to his elbow. The damn thing had to weigh fifty pounds with all his textbooks crammed inside.

  The room smelled strongly of incense, which was against the rules, but Cal was way past thinking this girl cared about the rules.

  “Sandalwood?” Cal asked, nodding toward the brown stick smoldering away near the open window. She had used an empty soda can for a holder, wedging the incense stick through the tab. “Trying to cover something up?”

  “Like what?” Fallon asked, giving him a blank look.

  “Never mind.”

  She had already laid out the books and notebooks on the desk for them. Cal joined her at the table, sliding into his chair with a grunt of relief.

  “Long day?” she asked. She wore a dark-blue sundress over shiny patterned leggings. Today it was a chain-mail necklace instead of a bracelet.

  “You have no idea.” Cal pulled out his copy of Wide Sargasso Sea and his notebook, opening it to find that message staring back at him.

  Ghosts, ghosts in the shadows, ghosts in the light, and now I am become one too

  He slammed the cover shut and leaned his elbows on it.

  “You seem edgy. Want a beer?” She was already on her way to the mini-fridge.

  “You sure that won’t get in the way?”

  Fallon shrugged, bouncing the messy curls on her shoulders. “My job is to make sure you pass your lit class. I’m not your sobriety coach. Here, I’ll join you.”

  Stop being nice, you’re making this harder.

  “I got a good start on my essay last night,” Cal lied, cracking open the beer she offered. It was ice cold, and he had to admit, it helped the jitters in his stomach. “So thanks. I think this is helping.”

  “Miracles really do happen,” she joked, raising her can in a toast. Then she browsed through her copy of the novel, trying to find where they had left off. “Your dad still giving you a hard time?”

  More questions about Roger. Maybe his father was right about her, and the friendliness was all an act. Cal shrugged, glancing around her room, looking for a spot to hide the contraband. “You know that basement in Brookline?”

  Taking another sip of her beer, Fallon nodded and then picked up a pen, tapping it on the open book in front of her. “You got to go down there, right? What was it like?”

  “Gross. Dusty. Depressing.”

  “So not a prime make-out spot then?” Fallon smiled and plucked at the tab on her beer can. It made a sharp twanging sound. “I’ll scratch it off the list.”

  Cal blanched. “Oh, I’m . . . not really into girls.”

  “And I’m not really into guys.” She winked, but it was friendly, and the jitters leaped again in his stomach.

  He had to distract himself or he would come clean and tell her what his father was up to. “There was this part of the book I really liked. . . .” Cal searched frantically through his notes. “This line—‘There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.’”

  Fallon nodded, her turquoise eyes suddenly distant. “Yeah. My favorite was always: ‘Blot out the moon, pull down the stars. Love in the dark, for we’re for the dark so soon, so soon.’”

  “You know that by heart?” Cal asked, impressed.

  She shrugged and went back to her book. “Some things just stick, you know?”

  He ran his hand over his notebook. He did know.

  Cal reached into his pocket and shifted the pipe closer to his leg, farther in where he wouldn’t be tempted to reach. It would stay hidden, where it belonged, and Fallon would stay at NHC, where she belonged.

  Cal was feeling pretty proud of the fact that it only took two more beers before he had the courage to keep his appointment with Professor Reyes and the others. He arrived promptly, if not eagerly, clutching his book bag and a flashlight of his own.

  Tonight I won’t touch anything or even look too hard at anything, he promised himself. I’ll stand still, I’ll watch what Devon does—which is really not such a bad way to pass the time—and that will be that.

  But they were a man down when he arrived—specifically a Devon down.

  Immediately, Cal thought of the folded piece of paper in his father’s suit pocket. This isn’t good.

  Just a coincidence, he assured himself. Devon was an athlete; he probably pulled a muscle in the weight room or took a bad fall in practice.

  “Where’s Devon?” he asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and eyeing the two girls, then Professor Reyes. He had left the pipe back in his room, locked in a combination safe under his bed.

  “It’s disappointing, but Devon won’t be joining us,” Professor Reyes lamented with a heavy sigh. “And since he was your supervision, that means you’re off the hook for this evening, Mr. Erickson.”

  “Oh,” he said blankly. “Bummer.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you’re devastated.”

  “I’ll be going, then. . . .”

  “But we’ll be seeing you tomorrow evening, the usual time.” Professor Reyes took out her key ring and turned away, finished with him. “Girls, I want to start in the office right away today. If you find another mention of that boy, you bring it to me. No need to make copies of anything, just bring me the originals.”

  Cal didn’t dare let out a relieved breath until he had cleared the corner and was already bounding up the stairs. Devon’s unexplained absence was weird, but probably nothing. Cal’s relief was cut short, however, when he arrived back at his room.

  He could hear the commotion through the door.

  “This is BULLSHIT.”

  Micah. Micah didn’t yell. Micah never raised his voice above a low Southern drawl. This was—

  “Who told you?” he was screaming now. “Who told you!?”

  Cal peered inside the door, afraid something would come hurling toward him if he busted in too quickly. His roommate paced the border between their halves of the room. The phone clutched in his white-knuckled fist looked like it was about to shatter.

  “You couldn’t tell me this in person? You had to fucking text me?”

  Cal could hear a high, frantic voice on the other end. A girl’s voice. He wedged himself farther inside, feeling his pulse crank up a few notches as he fit the pieces together. They were fighting, breaking up again, but this was sooner than he expected. Usually they at least lasted for a few weeks. . . .

  “I’m not that person anymore,” Micah was saying, calmer now but still with that hint of breathless desperation Cal had never heard before. “You know I’m not that person.”

  Finally Micah noticed Cal and swiveled around to face him with wet, shining cheeks.

  “Is everything okay?” Cal mouthed silently.

  “I have to go,” Micah said into the phone, hanging up and throwing it savagely at his bed. It skipped across the mattress, bumping against the pillow. “She broke up with me,” he said in a hollow whisper, staring at the floor as if he had never seen it before. “Again.”

  The next morning, the goatee was gone.

  I’m disappointed, Cal.

  Three little words. Cal’s thumb hovered over the phone, but he didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t planted the pipe, and now he was left to hope that Roger had been bluffing about the potential fallout of his failure.

  I just need more time, Cal finally replied.

  That was a lie. He wasn’t going to do it. Somehow, he would have to fix this. He would just have to go to
Roger’s office and call the whole thing off, promise to do better, be better, with no bribes or threats on the table.

  Whatever was going on between Fallon and Roger, that was between them. And really, all luck to Fallon. Maybe she’d find something in Roger’s emails to put him in his place.

  Cal set his phone down on the mattress. Slashes of early morning sun peeked through their curtains, and he splayed his hand in one of the patches of light on the blanket, feeling the warmth on his skin—the opposite sensation of the little ghost boy’s hand.

  He shuddered. That dream had come again. This time the boy had been with him in Brookline, leading him down to the door that could only be opened with the professor’s keys.

  “Go through,” the boy had said, pointing. “Go through, ghost who walks, go through.”

  That was all Cal could remember of it. He drifted in and out of his morning routine in a haze, forgetting to brush his teeth before stumbling out the door with Micah still dozing in his bed. Cal texted Lara to see if she was doing okay and received an immediate—if negative—response.

  He had his friends back, but not the way he wanted them.

  His class load was lighter that day, which was good, considering he would hardly be able to keep himself awake even with an energy drink. After his last class, he had his final tutoring session with Fallon before his English paper was due.

  He jogged past the frats and sororities to Fallon’s dorm. The dark clouds that had been gathering all day looked ready to burst, and he didn’t want to add soaking wet to exhausted, confused, and stressed.

  He checked his phone as he took the last few stairs to her floor, surprised to find Roger hadn’t dashed off an angry response to his text. It wasn’t like Roger to take failure this quietly.

  Frowning, Cal glanced up from his cell to find he wasn’t alone in visiting Fallon. A petite girl with neon-blue hair was waiting outside the door. One side of her head was shaved, and the rest was gathered up in a haphazard ponytail at her nape. The oversize tank top she wore hung off her bony frame, showing a lacy pink bra underneath.

  She turned and looked Cal up and down.

  “What’s your story, pretty boy? You looking for Fal, too?”

  “She’s my tutor,” he said, curling his lip. “Who’s asking?”

  “Holliday.” She stuck out her hand. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent. Every knuckle sported a ring of some kind. One of them even looked hinged, like she could hide something inside it.

  “Cal,” he said. They shook hands, and her fingers were like ice. “Is Fallon not in?”

  “Not in. Not answering emails. Not answering her phone.” Holliday shrank a little, pressing her palm to Fallon’s door. “Fal doesn’t do that. She doesn’t go dark, not without telling me first.”

  Oh shit.

  “Maybe she’s just hung up in class,” Cal suggested. “Reception blows on the academic side.”

  “It blows here, too, but her phone’s boosted. Look, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, pretty boy. Just holler if you see her, okay?” Holliday jerked him closer by the arm. She was surprisingly strong. She yanked up his sleeve and produced a black permanent marker, scribbling her number on his forearm.

  “Hey,” he pulled his arm back. “You could ask first.”

  “Yeah, whatever. If you see anything, you text me.” Holliday shoved away from him, glancing at Fallon’s door one last time before slinking down the hall.

  If I see anything. What if I already know something?

  Cal almost messaged Roger to let him know his tutoring session had to be canceled, hoping against hope that Roger would respond with surprise. But he had a strong suspicion that Roger already knew. That he had found some other way to remove his so-called problem.

  No, no, no. This couldn’t be happening.

  Cal didn’t go straight back to Brookline. He wandered around campus, hoping that a solution would come to him, or that he’d run into Fallon, who would explain that she’d just been asleep in the library or working out at the gym. Maybe her phone had died, and she’d completely forgotten about their tutoring session. Eventually, Cal headed back to his room, convinced that he was being paranoid and there were any number of logical explanations for where she might be.

  When his phone finally buzzed an hour later, it wasn’t Fallon or Roger. It was a number he didn’t recognize. Cal read the message with the feeling that his whole world was turning upside down. Any other day he would’ve welcomed this surprise. But today, after everything, he stood in the middle of his room, staring at his phone in mute horror.

  Hey, this is Devon. From the other night? We got off on the wrong foot. We should meet up tonight. Maybe grab dinner?

  “How did you even get this number?” Cal muttered at the phone. He blinked hard and wiped at the sweat starting to prickle at his temples. Okay. This could still be fixed. All of it could be fixed. First, he would take that stupid pipe back to Roger. He would calmly explain that he didn’t want any part of what was happening here—that making the list at all had been a mistake. Cal didn’t care about any of it—didn’t want anything from anyone.

  He certainly couldn’t go to dinner with Devon. Not yet. Not until he knew just what the hell was going on. That lame platitude, “Be careful what you wish for,” flashed mockingly in front of his eyes.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled, going down on his knees to search under the bed for his lockbox, “I’m an idiot and this whole thing is my . . . fault.”

  He stopped. The box was open. That couldn’t be. . . . It had a six-digit combination. Micah didn’t even know he owned it, and they were roomies. Cal pulled the safe out, scrambling to see what was missing. Just the pipe.

  Of course.

  “New plan,” he said decisively, but he could feel the heat rising in his cheeks, the familiar knot of panic twisting up his insides. The phone in his pocket chirped loudly, and Cal almost fell back down to the floor in alarm. “Jesus, you’re losing it, Erickson.”

  The message had come from another unknown number. Not Devon this time, but someone else.

  Look outside your window.

  He was sweating in earnest now, almost to the point where he couldn’t keep a firm grasp on the phone.

  Cal threw himself toward the window.

  There was the new girl, Holliday, standing down in the quad with her electric-blue hair glowing under the pathway lamps. She held her phone to her ear with one hand and the pipe above her head in the other. Then she lowered the phone, obviously typing something.

  Missing something?

  Forget the stupid phone. Cal shoved the window open, leaning down to shout, “How the hell did you get my number!?”

  Holliday pocketed her phone and the pipe, though how she fit them in her skinny black jeans he could not tell from here. She pointed at the window and mimed marching. So she was coming up. Lovely.

  “The room’s not really in a state for company!” he yelled down to her.

  “So what!”

  Cal leaned back and slammed the window shut. He didn’t trust Holliday even a little bit. The freak had somehow managed to break into his dorm room and crack his safe. She was probably a hacker just like Fallon.

  His phone jumped in his hand again, this time with another text from Devon’s number.

  Cal? Did you want to get dinner? Don’t leave me hanging here, man.

  Yes. No. Goddamn it.

  It almost felt good, liberating, to grit his teeth and type back.

  Not tonight, Devon. Maybe some other time.

  “I just blew off dinner with the hottest person I have ever seen in real life,” Cal fumed, stomping across the room to the door, “so this had better be good.”

  “Correction: hottest automaton you’ve ever seen,” Holliday said, closing the door resolutely behind her. “Here,” she said, tossing the pipe to him. “I knew that would get your attention.”

  “There are easier ways,” Cal told her hotly. “Like the phone, for example
. Or a cordial email! How did you know the combination to the safe—seriously?”

  She wandered around the room, glancing into picture frames and picking up random items as if she had been there a million times before. Who knew, maybe she had. “Now you know I’m not messing around.”

  “Messing around about what? What do you want from me?”

  “It was your mother’s birthday,” Holliday said, leaning casually against the window and crossing her arms. She blew a puff of slushie-blue hair out of her eyes. “Which I got from your laptop, the password to which was your favorite musician, whom you have a poster of above your bed.” She glanced at the Jack Johnson poster and rolled her eyes. “Who is frakking terribad, by the way.”

  Frakking? Terribad? “What are you—from the moon?”

  “No, the Internets.” She smirked. The space between her nose and lip was pierced, just a little silver stud like a mole. “Which is how I got your phone number. Fal and I share everything, and whenever she tutors someone new, she gives me their number in case something goes wrong. Precautions.”

  “You do that?” Cal asked, lifting a brow. He didn’t know what to do with the pipe in his hands, so he tossed it awkwardly onto the bed and prayed an RA didn’t stop by.

  “We’re girls. Of course we do that.” Holliday rolled her eyes as if this were the most obvious piece of information. “Anyway, I still haven’t heard from her. She’s gone. Missing. I know she is. And I know they took her.”

  “They?” This was getting crazier by the minute. But if he thought it was crazy, why was he still sweating bullets? “Who are they?”

  “The spooks who run things around here,” Holliday said, taking out her mobile and touching the screen a few times before showing it to him. On it was a picture, blurry, of two figures running by. They were dressed head to toe in red, capes maybe, their faces hidden and turned away from the camera. “They. Them. The Scarlets.”

  “Aren’t they just some academic fraternity?” Cal had heard of them, but in the loosest of terms. Allegedly only the smartest kids from the “best” families were invited to join. He had one of those things going for him, not so much the other.