by J. Round
“Where’d you get the key?”
He stumbled before answering. “Principal’s office. It looks like a master key, probably opens every door and lock in the school, not that there are many locks around, but still.”
I nodded. “Handy. After you.”
“It’ll be cold up there. Take my jacket.”
Before I could protest he’d wrapped his suit jacket around my shoulders. It looked silly, but no one was going to tell me so.
A short flight of stairs ended in another door. Then we were out in the open.
The garden wasn’t how I’d pictured it. Everything about it was short, no doubt why you couldn’t see it from ground level. The roof was dead flat, but, surprisingly, grassed. A small wall ran around the perimeter with a zipper-like step. It was a good three feet high, shielding the garden further.
Shrubs, trees and plants, all dwarf-like, were set in large squares around the roof. In the moonlight they took up all kinds of shapes, living specters in the night. Everything whistled and rustled. It didn’t exactly scream ‘romantic’ to me.
“It’s a little spooky at night,” Logan granted.
“This entire school is spooky at night,” I agreed, peering carefully over the wall into the statues set in the courtyard at the front of the school below. Logan joined me.
“How’d you know this was up here?” I asked, my voice weak against the wind.
“The guys told me about it. They said anyone used to be able to come up here, but there was as accident, so they closed it up. Teachers only.”
“What happened? The accident, I mean.”
“I’m not sure. They said a girl came up here and jumped.”
“Did she die?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. A school like this would probably try and keep it quiet if it was true. Why don’t we talk about something else?”
“Such as…?”
“I don’t know. You’ve got a free shot, remember?”
There were so many questions I wanted to ask him, especially about his past, but there was only one I needed the answer to. From somewhere, and I still don’t know where, I found the courage to ask. I looked to him with all the want I could muster, his eyes sparkling in the starlight.
“Do you like me, I mean really like me?”
He kept looked, waiting. I looked away, not being able to bear his response. He’d alluded to it earlier, but I had to be sure.
“I do,” he said, finally, and I snapped back to life. “More than you know,” and then he gave a little shrug and corrected himself. “You’re perfect. You just don’t know it.”
There was not a single moment in my life when I’d felt perfect. Even if I did everything else to the best of my ability, there would always be the physical imperfection I couldn’t erase, blue and green, right there on my face, but not to Logan. Maybe to him, my imperfection was what set me apart.
Neither of us spoke for quite a while, yet the energy between us could have powered cities.
It was Logan who spoke first. “Come into the middle. I want to show you something else.”
“Another secret trapdoor?”
We conversed like nothing had happened. Ever so slightly my heart started to sink back into its shell.
“No more surprises, I promise,” he said, heading away.
The heels were killing me. I pulled them off and padded out onto the grass behind him. It took me right back to childhood being barefoot. Everything was soft and squishy. I was that girl again, running off into the night with the others. I skipped along. It was immature, stupid, and I loved it. Circumstances aside, this place had worked wonders on me, even if it did run my emotions through the spin-cycle. I loved being free, and I was certain, I had fallen, without any hope of resurfacing, in hopeless, sloppy love with Logan. The ferry would come, answers delivered. We’d laugh at the dark hypotheses we’d dreamed up.
I followed Logan, laying myself on a large patch of grass beside him. We were both flat on our backs, the heavens and all their mysteries above us. Goosebumps rose like miniature mountain chains on my legs. There was a floral, fragrant smell in the air.
It was funny how’d I’d never appreciated the night sky here on the island. Perhaps it was the cloud cover or poor conditions of days prior, but tonight I could not help but wonder at the sheer number of lights that crowded together up there.
I saw Logan’s left pointer move into my vision. “See that star there. That’s Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The Greeks used to believe its appearance made men weak and women aroused. People went crazy when it came out. That’s where the term ‘star-struck’ came from.”
I breathed in the night air. “Feeling weak, are you?”
“I don’t know. Are you feeling aroused?”
“Maybe.” The word slid out of my mouth comfortably. We might have been sucked into a black hole, but I was finally getting the hang of this flirting thing.
We both breathed heavily, like animals. Logan laid his head next to mine. He rolled his body over until the space between us was almost non-existent. We breathed each other in.
This was it. I willed my head to move closer. Every inch gained was a mammoth effort, but the closer it drew me to him, to that perfect face, the more ground I made. Contact was imminent.
I saw myself in his eyes. My bottom lip hung limp in anticipation. My whole body seemed numb and detached. Blood rushed to my head. I needed his lips on mine with every square inch of my being. Still, neither of us could bridge the gap, even though our breath panted out into no man’s land in surrender. Everything screamed at me do it, do it. And then he was kissing me.
Our lips melted together, our tongues pressing against each other’s in the warmth. I didn’t know what to do with my arm, so I let it rest between us.
My mouth overlapped his and our noses wedged together awkwardly cheek to cheek. Neither of us cared.
Even in the midst of our embrace, as Logan’s hand intertwined with mine, I noted to myself to remember as much as I could of this moment, this luck.
When we parted, the distance between was utterly unbearable, the night cold on my lips. I pressed myself back to him with urgency. The cycle started over again.
By the end of it I was sweating profusely. It didn’t matter it was cold. The left-hand side of my face and the arm that’d been flattened beneath our bodies were numb. My mouth was dry and sticky.
“That was nice,” I said, each word requiring another stolen breath.
Logan lifted his head up. “There’s something you should know.”
I didn’t want to hear it. I was in the moment. My only response was to pull him back for more.
It was physically impossible for us to be any closer without losing articles of clothing, but we tried. I managed to place his hand on my bum, almost more shocked at myself than he was. Cradled together like that, so close to another breathing, hot-blooded being, was intense, yet I felt feather-light.
At that moment I was only here, with Logan. The city and the past seemed far away. Where everyone else had gone pressed on my mind no more.
As we became one, as our bodies ground together, I pressed his hand into the space between my legs. I felt pressure and then his hand suddenly pulled away.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this,” he was saying, moving away, standing.
“What? What is it?” I pleaded, and then I heard it.
“Wait,” I said, holding my hand up. “Do you hear that?”
Logan stopped, listening.
I concentrated, and was sure.
Damn it, I thought. We’re saved.
9. GUILT
It was so faint I almost missed it at first. It floated on the wind, ethereal, like part of a dream. The sound of helicopter blades cutting through the night.
The wind had gotten stronger, much stronger, and there was something else building in the air. It rumbled like a caged animal above us.
Logan looked puzzled. “Am I really hearing that?
”
“I think so. Where’s it coming from?”
Logan cupped his ear, rotating it around to catch the origin of the sound.
“Over there,” he said, pointing towards the pier. He stood and ran over to the wall, looking out into the night. I joined him, but the moon was in hiding, blanketing everything in sight black and making it hard to pick out particulars.
“I can’t see anything,” he groaned. All the while the sound increased in volume. It was intermittent, quiet, but it was there.
“Is it coming this way?”
“No, I think it’s landing.”
I should have been excited. Help had come, but I didn’t want it. I would have sufficed with the ferry so Logan and I could have more time alone, bubbled away here from constraints of the outer world. But he’d pushed me away just now. I felt scalded by his denial.
“I guess we should go down there, check it out, offer them afternoon tea,” I suggested.
Logan stepped back from the wall. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know who they are. But I agree it does warrant closer observation. We’ll go downstairs, see what we can see. Agreed?”
Rain started to fall. “Agreed.”
We didn’t say it, but we both knew whoever was in that helicopter had answers. It was true I had been occupied over the last few days, beautifully occupied, but the disappearance had always been there in the background, eating away at us.
We moved quickly down into the cavernous inner confines of Carver by night. I followed Logan as he stepped down into the lower foyer area. We’d never bothered to turn off the lights in this area of the school, and my eyes protested against the brightness.
I moved to the front doors that led out into the open.
“Wait,” Logan said. “Is there somewhere inside we can look out from first?”
“The sick bay,” I pointed, “down the hall”. I’d been there earlier. It offered the clearest view out the front of the school.
Logan didn’t respond, turning on his heel and continuing down the corridor. At my last school, the sick bay had a reputation as a place to make out more than anything, as it was regularly left unlocked, and unguarded given there was no medication in there anyhow.
This room was different. It was almost like an operating theatre in design, with specialist lights, monitors and glass cabinets filled to breaking point with bottles and stainless steel. The only antiquities were the walls and a leather-bound book on the counter with a gleaming gold caduceus on the cover.
I hated hospitals, medical centers, their stale, antiseptic smell, and the creeps rolled over me as soon as I stepped foot inside.
We walked over to the windows that faced out into the courtyard and beyond. Logan stooped low, his eyes dark saucers, peering out the bottom.
“Can you see anything?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, speaking softly and slowly against the muffled rain. “It’s too dark, the light’s reflecting and it’s really starting to come down.”
I spun around to turn off the lights, but Logan stopped me. “No, wait. What about you? See anything?”
The rain intensified outside. There was a low tremor as clouds came together in the distance.
I squinted, trying to keen detail where there was none. I moved my body against the wall, just my head in the window, careful not to expose myself fully in fear of what may appear outside. The sound of the helicopter had disappeared. “Nothing.”
A clap of thunder broke out. The rain came down harder. The window-frame rattled with it.
We both crouched side by side, staring.
I shifted on my heels. “I vote we go out there,” I said. “You?”
Logan took a deep intake of breath. “We go outside, but carefully, and quiet. We don’t know what’s out there. We don’t even know the chopper landed, if it was even a chopper in the first place. It might just be the Coast Guard, skirting the island, flying past.”
Plausible.
“But we’ll check outside,” he finished. “Just in case.”
He stood and headed to the door, myself in tow. Once we were in the corridor outside, I closed the sick-bay door behind us.
It was hard to believe only a few minutes ago I’d been in his arms with few cares in the world. Now the space between us felt like a bottomless pit.
I tried box it out, to put it into some manageable order, but we were back to square one. I hoped this was a big misunderstanding or joke, a reality TV stunt where some jolly host would pop out and we’d all laugh, meet the others six months later for the reunion show.
As we approached the front doors of the school, there was a sound outside, a voice. It sounded like a command – sharp. Definitely a male voice, definitely foreign, but although I’d travelled around the world with Dad, I couldn’t place it. We both heard it because Logan looked to me such concern carved into his face I feared he really had seen a ghost.
“Back to the sick bay,” he ordered. “Go!”
I didn’t question him. I moved with urgency down the hall.
Logan came up beside me and we opened the sick-bay door together, walked in and froze.
I noticed three things immediately.
The window was open.
Rain and wind whipped in.
And something was standing there, outside, just two green eyes and an outline.
I wanted to scream, but shock had sewn my mouth shut.
The wind cried out.
The rain reached a crescendo.
The world went black.
10. ANGER
I’ve never forgotten that initial darkness from when I was a kid. It was so unbelievably black when Mom switched off my bedroom light. I’d make sure the wardrobe doors, the windows and drawers were closed completely so as not to let any monster, imagined or otherwise, find the smallest space from which to emerge.
All those fears came flooding back when the lights went out that night in the sick bay. One second the stranger was there, blank and expressionless, and the next they were gone, a grand illusion.
Logan pushed at my back violently, forcing me towards the dark envelope that was the door. Somehow I moved. Logan reached around me, turned the knob and pushed the door wide open in a single movement.
The small window in the door exploded. I screamed instinctively, covering my head as glass rained around us. It was falling into my hair, tumbling down my back. I scanned the darkness again, frozen to the spot.
There was a loud noise, a shot. Something zipped past me, the air wrapping around it as it thudded into the center of the door. It was a horrible sound, the wood splintering and buckling under the force of the impact.
Logan pressed hard against the small of my back in the direction of the hallway. I slipped and fell, my wrists pressed awkwardly out in front of me, skidding across the floor. Logan’s hand squeezed me hard around my upper arm as he pulled me back to my feet.
It was just as well he was there. Someone was actually shooting at us, of that I was sure. The shock of those few split seconds filled me with so much terror I was absolutely stiff with it.
Gripping me by the arm, Logan started running. For a minute I thought we had the advantage having been through this part of the school more than most the last few days, but then I heard a door being kicked open behind us, footsteps, running. We were being chased.
It was strange how I could more or less find my way around Carver in darkness now. I wasn’t completely used to the silence, however. It was an acquaintance, not a friend.
Logan increased his grip on my arm, pulling me after him with greater urgency. It hurt, it would bruise, but I would not argue or let a single syllable escape my mouth in fear our pursuer would hear it and fire a lump of lead into my back.
Why were they shooting at all? That was the question.
We rounded the corner. The jacket Logan had given me caught on something. I let it peel off behind me as he dragged us forward.
Why shoot at us? It made no sense. Nothing
did.
Logan flung us into a room on our left, spinning me along the inner wall until I was pressed close to surface. His hand fanned out across my chest. My heart pounded against it.
We were in one of the small supply rooms dotted around campus. I could make out odd buckets and shelves, little else. Logan, too, was flat against the wall, just past the doorway. He said nothing, intermittently peeping out into the hall.
The unmistakable sound of hurried footsteps soon filled the space outside. I went to say something, but Logan put a finger to my mouth. The footsteps grew louder, then faded.
“Who is it?” I whispered, frantic, as Logan removed his finger.
“I don’t know.”
“Where should we go?”
“I’m not sure. We can’t stay here.”
“The roof?”
It seemed like a good idea. Access to the roof was back the way we’d come, away from the direction the stranger was headed. We could lock the door once we were up there, check around the perimeter of the building, and there was space to move around. Down here, we were cornered.
We quietly agreed and moved out into the hall toward the stairs in the foyer area. I followed Logan, given he seemed to know what he was doing, and noticed he made not a single sound when we moved. His feet rolled off the ground, cat-like, while mine squeaked or shifted in the rush. There was such grace in his movement, and here was I, an uncoordinated idiot with all the finesse of heavy machinery.
It didn’t take long to reach the room and door that led up to the roof. We hadn’t run far, but we’d been moving fast. Sweat soaked through every article of clothing I wore. I tried to breathe as quietly as possible, but the effort of doing so was choking me of oxygen, forcing me to take one extra-deep breath for every four or five shallow.
Logan was calm, concentrating in the dark at the door. His breathing was barely audible, even and unobtrusive. It was taking him longer than it had last time. Eventually, the lock popped open and he pushed the door out. I rushed in after him. He closed it behind us, twisting the lock into place.