Reading Between the Lines

by Katrina Abbott

  “I hardly think the Westwood boys pose a serious security threat,” I said.

  Robert’s eyes darted from me to Kaylee then back again. “B,” he said in a warning tone. “It’s my job.”

  But the look in his eyes said that it was a lot more than that, but he wasn’t going to say anything in front of my friend. I turned to Kaylee. “It’s almost time for class, why don’t you go back? I’ll meet up with you in science. If I’m a bit late, let Mr. Stratton know I’m with my brother and I’ll be there soon.”

  Kaylee glanced at me for a second, nodded and then looked beyond me toward the bushes on the Westwood side of the fence. I wondered if she could see Dave hiding out there somewhere, but didn’t want to look and potentially draw attention to him. “Okay. Try not to be late,” she said before she turned and left.

  “You can’t be so laissez-faire about security, B,” my brother said once she was out of earshot. “I’m serious. You know better.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Stop being so paranoid.”

  He stared at me, his jaw working as though he was deciding if he should tell me something.

  “What?” I asked, my heart kicking it up a notch in my chest. “What is it? Is there a current threat? Do you know something?”

  “There’s always a threat,” he said. “You need to be more careful. Which reminds me. Do you know about the bunker?”

  I frowned.

  “Obviously not,” he said, his face finally softening into a smile. “Okay, it’s good that you’re here, then. Come; I’ll show you.”

  “I have to get to class,” I said.

  “This is more important.” And then before I could protest, he grabbed my arm and tugged me away from the fence.

  As he led me away, the hair on my neck prickled in awareness; I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dave at the edge of the woods, silently watching me walk away.

  ~ ♥ ~

  I was still new to campus this year, so although I knew where the maintenance building was, I hadn’t been in it; that one time when I met Brady in the parking lot was the closest I’d come. So I wasn’t surprised when Robert took me around the back to a small wooden outbuilding that looked like the kind of shed where they’d keep rakes and snow shovels. The door was secured with a padlock, to which I was guessing Robert had the combination. However, after looking around to make sure we weren’t being watched, Robert walked up to the shed and pushed at a plank to the right of the door that was partially hidden by a bush. It moved, pivoting up to reveal a space below. He stuck his hand in and must have turned or pressed something. Nothing happened, but he gave a satisfied nod.

  “Wha...”

  He cut me off with a stern look and nodded at me to follow. It was all very cloak and dagger, but he obviously knew where he was going. I wondered if any of the girls knew about all of this. Somehow I doubted it, since I was fairly sure one of them would have mentioned it. He walked around to the back of the shed and I followed, wondering what on earth I was about to encounter.

  It started with an almost invisible door in the back of the shed. “That lever at the front opens this,” Robert said as he dug his finger into a knothole in one of the planks. He looked around again before he pulled it open. “Come,” he said and disappeared into the darkness. “Close it behind you and the light will come on.”

  As promised, the second I pulled the door closed a small light, just enough to see the walls of the tiny shed, went on. At the same time there was a faint click behind me that sounded metallic. “Did that just lock?” I whispered, claustrophobic panic threading into my veins.

  “From the outside. You can get out but not in.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling slightly better, but not entirely.

  “Come this way. There are stairs here.”

  I stepped toward my brother and as I got closer, I saw the stairwell. It was very gray and industrial-looking, like what you might expect from an underground factory or power plant.

  “Let’s go,” Robert said, starting down the stairs. I followed, listening to our steps echoing off the solid walls. I counted sixty-two stairs.

  “Whoa,” came out of me as we made it to the bottom. In front of us was a giant door that had to be seven feet tall and almost as wide—the kind that makes you think of a big bank vault with a spoke wheel for a handle.

  “What is this?” I whispered because this was the kind of place where you just felt like you needed to keep your voice low.

  “It’s the bunker. You didn’t think a school built for the kids of presidents and senators wouldn’t have one, did you?”

  “I guess I never thought about it. How do you know about it; you’ve been employed here for like five minutes.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s part of the staff tour. In case anything big goes down.”

  “Like a zombie apocalypse?”

  He rolled his eyes, but didn’t bother responding.

  “Why don’t the students know about it, then?”

  “It’s just for emergencies. Real emergencies. All the staff knows about it, but it’s only for death and destruction type stuff. Not kids who want a quiet place to make out. That’s what the back of the stables is for,” he said with a smirk.

  I almost choked. “What?” I pretended to be shocked, but his twisted lips and raised eyebrows told me he wasn’t buying it for a second.

  “Fine. Okay, real emergencies. But if you’re closing up the fence, there won’t be anyone looking for a quiet place to make out anymore.”

  “Just as well, little sister.”

  “I didn’t mean me, big brother” I protested, but my blush probably made me look guilty. I changed the subject before he pursued it and I died of embarrassment. “So are you going to show me inside or just that big door?”

  He nodded and angled toward the door. “I’m going to add you into the lock,” he said, leaning in and punching a few buttons on the keypad beside the door so quickly that I couldn’t follow the sequence. Once he was done, he stepped aside. “Lean forward and look into here. Stay still until I say.” He pointed at a black box on the wall next to the keypad.

  “What is it?” I asked but did as he told me.

  “Iris scan,” he said as he punched some more numbers into the pad until it beeped. He pointed at the black box again. “Okay. You’re set. Press this button and lean in again.”

  I did and heard another beep and the loud kachunk of the door unlocking. He turned the wheel counterclockwise and pulled it open with a big heave and a grunt. “If you ever need in here, you just press the button below the scanner and then lean in so it can read your eyes. Then the door will open.”

  Cloak and dagger indeed.

  I guess I expected to see some sort of mineshaft or something equally dark and dank thanks to the many steps we’d taken to get down here, but as soon as the door opened, I had to blink against the bright lights coming from inside the bunker. The air was fresh, though it had that slight tang of being piped out of a system that reminded me of that time I’d visited Dad at work on the thirty-fifth floor of his windowless office tower. Canned air. Maybe the bunker even had its own air purifiers. That would make sense if it was built for death and destruction, as Robert put it.

  As soon as my eyes adjusted and I looked inside, I saw there was nothing office-like about this space. It looked like a nicely furnished open concept home, although it felt a bit too sanitized to have the lived-in look. There was a coffee table, but no books on it. A mantel for what I had to imagine was a fake fireplace, but no photos or knickknacks atop it. A giant industrial kitchen with granite and butcher block counter tops but no dishes or even a crumb on its surfaces.

  More unsettling than the lack of the human touch was the silence. The only sound was the faint hum of something electrical, maybe the lights or the fridge. It was hard to tell, but the place felt so insulated and sterile, I suddenly wanted to blast some music and throw a party.

  “This place is crazy.” I walked deeper into the bunker and pee
ked into one of the doorways. It was a huge room, but held more bunk beds than I could count. “Whoa. Does the whole school fit in here?”

  “Not in that one room. There are four more like it,” he said, pointing down the hall.

  I came back into the main room. “This is really cool. I get why they keep it a secret.” Because: make-out city.

  “You think this is impressive,” he said, nodding toward the right side of the space to another door with a keypad. It wasn’t as big as the entrance door, but looked very secure, too. “You should see the presidential suite.”

  “Okay,” I said, stepping forward.

  “No can do. I don’t have clearance. I really mean presidential suite.”

  “So since no one from the first family goes here, who gets it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I bet the dean has someone earmarked.”

  Maybe Emmie, I thought. Although her family was wealthy, not necessarily politically important. Unless you were talking about school benefactors—then I suppose the Somervilles were probably very important, at least to the dean.

  “But I should get you out of here and back to class.”

  We left the bunker and Robert showed me how to lock the door before we climbed back up to ground level, both of us huffing and puffing by the time we got up to the shed. I would have taken a minute to let our eyes adjust, but he shuffled over toward the door. I barely managed to stifle my laugh as I heard the bang and groan when he walked into it.

  “Spaz,” I said.

  He grumbled something inaudible, but I imagined it was a juicy curse with my name on it. He opened the door slowly and peeked his head out. “Okay, all clear.”

  We walked around the maintenance building and toward the main Rosewood building. “Are you going back to the fence?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just need to check in and add your name to the log.”

  I stopped walking and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “The log for who has access to the bunker. They keep track of that stuff.” He looked at me sideways. “So don’t get any ideas. I’m serious. No taking people there. Death and destruction only.”

  I shook my head, knowing when to be serious about security. Sneaking around the back of the stables or the school building for a little bit of alone time was one thing, but I wasn’t about to breech something like that bunker. “Death and destruction. Got it.”

  Robert put his arm around me and squeezed me tight to him. “It’s good to be here, B.”

  My heart warmed at his words. I mean, we didn’t always get along, but he was my brother after all. And he was a pretty good guy.

  “So which one of your friends are you going to set me up with? That Emmie’s pretty hot, but that one today, Kylie? She’s got that girl next door vibe I kind of like. Oh, maybe both.”

  I squirmed away from my brother, ducking away from his arm. “It’s Kaylee. And really? You’re going to be that guy?”

  He winked at me devilishly. “I sure hope so.”

  ~ ♥ ~

  Robert and I parted ways on the main floor near the office, finally giving me a chance to check my phone on my way to science class.

  Sure enough, there was a text from Dave: U ok?

  I let him know that I was and that I was on my way to class. I waited for his response but then realized he would have sent the text back at the fence and was probably in his own afternoon class already, so I sent him another message to let him know I’d connect with him later. Hopefully by then, I’d figure out what I wanted to say to him, although much of that would depend on what he had to say to me. Which meant I was back where I started.

  I sighed as I walked quickly down the deserted hall, hoping Mr. Stratton wasn’t going to be mad about me being tardy. He was a pretty nice teacher, but I was late after all. And with a pretty thin excuse. Though if he wanted to give me a detention, I guess I wouldn’t mind that too much, since he was really a fine specimen to look at and a half hour or so stuck in his vicinity, observing said specimen, wouldn’t be so horrible, scientifically speaking, of course.

  I grinned and then shook my head at the thought. “You’ve been hanging around Chelly too much,” I told myself aloud as I pulled open the door to the Science lab. As I entered, the lecture halted abruptly and every pair of eyes in the room landed on me, including Mr. Stratton’s.

  “Sorry for the interruption,” I said sheepishly, my face heating up at all the attention.

  The teacher nodded at me. “Take your seat,” he said briskly before continuing on with his lecture.

  No detention. Oh well, I guess that was a good thing.

  ~ ♥ ~

  I sat next to Kaylee amid the murmurs of the girls around me. Kaylee didn’t even turn her head toward me, staring instead at our teacher and scribbling in her notebook like I wasn’t even there. I was just about to get offended when her notebook slid to the edge of her desk and she tapped her pen on it, drawing my attention.

  What was that about? Where have you been?

  I smiled and angled my arm over her notebook.

  Just with my brother. Family stuff. No big deal.

  I mean, I wanted to tell her about the bunker, but obviously I couldn’t.

  What about Dave?

  I looked over at her and shrugged. She nodded. Then, after a long moment when I thought we were done until the end of the period when we could talk, she wrote one more word.

  Fence?

  I shook my head at her. Sorry, I mouthed.

  She sighed.

  How Do You Know?

  Sitting at my desk in the dorm room that afternoon, I was grateful that Emmie had gone for a swim with Kaylee and Celia after classes. I needed a bit of time to myself to sort through all that had happened today.

  Not to mention that even though Emmie was a good roommate, having her in the room while I texted her ex-boyfriend was not really something I wanted to be doing.

  Not that I had a guilty conscience or anything.

  Ha ha.

  I looked down at my phone and pulled up the conversation with Dave.

  Hi, I typed with my thumb. And then, pretending I wasn’t waiting for his instantaneous reply, I got up to get a bottle of water to battle the desert landscape in my mouth. I barely had the fridge door open when my phone sounded. I grabbed the bottle and took the two steps back to my desk, picking up the cell before I even sat back down.

  Hi yourself. What happened earlier? Who was that?

  My brother.

  ??

  Long story. And way longer than I could ever tell him.

  Can I call you?

  Was he asking because he wanted to know if I wanted to talk to him or because he was worried Emmie was around?

  Ugh, I hated feeling like a cheater. Either way, his reasoning didn’t matter—we did need to talk.

  Sure.

  My fingers had barely left the screen when the phone rang.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hey. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “My brother is working here now after he left school. Don’t ask,” I added, not feeling up to rehashing his story again.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  His voice was deep and didn’t have the ring of laughter it usually did. Dave wasn’t the one to always tell jokes the way Jared was, but still, he was almost never serious. His tone now made me very nervous. “What do you mean?”

  “I meant I heard about you and Abe. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Of course you heard. I exhaled. And here we go. “Yeah, I’m okay. It was kind of mutual.”

  “He’s a good guy,” Dave said.

  “I know that,” I said, not sure why he was singing the praises of his roommate if he wanted to date me. Unless he was reminding himself that I had been dating Jared first? God, this was all so complicated and I had a very bad feeling that in the end, someone (or potentially everyone) was going to get hurt.

  “
I feel bad,” he said. “I never meant to screw him over.”

  As he said it, it irked me that he assumed Jared and I had broken up over him. Also that me dating Dave now that Jared and I were no longer together was a given. Though on some level he was probably at least partially right. But, “We both realized it wasn’t going to work out. I just don’t like him that way. It has nothing to do with anyone screwing anyone else over.” So you’re off the hook, I didn’t say out loud, but he had to hear the irritation in my voice. He abruptly changed the subject.

  “So your brother. He was closing up the fence?” he sounded about as impressed about it as Kaylee had been.

  But really? We weren’t going to talk about us? Maybe he chickened out, I thought and although I was kind of annoyed, I was okay not going down that road right now. “Yeah. He said it was his job to close it up. Oh well, Dave, no more sneaking into people’s beds,” I blurted out before my ‘don’t say stupid stuff’ filter engaged.

  I gasped, shocked at my own words. Nice one, Brooklyn, bring that up.

  “Sorry,” I added quickly. “That was really stupid.”

  He paused a beat before saying, “Technically, I was already on campus, so I didn’t actually use the fence that night.”

  “Dave, I...” I clamped my teeth shut, having no response for that.

  “Maybe we should talk about what happened that night.”

  I closed my eyes, unable to stop the thoughts of his hands and mouth on my neck. But that didn’t mean I wanted to talk about it. “I think that’s a very bad idea.”

  There was a long pause, but I knew he was still there—I could hear him breathing.

  “Brooklyn?” he said, his voice strained. “I didn’t mean to make it weird. I just thought...”

  “What?” I breathed, hating that I sounded like I was desperate for his next words. Which, of course, I was. “You thought what?”

  “I thought maybe we could get to know each other better.”

  I swallowed another gulp of water as I thought about what he was saying. I wanted to. I really wanted to, but the guilt might kill me. And there was another thing. “Dave. If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I...I just think it’s not going to work. I don’t want to be your rebound girl. I know how you felt about Emmie. I know you loved her.”