by Zac Brewer
“I’m rooming with Penelope again.” So far, so good. Her tone was even almost pleasant. “What classes are you in?”
“Honors Literature, AP Chemistry, AP Calculus, communication, economics, and biology.”
I swirled a dinner roll around on my plate, sopping up the blood from the rare meat. So far, it was the longest civil dinner conversation in the history of our dinner conversations.
“You?”
“I’m taking regular chem and AP Bio. I’m in communication with you, though. Should prove interesting.” That last bit had a hint of an edge to it. Not enough to really taste it, but enough that one might notice if it was left out of the recipe. I decided to tread lightly for the rest of the evening.
The conversation remained relatively tolerable throughout dinner. There were, of course, the occasional insults from Grace, but I let them pass. She thought she was being clever in the way that she tried to hide them within compliments, but she wasn’t fooling anyone. And I was determined to keep my promise to Julian.
Dinner passed and dessert was served. I always loved the way that the vanilla bean ice cream pooled with the warm cherry crumble in the bottom of my bowl. The contrast between hot and cold, sweet and tart, made my taste buds happy. There would certainly not be anything this good in the cafeteria.
Finally, I stretched my arms over my head and yawned. “I think I’ll turn in early. Thanks for the grub, Julian. It was delicious, as always. See you all in the morning.”
With that, I made my way to the stairs. But I hadn’t made it up the first two before footsteps from behind caught my attention. I thought maybe Julian was coming to thank me for letting so much go during dinner. But there was no way I could be so lucky.
“Adrien.” Grace’s voice was barely above a whisper. She looked over her shoulder to make sure that Viktor and Julian weren’t listening. “I want to be clear that I’m only playing nice for Viktor. If he weren’t dying, you and I wouldn’t be speaking, and we certainly wouldn’t be speaking cordially.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Was that what you call cordial?” I nodded toward the dining room. The look on her face told me that she knew exactly what I was talking about.
“More so than usual, you have to admit.” The eye rolling that accompanied her words said this was as good as I could expect to get. “Besides, we only have to pretend when we’re around Viktor.”
I couldn’t believe her gall. “You say that like it was your idea, which is bullshit and we both know it. We’re only acting civilly because Julian asked us to. Don’t think I like it any more than you do.”
Grace folded her arms across her chest and rolled her eyes again. Sometimes I wondered how they didn’t roll right out of her head and across the floor.
“I’ll tell you what, sis. You just stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours. Deal?”
“Fine by me. Just make sure you hold up your end of that deal. Because if you get in my way at school, I don’t intend to swerve. I’ll plow right over you.” With that, Grace stomped back into the dining room, and I climbed the stairs.
My phone buzzed in my pants pocket. When I pulled it out, there was a new text message, and I knew it was from the unknown number that had messaged me before because it appeared in the same chat window.
The papers she took are key. Find them.
I texted back. Who is this?
There was no reply.
CHAPTER 4
PARTIAL PRESSURE:
The pressure that would be exerted by one of the gases in a mixture if it occupied the same volume on its own
When I awoke the next morning, my mind was buzzing from a restless night of nightmares—some the usual back-to-school kind, and some not so much. I needed to get my ass back to California as soon as possible. It was bad enough when I’d thought being here would just mean having to see Grace around every turn. But it was getting harder to avoid thinking that she was part of some larger conspiracy. Even if it was coming from an anonymous source, the suggestion was enough to trigger some long-dormant anxieties about the deaths of my parents.
The texter had insinuated that Grace had had something to do with the lab accident that killed them. What if they were right? Proving her involvement would accomplish three things: 1. It would ease my mind, answering questions that had been haunting me for four years. 2. It would bring Grace to justice. Nothing would knock her off her high horse like a lifetime in prison. And 3. It would convince Viktor and Julian that I didn’t belong at Wills anymore, so close to the scene of such a horrific crime.
One thing was certain. I was going about my issue with the mystery texter and the questions of what Grace might be up to behind my back in completely the wrong way. My mistake, which was now so apparent to me that it practically glowed in the dark, was not following scientific method to deal with the problem. In short, I needed to form a hypothesis—an educated guess that could be tested, accounting for the data at hand.
(I cringed whenever someone said they had a theory. They didn’t have a theory—what they had was a hypothesis. It was enough to drive a thinking man mad.)
First I needed to collect my observations. Then I could evaluate those observations and imagine possible explanations, in order to judge which explanations were worthy of being hypotheses. With enough evidence to back up a hypothesis, I might be able to develop a solid theory as to what happened in my parents’ lab that day, and what Grace was up to now.
I opened my top desk drawer and pulled out an old notebook and a pen. Flipping to the first page, I wrote the word problem at the top. Beneath it, I wrote parents perished under unusual, as of yet unexplained conditions. Beneath that, I wrote observations. My list of observations was short, but important. First, I noted the page that Grace had taken from our dad’s journal, and her admission to stealing the other pages so that I wouldn’t have them. Second, I listed the text messages, scrolling through my phone and writing them down word for word, marking each with a date and time, and noting where I was when I received them and what was going on around me.
At the top of the next page, I wrote possible explanations, and made another numbered list.
1. Grace was responsible, in large or in small part, for the demise of our parents.
2. Grace was not responsible for their deaths, but plans to benefit from them by taking our father’s work for her own gain.
I took a deep breath as I wrote the next one, hoping like hell that it was wrong.
3. My anxiety has made me paranoid and I am looking for anyone, anything, to blame the unexplainable on.
After I was done, I shoved the notebook inside my duffel bag along with everything else I was taking with me to the dorms. It killed me to leave Maggie behind in the barn. I would have to get those new tires sooner than later.
For now, I had Julian drop me at the front door of the dorm, so at least I could walk in on my own. As expected, climbing the stairs to the tower was already getting old, and I could feel my legs aching. Some of my best friends in California were on the lacrosse team, but I’d never been much of an athlete myself. To be honest, I’d never really been much of anything. For years, teachers had lamented that if only I would apply myself, I could be capable of great things. But nothing had ever really sparked the drive in me that seemed to come so naturally to Grace. Honestly, I was just trying to get by. Survival mode. That’s what I’d been in my entire life.
The door to my room creaked open with a push—apparently the renovations everyone was talking about didn’t include squirting WD-40 on the hinges. The first thing I noticed was that Quinn had moved the furniture around since yesterday. My bed was tucked under the only window. My small desk sat beside it, the two divided only by one of the slanted, thick beams that came down from the low ceiling.
Quinn wasn’t there, but he’d taken no time at all in getting settled in, and he’d taken my permission to do whatever he wanted to heart. His bed was wedged behind the door, covered in a quilt that looked like something out of Docto
r Who. Tacked to the slanted beam on his side of the room were several photographs and bits of paper containing quotes that he’d either scribbled in a hurry or ripped from books. I read the first two I saw.
“I have learned more from my mistakes than from my successes.”
—Humphry Davy
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
—Albert Einstein
I went about putting the rest of my things away. Once my clothes were in the dresser, I made my bed and plugged in my laptop, opening it up and hitting the power button. I entered the Wi-Fi password I’d been handed with my class schedule and immediately went to the student directory on the school intranet. Some of the names looked familiar, but most didn’t. It had been four years since I’d called the Wills Institute home, and most of the few friends I’d had back then were older and had since graduated. I was a stranger to the school now, just as it was a stranger to me. It seemed that a lot of Grace’s friends from four years ago were still in attendance. I immediately felt outnumbered.
The door creaked open and I spun around to watch Quinn walk into the room, his arms full of books. As he dropped them on his bed, he smiled at me. “The bookstore is crazy right now. You might want to wait until after dinner to grab your supplies, if you don’t have them already.”
“Thanks for the tip, but I’m all set.” I reached back and closed my laptop, guessing that now was as good a time as any to get to know the person I’d be living with, if only for a brief time. “So, Quinn . . . where ya from?”
“About five miles from here. You?” He began picking up his books and organizing them on top of his dresser. Something told me I wouldn’t have to worry about having a messy roommate. In California, Connor had been a blast, but the guy had had no idea how to keep his laundry off the floor.
“Here. Kind of.” He looked at me with a perplexed expression and I smiled. “I went to a boarding school out in San Diego for a few years, but I’m from here originally.”
“What brought you back east? Senior year seems like a strange time to transfer.” He opened a package of pens and slid them into a coffee mug next to the books before dropping the packaging in the small trash can beside his desk.
Inside my head, I saw Viktor—his cheeks sunken in, his skin pale and sickly. He looked like I’d feared he would look when I first saw him upon my return. Attached to his arms were tubes. Covering the table beside him were bottles of pills. The image of my parents’ lab flashed through my mind, too. I swore I could smell the burnt remains. Then there was Grace, sitting there all prim and proper. In her hands were the pages from my father’s journal. The corner of her mouth lifted in a sadistic smirk. Shaking off the daydream with a shiver, I said, “Family stuff.”
“Oh, don’t get me started on family. You wouldn’t believe my back story if I told you.” He turned to face me, finished with tidying for the moment, and smiled. He was such a skinny little thing. Plaid shirt, wire-rimmed glasses. There was something familiar about his eyes, but I couldn’t place it.
“I should tell you. I’ll only be here a month. So you might get this room to yourself, unless they assign you a new roommate after I leave.”
“A month? You’re not staying through graduation?” He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, a distracted glint in his eyes.
“I really have to get back. Wills . . . it’s just not where I want to be.”
He nodded slowly and then said, “Hey, you wanna hit the dining hall? Grab some lunch? Hang out for a bit?”
“Sure.” We headed out the door and I locked it behind us. The hallway was bustling with students enjoying their last day before classes as we made our way down the stairs to the main floor of the tower. “So how long have you been at Wills?”
“This is my first year here, actually. But I’m a senior.”
We navigated through the flow of freshmen and boxes until we hit the front door that would lead us outside. “Any particular reason you transferred in for senior year?”
He shrugged. “The truth is, Wills is pretty prestigious. And a school with a rep like this one has looks a hell of a lot better on college applications than the school I was going to. Until this semester, I was in public school and spending my weekends volunteering at the hospital where my mom works. I’m trying to change my life.”
We made our way across the lawn, toward the student center and the dining hall. I opened the door and held it for him. “Well, we can be aliens together for a while.”
“Aliens?”
Faces passed—many familiar—but no one made eye contact with me. Finally, a guy name Gregg passed by. I opened my mouth to say hi—we’d been friendly enough in middle school—but he cut me off by purposefully slamming his shoulder into mine. My jaw tightened in irritation, but I didn’t say anything. Honestly, I didn’t know what to say. The last I knew, Gregg and I had been completely cool.
I looked at Quinn again. “I’m feeling a bit like I landed on another planet here.”
Quinn slapped me on the shoulder. And even though we’d only just met, and he had no real knowledge of my past, I got the feeling that he understood. “I hear ya, Captain.”
I looked at him with uncertain eyes. “Captain?”
The expression on Quinn’s face was matter-of-fact. As though there should have been no question what he was talking about. “Yeah. You know. Star Trek. Which captain do you prefer, Kirk or Picard?”
Shaking my head as I entered the dining hall, I said, “A conversation for another time. Come on, redshirt. Let’s grab something to eat.”
The dining hall was the most standout building on campus. Back when Wills was built, it was a religious school, and what was now the dining hall was then the chapel. About fifty years ago, the school went completely nonsectarian. But the chapel was such an architectural asset that the school decided to keep it and convert it to the kitchen and dining hall. Large arched wooden doors greeted diners. The walls inside were stone, matching the outside, but decorated with large paintings of the various headmasters who had served the Wills Institute since the school’s inception. Along the back wall was a line of heated and chilled food servers, and ten rows of long plank tables filled the room. Overhead, three gigantic wrought-iron chandeliers hung, giving the entire space a Gothic feel.
Quinn and I moved to the buffet on the back wall and grabbed trays, filling our plates with helpings of fried chicken, potatoes, green beans, and globs of yellow stuff that looked all right. After we picked up some silverware and napkins, we took seats at a mostly empty table.
That’s when I noticed Grace, tall and confident and at the center of her group of friends. They passed by our table as if we didn’t exist.
I tried to ignore her, but Quinn found that notion impossible. He was staring. “Wow. She looks like the queen bee.”
“Insect or alphabetical letter?”
“I meant like . . . like a bee. So . . . insect, I guess.” He looked lost for a moment, but then seemed to make the connection that she and I knew each other. “Why? You privy to some inside info that I’m not?”
“She’s definitely an insect. I’ll give you that much.” I shoveled a bite of the yellow stuff into my mouth. It turned out to be banana pudding.
“Too bad. She’s really hot.” His eyes followed her until she disappeared behind the buffet table. “Insect or not, she’s got a great thorax.”
“She’s my sister.”
Quinn was looking at me again. Surprise, shame, and fear filled his eyes. “Dude, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re not exactly close.” I took the final bite of banana pudding and reminded myself to take a larger portion next time.
Quinn’s eyes found Grace again as she and her friends took their seats at another table. “I should have known. You two have a similar cheekbone structure.”
That made me laugh. “Now, I’d like to know how that happened.”
This time Quinn’s expression was confused. “Gene
tics, Captain.”
“I was adopted.”
Quinn blushed slightly. This conversation just wasn’t going his way. “Oh. Sorry.”
I shook my head. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t the first time someone had said that Grace and I looked similar, and I was certain that it wouldn’t be the last. “Her name is Grace.”
“Does she have any?”
“Grace?” I didn’t bother to look at my sister, though it seemed that Quinn was having a hard time looking anywhere else. “Physically, yes. She’s very prim, very proper. As far as inside? Not much that I’ve seen. That is, of course, unless you’re one of her loyal subjects.”
“Wow.” He bit off the end of a roll and chewed, looking thoughtfully between my sister and me. Grace was chatting with her friends. I was glad that she had decided to sit as far away from me as possible, but I was also trying not to think about it. She could sit wherever she wanted to sit. I didn’t care.
Quinn looked like he was watching a tennis match. His eyes moved back and forth between us, scrutinizing. It was clear that his mind was working overtime trying to figure us out, to no avail. Finally, his eyes settled on me, as if he were studying the results of an experiment.
It wasn’t easy to keep the annoyance from my tone. “What?”
“I’ve just never heard anyone speak with such bitterness about their sister before.”
My plate of food had remained relatively untouched since I’d finished my pudding. The subject of my sister had this funny way of stealing my appetite. “What do you mean? A lot of people don’t get along with their sisters.”
Quinn pointed at me with his spoon. Apparently he had just sampled the banana pudding as well. “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. She must’ve really done a number on you at some point.”
“Let’s just say that it’s complicated. Bottom line is that I don’t trust her.” This topic of conversation was sending pinpricks up the back of my neck, so I opted to change it. “What about you? Have any siblings?”