by Rachel Caine
“What if they’d seen me?”
“Well, for starters, they’d have hauled me in to the station for interfering, confiscated my car….” Eve patted the steering wheel apologetically. “And you’d have just…disappeared.”
“But—”
“Trust me. They’re not exactly amateurs around here at making that happen. So let’s just get this done and hope like hell your plan works, okay?”
Eve steered slowly through crowds of lunchtime students walking across the streets, hit the turnaround, and followed Claire’s pointed directions toward the dorm.
Howard Hall didn’t look any prettier today than it had yesterday. The parking lot was only half-full, and Eve cruised the big Caddy into a parking space near the back. She clicked off the ignition and squinted at the sunlight glaring off the hood. “Right,” she said. “You go in, get your stuff, be back here in fifteen minutes, or I start launching Operation Get Claire.”
Claire nodded. She wasn’t feeling so good about this idea, now that she was staring at the door’s entrance.
“Here.” Eve was holding something out. A cell phone, thin and sleek. “Shane’s on speed dial—just hit star two. And remember, fifteen minutes, and then I freak out and start acting like your mom. Okay?”
Claire took the phone and slipped it in her pocket. “Be right back.”
She hoped she didn’t sound scared. Not too scared, anyway. There was something about having friends—even brand-new ones—that helped keep the tremors out of her voice, and shakes out of her hands. I’m not alone. I have backup. It was kind of a new sensation. Kind of nice, too.
She got out of the car, waved awkwardly to Eve, who waved in reply, and turned to walk back into hell.
Chapter 6
T he cold air of the lobby felt dry and lifeless, after the heat outside; Claire shivered and blinked fast to adjust her eyes to the relative dimness. A few girls were in the lobby with books propped up on tables; the TV was running, but nobody was watching it.
Nobody looked at her as she walked by. She went to the glassed-in attendant booth, and the student assistant sitting inside looked up from her magazine, saw her bruises, and made a silent O with her mouth.
“Hi,” Claire said. Her voice sounded thin and dry, and she had to swallow twice. “I’m Claire, up on four? Um, I had an accident yesterday. But I’m okay. Everything’s fine.”
“You’re the—they were looking for you, right?”
“Yeah. Just tell everybody I’m okay. I’ve got to get to class.”
“But—”
“Sorry, I’m late!” Claire hurried to the stairs and went up as fast as her sore ankle would allow. She passed a couple of girls, who gave her wide-eyed looks, but nobody said anything.
She didn’t see Monica. Not on the stairs, not at the top. The hallway was empty, and all the doors were shut. Music pounded from three or four different rooms. She hurried down to the end, where her own room was, and started to unlock it.
The knob turned limply in her fingers. Great. That, more than any graffiti, said Monica wuz here.
Sure enough, the room was a wreck. What wasn’t broken was dumped in piles. Books were defaced, which really hurt. Her meager clothes had been dragged out of the closet and scattered over the floor. Some of the blouses had been ripped, but she seriously didn’t care that much; she sorted through, found two or three that were intact, and stuffed them in the garbage bag. One pair of sweatpants was fine, and she added that, too. She had a lucky find of a couple of ratty old pairs of underwear that hadn’t been discovered, shoved in the corner of the drawer, and added those to the sack.
The rest was another pair of shoes, what books she could salvage, and the little bag of makeup and toiletries she kept on the shelf next to the bed. Her iPod was gone. So were her CDs. No telling if that had been Monica’s doing, or the work of some other dorm rat who’d scavenged later.
She looked around, swept the worst of the mess into a corner, and grabbed the photo of her mom and dad off of the dresser to take with her.
And then she left, not bothering to try to lock the door.
Well, she thought shakily. That went okay, after all.
She was halfway down the steps when she heard voices on the second-floor landing. “—swear, it’s her! You should see the black eye. Unbelievable. You really clocked her one.”
“Where the hell is she?” Monica’s voice, hard-edged. “And how come nobody came to get me?”
“We—we did!” someone protested. Someone who sounded as scared as Claire suddenly felt. She reached in her pocket, grabbed the phone, and held on to it for security. Star two. Just press star two—Shane’s not far away, and Eve’s right downstairs…. “She was up in her room. Maybe she’s still there?”
Crap. There was nobody in the dorm she could trust, not now. Nobody who’d hide her, or who’d stand up for her. Claire retreated back up the steps to the third-floor landing and went to the fire stairs, flung open the door, and hurried down the concrete steps as fast as she dared, ducking to avoid the glass window at the second-floor exit. She made it to the lobby exit door sweating and trembling from the effort, with her backpack and the garbage bag dragging painfully on her sore muscles, and risked a quick look out the window to the lobby itself.
Monica-groupie Jennifer was on guard, watching the stairs. She looked tense and focused, and—Claire thought—a little bit scared, too. She kept fooling with the bracelet around her right wrist, turning it over and over. One thing was certain: Jennifer would see her the second she opened the door. And sure, maybe that wouldn’t matter; maybe she could get by Jen and out the door and they wouldn’t be attacking her in public, would they?
Watching Jennifer’s face, she wasn’t so sure. Not so sure at all.
The fire door a couple of floors up boomed open, and Claire flinched and looked for a place to hide. The only possible spot was under the concrete stairs. There was some kind of storage closet crammed under there, but when she tried the knob it was locked, and she didn’t have Monica’s lock-smashing superpowers.
And she didn’t have time, anyway. There were footsteps coming down. Either she could hope the person didn’t look back in the corner, or she could make a break for the door. Once again, Claire touched the phone in her pocket. One phone call away. It’s okay.
And once again, she left the phone where it was, took a deep breath, and waited.
It wasn’t Monica; it was Kim Valdez, a freshman like Claire. A band geek, which put her only a tiny step higher than Claire’s status as resident freak of nature. Kim kept to herself, and she didn’t seem to be all that afraid of Monica or her girls; Kim didn’t seem afraid of much. Not friendly, though. Just…solitary.
Kim looked back at her, blinked once or twice, then stopped before putting her hand on the door to exit. “Hey,” she said. She pushed back the hood of her knit shirt, revealing short, shiny black hair. “They’re looking for you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Kim was holding her instrument case. Claire wasn’t exactly clear on which instrument it was, but it was big and bulky in its scuffed black case. Kim set it down. “Monica do that?” She gestured at Claire’s bruises. Claire nodded wordlessly. “I always knew she was a bitch. So. You need to get out of here?”
Claire nodded again, and swallowed hard. “Will you help me?”
“Nope.” Kim flashed her a sudden, vivid grin. “Not officially. Wouldn’t be too smart.”
They had it worked out in a matter of frantic seconds: Claire zipped up in the shirt, pulled the hood down around her face, and held the instrument case by the handle.
“Higher,” Kim advised. “Tilt it so it covers your face. Yeah, like that. Keep your head down.”
“What about my bags?”
“I’ll wait a couple of minutes, then come out with ’em. Wait outside. And don’t go nowhere with my cello, and I mean it. I’ll kick your ass.”
“I won’t,” she swore. Kim opened the door for her, and she took a ga
sping breath and barged out, head down, trying to look like she was late for a rehearsal.
As she passed Jennifer, the girl gave her a reflexive glance, then dismissed her to focus back on the stairs. Claire felt a hot rush of adrenaline that felt like it might set her face on fire, and resisted the urge to run the rest of the way for the door. It seemed to take forever, her crossing the lobby to the glass doors.
She was swinging the door open when she heard Monica say, “That freak couldn’t get out of here! Check the basement. Maybe she went down the trash chute, like her stupid laundry.”
“But—” Jen’s feeble protest. “I don’t want to go down to the—”
She would, though. Claire suppressed a wild grin—mostly because it still hurt too much to do that—and made it out of the dorm.
The sunlight felt amazing. It felt like…safety.
Claire took a deep breath of hot afternoon air, and walked around the corner to wait for Kim. The heat was brutal out against the sunbaked walls—suffocating. She squinted against the sun and saw the distant glitter of Eve’s car, parked all the way at the back. Even hotter in there, she guessed, and wondered if Eve had gotten out of that Goth-required leather coat yet.
And just as she was thinking that, she saw a shadow fall across hers from behind, and half turned, but it was too late. Something soft and dark muffled her vision and clogged her mouth and nose, and pressure around her head yanked her off-balance. She screamed, or tried to, but somebody punched her in the stomach, which took care of the screaming and most of the breathing, and Claire saw a weak, watery sunshine through the weave of the cloth over her face, and shadows, and then everything got dark. Not that she fainted, or anything like that, although she was wanting to, badly.
The hot pressure of the sun went away, and then she was being dragged and carried into someplace dark and quiet.
Then down a flight of stairs.
When the moving stopped, she heard breathing and whispers, sounds of more than a few people, and then she was shoved backward, hard, and fell off-balance onto a cold concrete floor. The impact stunned her, and by the time she clawed her way out of the bag that had been jammed onto her head—a black backpack, apparently—she found there was a whole circle of girls standing around her.
She had no idea where this room was. Some kind of storage room, maybe, in the basement. It was crammed with stuff—suitcases, boxes labeled with names, all kinds of things. Some of the boxes had collapsed and spilled out pale guts of old clothes. It smelled like molding paper, and she sneezed helplessly when her frantic gasps filled her mouth and nose with dust.
A couple of girls giggled. Most didn’t do anything, and didn’t look very happy to be there, either. Resigned, Claire guessed. Glad it wasn’t them lying on the floor.
Monica stepped out of the corner.
“Well,” she said, and put her hands on her hips. “Look what the cats dragged in.” She flashed Claire a cold toothpaste-ad smile, as if the rest of them weren’t even here. “You ran away, little mouse. And just when we were starting to have fun.”
Claire faked more sneezing, lots of it, and Monica backed away in distaste. Faking sneezing, Claire discovered, wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. It hurt. But it provided time and cover for her to pull the phone out of her pocket, cover it with her body, and frantically punch *2.
She pressed SEND and shoved it between two boxes, hoping the blue glow of the buttons wouldn’t attract Monica’s attention. Hoping Shane wouldn’t be iPoding or Xboxing and ignoring the phone. Hoping…
Just hoping.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Get her up!” Monica ordered. Her Monickettes sprang forward, Jen taking one of Claire’s arms, Gina the other. They hauled her up to her feet and held her there.
Monica pulled the hood back from Claire’s bruised face and smiled again, taking in the damage. “Damn, freak, you look like hell. Does it hurt?”
“What did I ever do to you?” Claire blurted. She was scared, but she was angry, too. Furious. There were seven girls standing around doing nothing because they were scared, and of what? Monica? What the hell gave the Monicas the right to run the world?
“You know exactly what you did. You tried to make me look stupid,” Monica said.
“Tried?” Claire shot back, which was dumb, but she couldn’t stop the impulse. It got her hit in the face. Hard. Right on top of the first bruise, which took away her breath in slow throbs of white-hot agony. Everything felt funny, rattled by the impact of Monica’s jab. Claire felt pressure on her arms, and realized that the Monickettes were holding her up. She put some stiffness back into her legs, opened her eyes, and glared at Monica.
“How come you live in Howard?” she asked.
Monica, inspecting her knuckles for signs of bruising, looked up in honest surprise.
“What?”
“Your family’s rich, right? You could be living in an apartment. Or in a sorority house. How come you live in Howard Hall with the rest of us freaks?” She caught her breath at the sudden cold blaze in Monica’s eyes. “Unless you’re a freak, too. A freak who gets off on hurting somebody weaker than you. A freak your family’s ashamed of. Somebody they hide here where they don’t have to look at you.”
“Shut up,” Jennifer hissed, low in her ear. “Don’t be stupid! She’ll kill you—don’t you get it?”
She jerked her head away. “I heard you went away to college,” Claire continued. Her stomach was rolling, she felt like she was going to puke and die, but all she had to do was stall for time. Shane would come. Eve would come. Maybe Michael. She could imagine Michael standing in the doorway, with those ice-cold eyes and that angel’s face, staring holes through Monica. Yeah, that would rock. Monica wouldn’t look so big then. “What’s the matter? Couldn’t you cut it? I’m not surprised—anybody who thinks World War Two was in China isn’t exactly going to impress—”
She saw the punch coming this time, and ducked as best she could. Monica’s fist smashed into her forehead, which hurt, but it must have hurt Monica a whole lot more, because she let out a shrill little scream and backed off, clutching her right hand in her left. That made the horrible throbbing in Claire’s head almost okay.
“Careful,” Claire gasped, nearly giggling. The scab on her lip had broken open, and she licked blood from her lips. “Don’t break a nail! I’m not worth it, remember?”
“Got that right!” Monica snarled. “Let that bitch go. What are you waiting for? Go on, do it! Do you think that wimp’s going to hurt me?”
The Monickettes looked at each other, clearly wondering if their queen bee had lost her mind, then let go of Claire’s arms and stepped back. Jennifer bumped into the towering column of boxes, spilling an avalanche of dust and old papers, but when Claire looked at her, Jennifer was staring at a spot between the boxes.
The spot where Claire had hidden the phone. Jen had to have seen it, and Claire gasped out loud, suddenly a whole lot more afraid than she’d thought she was.
“What the hell are you looking at?” Monica snarled at Jen, and Jen very deliberately turned her back on the incriminating phone, folded her arms, and stood there blocking it from view. Not looking at Claire at all. Wow. That’s… what? Not lucky, exactly. Jennifer had shown some cracks already. And maybe she wasn’t a complete convert to the First Church of Monica.
Maybe Monica had just pissed her off one too many times. Not that she would be stepping in on Claire’s side anytime soon.
Claire wiped the blood from her lip and looked at the other girls. The ones who were standing, uneasy and indecisive. Monica had been challenged and, so far, hadn’t exactly delivered the smackdown everybody—Claire included—had expected. Kind of weird, really. Unless Claire really struck some nerve besides the ones running through Monica’s knuckles.
Monica was rubbing her hand, looking at Claire as if she’d never seen her before. Assessing her. She said, “Nobody’s told you the facts of life, Claire. The fact is, if you suddenly just up and disappear…?” She
jerked her pretty, pointed chin at the dusty towers of boxes. “Nobody but the janitor’s ever going to know or care. You think Mommy and Daddy are going to get all upset? Maybe they would, but by the time they spend their last dime putting your picture on milk cartons and chasing down rumors of how you ran off with somebody else’s boyfriend? They’re going to hate to even think about you. Morganville’s got it down to a science, making people disappear. They never disappear here. Always somewhere else.”
Monica wasn’t taunting her. That was the scary part. She was talking evenly, quietly, as if they were two equals having a friendly conversation.
“You want to know why I live in Howard?” she continued. “Because in this town, I can live anywhere I want. Any way I want. And you—you’re just a walking organ donor. So take my advice, Claire. Don’t get in my face, because if you do, you won’t have one for long. Are we clear?”
Claire nodded slowly. She didn’t dare look away. Monica reminded her of a feral dog, one that would jump for your throat the second you showed weakness. “We’re clear,” she said. “You’re kind of a psycho. I get that.”
“I might be,” Monica agreed, and gave her a slow, strange smile. “You’re one smart little freak. Now run away, smart little freak, before I change my mind and stick you in one of these old suitcases for some architect to find a hundred years from now.”
Claire blinked. “Archaeologist.”
Monica’s eyes turned winter cold. “Oh, you’d better start running away now.”
Claire went back to where Jennifer was standing, and reached behind her to drag the phone out from between the boxes. She held it up to Monica. “Speak clearly for the microphone. I want to make sure my friends get every word.”
For a second, nobody moved, and then Monica laughed. “Damn, freak. You’re going to be fun.” She glanced away from Claire, behind her. “Not until I say so.”
Claire looked over her shoulder. Gina was standing there, right there, and she had some kind of metal bar in her hand.
Oh my God. There was something awful and cold in Gina’s eyes.