Student Body (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  Then I went to look for Mindy. I headed straight for the powder room on the first floor. She was probably still in there.

  She was.

  But she wasn’t standing at the sink, applying fresh mascara or lip gloss or adjusting the clip in her hair.

  Instead, she was lying on the black-and-white tiled floor on her back, her eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, her long, blonde hair splayed out around her head like a golden cloud. Her legs were bent at an angle, her arms were outstretched above her head, as if she were reaching for something.

  And she was lying very, very still.

  Chapter 17

  I OPENED MY MOUTH to scream, but the only sound I made was a breathy gasp. I wanted desperately to turn, to run, to get out of there and tell myself I hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. I wanted Mindy not to be lying on the floor, unconscious. For one tiny moment, I was very, very angry with her for letting this happen. Why hadn’t she been more careful?

  Because she didn’t know she was supposed to be, came the answer. Because you, Tory, didn’t warn her.

  I knelt to see if she was breathing. When I was sure that she was, I checked for blood, expecting it to be pooling under her head.

  There was no blood. And no visible marks of any kind, except that her lips seemed to be bluish.

  I did open my mouth again, and this time a cry for help came out. Then another, and another. In just seconds, people entered and began milling around, barking out orders: Call a doctor, call an ambulance, get a pillow, give her air, give her air.

  I stood up. Mindy had plenty of help now. What I wanted to know was how she’d landed on her back on the floor in the first place.

  It only took a second to figure it out. The sink was full of water. She’d been rinsing off the old makeup, planning to apply fresh. And lying in the water, floating innocently, was a small curling iron. Mindy’s intention had been to put some new life into her curls. The curling iron was still plugged in.

  I’m not stupid. A sink full of water combined with a small electrical appliance had thrown Mindy Loomis to the cold, tile floor as effectively as a blow to the head.

  I knew, even as I stood there looking down into the sink, what everyone else would think. That vanity and stupidity had sent Mindy to the floor.

  I knew better. Mindy would never have been that careless.

  Someone had pushed it in. Someone had slipped into the room, probably tiptoeing, and Mindy wouldn’t even have known anyone else was in there with her. I could almost see her, bending from the waist over the sink, her eyes closed, splashing at her old makeup with water scooped into her hands. She wouldn’t have heard anything, wouldn’t have seen anything. The curling iron would have been at her elbow, plugged in, warming up.

  He’d slipped up behind her and pushed the curling iron into the sink while Mindy’s hands were in the water.

  I was facing the sink now, and I could hear voices behind me saying exactly what I’d anticipated: “How could she have been so careless?” and “Jeez, even my ten-year-old sister knows better than that!” and “Didn’t she ever read the warnings on those things?” I felt a pang of sympathy for Mindy.

  I wanted to scream at all of them, “It wasn’t her fault! She didn’t do it! She’s not that stupid. Someone else did it! Someone horrible—and dangerous.”

  I looked up to see Eli standing in the doorway. But he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on the windowsill directly behind me.

  I turned around to look.

  The window was halfway open, letting in a brisk March breeze.

  But that wasn’t what Eli was looking at. What Eli was looking at, and what I was looking at now, too, was a small, ragged square of something white.

  While Eli watched from the doorway, I walked over to it. Everyone else was busy fussing around Mindy, who was beginning to stir and make little sounds, so no one was watching me but Eli.

  I knew what the white was before I even got to the window. A piece of gauze, of course. What else?

  I wondered if Mindy had seen the mummy-thing. But she hadn’t. As she regained consciousness, she couldn’t remember what had happened, and she didn’t remember seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. That’s what she told the ambulance attendants who glanced quickly at the sink, drew their own conclusions, shook their heads, and put her on a stretcher. “I was washing my face,” she told them repeatedly, clearly not yet fully alert. “I was just washing my face.”

  The last thing she said as they carried her out of Sigma Chi was, “I probably won’t win now, will I?”

  But Hoop’s friend Boomer, who was standing beside me, disagreed. “You’ve already won, Mindy. You’re our new Sweetheart. Congratulations.”

  Pale as the stretcher she was lying on, Mindy managed a small smile.

  Pocketing the piece of gauze, I ran after the stretcher to ask one of the attendants if Mindy was going to be all right.

  “That curling thing was small,” he said as he slammed shut the ambulance doors. “Probably not much of a charge. I think she’ll be okay. She’s lucky.”

  Had it been just this afternoon when Eli and I had thought the same thing … how lucky we were to be alive? Only this afternoon? It seemed much longer, maybe years ago.

  When I turned away from the ambulance, Eli was standing right in front of me. “Let me see it,” he said.

  I unearthed the piece of gauze and extended it in the palm of my hand. “It got caught on a nail when he was climbing in or out of the window.”

  “It looks brand-new,” Eli said. “It’s so clean. If it’s the same gauze he had on this afternoon out in the woods, wouldn’t it be dirty? Sooty? We were.”

  “We were crawling around in a tunnel, Eli.”

  “Still, he was in those burned-out woods, standing in the middle of all that soggy ash. How did he keep this gauze so clean?”

  “Maybe he changed bandages.” I didn’t see why Eli was making a big deal out of the little piece of gauze. It told us what we needed to know, didn’t it? What we would have suspected, anyway? Clean or not, it was proof that our attacker had chosen Mindy as his target this time.

  Bay and Nat, both visibly shaken, approached. I quickly stuffed the square of gauze back into the pocket of my skirt. I knew I had to tell them everything. They would really be disgusted with me now, justifiably pointing out that if I had told Mindy the truth earlier, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.

  They wanted to follow the ambulance to the hospital. “Okay, but I’m riding with Eli,” I said hastily, avoiding Bay’s eyes. I didn’t want to see the hurt in them. Or anger, maybe, if Eli was right about Bay’s temper. But I needed to talk to Eli, and I didn’t want Bay and Nat around when I did. Maybe together, Eli and I could figure out the best way to tell the others that someone was out to get all of us.

  “Why can’t we all go together, in one car?” Nat complained. “I’d rather ride in Eli’s car than the Bus. It’s nicer.” To Bay, she quickly added, “No offense.”

  But Bay was too mad at me to ride with us. “Suit yourself,” he told me stiffly. “See you down there.” And he grabbed Nat’s elbow and dragged her away.

  “So, what are we going to tell them?” I asked Eli.

  “The truth? For a change? And I think maybe it’s time we discussed going to the police, Tory.”

  “Nat and Bay will never go along with that.”

  “Why not? We don’t have to admit to being in the woods Friday night. Why can’t we just tell them what’s been happening since? We aren’t even positive there’s a connection to the fire, so why would they think that?”

  “Oh, Eli, of course there’s a connection. And I don’t see how we can tell the police about the attacks without making them suspicious about the fire. I just don’t think that’s possible.”

  Eli sighed as he braked for a red light. “Well, we’ll check it out with Bay and Nat. Maybe they’ll have some ideas. Right now, I wish I’d never gone near that park Friday night.”

>   I felt exactly the same way.

  But that was nothing compared to the way I felt when we got to the hospital and, while Mindy was still being treated in the emergency room, the four of us went upstairs to check on Hoop’s condition.

  Nurse Lovett wasn’t at her desk. The floor seemed unusually noisy, and a minute later, Lovett came rushing out of one of the rooms, a tray in her hands.

  “Oh, dear,” she said when she saw us. “What are you doing here?”

  “We know, we know,” Eli said, “we’re not family. We just wanted to see how Hoop was, that’s all.”

  She stopped in her tracks. “Oh, heavens,” she said in dismay. “Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  My stomach lurched. Tell us what?

  “Tell us what?” Nat said uneasily.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. You should have been told.”

  “What?” Eli said impatiently. “What’s wrong?”

  Nurse Lovett looked away, toward her desk, as if she needed to be looking at anything but us. And she said, “I’m afraid your friend has passed away.”

  Chapter 18

  “PASSED AWAY?” ELI SAID. “You mean … died? Hoop died?”

  Lovett nodded. “Yes, I’m so sorry. But I’m afraid I can’t fill you in right now. We’re going crazy up here. Three-car smashup. A real mess. They sent two up from ER and another’s on the way. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, and neither does anyone else.” She bent to rummage through her desk drawers, already having dismissed us. “Died?” Nat echoed Eli. “Hoop died?” “I’m sure someone tried to call his girlfriend. Must not have been able to reach her, or I’m sure she would have let you know.” She found the papers she’d been seeking and straightened up, moving as if to leave in a rush. Then she must have taken pity on us because she half-turned and, her eyes sympathetic, said, “Perhaps you could think of it as a blessing. Your friend was so severely burned. I’ve worked with burn patients before, and their suffering is immeasurable. Now, I really have to get back to ICU.”

  But before she could leave, Nat blew me away by asking hastily, “Did he say anything before he died?” I couldn’t believe she was thinking that way. Not now, not when we’d just been told … how could she? Was she really that afraid of being found out?

  Nurse Lovett frowned. “Why, I don’t know. I doubt it. I wasn’t here when it happened. Just came on duty a few minutes ago. All hell had already broken loose with that car wreck, but when one of the nurses ran by me, she mentioned that we’d lost a patient. When I saw your friend’s empty bed a few minutes later, I realized it had to be him. Sure enough, when I checked, all of the paperwork on him was gone. I knew what that meant. I felt really bad. So many people seemed to care about him. But it’s been so chaotic here, I haven’t had a chance to talk to anyone about his final moments. I’m sure he went peacefully, though. He was heavily sedated.”

  Then she was gone, rushing off down the hall, her white-soled shoes making only the faintest whispering sound.

  We were all transfixed with shock and disbelief. Hoop, dead? Impossible. How could Hoop be dead? Our friends didn’t die. Maybe they got sick, maybe they had accidents and got hurt, maybe they even were burned badly in a fire, but they didn’t die. Not at eighteen. Except when people were wild and careless. I knew that all too well.

  “Dead?” Bay said in a hollow voice. He turned away from the desk, his face ashen. “Hoop’s dead?”

  “Can we please get out of here?” Nat cried, making a break for the elevator. “I can’t stay here another second!”

  Like robots, we followed her. We stepped into the elevator when it arrived, and we descended slowly, silently, to the ground floor emergency room where Mindy was being treated for electrical shock.

  Mindy. She had no idea that Hoop had died. How were we going to tell her? She’d go crazy.

  “If she freaks,” Nat said when we reached the emergency waiting room and I asked that question of all of them, “she could say anything. She could scream that it’s all our fault. She will, I know she will. In front of the doctor and the nurses and everyone. They’ll ask her what she’s talking about, and she’ll tell them. And now,” she added heavily, “we’re not just talking about defying the burning ban and starting a fire. Hoop died because of that fire.” She fixed her eyes on Eli and me. “You guys are the law students. Doesn’t that make us guilty of manslaughter or something?”

  I couldn’t think. How could I think when I’d just found out that Hoop was dead? But I knew one thing we had to do.

  I turned to Eli and said, “The waiting room is empty. If we’re going to tell Nat and Bay what’s going on, we should do it right now.”

  And that’s what we did.

  They didn’t believe us, of course, not at first. I wouldn’t have believed any of it myself if they’d been the ones telling it to me. But at last it sank in.

  “We have to tell Mindy,” Eli said. He jumped up and began pacing back and forth in the small, yellow-walled room. “We have to fill her in the minute she gets out of that treatment room. If they decide to keep her overnight, one of us will have to stay with her all night. Keep an eye on her. She’ll be here all alone, which puts her at risk more than the rest of us. She’s already been attacked once. If he finds out she’s alive, he’ll come looking for her to finish the job.”

  We agreed that if necessary, we would take turns sleeping in Mindy’s room.

  “She’s been in there an awfully long time,” Nat complained, getting up to join Eli in pacing the white tiles. “Maybe she got more of a jolt than the ambulance attendants thought she did.”

  Lost in misery, we waited another thirty minutes or so. The waiting room was beginning to fill up with people waiting for word about the car accident. It grew noisier and more crowded. Finally, Bay jumped to his feet and said, “I can’t stand this! I’m going to go hunt up a doctor and find out what’s taking so damn long.”

  But just then, a young woman in white came out of the treatment room, a clipboard in her hands. We expected her to head straight for us, but she didn’t. She turned and began walking down the hall.

  We ran after her.

  I caught up with her first. “Are you treating Melinda Loomis?” I asked.

  “Well, I was,” she said. “Mild electrical shock. She seemed okay when she came in. Her vital signs were good, and she didn’t seem to be burned. But I never finished my examination. Are you a friend of hers?”

  I nodded. “You didn’t finish? Is something wrong? She’s been in there so long.”

  “No, she hasn’t,” the doctor answered. “She left a few minutes after she got here.”

  “Left?”

  “Yes. I left the room for a few minutes. When I got back, she was gone. I guess she got tired of waiting.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “She left? Where did she go?”

  The doctor smiled. “Well, now, how on earth would I know that? She wasn’t a prisoner here, you know. Just a patient. She hadn’t even been admitted to the hospital, so she didn’t need a doctor to sign her out. I did see the back door closing, though,” pointing toward the door in question. “I assumed that was her leaving, because there hadn’t been anyone else here. I didn’t actually see her, but I saw another patient who I figured was leaving with her.”

  “Another patient?” Eli said. “What other patient?”

  The doctor frowned. “Well, not one of mine, I can tell you. I wouldn’t let anyone in that condition leave the hospital. I mean, I couldn’t see any actual injuries from this far away, and he must have been ambulatory or his doctor wouldn’t have let him leave the hospital. But I couldn’t believe that someone so completely bandaged was actually walking out the door.”

  Chapter 19

  WHEN I FINALLY FOUND my voice, I said shakily, “Someone wrapped in bandages left with “Mindy?”

  “Outpatient, probably,” the doctor said matter-of-factly. “Maybe a burn patient. The damaged skin is sometimes wrapped for months while healing takes
place.” She frowned. “Although that wasn’t what it looked like. This bandaging looked whiter, more like ordinary gauze.” She shrugged. “Anyway, he seemed to be walking just fine. Is he a friend of yours, too?”

  Eli’s eyes met mine. A friend? Hardly.

  “We have to find her,” Eli said minutes later as we stood on the hospital steps. “The doctor said she left before those car-crash victims came in, so she’s been gone a while. He could have taken her almost anywhere by now. Maybe back to campus.”

  “We don’t have any idea where we should look for her,” I said bitterly,” and that’s the truth. We have to call the police this time. We have to.”

  They knew I was right. It would be tricky, trying to dance around the reason someone would have kidnapped Mindy from the hospital, trying to explain why we were scared to death, but we had to try.

  But first Bay thought we should check the hospital grounds, on foot. “He could be tricking us into thinking he’s taken her somewhere else. Won’t hurt to check.”

  The building loomed above us, lights glowing in almost every window, as the staff worked to save lives. But they hadn’t been able to save Hoop’s. I would think of the hospital from now on as the place where Hoop had died.

  No, that wasn’t right. Hoop had really died out there in the woods, in the park, in the middle of a roaring inferno. All they’d brought to this hospital in a screaming ambulance was a body, silent and unknowing. Not Hoop.

  I couldn’t think about that now. We had to find Mindy, before she was gone, too. For good.

  We split up into pairs, Eli and I taking one side of the hospital grounds, Nat and Bay the other, agreeing to meet back at our cars, which were parked near the construction for the hospital’s new wing.

  There was no sign of Mindy on the hospital grounds. I hadn’t really thought there would be. Why would he hang around there, where people would certainly be hunting for her when they discovered she was missing. I wondered if he’d had to hurt her to get her to come with him. It seemed so unfair, that she had survived the electrical shock only to be dragged, probably still groggy and disoriented, out of the hospital and into the dark night. Had she even known what was happening to her?