The Impossible Fortress(65)

We kept walking. The fence led us all the way around the campus, but we never saw a single student or even a building. The school and its entire population were hidden well beyond the perimeter. After twenty minutes of hiking I realized we were approaching the gate again, this time from the opposite direction. Some fifty yards ahead of us, I could just make out the guard booth through the trees.

“Careful,” Alf said, grabbing my arm.

I was so busy looking for the security guard, I’d nearly walked into a small stream. Alf and Clark hopped across, but I stopped to take a closer look. The running water had eroded a narrow gorge beneath the fence, maybe twelve inches deep.

“Forget it,” Alf said. “We won’t fit.”

“We might,” I said.

Clark teased the water with the toe of his shoe, poking around at the mud. “It’s not deep enough, Billy. Maybe if we had a shovel. But not like this.”

He didn’t seem to understand we were out of options, that we’d reached the end of the line. I kicked off my sneakers and hurled them over the fence. They landed on the other side, far beyond my reach. “You can turn back if you want,” I said, “but I’m going in.”

Alf and Clark watched, skeptical, as I climbed down into the creek and lay flat on my back in the cool muddy water. At the base of the fence was a rusty horizontal bar with jagged edges. By turning my face to the side, I was able to pass my head underneath—but my chest wouldn’t fit. I sucked in my gut and pulled on the fence, wedging myself further and further until I was completely and totally stuck.

Alf watched me flail for a minute before offering to pull me back out. “Should I grab your feet?”

“Hang on,” I said. By pushing up on the fence, I found I could press myself deeper into the mud, carving a deeper trench through the ooze. Something small and slimy fluttered against the back of my neck—a fish? A tadpole? I ignored it and kept pushing, using my legs to propel me along. The rusty base of the fence raked the front of my shirt, slashing the cotton and popping buttons. But soon my waist was through and the rest was easy. I crawled out of the creek, caked with mud and slime, and stood up. Through the bars of the fence, Alf and Clark observed me in a sort of horror.

“You look like Swamp Thing,” Clark said.

“It’ll wash off.” I dipped my hand into the shallow water of the creek, demonstrating how easy it would be to clean up. All I really managed was to smear the mud around my skin. “Come on, now. Let’s go.”

They both hesitated, and I knew what they were thinking: This sort of thing never happened to James Bond. Somehow he always managed to breach the perimeter without getting a speck of dirt on his white tuxedo.

But then a sound cut through the forest—a girl’s voice, laughing. “That’s it!” Clark said. “That’s her!”

“I hear it now,” Alf said.

He kicked off his sneakers and knelt down in the mud. All of my squirming and thrashing had made things easier for him; once he was halfway under, I grabbed his arms and pulled, dragging his pristine Hard Rock Cafe shirt through the mud. Clark had a somewhat harder time because he had to do most of the pushing with one hand, but Alf and I splashed around him in the mud, heaving and pulling until he was all the way through.

It wasn’t until Clark stood up that we realized Alf had forgotten his socks and sneakers—they were back on the other side of the fence, out of reach. Alf fished a branch through the wrought-iron bars, trying to snare them, but all he managed to do was push the sneakers farther out of reach.

“We have to go back,” he said.

“Are you kidding?” Clark asked.

“There’s no time,” I said. “We’ll get them on the way out.”

Alf took a step forward, wincing as his bare heel came down on a pinecone. “I’m not going to make it,” he said, but then there was more girlish laughter echoing through the woods, a siren’s song calling us forward. Clark and I followed the sound, and Alf had no choice but to limp after us, hopping and complaining the whole way.

Through the trees, we began to discern a large athletic field. Some thirty girls were running, shouting, and swinging nets on long sticks. It was a sport I’d never seen before; they all seemed to be chasing a small rubber ball.

“Is that polo?” Alf asked.

“You play polo on horses,” I said.

Alf shook his head. “No, that’s jousting.”

“It’s lacrosse,” Clark said. “They’re playing lacrosse.”

We lay flat on the ground to avoid being spotted, then crept closer on our bellies for a better look. These girls didn’t look anything like the bikini models on my bedroom walls; none of them would ever make the pages of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. They were too short or too tall, too fat or too freckled, too sweaty and too flushed and too imperfect. But they were real, they were gloriously alive—laughing and shouting and sprinting across the field. I watched them in quiet astonishment and realized that the rumors about St. Agatha’s were true: these were the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen.

“I bet they all get their periods together,” Alf said.

“Please don’t talk right now,” Clark said. “Just let me enjoy this moment.”

“It’s true!” Alf said. “When girls live together, their menstrual cycles sync up automatically. To protect the herd.”