The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(29)

“If they can prove it,” Vi said. “I guess they have footage. They have footage of everything, because now we live in a surveillance state.”

Janelle rolled her eyes just a tiny, tiny bit.

“Seriously,” Vi said. “People are saying those cameras we got? They’re from someone on the outside. The school didn’t want them.”

“Then who bought them?” Janelle said.

“I don’t know. It’s private, though. I know you think I’m a paranoid protestor, but it’s true.”

Stevie bit her lower lip. It appeared that no one knew about Edward King’s connection to the school. This meant that the helicopter had not been seen up close. Stevie felt like she was sitting on a secret—palpably. Like it was an egg. If she moved, it would crack open.

“I don’t know,” Janelle said. “I get the problem, but I don’t hate the cameras. There are . . . things around. Bears and moose . . .”

“No moose,” Stevie said. “The moose is a lie.”

“I’m just saying that considering everything that happened, cameras aren’t completely the worst idea.”

“All I’m saying,” Vi said, steering the topic back to even ground, “is they must have seen him do it.”

A new person came up to where they were sitting. He was tall. Actually, he was by far the tallest student at Ellingham, and maybe the tallest Stevie had ever seen. She practiced measuring people by height, as that was a useful observational skill. Witnesses routinely got heights wrong. The best way to note a height was to measure it against something that didn’t move. In this case, this person was up to a large knot in the wood of the latticework that held up the yurt wall. Based on her other observations, this probably put the guy at six foot four, maybe five. He had a full build, like a football player, or like how Stevie guessed football players were built. (They existed at her old school, but they were not present for Stevie. She didn’t care enough to make note of them. Stevie hated football, and she specifically hated the car commercials that were in football, with the meaningless slogans and aggressively masculine messages about how important it was for Americans to drive up rocks and treat every trip to the store or a soccer game like a single-person invasion. Maybe she was overthinking this.)

This person probably did not play football. He was fiercely pale—not like Nate, who had a gentle, bookish gray tone. This was a kind of paper-white, contrasted sharply by jet-black, obviously dyed hair. He had purple cat-eye contacts in, wore a Slipknot T-shirt, and had spiked black leather cuffs on both wrists.

“Hi,” he said softly to Stevie. “I’m Mudge. I don’t think we met before, but Pix asked me to get you up to speed on anatomy stuff. Do you want a Pringle?”

His voice was so soothing, he sounded like someone who might be on a recording or one of the meditation apps Stevie used when she had anxiety.

“I’m okay,” Stevie said.

Nate peered up from his tablet and he seemed to regard Mudge as some kind of fellow traveler.

“Yeah, I want a Pringle,” Nate said.

The can of Pringles was extended, and Mudge entered the group. To Stevie’s surprise, he and Nate immediately started talking about a board game. Stevie was adrift in her small group, alone. Then she felt them. The eyes of Germaine Batt. They were watching her from across the room.

“I’ll be right back,” she told the others.

Germaine Batt was petite, just touching five feet. She had long, straight hair that today she pulled back in a bun. Like Stevie, she dressed for the job she wanted to have—she wore a black blazer with a white T-shirt under it, as if she might be called to be a talking head on the news at any time. She was sitting by herself on a pouf—not in the corner, as yurts have no corners—but tucked off into a nook with some screens and a coffee table. She sat alone, bent over her laptop. She was typing away when Stevie approached, but there was no pretense. They both knew they had been staring each other down.

“Welcome back,” Germaine said. Her voice had a high register, and her words a hard, fast clip. She spoke like she typed.

“Thanks.”

Stevie tried not to overload the word. It wasn’t Germaine’s fault that her article caused her parents to remove her from Ellingham. She didn’t mean for it to happen. Still, it was hard not to feel the connection between Germaine and being ripped from the mountain and thrown back to the earth below.

“Something wrong?” Germaine asked.

“No.”

“Seems like something’s wrong. By the way, you still owe me a favor. From that night.”

Stevie had forgotten about this. At the silent party, when Stevie was trying to figure out who had taken Hayes’s computer, she had asked Germaine to show her some photos on her phone. She had promised a favor in return, but she didn’t really think that she would be hit up for it.

“You figured it out because of my picture,” Germaine reminded her.

“I know. So what do you want?”

“Nothing yet,” Germaine said. “When it’s time, I’ll ask.”

Stevie found she was clenching her jaw. She consciously released it, but it snapped right back into position.

“So,” Germaine said, half closing her computer, “what do you think happened?”

“With?”