Begin Again(15)

Harriet uses some fear-based tactics to round up a few more people hesitating in the hallway and Tyler brings half a floor’s worth of Bluebird, along with several half-eaten party-size bags of tortilla chips and a massive tub of salsa someone clearly snagged from the dining hall. We sit in a big circle on the floor, quickly learning one another’s names to avoid any confusion and launching right into the game, adding mismatched, ridiculous rules from everyone’s childhood version of it as we go.

The longer the night goes on, the more I start to get the lay of the land in Cardinal. There’s Harriet with her cuttingly hilarious commentary on the status of everyone’s mortality throughout the course of the game. There’s Tyler with his booming laugh and his army of friends who keep the energy mounting all through the night. There’s Ellie with her shy smiles and her little squeals every time Shay and I declare that yet another villager has “died,” and the way she scoots over to Tyler when they’re both eliminated from a round. There’s Shay, who gets caught up in it so fast that she takes over narrating duties, stringing elaborate, ridiculously creative stories behind the deaths of every villager at the hands of the werewolves and vampires. For a little while, it’s like we’ve all entered some separate realm—some place where all our worries are so far gone that we can just forget them.

And for a little while, I forget, too. I forget I was apprehensive about making new friends here. I forget I messed things up with Connor. I forget about my ribbon burning a hole somewhere in Professor Hutchison’s desk. I forget that I’m in over my head here at this school full of overachievers who were probably all in the top 10 percent of their graduating class. I forget that I’m away from home for the first time in a real, semipermanent, non-summer-camp way.

I don’t forget the bone-deep things—the things so far buried in me that they’re just there on a dull, constant hum—but I forget the scary ones. The immediate ones. For an hour or so, they aren’t pulling at the edges of me, and I’m laughing and yelling and swapping embarrassing stories with everyone else.

That is, until the door to the rec room opens, and one very tall, very sleep-deprived RA says groggily, “What on earth is going on in here?”

The recently murdered villagers are closest to the door, so Ellie lets out a “Ruh-roh” and Tyler jokingly tries to hide behind the hood of her onesie. Shay, whose arms were fully extended in a theatrical depiction of Harriet’s death at the hands of a vampire who lured her backstage at the school’s production of Mamma Mia! and used a pair of prop overalls to tie her limbs together before suffocating her with glitter and draining her of all her blood, clears her throat and leans back against a chair. The kids from Bluebird look at Milo with total apathy, but the kids from Cardinal all clear their throats and glance around the room like they’ve been busted mid–bank robbery.

Milo takes all of this in while blinking like he thinks he might have sleepwalked into it and is waiting to wake up from an odd dream.

“It’s past quiet hours,” he says lowly.

I offer a half wince, half smile. “Were we being too loud?”

Milo zeroes in on me so fast that there’s no doubt he knows I’m the responsible party. “I heard someone yell ‘Avenge me!’ from eight rooms away.”

“And yet not one of you has,” Tyler mutters pointedly.

Milo’s nostrils flare, but he doesn’t break eye contact with me. I gesture back at the mountain of cake, which is more like a small hill now that we’ve collectively dug into it. “Snoball?” I ask.

Milo narrows his eyes, but does take a few deliberate steps toward the table. The room is still utterly silent, all parties transfixed as he scrutinizes the table, picks up a package of Tastykakes, and opens it while looking at all of us in turn.

“If this is going to continue, I need it to be at least eighty decibels quieter. Am I clear?”

“Crystal,” says Shay, before I can answer.

Milo nods at her solemnly, and it’s clear he’ll trust her word over mine, so I keep my mouth shut. Then he takes a very large bite of Tastykake and points himself toward the door, leaving the room as ominously as he came.

There are a few beats of silence and then some muffled laughter.

When Shay speaks again, her voice is only slightly above a whisper. “We’ll just . . . be super quiet, okay?”

Harriet sighs. “You’re literally killing me softly, huh?”

I muffle my own laugh, giving Shay the “one sec” gesture before ducking out of the rec room and following Milo down the hall—no easy feat, considering every one of his steps makes up about two of mine.

“Hey.”

Milo doesn’t stop walking, but does significantly decrease the length of his tall-person steps so I can keep up. “You again,” he says, without turning to look at me.

“Me again,” I confirm. “So—first of all—sorry about the noise.”

He takes another large bite of Tastykake. “Apology mostly accepted.”

“Good. Um. But the thing is, Shay mentioned you might be a good person to talk to about work-study?”

Milo stops walking, but sure does take his time chewing. For a few moments it’s just the two of us standing in the hallway, me craning my neck to watch him, Milo considering me like we’ve both walked into a high-stakes business negotiation.