The Hand on the Wall(35)

“Thanks for the help, Freckles,” David said to Hunter. “We’ll meet you when the coast is clear. Keep Pix distracted for a few minutes when she gets back, okay?”

“Are you seriously going to call me Freckles?” Hunter replied.

“Give me all your IDs,” David went on. “The security posts can ping them as you pass. I don’t want them showing up when I turn the system back on.”

Again, Janelle looked very hesitant, but things were moving now. They passed over the cards. David dropped them into Janelle’s bath caddy.

“The security system is about to go down. Ready? Three, two, one.”

He put his phone back in his coat pocket. It was impossible for Stevie to ignore the fact that security-shutting-off David was sexy.

“It’s off. Time to move.”

They pushed open the door and stepped out into a world of gently falling snow. The sky was an extraordinary color, a kind of pink steel. It had barely been an hour, but already about two inches had gathered on the ground and the trees, and this was not even the storm itself. Stevie could hear the coaches and the voices of fellow students carried on the wind, as people said good-bye and cried and began to go.

A little flash ran through her mind—this had happened here before. In April 1936, the morning after the kidnapping, when Albert Ellingham ordered all the students to be evacuated because of the events of the night before. Just like this. Perhaps Ellingham was never meant to be. Perhaps it was always designed as a place that had to be abandoned because of death and danger.

“We’re going the long way around,” David said, waving them toward the back of Minerva.

The group walked past the circle of stone heads, then veered toward the woods, away from the yurt. They kept along the line of the woods, tramping over rocks and sticks. They passed a statue of a man in a classical stance. This was the statue Ellie had climbed on their first night here, as they went to the party at the yurt. She had painted THIS IS ART on his torso. It had been scrubbed clean, but Stevie suspected that if she got up close, she would be able to see the outline of the letters.

Every contact leaves a trace.

David went ahead, leading the way. Vi and Janelle, normally entwined and constantly talking, now walked side by side in silence. Janelle’s gaze was fixed firmly and miserably ahead; Vi had their chin up defiantly.

“I’m trying to figure out if this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” Nate said as he kept up the rear with Stevie. “I don’t think it is, and that worries me.”

“It probably isn’t.”

“I mean, the thing with the files is crazy. I honestly don’t even know if I’m going to look at them.”

“Then why did you stay?” she asked.

“Because,” Nate said, tipping his head toward David, “when you and he get together, something bad happens to you.”

Stevie swallowed down a lump in her throat. She wanted to reach over and grab Nate’s hand at that moment, except that Nate would probably receive the gesture with as much enthusiasm as a handful of spiders.

“Are you going to tell him what you told me?” he asked. “About how you solved the case?”

“I don’t know,” Stevie said as her breath puffed out in front of her like a feather of frost. “No. I don’t know. Maybe. No. And if I stay, it’s more time to get what I need—anything I can find to bolster the case.”

“Well,” Nate said, “now that we belong to The Shining reenactment society, you might as well go for it. Last chance.”

There is one thing about talking about doing something—and then there is going into the mountain woods as you see your classmates carrying their bags out and going to coaches and crying and hugging each other. Stevie got to see a little bit of this as they hid among the statuary. In particular, she could see Maris, in a flash of red, running from person to person. Dash was with her, in his long, sweeping coat. Stevie had known them a bit—had experienced a death with them—and now, she would likely never see them again. Mudge was there as well, getting help, as his right arm was casted and slung over his chest. All of them departing, while she and her friends were here in the trees.

They wound behind the art barn, walked into the woods opposite the maintenance road, past the entrance to the tunnel that led to the dome. From there, David waved them down sloping, uneven ground laced with tree roots and filled with leaf pits of unknown depth. They slid and stumbled down to the river, which was running low and fast. Through the bare trees, on the rise above, Stevie could see the top of the library, and a bit of Artemis and Dionysus, the gym. Three coaches were making their way past the entrance sphinxes and around the drive.

“This way,” David said, leading them around the back of the building where a window had been propped open. They each climbed through, Stevie awkwardly throwing her leg over the sill and getting her pack jammed as she pressed her way inside. It was not a graceful way for any of them, but it was an entrance.

“System is back on,” David said once they were all securely through the window.

“Now what?” Janelle said.

“We bunk down. I recommend the pool-supply room. I slept there last night. Very private. Lots of towels. And pool noodles. Did you know we had pool noodles?”

Stevie hadn’t spent much time in Dionysus. She had been here on the tour on the first day of school and had made a few quick trips to the costume room upstairs. It was a strange building. The theater was there—a small space with a painted entrance wall that looked like a temple. There was a modern room full of exercise machines with rubber matting on the floor, and some changing rooms. The building smelled of chlorine.