The Hand on the Wall(39)
“Up and at ’em,” David said. “Time to go home.”
“Home?”
“No point in hiding now,” he said. “That just makes them look for us and cause trouble.”
Stevie stepped out of the closet into the pool room. The glass ceiling was heavy with snow. Nate was looking up at it worriedly.
“I know it’s probably built for this weather,” he said. “But that is a lot of snow. Not to be a big baby or anything, but I don’t want to die in a shower of glass shards.”
The first thing they found was that they could no longer open the door; a foot of snow had already blocked it. They left through the window they had used to come in. The snow was pouring down. It was so heavy that Stevie couldn’t see the other buildings, just outlines in a white and night-pink world. The view was a bit magical—the Great House framed against the sky, with a white blanket set all around it. A few lights were on, glowing against the fierce, weird weather. The rest of Ellingham was dark. Nothing stirred in the library or the classrooms or the houses. Neptune was slowly being buried in his fountain, consumed by another form of water, which had slipped out of his control. The snow muffled everything. That was maybe the strangest part. Stevie realized that even though it was quiet up here, there was always a low, gentle current of noise—trees rustling in the wind, creaking wood, animals. Tonight, nothing but the operatic whistle of the wind. Their voices were flattened by the thick coating all around them, making each word stand out.
Not that they could say much. Walking was hard. Each step demanded that she pull her leg out of the almost knee-deep accumulation, lift up the other foot, and plunge it down through the snow. It was heavy and aerobic. She sweated from the effort of the walk, and the sweat created a halo of cold all over her body. It wasn’t long before her feet began to burn and go numb. By the time they had gotten back on the path to Minerva House, Stevie would have faced anything or anyone to get inside.
Minerva was deliciously warm when they trudged back in. There was a cheerful fire going, tended to by Hunter, who poked at it threateningly, in case it decided to get out of hand. He was wearing the fleece and slippers she had picked out for him. Pix was next to him, on the beaten-down sofa, wrapped in her massive brown fuzzy robe. Though she was dressed like a teddy bear, she had the look of a much more frightening creature on her face as she stood up.
“Everyone get changed so you don’t freeze to death,” she said. “Then you come right back here so I can yell at you. Because I am pissed.”
Stevie stumbled into her room, which was darker than normal as the snow had piled on her windowsill and blocked the window halfway. She knocked on the light switch with a raw, burning hand and peeled off her wet clothes. Everything hurt as her body came back up to temperature. Instinctively, she grabbed her robe and staggered across the hall to the shower. Even the hottest water felt cold against her skin. She huddled in the corner against the tiles until something approaching warmth took over again. Her feet were the last to come back online. She went out, numbly pushed her way back into her room, and grabbed at whatever clothes were closest and softest and warmest. Then she put on more—more socks, another sweatshirt on top of the first, then a blanket around her shoulders. Finally, covered in so many layers she had to shuffle, she went back to the common room. Janelle was there, in her fuzzy cat-face pajamas. Vi was wearing another borrowed pair covered in rainbows. David must have had one spare set of clothes in his big bag—the sloppy old Yale sweatpants that used to be his dad’s. He had been wearing them on the night they first kissed.
“Okay,” Pix said once everyone was seated. “I’m going to be really, really clear about some things. Everyone is under house arrest. Nobody leaves here until the snow clears. The school may be closed, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no way to enforce this. You want good recommendations at your home schools? Do you want any chance of coming back if we ever reopen? Do you want to go to college? You stay put until I say otherwise. Except you, Hunter. You can do whatever you like.”
“I can’t go anywhere either,” he said. “The snow is nuts.”
“No. But I have to say that you’re free to do whatever.”
“Fine,” David said, kicking back and putting his feet by the fire. “Nowhere to go anyway.”
“We’re not even going to get into where you’ve been,” Pix said. “Only because it’s probably not even relevant anymore.”
“I went on a quest,” he said.
Nate shot him a look that seemed to say, “Don’t joke about quests, jackass.”
“All of you,” Pix said. “Have you called home yet?”
“I don’t have a signal,” Vi said.
“Yeah, me either,” Nate said.
Stevie pulled out her phone. No signal.
“I have a landline upstairs,” Pix said. “We’ll take it in turns. Who wants to start?”
No one wanted to start, so somehow Stevie ended up going first. In all the time she had been at Ellingham, she had not been in Pix’s private apartment, which took up the space above the common room and kitchen, and also the area down the hallway opposite the upstairs rooms. She had painted the walls a clay color. There were beautiful Middle Eastern and African objects—brass teapots with long spouts; low, hexagonal tables topped in azure and white tiles; delicately carved wooden animals; tin and brass hanging lanterns with colored insets. There were reproduction hieroglyphics printed on vellum hanging alongside Pix’s other passion: her 90s music. She had at least a dozen original concert posters from bands like Nirvana. Nirvana was the only one Stevie recognized.