IT WAS A SLIGHTLY LESS KINDLY LARRY WHO ESCORTED STEVIE AWAY from the workshop.
“I know,” she said, “I’m . . .”
“Listen, Stevie,” he said. “You’re a smart kid, and I like you. Let me just be clear. You need to do exactly what I say.”
“I know. I just . . .”
“No. You know. Say you know.”
“I know,” Stevie said. “But Janelle . . .”
“So now you’re going to stay here,” he said. “In the security office. And you’re not going to talk to anyone until I say so. Okay?”
Her phone started ringing again.
“Who is that?” he said.
She held it up. Again, it said: PARENTS. He indicated that she should answer and stared at her as she did so.
“Stevie!” Both her parents were on the line and it was impossible to tell who said her name first.
“The school just called us,” her mom said. “We’re coming to get you.”
Stevie dragged a hand over her face.
“I’m fine,” Stevie said.
“Stevie, someone died.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stevie said.
“So we’re coming up and you’re coming home,” her dad said.
“Look,” Stevie said, staring at the ground in panic. “It’s horrible, but . . . it could have happened anywhere.”
“No one died at your old school.”
“That’s not true,” Stevie said. “There was a car accident in—”
“Look,” her mom said. “Your dad and I are taking the day off and we’re coming to get you. It’s only been a few days. We can get you reregistered.”
This shouldn’t have been the moment Stevie started crying. She didn’t want this to be the thing that did it. Hayes should have done it. But, as Larry explained earlier, things didn’t happen the way you wanted. She brushed a tear away with the back of her hand and tried to keep the tremble out of her voice.
“Look,” she said, “it was . . . Can we just talk about it when you’re here?”
There was a grudging agreement on this. Stevie managed to get off the phone. Larry’s expression had softened a bit from jagged rock to slightly less sharp and pointy rock.
There was a noise overhead, like the noise from the night before. Larry and Stevie looked up at the same time and saw a red and white helicopter.
“Press,” he said. “It’s out. They’ll be at the gates.”
He exhaled loudly and started walking fast.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ve got to get you back to Minerva and then handle this.”
“I lost my mind for a minute,” she said. “I was scared for Janelle. But I won’t. I promise I’ll go right back and I won’t stop on Go or collect two hundred dollars or anything. I’m sorry. You can do what you need to. You can trust me.”
Larry regarded her for a moment.
“All right,” he said. “But if I find out otherwise, you’re burnt with me. And I can check.”
She turned to walk off, to prove her word, but Larry called her back.
“Take care of yourself, Stevie,” he said. “Go be with your friends. Even if you didn’t like the guy, this is no time to be alone.”
“Who said I didn’t like the guy?” Stevie asked.
“Twenty years with the state police. I was a detective. You get a knack for these things.”
“You were a detective?” Stevie said. “Seriously?”
“Fifteen years on homicide.”
“Why did you stop?” Stevie asked.
“Because I opened too many doors and saw too many terrible things,” he said quietly. “And some of those things never leave you. Every police detective has something they carry with them, something they see when they’re trying to go to sleep at night. Twenty years is plenty. I know you are interested in being a detective, but don’t play at being one, do you understand? No sneaking around behind the police.”
“I know,” she said.
“We understand each other?”
“Yeah,” Stevie said. “I think we do.”
Stevie returned to Minerva feeling numb. Her parents would definitely be a problem, and going home was a real possibility, if Ellingham didn’t kick her out first. She looked at her building in a new light as she approached the big blue door. Maybe she was never meant to be here very long. Mistakes got made all the time. Fate had plans. . . .
No.
Stevie was not one of those people who thought fate decided for her. Fate was making choices. Fate was at least trying. The school hadn’t kicked her out yet, and her parents hadn’t taken her home yet. And something was going on. If Hayes had taken the pass, if Hayes had taken the dry ice . . . what the hell was he doing with it down in the tunnel?
She entered the common room still thinking about this. No one seemed to have moved from where she’d left them. Someone had built a fire in the fireplace, so the room was hot. The fire gave it a completely new character—the woodiness, the intimacy of it. It sounded like glass as it crackled.
“You okay?” Janelle asked. Nate turned as well.
“Yeah,” Stevie said, pulling off her hoodie.
She looked around for where to sit. Ellie and David were still on the sofa, but there was space between them now. Ellie had a black notebook in her lap and was drawing. David had his computer, but again, he looked right at her.
Stevie caught his eye and looked away quickly. She sat at the table.
“Did they tell you what happened?” Nate said.
Stevie just shook her head.
“So are we going to be allowed out?” Nate asked.
“I guess so,” Stevie said. “Soon. My parents called me. I guess the school let them know? So your parents will know soon. Everyone is going to know.”
“Yeah,” David said. His voice caused Stevie to start. She saw Janelle take this in, and look from Stevie to David curiously. “The word is out. So we’re going to be knee deep in counselors soon.”
He would not stop looking at her. And not just looking. It was a penetrating, unwavering look.
“I better call my parents first,” Janelle said, grabbing her phone. “Can we do that? Do you think we can?”
Stevie shrugged.
“I’ll wait,” Janelle said, setting her phone down. “I’ll ask Pix when she’s out of the shower.”
“Après les déluge,” Ellie said, out of nowhere. “Les parents.”
No one knew what to say to that.
“So we wait,” Nate said.
“We wait,” David said.
Stevie became very conscious of where David was in the room. Yes, it was just kissing last night, but it was a lot of kissing. It was a lot of rolling. What did you say to someone you’d rolled all over?
Ellie stood up suddenly and stomped off to her room. Then there were four, sitting in awkward silence until the knock at the door. It was Larry, with a uniformed officer.
“Janelle,” Larry said. “Can you get your pass and come with us for a moment?”
Janelle’s eyes went wide, but she got up instantly and went to her room for the pass, then stepped out the door.
“Why do they want Janelle’s pass?” David asked Stevie.
“Because someone took it on Thursday,” she said, watching the door.
“So?”
Stevie said no more. David got up and sat next to her at the table.
“You have no idea?” he said.
“I can’t say anything,” she replied.
“So you have some idea.”
Nate observed this silently. Pix came downstairs.
“Was someone just at the door?” she asked.
“The police just took Janelle and her pass outside,” David said. “For no reason Stevie can say.”
“I’m not being a dick,” Stevie said. “I just can’t.”
Pix hurried to the door and stepped outside.
The atmosphere in the room continued to thicken. Stevie looked at David’s hand on the table. He had long fingers. Those fingers had run over her hair last night, and other places. His hands were strong, much stronger than they looked. She gave him a sideways glance. His eyebrows were thick and very expressive. They rose when he was playful, arched when he was being a jerk, and now were flat. He was watchful.
She had a strange desire to sit in his lap. To pull his face closer to hers. To kiss him again, right here, by the fire and in front of Nate and the moose head.
Where had that thought come from? It just shot through her brain like a rabbit across a road.
David pushed his chair back and went down the hall to Ellie’s room, leaving Nate and Stevie.
“So,” Nate said.
“Yeah,” Stevie replied.
“Are you really okay?”
She nodded.
“Because you seem freaked out. It’s okay to be freaked out. I was freaked out last night, and today I’m not as freaked out. So it’s your turn, if you want.”
“I always wanted to be around for a death,” Stevie said. “You know I’m into this stuff. And now I am around death. I feel bad for saying I wanted that, but I’m . . .”
She shook her head.
“You’re interested,” he said. “I saw how you looked when Larry came and said the police wanted to talk to you.”
“Is that bad?”
“No,” he said. “This just happened. We were here when it happened.”
He dug his nail into the grain of the wood.
“Thanks,” she said.
“For what?”
“I just think you get me,” she said.
“I do,” he said, shrugging. “We have a limited emotional vocabulary. We’re indoor kids.”
The door opened again, and Janelle returned and sat next to Stevie, leaning her head into Stevie’s shoulder.
“They’re taking my pass,” she said. “And they’re going to go up to Hayes’s room to look around. I don’t know why they want my pass. I didn’t do anything.”
Stevie put her hand on her friend’s head. It was an unfamiliar feeling, this warm head on her shoulder. Janelle just trusting her and leaning on her. Nate reaching out.
And David, the person she’d just been closest to, being meaningfully silent.