Variant

There was a long pause, and I wanted to say something comforting but couldn’t think of anything. Homeless. To go from that to here. No wonder she kept saying this place wasn’t so bad.

She finally looked up at me.

I spoke. “Will you go to the dance with me tomorrow?”

Jane smiled, the corners of her mouth slowly widening until I could see her white teeth and a look of pure joy.

Her fingers curled around my hand and I squeezed them back.

Chapter Eleven

Tapping.

I opened my eyes. The room was pitch-black. I could barely see Mason’s bunk above me. No light was coming in through the drapes, and even the gap under the door was dark.

There it was again. Tapping, far away. I sat up and listened. It was persistent, somewhere down the corridor.

Standing up, I saw that Mason was still asleep. It was chilly, and I pulled my Steelers sweatshirt on and opened the door.

The hallway was dim, but I could tell that no one was there. I had expected to see someone trying to get into another guy’s room, but the corridor was empty. I checked my watch: 3:34 a.m.

The noise was coming from the far end, and I hurried down after it, even though I knew it was foolish going anywhere alone at night. I was well aware of the enemies I’d made.

As I got nearer, it was clear that the sound was coming from outside the dorm. Someone was pounding on our door. I quickened my pace and as I reached the door the lock buzzed and opened.

Carrie was there, alone.

She grabbed my arm. “Benson.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Lily’s missing. Go get Curtis.”

I nodded and turned, running back down the hall. Had she tried to escape? Or was it detention? Carrie had said she was missing, not that she’d been taken. But maybe she hadn’t heard? As I ran I could picture Laura and the Society girls dragging Lily away just as the guys had done to Walnut.

Curtis must have heard something because he opened his door almost immediately after I knocked. In seconds, we were back down with Carrie.

“She’s nowhere in the dorm,” Carrie said. “We’ve searched all the rooms, even the other gangs’.”

Curtis’s face looked grim in the dim light. “When was the last time anyone saw her?”

“We were all down in the cafeteria doing decorations last night,” Carrie said. “But no one remembers seeing her.”

The last I was sure I’d seen Lily was when she walked off the paintball field, with the two hits to her shoulder. Had she been in the cafeteria? I couldn’t remember.

“What about her roommate?” I said.

“Tapti didn’t get back to her room until after midnight, and the lights were off. She said she assumed that Lily was already there, asleep. Lily has the top bunk.”

Why hadn’t Lily waited for the medic? Did she want to leave the field?

Curtis put his arm around Carrie’s trembling shoulders. “Lily’s smart. She’s probably just… I’ll get everybody up. We’ll search the school.”

“Okay.”

I finally spoke. “I think she tried to escape.”

Carrie gasped. “What?”

“Did you know about this?” Curtis snapped.

“No,” I said, holding up my hands in my defense. “I don’t know anything about it. But Lily’s one of the few people in here who I’ve heard actually say that she wants to escape. She says it all the time.”

Curtis sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. “Other people say it, too.”

They obviously didn’t want to listen to me talk about escape attempts, but things were starting to click in my brain. “She left during the paintball game. Listen, I was hit and sitting there waiting for Jane, and Lily walked past me. She’d been hit in the shoulder, not the head, but she wasn’t waiting for the medic.”

Neither Curtis nor Carrie said anything, but they exchanged a look.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Let’s go look for her.”

Twenty minutes later, all the V’s had been roused out of bed and were gathered on the first floor. Jane was standing at the doors, staring out the window. I was about to go talk to her when Curtis got everyone’s attention.

“Just for simplicity,” he said, “let’s just break up into our paintball squads. I don’t want anyone going alone.”

“What’s the deal with the lights?” I asked. I’d tried the switches, but they weren’t working.

Curtis shook his head angrily. “I don’t know. They won’t come on.”

Mason, rubbing his eyes, whispered, “Rats in a cage, man.”

“Joel, you have the third floor,” Curtis said, handing out assignments. “Hector, second. John, first.” He paused, looking at Mason and me. Our squad was missing a member. “Mason, Benson, take the basement. If you find anything, meet back here. I’m going to go talk to Oakland and Isaiah and see if they know anything.”

“Isaiah probably did it,” Hector grumbled. “Put her in detention or something.”

“Don’t say that,” one of the girls said. “She’s going to be fine.”

Curtis clapped his hands, just as he did before every paintball match, and we all split up. Mason and I walked in silence, heading down the main stairs into the blackness of the basement. I checked the switch at the bottom, but it didn’t work, either.