What Happens After Midnight, page 10
And Tag, once again, understood the assignment. If we didn’t choose Maya’s installation, Daniel would be checking every single sculpture here. Which could take hours.
There was only one catch.
“He’ll suspect it’s Maya,” I pointed out. “Daniel will think Maya’s the Jester.”
“Well, at the end of the day, he’s going to peg somebody as the Jester,” Alex said.
“And it won’t be Maya,” Tag said, showing us his phone screen. Zoe had buzzed in: Maya’s going to the infirmary. Take cover. Housemaster is driving her over now.
“Excellent,” Alex whispered excitedly. “Awful but excellent.”
Can we ensure word is spread? Tag wrote back.
“Uh, who are you?” I joked. “People magazine?”
“It’s her alibi,” he responded after Zoe liked his message. “It’ll eliminate her as a Jester possibility.” He locked his phone and nodded at the sanctuary. “Okay, now let’s solve this.”
We needed the deck. Unfortunately, none of us were tall enough to reach the top of Maya’s sculpture without standing on one of the deck’s benches.
“I say we split up,” Alex said. “You two can hide the clue from the sculpture’s other side while I create a diversion. I’m a senior, they’re freshmen—or, if Manik’s right, sophomores. Either way, I outrank them.”
“But you’re not an authority figure,” I said. “It’s not like you can send them racing for their rooms. They might leave, but they also might sit and stay a while.”
Alex was unfazed. “Then I’ll shoot the shit with them.”
I sighed. “Alex, even if you play it cool now, those guys will immediately remember you when Ames finds out the Almanacs are missing. What are you supposed to be doing out here alone? Unless you have recreational drugs in your backpack…”
Alex tilted his head. “Lily.”
“No!” I whisper-yelled. “You have recreational drugs in your backpack?!” Alex had gotten his strike for drinking, but I’d also caught a whiff of a Dave Matthews concert once or twice. He occasionally partook in a joint.
I looked at Tag. He never smoked and rarely drank, but a bathtub and champagne flashed through my mind. After crossing the Chicago Marathon’s finish line, we’d celebrated with the bottle of nonalcoholic champagne that my mom had hidden in my suitcase—she knew how hard I’d been training for that race. 26.2! its tag had read. In Tag’s empty house, I’d been lounging in a decadent bubble bath while he’d sat freshly showered on the edge of the clawfoot tub. Back and forth, back and forth, the bottle had passed between us until our stomachs fizzed and we couldn’t stop laughing. He became so naturally tipsy that he’d leaned far over the edge of the tub. Any second, he would slip. “What a stupid place to sit,” I’d giggled, to which he grinned and said, “But what a pretty place to fall!”
Then he’d slid into the water, T-shirt and boxers and all. And my heart—well, my heart had swelled so much I thought it would burst from my chest. I could still see us splashing each other in between soapy kisses.
“Blame me, Lily,” Tag now said. “I told him to bring some in case we ran into students. We need as many explanations as possible. If they see Alex light up, they won’t think he’s the Jester.” He gave his friend a shove. “They’ll just think he’s an idiot.”
I considered for a beat. It would knock off another Jester prospect, I realized. Tag put himself in a clue, Maya’s now safe in the infirmary, and Alex would be sneaking out for a smoke…
We needed a distraction. The freshmen were talking, but unless someone purposely kept the conversation flowing, they would break off if they heard too many sticks snap or the faintest of whispers.
“Okay,” I mumbled. “Fine, but promise you won’t share with anyone?” Watching Alex smoke would already be giving them the wrong idea.
Alex held out his pinkie. “Promise.”
Our makeshift scheme came together quickly. Alex would casually run into the underclassmen while Tag and I handled the clue. We didn’t have the time or privacy for a clue reading, so after Tag showed it to me, he tucked it inside its envelope before licking the seal. “What’s that for?” I asked when he dropped the envelope into a plastic sandwich bag.
“Protection from the outdoor elements,” he answered as I vaguely remembered him performing the same ritual on the telescope balcony. I’d just been too wrapped up in his Blair clue to really notice.
“Alright,” Alex said. “Wait until you hear my voice.”
I shifted from one foot to the other. My mom always said that Alex could make conversation with a chair, but that didn’t make me feel better tonight.
Tag nodded, and my pulse sped up once Alex left. The walkway’s first step squeaked, and by the time Alex and his flashlight had rounded the bend, the boyish babble had quieted.
“Whoa there!” Alex exclaimed seconds later. He was nearly shouting to ensure we’d hear him. “You guys scared me…”
“Ready, set, go,” Tag said, and after a deep breath, the two of us headed for the walkway. But instead of climbing the low-slung steps, we skirted around them and dropped to our knees. Even with the deep and dark woods for cover, we had no choice but to crawl around the deck. Alex also knew to aim his flashlight above the Hour Glass since we couldn’t risk lighting our way.
There were both sharp-edged twigs and soft pine needles under my palms and soon I came across something wet. “Watch out,” Tag warned too late, my hands already soaked. “There’s a mud puddle.”
I got my revenge when we stood up, wiping them on his sweatshirt.
Meanwhile, Alex had officially taken over the party on the deck. I could smell his pot. “This is purely for medicinal purposes,” he told the boys as Tag and I navigated around a sculpture of Poseidon together. “My insomnia tends to hit me pretty hard, so I came out here to hopefully chill out.”
“Can I take a hit?” one boy asked boldly.
“Nope,” Alex answered, then said to someone else, “Here, scoot over, bud. It’s important to treat your elders with respect. Offering them a seat would be a strong start.”
Only Alex, I thought as Tag and I dodged some tangled tree roots.
Whoever Alex had politely pushed aside on the bench didn’t complain, because after a moment, Maya’s sculpture appeared in all its glory. Our beautiful beacon of light.
But Alex’s beam did not go unnoticed. “Why the flashlight?” someone asked, giving me goose bumps. I could feel all six gazes turn toward us. “Is someone out there?”
“On the ground!” I told Tag at the same time he said, “Plank position!”
Both of us fell to the earth. Dirt went straight up my nose, and I worried my heart would give us away. It thumped wildly against the ground.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Alex said easily. “At least not yet.” He turned off his flashlight, not really having a choice. “Tag Swell and Blair Greenberg could arrive in a few hours, though. It depends if they’ve gotten back together.” He paused. “Are you interested in joining their yoga class?”
I felt Tag tense next to me.
The boys laughed, a buoyant enough chorus that Tag and I could stand and snap sticks in the process. Now on our feet, we broke into a jog. I could still envision where the Hour Glass was, but if I blinked a few times, it would disappear.
Keep talking, I thought. Alex, keep talking.
But I knew he had to be careful. If he talked too much, asked too many questions, the guys would grow suspicious. It was a risk we’d been willing to take.
“No, no, we aren’t here for yoga class,” one boy said. His voice hadn’t dropped yet. “We came to pull a prank.”
“A prank?” Alex sounded as surprised as I was. “Color me intrigued. Shocked, but intrigued.”
“Yeah, there’s like a week left in school and this so-called Jester hasn’t done anything,” another kid said. “We thought it was time we took matters into our own hands.”
I imagined Alex exhaling some smoke. “What did you have in mind?”
All six boys spoke at once, so Tag and I made one last loud push for Maya’s sculpture. I couldn’t follow what anyone was saying, but by the time we arrived, one boy had been elected to speak. His voice sounded so close that I could step around the sculpture and tap his shoulder. He was talking about the Circle’s iconic scattering of Adirondack chairs.
“And do what with them?” Alex asked.
Tag handed me the duct tape and third clue before crouching down and whispering for me to climb onto his shoulders, pool party chicken fight-style. You’re joking, I almost said, but then remembered this job required a dynamic duo. The Hour Glass was ten feet tall. Daniel would hop up on a bench, but Tag and I didn’t have that luxury.
So I gingerly threw a leg over his shoulder.
“Build a tower out of them,” the freshman told Alex. “Picture a Jenga game—”
“Which will upset all the upperclassmen!” another couldn’t help but jump in. “Because we all know you live for those chairs.”
“We also want to steal some chairs from inside the buildings,” the first kid added. “Enough that classes get canceled, because it’s like, where will we sit?”
Tag and I swayed together for a second when he rose to his full height. I was trying really hard not to think about his hands on my thighs, so I didn’t realize I had grabbed two tufts of his thick hair and was holding on for dear life.
“Lily, you’re squeezing my skull,” he whispered.
“Shit, sorry,” I whispered back, but after letting go, it only got worse. I crossed my ankles for better support while Tag’s hands moved farther up my thighs, and his lips pressed against the inside of my knee as if to anchor himself.
A lightning bolt crackled through my body before it settled into an electric hum, a longing ache. “Okay,” I breathed. “Just a little closer…” I swallowed hard, my pulse pounding. “Just a little closer and I’ll be able to reach the top.”
“We’ll be in their crosshairs,” Tag warned, mouth moving on my skin. A few more steps forward and we would be in plain sight. Alex had turned off his flashlight, but someone else’s glowed so they weren’t in total darkness.
A distraction, I thought. We need a diversion within a diversion.
Tag shuddered as I clung closer to him to pull my phone from my pocket. Thankfully, I’d turned my brightness level down ahead of time. We are right behind the HG, I texted Alex. Can you somehow turn their heads?
My heart thudded three times before a deep-voiced boy asked Alex who’d texted him. He definitely thought something was amiss. “My dearest friend,” Alex lied smoothly. “Instead of keeping a dream journal, Taggart likes to text me his.”
Tag snorted. “Try the other way around.”
“Oh…” all the guys said, and that was when I knew for sure they were freshmen. Freshmen idolized Tag because he was so nice to them. Even watching from afar, I knew he always had a fist bump ready and knew almost everyone’s name.
He would’ve made a damn good prefect.
A sudden beeping noise snapped me back to the sculpture situation. “Fuck,” Tag was mumbling. “Fuck me.” He let go of my left leg to dig something out of his pocket. Not his phone but his insulin pump. Did he have a notification?
I squeezed my eyes shut. Don’t hear us, I prayed as he silenced it. Please don’t hear us—
Alex immediately did, attuned to the sound, but swooped in to save us. He sprung up from his bench, sneakers slamming against the deck’s wooden planks. “So you want to move all the chairs…” I could tell from his tone that he was pacing. “That’s a pretty big job, guys. Especially at this time of night.” He let out a low whistle.
A signal.
Tag’s hand went to my leg again to regain our balance, and he edged us around the Hour Glass. Slow and steady, I told myself, even though I wanted to go fast and furious.
“The buildings are all locked,” Alex reminded the boys. “How do you plan on getting inside to take those chairs?”
No one offered up an answer except the trusting tinny-voiced kid. If I were to suddenly go toppling over, I would land on him. “Brendan stole our prefect’s ID,” he said. “He snuck into his room while he was in the bathroom brushing his teeth. He stays up late, so that’s why we got out here so late.”
Oh, how marvelous, I internally groaned. Something told me it wasn’t Manik they’d robbed.
“You good, Lily?” Tag asked, and I stilled my shaking fingers long enough to secure the Ziploc bag on top of the sculpture. Alex continued to pace and ask questions, so his audience didn’t hear me ripping strips of duct tape. He somehow managed to sound interested instead of interrogative.
“How about the plan of attack?” Alex asked. “Dividing and conquering won’t work, because you only have one key.”
I shifted on Tag’s shoulders. “Done,” I said, and he moved so abruptly that I went swinging, and when he tried to stop me from tumbling to the ground entirely, he stumbled over a stray branch.
With Alex still in the sanctuary, Tag and I could forgo our army crawling and just make a quick and quiet run back to the main trail. I was afraid to check the time once we finally made it back to the tree where we’d stowed his and Alex’s backpacks. The gnawing in my gut told me it was after 2:00 a.m.
We both sighed in relief. “Well, that was fun,” I joked weakly.
“I’m going to update Alex,” Tag said, unlocking his phone. “Since I’m apparently sending him my dreams…”
His text appeared in our group chat several seconds later: Mission accomplished.
Alex quickly responded: You guys should go ahead without me.
My heart rate skyrocketed. NO! I wrote before Tag could.
I can’t just get up and leave, Alex said. It’ll look suspicious.
“But he only brought one joint,” I said to Tag. “Hasn’t he finished it yet?”
Plus, Alex added, I really should dismantle this bomb. We can’t have these guys wandering around. I need to convince them to go back to Mack.
Then Manik decided to join the conversation.
Wait, those are seriously my guys?!
Don’t worry, we’re taking care of it, I wrote when Tag didn’t. He seemed to have switched to a separate conversation with Alex. Stay on the fire escape.
Zoe then privately texted me: WTF is going on?
What’s your twenty? I replied. Any chance you can meet us?
Because the next clue’s hiding place…well, I imagined it was another reason Tag had tapped Zoe. There was a reason my mom had nicknamed her “Wonder Woman.” She was heroic.
Sneaking out my window now! she wrote. Where am I heading?
The ropes course, I wrote, my legs wobbling at the thought. Heights—oh, how I hated them. Meet us at the ropes course.
TWELVE
Tag and I didn’t talk much while we navigated the woods, both of us mourning the loss of Alex. What was his plan? “He’ll catch up to us,” I told Tag as some way of comfort. “He knows where we’re going…” I paused. “And where we’re headed after that?”
“Yeah,” Tag said quietly. “He knows the entire route.”
“Zoe’s on her way,” I added. “We’ll have her.”
That made him chuckle. “Phew, because we need her.”
I smiled. “That’s an understatement.”
Our trail would soon spill out of the woods into a large clearing, which was one of my least favorite places on campus: the ropes course. My mom and I rarely disagreed on things, but our “likes” did not align when it came to Ames’s ropes course. She loved climbing the various apparatuses and was the faculty ropes course instructor, while my knees buckled at the thought of a heavy-duty harness. I’d only climbed the rock wall once, during freshmen orientation. “Come on, Lily, keep going!” I remembered one of the student RCIs cheering, but after I’d rung the bell at its peak and clambered downward, I said I needed to go to the bathroom.
But instead, I made a detour to the back side of the storage shelter and collapsed in the shade. My legs were still wobbling. Deep breaths, I’d told myself. In through the nose, out through the mouth—
“Oh, nice,” someone said. “Is this the designated hiding place?”
My heart lurched. The boy had scared me.
“If we’re afraid of heights?” he tried again.
All I could do was nod, and he took that as the go-ahead to join me. I noticed he wasn’t much taller, skinny with thick brown hair and gray-green eyes. “I’m Tag,” he said.
“Like the game?” I replied.
He smiled, revealing a set of silver braces. “It’s short for Taggart,” he explained. The tips of his ears pinkened. “But yeah, Tag like the worldwide recess phenomenon.”
I laughed. “Well, I’m Lily, but ironically I’m allergic to the flower…”
This is where we met, I thought once the footpath ended and we were dumped out into the dark meadow. This is where Tag and I first met.
My heart twisted, wishing and wondering if he was thinking the same thing.
The moon was bright enough to highlight the ropes course’s five climbing apparatuses. They looked like they soared all the way to the stars. I morbidly imagined myself falling to my death from one of them.
But that was why we had Zoe! She and her family went rock climbing out west every year. Even in the dark, Ames’s ropes course would be a piece of cake.
Tag was really making Daniel work for the Almanacs.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “Should we unlock the storage shelter and grab equipment for Zoe? Which one of us is going to belay?”
Back at the freshmen climb, Tag and I learned to belay so we wouldn’t have to climb anymore. Few people volunteered for the job because belaying had none of the glamour that climbing did. It meant you stood at the bottom of a structure to control a climber’s rope. You gave them slack to climb higher but also enough friction to ensure they didn’t fall.
“Not necessary,” Tag replied, then pointed to the far corner of the field where another copse of strong and sturdy trees stood tall. His arm shook a little. At least four trees were connected by a building fifteen feet off the ground. “We’re breaking into the Hideout.”
