What Happens After Midnight, page 16
Admissions, he answered. Eagerly anticipating your arrival!
Good, Tag typed. I miss you, Alexander.
I miss you too, Taggart, Alex replied. But always remember that you’re simply the best, okay?
“Tag, focus.” I locked my phone and forced him to do the same. We had no time for needless Schitt’s Creek references, even if Patrick’s open-mic night performance never failed to warm my heart. Just like Tag and Alex’s bromance did. I hoped things wouldn’t be too rough for them next fall, with Tag in Virginia and Alex at Columbia. “There’s no ID sensor on the Hub’s outside door,” I said, “and I don’t have a key.” I thought about my mom’s key ring. “Or I probably do, who knows.” I took a breath. “But since Josh is there, it’ll be unlocked…”
“Or just casually open to all,” Tag noted once we’d crept over to Hubbard Hall. The building where the prank had begun was silent and secure, save for a propped-open black door and a dining hall delivery van idling on the street. “Did he mention if he was low on supplies?”
“Oh, he actually did,” I said. “Flour, eggs, butter, bacon, just some basics. Although this kid has also completely cleaned him out of ketchup. Breakfast, lunch, dinner—I’ve heard he pretty much drinks it with a straw.”
Tag threw me a glare but then knocked his knuckles against mine. You’re funny.
I flicked his arm. Thanks.
We waited a couple more minutes for Josh or the delivery guy to appear, but when neither did, Tag and I tiptoed toward the doorway. From past backstage visits, I knew the kitchen would be to the left, the so-called too-small storage room to the right, and the diner floor straight ahead. We just had to strike at the perfect moment.
Which turned out not to be this moment.
Someone emerged from the building. Not Josh but Raymond from the dining hall. Tag and I both froze, backs against Hubbard’s shadowed wall. “Hello, little fellow,” Raymond said, spotting Puck over by his van. “You want to help unload?”
The damn cat, I thought. Why must he insist on joining the team?
“Hey, Ray, please tell me you brought…” I heard Josh call from inside, but he trailed off once he’d stepped out into the early morning air and spotted his archnemesis. “Nice try.” He folded his arms over his chest and shook his head at Puck. “Nice try, but I’m not my fiancée.”
Raymond gasped. “You and Leda are finally engaged?”
“You are not setting one paw in my diner,” Josh told the cat, then looked at Raymond. “Yes, we are—have been, actually—but it’s not public yet. We agreed to wait until after graduation.” He smiled. “This is Lily’s year.”
Oh, Josh, I thought, my heart flaring with love for him. Ever since Josh had proposed in October, my mom had been saying they were waiting for the right time to tell people, and I kept wondering why it hadn’t come around yet.
Now I knew.
“Still,” Raymond said. “Congratulations!”
“Thank you, Ray,” Josh said, running a hand through his bedhead. “That means a lot. We’re really—sick of this con artist cat!”
Puck had pounced for the prize. I blinked to see the cat zig past Raymond, then zag around Josh and into the building.
“I knew it!” Josh shouted, stalking back inside with Raymond on his heels. “I told Leda!”
“Hurry, this is our chance,” Tag told me. “Stevie’s always sniffing around Alex’s and my snacks, so I bet Puck will go for the food and they’ll follow him into the kitchen.”
Together we ran for the door, and after throwing ourselves inside, I caught whiffs of sugar and spice and savories from the kitchen mixed with the sound of pots and pans clanging. Raymond was trying to mediate between a roaring Josh and a mischievous Puck. “No, Josh, violence is never the answer…”
Puck mewed mockingly.
“What an imp.” Tag grinned while we weaved through the dark diner, booths empty and chairs still up on tables, and then flipped the lock to flee and fly across the student center. “We’ll have to thank him later.”
“If he’s alive later,” I said.
“Cats have nine lives,” Tag shot back.
“But none of them have been hit by Josh’s favorite frying pan,” I quipped.
“Touché,” Tag said, tickling my waist before we skidded through the side exit and back onto the street. All was still quiet except for a distinct meow.
“No,” I whispered, spotting Puck sitting a few yards away with his tail swishing expectantly. “There’s no way.”
“Pet him,” Tag said when the cat sauntered over to us. “He was willing to take a frying pan for you.”
I shook my head and smiled when Puck let me scratch behind his ears. “Very nicely done,” I told him. “Now let’s go finish this.”
NINETEEN
Somehow, some way, we made it to Admissions. Cutting through Hubbard had helped us avoid crossing the entire Circle, but we still had to army crawl through part of it, flattening ourselves like starfish whenever a headlight neared. Then we crouched by the Crescent’s low wall before porch hopping between junior dorms and hiding behind the auditorium’s pillars. “Better late than never,” was how Alex greeted us when we finally arrived. He and his backpack popped out from the impeccably manicured boxwood hedges that framed the building. “What took you so long?”
“The Ames School equivalent of American Ninja Warrior,” Tag said as the knot of anxiety in my chest began to unwind. We’d made it, although I swallowed hard when I checked my phone to see 5:22 displayed on-screen. I glanced at the guardhouse up the street. Gabe’s old post faced the front gates, so his successor had their back to us.
“Oh man, who’s this?” Alex asked, noticing Puck at my heels. He’d kept his distance on the way over but now had moved in close.
“Puck,” I said. “Alex, this is Puck.”
“As in hockey?” He raised an eyebrow. “Or Midsummer?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Tag said, then nodded his chin at the tulip-bordered flagstone pathway. “Shall we?”
“Don’t!” Alex yelped before Tag could cross the lawn. “There’s now a camera.” He pointed to the elegant archway entrance. “We’re out of range, but see? Over there?”
“Since when?” I asked after squinting at a security camera angled toward the front walk. My shoulders sagged. Not only was Ames considered old-fashioned because it had been founded in the nineteenth century but also because its buildings did not have cameras. The gated entrances and back delivery roads had electronic eyes twenty-four seven, but a fence ran around the entire campus. One too tall to climb unless you had a grappling hook on hand. Plus, the school’s stalwart Campus Safety squad. How much more thorough did the coverage need to be?
After a couple beats, Tag sighed. “Eh, I get it,” he said. “At least for this building. It’s like a museum. Random people funnel in and out all day, every day. There should be more security.”
“Wait a sec,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re giving up.”
“I’m not.” He glanced at Alex. “Someone leave a window open?”
“But of course,” he said. “Associate Director of Admissions, I believe.” He gestured to the side of the building. “This way.”
“One more clue, Jester!” I tried to psych up Tag. “We’re almost there—so, so close.”
He was slow to respond. “How are you going to get back?” he asked. “I don’t want you going through that maze again, and, Lily…” He yawned. “Lily, we barely have an hour.”
Indeed, the sky had gone from inky black to a deep plum and was now lightening to violet. Sunrise was upon us. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “I’ll hide somewhere until 6:30, then simply walk home. If anyone asks, I’ll say I’m taking a morning walk.”
“But you never take morning walks.”
“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”
“Here we go,” Alex said, hoisting up an office window. Puck nimbly jumped up and dropped inside before the three of us followed suit.
Just not quite as nimbly.
The Associate Director of Admissions’s office was dark with spooky shadows, which revealed themselves to be endless clutter when I switched on my phone’s light. Piles of color-coded folders and paperwork, framed family photos, and multiple New England Patriots bobbleheads along with a freestanding globe and an Eiffel Tower-shaped floor lamp. “Mr. Hoffman has quite the eclectic vision,” Alex commented. “I want the name of his decorator.”
The lock clicked when we snuck out the door and into the first-floor atrium of offices. A twisting staircase was in the center, and if you tilted your head back and looked skyward, you could see the stained-glass ceiling of the building’s rotunda. It was a depiction of Ames’s coat of arms, a checkerboard of light blue-and-red panels with a gold seagull overtop.
I pointed diagonally across the atrium. “I think the conference room’s the door on the left.” I paused. “Or is it the right?”
“The left,” Alex sighed, but before the presidential runner-up could trudge over to student council’s base of operations, Puck started adamantly pawing at his leg. “What? What is it?”
A shiver went up my spine. “Someone’s here,” I whispered. “Someone’s here and—”
The sudden but unmistakable sound of snoring finished my sentence. “Dear mother of god,” Alex softly proclaimed. “We are supposed to surprise the people; the people are not supposed to surprise us.”
“Aptly put, Alexander,” Tag mumbled. “Now where’s the Sandman camped out?”
Puck took that as his cue to tiptoe off, and I cupped my hand around my flashlight so we could track him. He stopped near a couch against the far wall, where a heavyset, bearded man was sleeping. “Is that…?” Alex asked.
“Yes,” I said, mystified. Why was Mr. Hoffman here? “That’s our Associate Director of Admissions.”
“His colleagues should have plenty of fun with him later…” Alex said, but he trailed off as if unsure what to do next.
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure either.
We gave it a full five minutes before linking arms like children and crossing the atrium floor, footsteps echoing off the walls no matter how lightly we tried to walk. My pulse pounded, even though Puck had not left Mr. Hoffman. He’ll sound the alarms, I tried to reassure myself. Puck will raise hell if he wakes.
Tag began humming “The Final Countdown” once we’d ever so carefully closed the conference room’s door behind us. I watched him flip on the lights but then immediately dim them until the room was almost dark again. An oval mahogany table sat in the center with a dozen matching chairs while the taupe walls were clean, save for several windows and a standard SMART Board. Alex wasted no time in helping himself to the conference room’s sideboard, which was laden with fresh glasses and mugs. The water carafe was empty, but Alex popped a Starbucks Breakfast Blend pod into the Keurig.
Yuck. Coffee.
“Alex,” I hissed. “Really?”
“Relax, Mom,” he said. “It’ll be ready by the time we’re finished.”
“And you will be abandoning it if not,” Tag said dryly as he battled with his backpack’s zipper. It looked like it kept getting stuck.
“Here, let me try,” I said right before he won the war, but I joined him at the table anyway. He’d started rubbing his forehead, and when I put my hand on his back, his skin radiated heat. I could feel it even though his sweatshirt. My stomach stirred. “What can I do?” I asked.
“Clue,” he said. “We need the clue envelope, and the tape—the duct tape.” He sighed heavily. “I should’ve brought scissors. I’m so sick of ripping duct tape, Lily.”
I nodded and pulled both the manila folder and roll of duct tape from his overstuffed backpack. “Heads up, Nguyen,” I said, tossing the tape to Alex. “Use your teeth if you must.”
“Are you going to read it?” Tag asked when I’d flipped the clue envelope to seal it. “Don’t you want to read the riddle?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly, “but there isn’t time.” I licked the flap and handed the clue off to Alex. “Why don’t you perform it spoken word-style while Alex hides it?”
Tag opened his mouth, but only two words came out: “I couldn’t.”
“Don’t be modest, Taggart,” Alex said as he crawled under the table. “Spoken word poetry definitely puts you in a vulnerable position, but this is a safe space.”
“And you memorized all the clues,” I added. “Advantageous, remember?”
Tag ran a hand through his hair, then nodded. “Yeah, yeah, no, I got it,” he said, his laugh sounding more Jester than Tag. “Let me just…I need a stage…”
And before I could even grab his sweatshirt hood to stop him, he’d climbed onto the conference table. His legs wobbled a little like Bambi’s once he stood tall above me. Alex crawled back out from underneath just in time to see Tag grin and sing:
Burgers, fries, milkshakes, oh my!
Ready to know where the Almanacs lie?
Well, say hello to the Hub,
Behind where everyone gets their grub…
Alex and I were both on the table before Tag could take a bow. Something was wrong. His opening stanza had been charmingly charismatic, but by the end of the poem, it was like a haze had engulfed him.
Alex took both of Tag’s hands. “He’s trembling,” He said. “Lily, tell me why he’s trembling!”
“Don’t yell at her,” Tag said sharply.
“I’m not yelling at her,” Alex said while I tried to work Tag’s soaked sweatshirt over his head. He was no longer warm but sopping wet with cold sweat. “I’d just like to review any recent medical history.” He looked at me. “Please.”
I told him everything, and his eyes widened when I mentioned the bolus. “But what’s wrong with that?” I asked, heart lurching. “He does it regularly. He said he automated an accurate amount…”
“Well, being accurate is tricky,” Alex said, unzipping his backpack. His hands were shaking too. “When you aren’t carb-counting what you eat or drink, being accurate can be really fucking tricky.” He rifled through his bag. “I’m sure he tried to be accurate, Lily, but I’m even more sure he overdid it. He gave himself too much insulin and now he’s crashing.”
Tag swayed on his feet, so I quickly wrapped my arms around his waist to steady him. “Is this true?” I asked, because as much as Alex sounded like a doctor, he wasn’t one. And nobody knew Tag’s diabetes better than Tag. “Did you overshoot?”
“I shouldn’t have done it in front of Anthony,” he said by way of an answer. “I wasn’t fully focusing…I was nervous he was going to put the pieces together and confront us about the prank.” He groaned. “Can we leave? This room is so hot. I feel like I’m in a…a place with lava.” His throat bobbed. “A volcano.”
I held Tag tighter, realizing that he’d gone from a cold sweat to a hot flash. Haywire temperatures couldn’t be good. “Alex, how do we fix this?”
“I’m finding him something to drink to boost him back to normal,” Alex said, head basically in his backpack. “I know I dumped a Gatorade in here, but Zoe…”
“Tag, how about we sit down?” I suggested. He was fully leaning on me. “There are chairs—”
“Hops, it’s really hot in here,” Tag whispered. “Can we please go outside?”
“Goddamn it!” Alex cast his backpack aside. “Zoe did steal that Gatorade!”
My heart throbbed. No Gatorade, no Gatorade, no Gatorade.
“Wait, he has a Capri Sun,” I exclaimed, remembering. “I packed it before we left my house. Alex, it’s in his backpack.”
He snapped his fingers. “That should work!”
From there, we moved quickly. Alex found the juice pouch, stabbed in its straw, and made Tag take a few sips before granting his wish to go outside. “Keep drinking,” I said while he helped Tag down from the table and out through the room’s large arched window. It wasn’t far above the ground; Admissions was on a small hillside.
“It should kick in within ten minutes,” Alex said once we were sitting next to him. “Although last time was a different story.”
Last time? I wondered and was about to ask, but suddenly there was something more pressing. A lump formed in my throat at the sight of the approaching Campo car. We weren’t in its crosshairs yet, but only because it had disappeared behind the auditorium.
Then it would turn the corner and its headlights would find us like an Olympic archer found the bull’s-eye.
Thick blood thudded through my ears. I barely heard Alex say we had to go, barely felt him shaking my shoulder. It wasn’t until he Alexis Rose-style booped my nose that his hoarse voice registered. “Lily, help me get Tag up!”
But while we successfully got Tag to his feet, it wasn’t enough. He stumbled when we tried to make a break for it. “My legs are slush,” he said, still stuck in his sluggish cadence. He sank back down in the grass. “I can’t move.”
“Then we’ll stay with you,” Alex and I both said.
“No.” Tag shuddered with chills. He’d entered another cold sweat. “You guys need to go—run.” His teeth chattered. “Don’t let them catch you.”
“Taggart, you’re having a hypoglycemic attack,” Alex argued. “If you seriously think I’m going to leave you here…”
“Alex, please,” Tag pleaded. “We can’t risk it.”
We can’t risk it.
My spinning stomach plummeted. Tag had said that to Alex to stop him from chancing a dance with Bunker at the observatory. He was thinking again about the strike in Alex’s file, and if he were to get caught again…
“Alex, beat it,” I told him. “I’ve got this.”
“What?” Alex gaped at me. “Lily, no.”
“Lily, yes,” I responded. “We’re not going to let you get kicked out of school. Get out of here before you blow it.” I hurled Tag’s Jester backpack at him. Campo did not need to get their hands on it.
Alex caught the bag but shook his head. “He’s my best friend. I can’t leave him.”
“Then don’t leave,” I snapped. “But at least hide!”
