What Happens After Midnight, page 9
Then he just walked through the door, shucked off his jacket, and joined me on the couch. “Smoosh.” I swallowed, my eyes welling up with tears. It hurt to talk. “I feel like a flaming pile of fucking shit.”
“But my oh my, do you look radiant!” Tag grinned impishly and pulled me into his arms, cuddling me close before I settled my head on his lap and started sobbing. He kissed the top of my head and then slid his hand up my grandfather’s old fisherman cable cardigan to rub slow circles on my back. “Close your eyes, Hopscotch,” he said like a hypnotist. “Close your eyes and—”
A beeping noise cut him off. His glucose sensor. “Perfect timing,” he mumbled, and I felt him shift so he could pull his insulin pump from his pocket to check his blood sugar. “Too low,” he said after he’d silenced the device. “I need something to boost it.”
“Gatorade’s in the back of the fridge,” I said. Neither my mom nor I drank the stuff, but we kept the house stocked for Tag.
“Cool Blue?” he asked.
“Of course,” I answered as he carefully slid out from under me. “Because you’re the coolest.”
Tag laughed and took my hand.
“You’ll come back?” I murmured hazily.
“When have I ever not?” he murmured back, raising our laced fingers to kiss the inside of my wrist. It sent sweet shivers through me. “And why would I ever stop?”
Because I told you to, I thought now. Only several months later, I’d told him to stop coming back, or coming in general. I could feel him pulling away and wanted to protect myself.
“So…” Alex ventured once the three of us had started walking. “What’s next?”
“Sculpture sanctuary,” Tag said right as I deadpanned, “Dropping the act.”
Alex kept his voice light, innocent. “Pardon, Lily?”
I sighed. “Alex, come on. You know everything that’s planned for tonight.” The final tip-off had been seeing Bunker at home. Alex had been surprised—shocked, even. Like Tag, he clearly believed the old man would be gone for the night.
“Listen, I may have consulted a little,” Alex allowed, which made Tag chuckle. “Everyone knows that sounding boards are helpful.” He clapped Tag on the back. “But really, this is all the Jester.” He pretended to weep. “And I couldn’t be prouder.”
I shook my head. “You guys never cease to amaze,” I said, then randomly felt the need to ask, “Do you actually have a cat? Or was that a rumor?”
Tag answered. “No, it’s true,” he said. “We found Stevie hiding behind Provisions’ dumpster and convinced her to come home with us.”
“Stevie after the Stevie?” I guessed, jettisoning Stevie Nicks. There was only one Stevie in Tag and Alex’s life: Stevie Budd from Schitt’s Creek.
He nodded. “It fits her. You wouldn’t think a cat could be so sardonic, but…” He pointed to the left, which meant we were taking the scenic route to the sculpture sanctuary. It would take longer but would be worth it.
There was the “beach side” of Ames and the “wood side.” The sculpture sanctuary was wood side, but the most direct path there involved parading back through the academic village and cutting across the Circle again. Tag was smart; it was better to keep to the outskirts. Ames’s paved roads only extended so far, so the outer buildings and fields weren’t monitored as habitually by Campo.
But watch rookie Gabe get overeager and want to sweep the fields, I thought. Watch him borrow Madame Hoffman’s toy poodles for the first-ever Ames School K9 unit.
They knew the Jester’s prank was happening sooner or later. What a way for Gabe to be welcomed to the squad and what a way for Mr. Harvey to go out if they caught its culprits…
I barely let myself breathe as the three of us fell into a game of follow the leader. Tag was on point with me in the middle and Alex bringing up the rear. I was on high alert for any suspicious sounds, still feeling whiplash from our tête-à-tête with Bunker and the chance that Daniel was on tonight’s chessboard. If we ran into any other roadblocks, I worried there would be no escaping them. Hence, I almost cried out when I felt Alex’s hand on my shoulder. “Shh, it’s only me,” he whispered.
Instead of screaming, I sighed.
“Thank you for asking about Stevie,” he said in a hushed voice.
He doesn’t want Tag to hear, I realized and, with one quick glance, confirmed that the Jester was still scouting ahead of us.
“No worries,” I whispered back. “I’d been wondering for a while, so…yeah.”
“It chilled him out,” Alex said. “You noticed that, right? How fired up he was on the hill, especially after giving Manik new marching orders?”
“Yeah,” I grumbled. “Considering I was equally fired up, I’d say I noticed.”
And I’d noticed Tag thaw too. We were both rattled, and if Alex’s mere presence didn’t do the trick, the best way to calm Tag was to get him talking about something he loved. All I needed to do was ask questions and listen…which was, well, how my heartbeat steadied. I’d been so nervous for The Sound of Music sophomore year, but by the time I walked into the auditorium on opening night, I was fine. I was nothing but excited, because Tag had come over after classes and analyzed Dune—his favorite book—for an hour straight. “Dune is to sci-fi what The Lord of the Rings is to fantasy,” I’d never forget him saying.
His voice vaporized my nerves.
“He’s head over heels for your cat,” I told Alex. “It’s so cute that he wants—”
Alex snorted. “He wants a girlfriend.”
My stomach somersaulted. “What?”
“A girlfriend,” Alex repeated. “What he wants is a girlfriend.”
“Alex, if he wanted a girlfriend, he wouldn’t have broken up with Blair for the…” I did a quick calculation. “Gajillionth time.”
“She doesn’t count,” he replied. “Blair isn’t a girlfriend, Lily. Blair is a Band-Aid.” He paused. “Well, more like a box of Band-Aids.”
I stopped in my tracks. “A box of Band-Aids? What does that even mean?”
“Hey, does Lily need a Band-Aid?” Tag whisper-shouted back to us. “I’ve got some in my backpack.”
“Nah, she’s fine,” Alex answered as I tried to decipher his weird metaphor. Blair was a box of Band-Aids? Because even after all the arguing between them, he still reached for her to patch up the hurt? Over and over again?
I rolled my eyes and resumed walking.
Slowly but surely, we passed various checkpoints. The darkened art building, music hall, and then the deserted baseball fields and other practice fields. During a recent game of truth or dare, Zoe had admitted that she and Maya had hooked up in one of the lacrosse goals. “Well, I’m glad the season’s over,” Pravika had joked. “Because now that I know you’ve scored there, I don’t ever want to again!”
I wished I could tease her about it now because I needed a distraction. Tag and Alex were muttering about how we hadn’t heard from Manik yet, so Blair floated through my mind. For our first couple years at Ames, I’d only known her as the pretty popular girl who got great grades, wrote for the school paper, and was worshipped by guys. We didn’t talk until junior year, after one of Tag’s swim meets. “Lily, hi!” I remembered her saying. “Tag had an awesome relay today!”
She’d been really nice, but now I knew it had all been so calculated. Most girls had been so obvious with Tag; they smiled and said hello in the halls, interrupted our conversations, and some were bold enough to touch his arm while giggling at his jokes. Stop it, I always thought. Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Blair hadn’t thrown herself in his face. She’d casually talk to me alone, then Tag and me together. It wasn’t until she wrote a profile on him for the newspaper’s sports section that I wondered if something was up. Blair was features, not sports. “The two of us are also partners for a stats project,” Tag had mentioned after his interview with her. “We both hate that class, so we’ve decided to suffer together.”
My heart had sunk. She likes him, I realized. The incessant attention from the others was testing my nerves, but this? Blair making all the right moves to get Tag to fall for her?
Leave Lily, I could hear her saying. Break Lily’s heart and be with me.
“Mom, I have to end things with Tag,” I’d whispered to her late one night. “Nothing has happened, but I feel so sick. There’s this knot inside me…”
She’d nodded like she knew it’d been coming. “Then let him go, Lil.” She gave me a bittersweet smile and a big hug. “Let him go for now.”
The three of us soon reached the mouth of the woods. They were far from welcoming, pitch-black with tree branches audibly swaying in the breeze. Tag and Alex switched on their iPhones, but my hand was shaking so hard that I couldn’t tap the flashlight icon. Instead, I slipped my phone back into my pocket and made a fist around it.
Tag’s eyebrows furrowed. “Your battery isn’t dead, is it?”
“No, it’s alive and well,” I said, then shrugged. “I just can’t do this.”
“Because of the skunks?” Alex asked. “Because no lie, I’m kinda freaking out too. We should’ve brought tomato juice—”
“Lily, what do you mean?” Tag spoke over his friend. “You can’t do what?”
My stomach started churning, and I couldn’t ignore it. “I mean I can’t pop by the place where you and Blair used to have wild sex,” I said. “I know I’m your ex-girlfriend, and she’s also your ex-girlfriend, but it’s not okay, Tag. I don’t care how stupid you say that clue is.” I swallowed. “I’m not okay.”
Tag glanced at the ground. Alex awkwardly patted his shoulder before vanishing into the woods, but Tag stayed quiet. “Wild sex, huh?” he eventually said. “I thought it was ‘sunrise yoga.’”
I folded my arms across my chest. “You know it’s a euphemism.”
“Well, yeah, but a completely off-base one,” he said, sighing heavily. “We actually were doing yoga, Lily. Blair is not the most relaxed person, so that’s how she starts her day, and since I’m not all that relaxed either, I joined her.”
“Oh,” I said.
Tag forced a smile. “To be honest, it’s not that effective.”
“Why aren’t you relaxed?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”
He yawned. “It doesn’t matter.”
Yes, it does, I thought, but instead I asked what they did there at night. “After you argue in front of everyone?”
God, I was so jealous. Desperately jealous. He didn’t owe me any explanations, but I wanted them anyway.
“It depends,” Tag said. “Usually, we’ll apologize to each other or call it quits.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Lily, there is a place where Blair and I would…” He trailed off, letting me fill in that blank space. “But it’s not the sculpture sanctuary, I swear.”
I waited a second, then nodded. “Alright,” I whispered, and in an even smaller voice, I said, “Thanks for telling me.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how loyal Ames is to People magazine.”
“Oh my god, I hate you,” I said. Tag knew how much my mom and I loved People. His favorite joke was that our weekly subscription was “keeping the lights on” at their headquarters.
“I don’t believe you,” he said back.
“Why not?” I asked, heart now hammering.
But before he could respond, our phones simultaneously buzzed. Finally, a message from Manik. Back at Mack, his text read. Daniel is on-site.
My pulse slowed. Phew. Daniel was asleep, not wandering around Ames.
Roger that, Tag replied. Update us if anything changes.
My brows knitted together. “What could possibly change?”
“Hmm…” he mused as Manik sent back a thumbs-up emoji. “He could wake up?”
“Manik’s not coming back,” I guessed, switching on my flashlight. “You’re going to have him monitor Daniel for the rest of the night, aren’t you?”
“Preferably without blinking,” he deadpanned when the two of us entered the woods to find Alex. Twigs and other forest floor remnants crunched under our feet, and little animals luckily scattered and scuttled away before I caught them in my beam. Tag cleared his throat. “We wasted so much time on the hill trying to figure out where he was, Lily. That type of clusterfuck can’t happen again. Not if I—or in this case, Manik—can help it.”
“But he knows where the Almanacs are,” I warned. “If we cut him out…”
“He won’t tell,” Tag said. “Once you join the Jester, you’re loyal to the Jester.”
True, I thought while we walked in silence, feeling surer of myself now that we knew Daniel was snoring into his pillow.
“Alright, here we go.” Tag slowed to a stop several minutes later and shined his light to reveal a raised plank walkway. The entrance to the sculpture sanctuary, which had been a collaborative project between one of Ames’s old art classes and faculty volunteers. And Headmaster Bickford, naturally. Forget a landscape architect; she had impeccable taste and a vision. “But it’s turned into such a headache,” she’d complained once, and my mom and I had cracked up because the whole point of the sanctuary was to promote tranquility.
The walkway led to a hexagonal deck surrounded by students’ work. Some sculptures were abstract and impressive, others abstract and awful (but because they were so abstract, you couldn’t put your finger on why they were so awful). True talent and tradition were there too. Certain Italian- and Indian-inspired pieces were so lifelike it was beautifully haunting.
All the sculptures were artfully arranged in the area with viewing benches rounding the deck and a bubbling fountain in the center, one filled with wishes. You weren’t supposed to toss coins in, but students did it anyway. I remembered Tag flipping in a shiny penny during the final days of sophomore year. Pretty much everyone on campus had gathered in the Circle to watch the senior prom processional, but we’d slipped into the woods. “What did you wish for?” I’d asked and rolled my eyes when he refused to tell me.
Or else it won’t come true!
“Yes, it will,” I said, sliding my arms around his waist. “Don’t be so superstitious, Smoosh.”
Tag laughed and threaded his fingers through my three-second braid before kissing me. We’d been dating a year; we were mad for each other. “I wished to take you to prom,” he said afterward. “You know, when it’s our turn—senior year.”
I playfully swatted him. “What a wasted wish! Of course we’re going to prom together. I mean, who else would I go with?”
Tag shrugged. “Somebody.”
“Nobody,” I corrected. “The answer is nobody.”
The corners of Tag’s mouth twitched.
“You’re my prom date,” I told his glinting green eyes, a smirk on my face. “Because, Tag, you know you’re the—”
“Hey,” someone said, and I snapped back to attention to see Alex leaning against a nearby tree. “We have a situation.”
“A situation?” I asked. “What do you mean? The situation’s under control. Manik texted that Daniel’s asleep.”
“Yes, I saw, but now we have another situation,” Alex clarified. “A problem.” He dropped his voice. “Listen.”
Only ten seconds passed before Tag tightly inhaled and my spine straightened, both of us hearing laughter. “It’s coming from the end of the walkway,” I whispered. “Someone’s here.”
“More like a lot of someones,” Tag whispered back. The three of us listened to at least five or six voices going back and forth. We were far enough away that their conversation sounded like gibberish, but it was clear each participant was male…and young. For every deep voice, there was a high-pitched one.
“Might as well alert Manik,” Alex grumbled. “Daniel might be asleep, but there was still a jailbreak from Mack tonight.”
No way, Manik said after I texted that a bunch of freshmen boys had snuck out of Macalester. Daniel has our kids on lockdown. It must be the sophomores. You know their prefects do nothing.
I sighed. Being an Ames prefect was a J-O-B job. You were a mentor, an older sibling, and police officer all at once. You dealt with the fears, the tears, and the cheers. It was a huge responsibility, so I hadn’t understood why Daniel had applied for the position last spring. “You’re already running for president,” I’d commented while he sped through his application and I color-coded Latin flash cards. “Why this too?”
“Because what if I don’t win the election?” he’d posed. “You know I need to pad my résumé for Harvard. If I’m not president, prefect is the next best thing.”
I hadn’t said anything. Maybe because I had always pictured Tag and Alex as the freshmen prefects. They’d talked about it a lot over the years. But now Alex was running against Daniel for president, and everyone knew he and Tag were a package deal. If Alex didn’t apply to be a prefect, Tag wouldn’t either.
“What if you get both?” I asked. “Then what?”
Daniel shrugged. “Then I’ll get both.”
I tried to hide how irked I was. Not only because he didn’t need both positions, but also because it didn’t even sound like he wanted the second one! Someone who genuinely wanted to be a prefect deserved the role. It was about more than just bolstering your college application.
Please just apply, Tag, I’d thought, because he would be so good at it. But we weren’t together anymore, and since we couldn’t be friends, I’d said nothing.
ELEVEN
“Okay, time to regroup,” Alex said after Tag and I had carefully backed away from the sanctuary’s entrance and huddled under Alex’s tree, hiding his flashlight beam. “It sounds like those guys are all over the deck, which we needed for the Hour Glass.” He gave Tag a look. “Unless you want to change the location?”
Tag shook his head. The aforementioned Hour Glass was the best place to hide the next clue, because it was a Maya Rivera original. Ten feet tall, the sculpture was a mixture of light sea-green glass and melded metals. There was even sand inside, on the top, bottom, and somehow suspended in between. Daniel’s twin had outdone herself.
