“Am I coming?”
She rolled her eyes, then turned on her heel. “Come on,” she said, then beckoned me forward. I blinked, but ever curious, uncrossed my legs, hopped down off the bed, and followed. She walked to the open door of Amie’s room and stood there for a moment, apparently inviting me inside.
I had no clue why she was asking me inside, and I was just nosy enough to wonder what she was up to. That was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.
“Sure,” I said, then joined Veronica at the threshold. When she bobbed her head toward the interior of the room, I ventured inside and got my first look . . . at the room that pink threw up on.
Honestly—it looked like a Barbie factory exploded. There was pink everywhere, from the walls to the carpet to the bedspread and pillowcases. I practically had to squint against the glare.
On the other hand, the stuff in the room was choice: flat-screen TV; top- of-the-line laptop; fancy speaker system with an iPod port; thick, quilted duvet. I mean, sure it was all covered in kill-me-now pink, but I could appreciate quality.
“Nice room,” I half lied, as Veronica shut the door behind me. Mary Katherine was already on Amie’s bed, one leg crossed over the other and the glossy shoe box on her lap. Amie was in a sleek, clear plastic chair in front of a desk made of the same clear plastic. “Why, exactly, is she here?” Mary Katherine asked.
Veronica gave me an appraising look. “We’re going to see how cool she is.”
When Mary Katherine stroked the sides of the shoe box, I assumed my field trip into the Kingdom of Pink and the coolness test were related to whatever was in the shoe box in Mary Katherine’s lap . . . or my reaction to it.
“How do we know she’s not a Little Mary Tattletale?” Mary Katherine asked.
“Oh, come on, M.K. Lily’s from New York. She’s hip.” Veronica arched a challenging eyebrow. “Aren’t you?”
I was from Sagamore, not New York, but I was too busy contemplating the first-degree peer pressure to bother correcting her. But since the surprise invitation was a mystery that would be solved when M.K. flipped the lid off the shoe box, I figured I’d go for it. I wasn’t getting a whole lot of closure on mysteries these days.
“I’m wicked hip,” I agreed, my voice wicked dry.
“Are you ready?” Veronica asked, as Mary Katherine slipped her fingers beneath the lip of the shoe box.
“Sure,” I said.
I’m not sure what I expected for all the buildup. Mind-altering substances? Diamonds? Stolen electronics? Weapons-grade plutonium? Or, if they’d been teenage boys, fireworks and nudie magazines?
It wasn’t quite that dramatic.
With her girls—and me—around her, Mary Katherine lifted the lid. It was filled with candy, diet soda, back issues of Cosmo, energy drinks and clove cigarettes. It was like a supermodel’s necessities kit.
“Well?” M.K. prompted. “Pretty sweet, huh?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again with a snap. Surely they weren’t so sheltered that issues of Cosmo—which were probably available at every drugstore, bodega, and grocery store in the United States—were contraband. Still, I was a guest in enemy territory. Now was not the time for insults. “There’s definitely . . . all sorts of stuff in there.”
Veronica reached in and grabbed a box of candy cigarettes, then pulled out a stick of white candy. “We have friends who bring it in,” she said, nipping a bit off the end.
“And Mary Katherine’s parents practically make shipments,” Amie added, disapproval ringing in her voice.
M.K. rolled her eyes. “We need it,” she said. “St. Sophia’s is all about health and vigor, organic and free-range and vitamin-enhanced. Weaknesses like these don’t figure into that. And if Foley ever found this stuff in our room, we’d be toast.” She gave me an appraising glance. “So—can you keep your mouth shut?”
My gaze on a small bag of black licorice—my greatest weakness—I nodded. “That shouldn’t be a problem.”
Mary Katherine snorted and, seeing the direction of my gaze, reached over, grabbed the packet of licorice Scotties, and tossed it to me. I pulled it open—not even pausing to question why she was offering me candy—and began to nibble the head off a tiny, chewy dog.
Veronica looked at her BFFs, then slid a glance my way, her eyes bright with promise. “You know, Parker, we don’t keep all of Mary Katherine’s stash up here, just in case Foley decides to start doing room checks again. The rest of it is in our little hidey-hole. We call it our treasure chest. We were going there, you know, to replenish our stack.” She glanced back at Mary Katherine. “M.K.’s almost out of Tab.”
When Veronica looked at me again, her gaze was cool . . . and calculating. “You can go with us if you want. Share in the bounty.”
I’d have been stupid not to be suspicious. The stash these trendy big-city girls played at being so excited about wasn’t really that exciting. More important, they were being unusually nice. While I guessed it was possible they were still making some kind of misguided attempt to steer me toward “better” pals, it seemed more likely that something more nefarious was on their agenda.
But they weren’t the only ones with secret plans. Foley had nearly ripped the rug out from under me earlier today; this was my chance to retake control, to take charge, to act.
“Where, exactly, is this stash?” I looked at Amie, thinking she offered the best chance to get an honest answer.
“Downstairs,” she said. “Basement.”
And we have a winner, I thought. A trip downstairs would get me one step closer to figuring out what Scout was involved in—and what else was going on at St. Sophia’s School for Girls.
I nodded at the group. “I’m in. Let’s go treasure hunting.”
8
We were armed with pink flashlights, Amie having produced the set of them from a bottom- drawer stash. I also saw a set of pink tools, a pink first aid kit, and some pink batteries in there. Amie was apparently the prepared (and single-minded) type.
I was also armed with a pretty good dose of skepticism at their motives. I assumed the brat pack was leading me into trouble, that the “treasure” at the end of our hunt was a prank with my name on it. Given the strong possibility that I’d have to make a run for it, I was glad I’d worn boots. I figured they offered at least a little more traction than the flip- flops, and they’d probably pack a bigger wallop, if it came to that.Scout was still gone when we left the suite, three brat packers and one hanger- on, Veronica in the lead. It was nearly ten p.m., and the hallways were silent and empty as we followed the same route I’d taken behind Scout two days ago—down the stairs to the first floor, back through the long, main corridor to the Great Hall, then through the Great Hall and into the main building. But instead of stopping at the door Scout had taken, we took a left into the administrative corridor I’d taken with M.K. earlier in the day.
We hadn’t yet turned on our flashlights, so I’m not entirely sure why we had them. But when footsteps suddenly echoed through the hall, I was glad we hadn’t turned them on. Veronica held out a hand, and we all stopped behind her. She turned, excitement in her eyes, and motioned us back with a hand. We tiptoed back a few steps, then crowded into one of the semicircular alcoves in the hallway. I gnawed my lip as I tried to control my breathing, sure that the thundering beat of my heart was echoing through the hallway for all to hear.
After what felt like an hour, the sound of footfalls faded as the person—probably one of the clipboard-bearing dragon ladies—moved off in the other direction.
Veronica peeked out of the nook, one hand behind her to hold us back while she surveyed the path.
“Okay,” she finally whispered, and we set off again—Veronica, then Mary Katherine, Amie, and I. I couldn’t help but glance behind us as we moved, but the hall was empty except for the cavernous silence we left in our wake, and the moonlight-dappled limestone floor.
We continued down the administrative hallway, but before we got as far as Foley’s office, we turned down a side corridor that dead-ended in a set of limestone stairs. The air got colder as we descended to the basement, which didn’t help the feeling that we were heading toward something unpleasant. We probably were headed toward the nasty that had been chasing Scout, but I couldn’t imagine the brat pack had any clue what lurked in the corridors beneath their fancy school. If they had known, they surely would have tortured Scout about it. They seemed like the type.
“Almost there,” Veronica whispered as we reached the bottom of the staircase. True to St. Sophia’s form, we entered another limestone hallway. I’d heard about buildings that contained secret catacombs, but I wondered why the nuns had bothered building out the labyrinthine basement of the convent—a task they’d taken on without trucks, cranes, or forklifts.
“Here we are,” Veronica finally said as we stopped before a simple, wooden door. The word CUSTODIAN was written in gold capitals across it, just like the letters on Foley’s office.
I arched an eyebrow at the door. “We’re going into the janitorial closet?”
Without bothering to answer, Mary Katherine and Veronica fiddled with the brass doorknob, then opened the door with a click.
“Check it,” Veronica said, grinning as she held the door open.
I walked inside, and my jaw dropped at the scene before me.
The room was a giant limestone vault, completely empty but for one thing—it held an entire, little Chicago, a scale model of the city. From a two-foot-high Sears Tower and its two gleaming points (which even I could recognize), to the Chicago River, to the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. All in miniature, all exactingly detailed, laid out across the floor of the giant room by someone who clearly loved Chicago—someone who knew Chicago.
“Who did this?” I asked.
“No clue,” Veronica said. “It’s been here as long as we’ve been here. Pretty sweet, huh?”
“Very,” I muttered, eyes wide as I walked the empty perimeter of the limestone room, just taking it all in.
The model was almost totally devoid of color—the buildings and landscape rendered in various shades of thin, gray cardboard—but for symbols that were stamped on a few points across the city. In navy blue was a symbol that looked like four circles stuck together, or a really curvy plus sign. In apple green was a circle enclosing a capital Y.
Markers, I thought, pointing out the locations of two kinds of something across the city.
I moved into the middle of Lake Michigan—an empty space across the floor—and peered between the buildings, looking for St. Sophia’s. When I found East Erie, I realized there were two symbols nearby: the four-circle thing on Michigan Avenue and, more interesting, the enclosed Y only a couple of blocks from St. Sophia’s. “What do the symbols mean?” I asked.
I got only silence in response.
I glanced up and looked behind me just in time to watch them shut the door, and just in time to hear the lock tumblers click into place. I hurdled Navy Pier, ran to the door, gripped the doorknob in both hands, and pulled.
Nothing.
I shook it, tried to turn it, pulled again.
Still nothing, not even a knob to unlock the door from the inside. Just a brass keyhole.
“Hello?” I yelled, then beat my fist against the door. “Veronica? Amie? Mary Katherine? I’m still in here!”
I added that last part in the off chance they were somehow unaware that they’d locked me into a room in the basement of the school; in case they’d forgotten that the four of us had traveled the halls of St. Sophia’s to get to this underground room, but only three were headed back up.
But it wasn’t an accident, of course, and the only answer I got back was giggling, which I could hear echoing down the hallway.
“Way mature!” I yelled out, then muttered a curse, mostly at my own stupidity.
Of course there was no candy, no Tab, no hidden cigarettes, or black-market energy drinks down here. There was a treasure—the brat pack had stumbled upon something, a hidden room that contained an intricate scale model of the city. But they’d probably missed the point, being only interested in how to use the room to prank me—how to punk me.
I kicked a foot against the door, which did nothing but vibrate pain up through my foot. Turned out, even my favorite boots didn’t provide much more insulation than flip- flops. I braced one arm against the door and rubbed my foot with my free hand, berating myself for following them into the room.
Traipsing around the school was one thing; I’d done that already. But being locked in a custodial closet in the all-but-abandoned basement of a private school was something else. My love of exploration notwithstanding, I knew better.
When my foot finally stopped throbbing, I stood up again. For better or worse, I was stuck down here, in a hidden room that was probably a little too close to whatever lurked behind the metal door. It was time for action.
One hand around my pink flashlight, the other on my hip, I took a look around. Unfortunately, the obvious exit wasn’t an option. The door was locked from the outside, and I didn’t have a key.
“Hold that thought,” I muttered, put my flashlight on the floor. This was an old building, and I had a skeleton key. I pulled the ribboned room key off my head.
“Come on, Irene,” I said. Two fingers crossed for good luck, I slipped the key into the lock.
The tumblers didn’t budge.
I muttered out another curse, then pulled back the key and slipped the ribbon over my head again. I slid my gaze to the flashlight on the floor and considered, for a minute, pummeling the lock with it, but God only knew how long I’d be down here. Sacrificing the flashlight probably wasn’t the brightest idea (ha!).