Variant

“Nice shots,” he said, pulling his mask up onto the top of his head. He grinned. “We’re going to have to work on your approaches, though. The suicide charge isn’t always the best tactic.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Mason nodded and laughed. “Yep. I just wish you were ten seconds faster.”

That night the V’s gathered in the cafeteria, doing our best to turn it into a ballroom. Rosa had collected lamps from several of the dorm rooms, and she and a couple others were making new shades out of construction paper. A few of the guys were cutting long sheets of butcher paper into strips for streamers, and Jane and I were working on a banner. It looked like a bunch of little kids had decorated their bedroom.

“So why are you always the medic?” I asked, painting where she had instructed me to.

She smiled. “Because I don’t like lying in the dirt.”

“Really?”

“No, not really,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t like being in the squads.”

“I get that,” I said, leaning back to stretch. “All of my moments of brave heroism have come when I was working alone.”

Jane laughed. “I wish I’d been there to see that.”

“It was very awesome.”

“We still lost.”

“That makes it even better,” I said, dipping the brush in more paint. “It’s not nearly as heroic if you win. I was Bruce Willis blowing up inside the asteroid, or Slim Pickens riding the bomb.”

She pushed her red hair behind her ear so she could see what she was doing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“There aren’t a lot of movies in here,” I conceded.

“That’s got to be pretty hard on you,” she said with a laugh. “All you do is quote movies.”

I shrugged. “When you spend a lot of time alone, you watch a lot of TV.”

“You have to remember,” Jane said, moving the conversation back to the original topic, “that the gangs were formed less than a year ago. Before that it really was chaos in here. Our old paintball teams never used squads. It was just us. I got used to being on my own.”

I nodded and then set my brush in a cup of water.

“Jane, what did you used to do before you came here?”

She looked up at me from the side of her eye and then focused back on the banner. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious,” I said. “I think you’re interesting.” While that was true—I really did find Jane fascinating—ever since the paintball game I’d been thinking about what Isaiah had said. Maybe he was right—maybe I was concerned only about myself. I didn’t know how to fix that, but I thought I’d start with Jane.

“What did you used to do?” she asked.

“I moved around a lot,” I said. “Foster care. No idea who my dad was. My mom took off when I was five, I think. Left me with a babysitter. Never came back.”

She set down her brush. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said. I didn’t want Jane to think I wanted pity. “I don’t really remember her. Anyway, since then, I’ve just bumped around. Bluff, Elliott, South Side. Not exactly the hot Pittsburgh tourist spots.”

Jane reached across the banner and put her hand on mine. “Isn’t this place a little better?”

And for a moment, I couldn’t think of a single reason I’d want to leave.

“What about you?”

She frowned. I was worried that she’d move her hand, but she didn’t.

“Baltimore,” she said, her green eyes no longer on me.

“You said that before,” I coaxed.

“I was homeless.”

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.”