I tell Caleb to meet me on the roof that night, but he texts just before ten to say Belk is working on a leaky faucet in the guest bathroom on their floor, which means his path to the attic is blocked. I heard Joel talking about the dripping sound that kept him awake last night, but I can’t help thinking it has something to do with what happened earlier in the pit.
I know he’s not mad—this is my assignment—but it can’t be easy watching me flirt with someone he hates right in front of his face.
I’m making myself blush with creative ways I’ll make it up to him tomorrow when there’s a quiet knock on my door just after midnight.
Already in my sleep shirt and flannel boxer shorts, I turn on my nightstand light and tiptoe toward the sound, careful to avoid the creaky spot in the carpet near my desk. A giddy rush fills my veins as I peel back the door.
Caleb’s snuck out to see me after all. And he’s going to be in my room.
But Caleb isn’t standing in the threshold. Instead, glowing in the pale light from my lamp is a small silver pig, waiting, like a dog, to be let in from outside.
“Petal?”
From the hall comes a creak in the floor, and when I crane my head outside, I find Grayson leaning against the wall beside the door.
“That’s a relief,” he says. “I had your room narrowed down to one of three. If you didn’t answer, I was going to make a run for it.”
I snatch Petal off the floor, then grab Grayson’s shirtsleeve and drag him inside.
“Quiet,” I hiss, shutting the door behind him.
“Wow.” His gaze makes a slow path down my body. “Unexpected, but I’m game.”
He steps closer. I cross my arms over my chest, halting his approach. Petal’s locked in the death-grip of my right fist.
“We have a curfew, you know. You’re not even supposed to be in this hall.”
“You came to my side earlier.”
It isn’t his “side.” He’s only here for a little while.
“That was different.”
“How?”
His steel-blue eyes gleam in the low light. From only a foot away, I can see the sharp lines of his jaw, and how his slim T-shirt fits against his chest and waist. He’s still wearing jeans, but his feet are bare.
He crosses his arms, mimicking me.
“I was seeing if you were all right,” I say.
“The pig and I were doing the same,” he replies. “We thought you might be lonely.”
Still wary, I drop my guarded stance, holding Petal between us. Grayson’s here now, which means I’m on.
“How’d you do it?” I ask.
He grins. “Waited until everyone went to class, then snuck into her room.”
“Not very sneaky,” I say. “She caught you.”
“After the deed was done.”
I smirk.
I’ve never actually held Petal, and doing so now, in my dark room in the middle of the night, feels wrong in all the best ways. The coveted Platinum Pig, the prize of Vale Hall, is currently in my possession.
“What are you going to do with it?” Grayson asks.
“Her,” I correct.
“Weird,” he says.
My finger trails over Petal’s pointed ear, where the paint has grown thin, revealing the pink plastic beneath. As much as I’d like to keep her, I have no doubts Geri will find out and report me for stealing.
“I’ve got an idea,” I say, and add, “You wish,” when he glances hopefully at the bed.
Grabbing a scrap of paper and marker from my desk, I use my left hand to write a note, hoping no one will be able to read my penmanship, then show it to Grayson.
“Again,” he says. “Weird.”
I giggle and grab his elbow, leading him into the hall. One finger pressed to my lips, I urge him on until we’re both jogging toward the catwalk opposite the girls’ wing, which leads to Belk’s and Moore’s rooms.
The house is quiet now, all the lights off. The carpet is soft beneath my padding feet as I slow to a stop. Hunkering against a wall, I pull him beside me and point to the nearest door.
“Put it outside that one,” I whisper.
“Why am I doing this?” he asks, but in the dark I can see the gleam of his teeth and I know he’s smiling.
Taking the pig and the note, he creeps toward Belk’s door and places them on the floor before it. Then he knocks once and runs.
A dark thrill surges through me—I didn’t tell him to knock, but now that he has, we need to get out of here before we’re caught. Running for the stairs that separate the two wings, I hear his stifled laughter and swear under my breath when a door behind us cracks open.
Dodging around the bannister, we huddle on the steps as Belk appears in the threshold of his room, shirtless. His gut overlaps the waistband of his basketball shorts, and his loose black hair hangs down his neck.
With a grunt, he looks right, and left, then down at Petal. He scratches his belly, then picks her up.
A moment later, he’s back inside his room, door closed.
“Nice,” I whisper, and then realize I’m alone, in the dark, with half my body pressed against a guy who is definitely not my secret boyfriend.
Subtly, I put a few inches between us.
“What now?” he asks, his voice floating through the dark.
“Now we go to bed. Our own beds,” I add when I hear him snicker.
“No way,” he says. “I passed the test. I get to pick the next game.”
Wariness crawls over my excitement, and I sink onto the steps.
“It’s late,” I say.
“Technically, it’s early.”
I think of Caleb, asleep in his bed right now. He didn’t try very hard to sneak out to see me. If Grayson, the king of subtlety, could manage it, I’m sure a trained con artist could make it happen.
I push the thought away.
“What’d you have in mind?”
Again, I see the dull glow of Grayson’s teeth as his mouth cracks into a smile.
“The director’s office.”
Cold fingers trace down my spine.
“What about it?”
“Let’s go check it out.”
“It’s locked.”
“You scared?”
“No,” I say, genuinely irritated.
“So let’s go.”
There’s no way I’m getting out of this. If I refuse, I ruin the fun. But if I do it, and we get caught, I’m in trouble.
Dr. O’s office is off-limits to students when he’s not around. He’s made that clear.
But Grayson’s not really a student. And if I’m helping him, it’s only because I’m following Dr. O’s orders of making him comfortable, anyway.
“Fine,” I whisper.
We make our way down the spiral staircase, and when we reach the bottom, the cold from the marble seeps through my feet and up my legs. The outside light sends a glimmer through the foyer, highlighting the twin black ravens on the pillars bracketing the office door. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I swear their black stone eyes are watching every move we make.
Grayson pulls something small and metallic out of his pocket, and as I step closer, I see that it’s a hairpin.
“Where’d you get that?” I whisper.
“Piper’s room.” He frowns. “I mean … Geri? She said she goes by her middle name now.”
“She changes names like she changes outfits,” I say with a weak laugh. “You’ll get used to it.”
“A lot of that going on here,” he says, giving me a look that says he hasn’t forgotten that I used to be Sarah.
“Don’t you ever want to be someone else?” I ask. He doesn’t seem too suspicious, but I need to steer him away from the truth about this place, just in case.
“Just every second of every day,” he says quietly.
He stares at the curved door handle, trying to find a place to stick the hairpin. Kneeling, he nudges me out of the light with his elbow and examines the lock more closely.
I wonder how many movies he’s seen where this actually works.
“You need a credit card,” I finally tell him.
“How do you know?”
“It’s a spring lock.” I sigh, remembering our bathroom door at home that always managed to lock from the inside. Mom taught me how to get it open when I was five years old, a skill that may or may not have come in handy over the years.
Grayson stands and pulls a leather wallet out of his back pocket, slipping one of the many cards free. I glance over my shoulder, almost hoping to hear Ms. Maddox on some midnight cleaning mission so we can call this off.
I’m out of luck. She probably went to sleep hours ago.
“I’m not sure it’ll work.” I can always fake it and pretend I can’t pop the lock. He’ll never know the difference.
“Is that defeat I hear?” he whispers. “If you’re not good enough…”
It’s an echo from our past, from the first night we met. His party, when I planted licorice on Caleb while we were dancing and challenged Grayson to find his own mark.
I snatch the card from his hand. “I didn’t say that.”
He wants to play, fine. We’ll play.
But he’s not taking anything.
I press the card between the jamb and the door until it bumps against the lock. Then I push away, the card nearly breaking as I jiggle the handle.
With a click, it opens.
Beaming, Grayson strides through the door.
I check back over my shoulder, hugging my arms against my body. It’s colder down here, the air like an icy breath over my skin. Passing the tablet with the school’s motto, he heads toward the desk.
“What are you…”
We both freeze at the same time, caught by a soft snore near the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. My eyes have adjusted to the dark, but even so, it’s hard to make out the figure lying on the couch in front of Susan Griffin’s portrait.
Another murmur, and this time I’m certain it’s the director. He’s hidden by the back of the couch, but a blanket drapes over the side beside his pale, limp hand.
He’s asleep, and I don’t ask myself why he’s crashing here when he has a house across the property. I back away slowly, keeping my feet silent and my breath still. Grayson’s doing the same, his eyes pinned on the director.
Slowly, carefully, we retreat, my heart pounding in my throat as we reach the door and close it softly behind us. I don’t breathe until it’s shut, and even then, I stop Grayson from speaking with a pointed look. We shouldn’t have done this. Even if I have a built-in excuse, it feels like tempting fate. Dr. O gave me a future; I can’t risk it doing something stupid like breaking into his office in the middle of the night.
I motion toward the stairs. We climb each step in silence, and once we reach the top, my pulse has slowed enough that I can think.
I didn’t know Dr. O slept here—if it was a onetime thing, or if he does it often. All I know is Grayson broke into an office just to see if he could do it, and he looks like he won a million bucks. The boy who’s running from his father couldn’t be farther away.
This might not have been so stupid after all.
He leans close, and this time I don’t back away when he whispers, “I guess you get to pick the next game.”
With a grin, he rolls his shoulders back, and leaves me staring at his back as he heads upstairs.