TUESDAY, MAY 19
86 DAYS
‘A phone?’ said Jordan. ‘You’re sure that’s what you heard?’
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘Unless Pryor’s running a secret beekeeping business out of her top drawer.’
It was recess, and we were hiding out in an upstairs corridor in the English block, trying to avoid the plague of Year 7s that was still following us everywhere we went. I’d been in classes with Luke all morning, but this was the first chance I’d had to talk to Jordan since leaving Pryor’s office.
‘Sorry,’ said Jordan, brushing her braids back out of her face with one hand. ‘It’s just – I mean, if Pryor’s actually got a working phone, then this is … Hold on. Are you saying it was her we were chasing on Sunday?’
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t have thought she could run that fast, but –’
‘So what are we gonna do?’ asked Luke impatiently. ‘How are we going to get in there and get it?’
‘Getting in isn’t the problem,’ I said, pulling a sandwich out of my bag. ‘Just wait until our next meeting with –’
‘We can’t wait that long,’ Luke cut in. ‘You know what Pryor’s like. She’s hardly ever here. It could be days before we see her again.’
‘That’s just it, mate,’ I said. ‘Just because we don’t see Pryor doesn’t mean she’s not here. It means she’s in her office. And even if she wasn’t, how would you get through the door?’
‘We’ll find a way,’ said Luke, a desperate edge creeping into his voice. ‘Steal her key card or –’
‘No, Peter’s right,’ said Jordan. ‘We need to wait. We need to be smart about this.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Luke muttered, before I even had time to be surprised that Jordan was actually agreeing with me for a change. ‘Your dads aren’t stuck on the outside.’
‘No,’ said Jordan, ‘just the rest of my family and everyone else I care about.’
Luke closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean –’
‘I know you didn’t,’ said Jordan. ‘My point is, we’re all on the same side here.’ I bristled as she reached out to touch him again. ‘I know you want to help your dad. But rushing in there and getting caught isn’t going to help anyone.’
Luke took a breath.
‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘Yeah. You’re right.’
‘The tricky part is gonna be getting Pryor out for long enough to grab the phone,’ I said, leaning out the window to peg my sandwich wrapper at a kid walking past below us. ‘And making sure she doesn’t know it was us who took it.’
The bell rang again. Now that I’d filled Jordan in on the phone, my mind was back on BEHINDTHEWINDMILL. I snatched up my bag and headed for the stairs.
‘What are you in such a hurry for?’ asked Jordan. ‘Don’t you two have a free period?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but I need to go look for a book.’
I hadn’t told her or Luke about Bill’s message yet. No point getting them all hyped up until I actually had something useful to tell them.
But there was definitely no windmill in Phoenix. And since Crazy Bill’s last two messages had been hidden in library books, I figured that was as good a place as any to start.
‘I’d better go too,’ said Luke. ‘Need to make sure Peter doesn’t get up to any shenanigans with Mrs Lewis.’
I kicked him in the shin. He got up, laughing and rubbing his leg, and started following me downstairs.
A second later, I heard Jordan’s voice behind me. ‘Peter, wait.’
I stopped walking. ‘Yeah?’
‘Thanks.’
I stared at her. This was new.
‘No worries,’ I said. ‘Could’ve been any of us that heard the phone. I was just in the right place at the right time.’
‘No, not just that,’ said Jordan, ‘I mean thanks for being with us in this. Thanks for believing that it’s all real.’
‘Hey,’ I shrugged, ‘when you’re right, you’re right.’
She smiled and headed back up the stairs.
‘See?’ I said to Luke as she disappeared.
‘See what?’
‘Told you. Hundred and first time’s a –’
SLAM!
I took one step into the downstairs corridor and heard a locker bang shut.
Cat was standing alone, about ten metres away, looking like we’d just caught her doing something extremely suss. There was something in her hand. A letter, maybe.
But whoever’s locker she’d been poking around in, I knew it was nowhere near hers.
I started walking towards her. ‘Cat, that’s – Whose locker is that?’
Cat’s hands were shaking. Whatever this was, getting caught was a big deal.
She whipped the paper around behind her back.
Her face went red, then white.
Then she turned and ran away down the corridor.
THURSDAY, MAY 21
84 DAYS
‘All right,’ I sighed, staring down at a kid so pasty I could almost see through him. The kids in his year all called him Ghost. No idea what his real name was. ‘What is your opinion of the range of lunch options available at the school canteen? Are you extremely satisfied, somewhat satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or –?’
‘Somewhat dissatisfied,’ he said. ‘No, wait. What was the middle one?’
I tried to remind myself that losing it at this kid would be a bad idea. At least until he’d answered all the questions.
By Tuesday afternoon, we’d decided that the best way to fast-track our next meeting with Pryor was by finishing all her stupid surveys. My vote had been for faking the results. As if she was even gonna look at them anyway. But Luke didn’t want to risk it. He didn’t want to do anything to rock the boat until after we got our hands on that phone.
So, for the last two days, we’d spent every spare moment chasing people around the playground, trying to ambush them into doing the surveys. At first, it had been easy enough – there are always a few losers who go nuts over this kind of stuff – but after that, I might as well have been offering people free kicks in the face.
Finally, though, we were getting close to the end of them.
Things in the BEHINDTHEWINDMILL department had been just as frustrating. All Mrs Lewis had been able to come up with when I’d gone to the library was The Wind in the Willows and a couple of books on Holland.
Dead ends.
What was Crazy Bill trying to tell me? And why me, anyway?
I finished up with Ghost and found Luke thanking some Year 8 kid for her help.
‘Done!’ he said, flipping through the pages as I came up to him. ‘You?’
‘Just about.’ I clicked my pen and started scribbling down the boxes of one of my blank surveys.
‘Hey, you said –’
‘Mate, I’ve got three left, and we’ve already asked everyone. I’ll mix ’em in with the others and Pryor won’t know the difference.’
‘Fine, whatever,’ said Luke irritably. ‘So did you ever figure out what was up with Cat the other day?’
‘Nah,’ I said, flipping over the page and filling out the other side. ‘Couldn’t get anything out of Mike or Tank. They definitely both know, though, from the looks on their faces when I asked.’
‘What about Cat?’
‘What do you reckon?’ I said, bitterness jumping at me out of nowhere. ‘Good luck getting two words from her about anything anymore.’
‘Weird,’ said Luke. ‘She freaks out when we catch her, but then we get to geography and she’s right back to pretending we don’t exist.’
‘Pretending I don’t exist, you mean. Only problem she has with you guys is that you’re hanging out with me.’
Luke shrugged.
I finished the survey, shoved it into the middle of my pile, and got started on the next one.
‘Hang on,’ said Luke slowly. ‘You and Cathryn weren’t ever …?’
My pen slipped out of my hand.
‘What?’ I said, catching it before it hit the ground, mind suddenly flashing with images of Cat, of how it’d been back in the beginning, of how things had almost –
‘Nah, mate,’ I said, grabbing hold of my brain again, ‘you know I’m a one-woman man.’
‘Actually, right now I think you’re technically a zero-woman man,’ said Luke.
‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’m making some serious headway in that department.’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Luke, scanning the quad. ‘Well, we should probably go see if she’s –’
He stopped short, staring out past the admin building. ‘Peter –’
‘Yeah, I see ’em.’
Pryor was coming into the school from across the street, talking to a guy in a suit with two black eyes and a bandaged head.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Luke, moving in for a closer look.
‘Ben More,’ I said. ‘Works in my dad’s building.’
‘Ben? The one who went after Crazy Bill when he tried to break out of the security centre?’
‘Definitely looks like he’s had a run-in with Bill,’ I said, grabbing the back of Luke’s bag in time to stop him disappearing around the side of the admin building. ‘Hang on.’
I poked my head out to see Pryor and Ben going in at the other end. As soon as they were gone, Luke got moving again, creeping along the front of the building.
‘Mate,’ I hissed, two steps behind, ‘what do you think you’re – ?’
He stopped about halfway down, climbing up on a bike rack and peering in through the window.
‘You really think this is a good idea?’ I said, clambering up next to him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Shh!’
From where we were standing, we were just high enough to see through the window to the hallway inside. Pryor and Ben were standing outside the principal’s office.
Ben reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a key card just like Pryor’s. He waved it past the sensor and the big metal door swung open.
Pryor glared at the back of his head like, Excuse me, this is MY office, then followed him inside and shut the door.
‘Huh,’ I said. ‘She didn’t like that.’
‘Why would he have a key to her office?’ asked Luke.
‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘But Ben’s one of Shackleton’s top guys. He could probably get a key to pretty much anywhere he wanted.’
I stared at the closed door.
And the door stayed closed.
‘Well,’ I said after a minute, ‘that was boring. Let’s go see if –’
I bit my tongue as Pryor’s door swung open again. Pryor walked out, grumbling and shaking her head.
But where was Ben?
I stretched up on my toes, trying to see into her office through the half-open door. But as far as I could tell, he was nowhere inside.
It was like he’d just disappeared.
CRASH!
I ducked down and leapt off the bike rack. Luke had just lost his footing and stacked it across a row of bikes. He staggered back, trying to find the ground again, his pile of surveys flying out of his hand.
‘Crap,’ I muttered, grabbing the stupid unco by the back of the shirt and pulling him free. He scraped the mess of papers back together and we bolted back to the quad.
‘Mr Weir! Mr Hunter!’ called a voice from behind us. ‘May I see you for a moment?’
Pryor was standing at the edge of the quad. She looked pretty cut at first, but by the time we’d backtracked across the asphalt, her face had shifted back into a smile. ‘May I ask where you two were off to in such a hurry?’
‘Just looking for Jordan, miss,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ Luke panted. ‘We wanted to tell her we’d finished our assignment.’
He held out the very crumpled stack of papers. Pryor pursed her lips.
‘They’re a bit of a mess,’ said Luke nervously, straightening up the pile. ‘I dropped them. Sorry.’
‘He got a bit over-excited,’ I said. ‘You know how it is when you’re filling out surveys.’
‘Indeed,’ said Pryor coldly. ‘Well then, I suggest you begin analysing your findings. I will meet with the three of you at lunchtime tomorrow to discuss the results.’
‘Uh, right,’ I said. ‘Great. See you then, miss!’
Pryor didn’t move.
‘Is there something else, miss?’
‘Just one more thing,’ Pryor smiled. ‘If I ever catch either of you snooping around my office again, I will arrange for your lives to become extremely unpleasant. Is that understood?’