Page 23 of Riot House
My eyes sweep over the surfaces of the furniture, searching. “And the little china bird?”
“I’m afraid Gustav vacuumed up some of the pieces before he realized there was something on the rug,” Principal Harcourt says from the doorway. Her voice is clipped and harsh, and she clearly doesn’t want to be dealing with this anymore. She has better things to be doing at eight p.m. on a dark and stormy night, and none of them include pacifying a troubled teen about a broken ornament. “If you know where it came from, we’ll happily get you another bird as well, Elodie. We’ll have a new laptop for you soon hopefully. Just make a list of anything you need, and we’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”
She turns around and walks off down the hall, her heels clipping angrily against the hardwood as she goes, leaving me and Carina alone in my bedroom, which now smells of chemicals, and plastic, and brand-new mattresses.
“Want me to stay with you?” Carina tucks a strand of hair back behind my ear. “I don’t mind. We can watch something on my laptop. Polish off some chocolate? I have a stash in my room.”
Wearily, I shake my head. “If it’s alright with you, I’d kinda like to be alone. I just…this is all a lot to wrap my head around.”
Carina looks unsure, but she accepts my decision with a sorry smile and gives me one last hug. “All right. I’m just at the other end of the hall if you need me, okay? Shoot me a text if you change your mind.”
The moment she’s gone, a fissure of lightning rips open the sky outside my bedroom window, bleaching the gardens and the trees outside the academy bone white, throwing tall, menacing shadows across the lawns. Darkness descends a moment later, shrouding everything in black, the rain continuing to hammer against the glass, but in that brief moment of illumination, I see something: a figure cloaked in shadow, standing at the mouth of the hedges that lead to the maze.
10
ELODIE
No one saida word about the knife sticking out of my bed.
Strikes me as a little odd, that fact.
I’d have thought it would have been the first thing Principal Harcourt wanted to discuss with me. Surely, she should have wanted to reassure me that I was safe, and that no one would be allowed to harm me here at Wolf Hall Academy. She seemed far more concerned with replacing my damaged property instead of getting to the bottom of the matter, though.
And no one,no one,had any ideas or suggestions as to who might have done this to my room, or what they were hoping to achieve by trashing my stuff.
The military-style training that passed as my childhood wasn’t just physical, though. It was mental, too. I was taught how to read and assess a situation on sight from a very young age. I know how to read a room and take it apart, piece by piece, without touching a single thing. Colonel Stillwater trained me how to draw educated conclusions about a person’s intent from their actions, and I’ve already drawn a number of educated conclusions about the break in, based on what I observed during the first five seconds after I walked into my room.
Whoever tore my room apart wasn’t trying to threaten me.
Or at least that wasn’t their main purpose, anyway.
The pages ripped out of the books? That was a pointed exercise, as were the drawers that were pulled off their runners and dumped upside down onto the floor. Whoever broke into my room was looking for something. Something concealed inside the jacket of another book or taped to the bottom of a drawer. And the pillows and bed? Same thing. They were searching for something that I don’t think they found.
It’s possible that the knife in the bed wasn’t a threat. It’s possible that whoever tossed my room got disturbed at some point, either by me or someone else, and they fled, leaving the blade buried up to the hilt by accident.
I have no reason to believe it was Wren who did this, but every cell in my body is screaming that itwashim. The way he was staring at me during our English class…it looked like he was plotting terrible, evil things, and for some sick reason I couldn’t force myself to stop looking at him. That hour, trapped inside Doctor Fitzpatrick’s room, was an embarrassment. I should have had a little more self-control. I should have been able to block Wren out. I’ve never had an issue ignoring a guy with an attitude problem before, but this guy.This guy. He’s different.
I suspect he’s way more than I can handle. And invading my room? Breaking every personal possession I own? Destroying the only thing I really, truly hold dear? That’s so cold and calculating that I’m actually worried I might not be able to manage the attentions of a guy like Wren Jacobi all by myself.
I’m too agitated to sleep, so I pace back and forth by the window, turning things over in my head. What the hell does he want from me, for fuck’s sake? And what the hell did he want in this room? I know so little about Wren that guessing the answers to these questions is near impossible.
So, what do I do about him? What do I do about this troubling fascination I feel coiled like a snake around my insides every time I think his cursed name? How the fuck do I make it through these final months at Wolf Hall without falling foul of some terrible, dark act? Because it feels like something terrible and dark is about to happen. Just like the storm clouds amassed in the sky above Wolf Hall, this sense of foreboding presses down on me from above, filling me with dread.
From the way Carina reacts any time Wren, Dashiell or Pax are close by, my worries seem justified. Dashiell treated her horribly and broke her heart, but something in my gut tells me there’s more to that story than she’s letting on. I think she’s keeping secrets, and I don’t begrudge her them. We’ve only been friends for a little over a week. I can’t expect her to trust me and take me into her confidence, when neither of us have figured each other out yet.
She warned me not to go near the boys or their precious Riot House, but shit. If there’s something I need to know, something specific that could prevent me from getting seriously, actually hurt, then thatwouldbe useful information.
The best thing I can do is stay the hell away from Wren and his friends. Avoid contact with them at all costs. And get a fucking lock on my bedroom door, even though they’re forbidden according to the Wolf Hall rule book. Fire Ordinances, or health and safety, or something like that. I dare anyone to challenge me over a little protection for myself and my belongings, now that this has happened, though.
By midnight, the storm outside has gotten so bad that the wind howls through the gaps in the windows, and the rain slamming down on top of the eaves above my window sounds like my father’s old unit are practicing their drills right on top of me. It’s so dark outside that I can barely make out the boughs of the huge live oaks that loom over the maze, tossing and groaning under the elemental assault.
I’ve lived in all kinds of different places, climates and landscapes. For a time, my mother insisted I stay with her for a year in Chicago when I was a child, but aside from that all of my other homes have been in warm climates. Deserts and beaches, for the most part due to my father’s dislike of the cold. That he sent me to live in such a bitterly cold spot now really speaks to the fact that he plans onnevervisiting me here. Which is totally fine by me.
But this kind of weather feels unnatural to me. I’ve never experienced anything remotely like it. I’ve hated thunderstorms since I was a child, but my fear is amplified a thousand-fold tonight, given what took place in my room.
Urgh.
The clock on my cellphone reads 2.15 am when the storm reaches its climax. Somewhere, a shutter door bangs loudly, crashing every few seconds in the gale-force winds. I try to sleep, but with the normally silent building moaning and sighing so deafeningly, there’s absolutely no way I can pass out. Agitated beyond measure, I get out of bed, throwing back the covers, shivering against the cold that seeps through the thin material of my pajamas. I stand in front of the window, baring my teeth at the sheet rain that obscures the view on the other side of the glass, willing it to fucking stop…
