Page 58 of Riot Act
The night air sings with crushed pine needles and cooling sap. I hang my clothes over the lowest branch of a red oak, relishing the kiss of the water vapor misting my bare skin. Before me, Guinevere’s Waterfall thunders—gallons and gallons of water roaring over the edge of the slick slab of stone. During the day, the rush of water scatters rainbows into the air as it descends to the deep plunge pool forty feet below, but tonight, with a thick bank of clouds blotting out the moon and the stars’ light, the water disappears into nothingness.
I found this place a few months after I came to Wolf Hall. While Wren was painting, and Dash was hammering away at his piano, before I picked up my camera, I ventured out into the thick forest that blankets the mountain we live on and I bonded with it. The nest of angry vipers, constantly seething and writhing in the pit of my stomach, stilled when I surrounded myself with the trees.Ibecame still. I learned how to breathe. Outside of the forest, it’s very hard to remember how. The moment the soles of my shoes hit dirt here, though, the tension that grips me every other waking hour of the day releases its hold, and briefly I am free.
I don’t jump very often at night. Even I know how dangerous it is to hurl myself off a ledge into the void when I can’t evenseethe body of water below, but I trust myself enough. I’ve jumped plenty of times during the day, when I’ve gauged how far I need to launch myself away from the cliff face in order to avoid the outcrop of jagged rocks below. I stored that information in my muscles a long time ago—the body remembers. Itknowsthat kind of thing—and I’m very calm as I step back from the cold, smooth edge of the stone.
I take the run up, and I hurl myself into the dark.
Cold wind rushes over my goose-bumped skin as I fly, first forward and then down as gravity takes hold and I begin to fall. My stomach drops. I let out a loud whoop, bringing my legs together, ankles crossed, toes pointed, and then the shock of the cold water hits me. I knife through the surface, sinking down, down, down, and even with my eyes open I can see nothing at all. Not even the faintest glimmer of light to lead me back up to the surface.
I let physics do its work.
The human body floats, especially when its chest cavity has a lung full of air trapped inside it. Instead of trying to kick my way up, I surrender myself to the crushing cold, waiting for my body to rise. It goes against every instinct I have, to wait like this. After the adrenalin of the drop, my body is alive with energy and desperate to move, but I force it to obey. Slowly, I float to the surface, my lungs prickling with need as I give in and let myself gulp down a fresh breath of air.
Everything rushes toward and away from me at the same time. That fucking French girl I screwed in Corsica.The Contessa, listing over in its mooring like a toy boat, slowly disappearing below the water; my mother, sick and dying; the moment at the hospital, just before the anesthesia took me, where I wondered if I was actually going to wake up again. And Presley, her face splattered with her own life blood, so, so fucking beautiful in her near-death.
I tread water, thrilled by how dark and thick the water is around me, black as oil. Thrilled, also, by the fact that I have no idea how deep it goes beneath me, or what might be lurking in the plunge pool’s depths, ready to take a bite out of me.
I'm not worried about potential monsters, crouched beneath the rocks below, waiting to drown me, though. I'mconcerned(not worried. I could never beworried) by Chase. I make plans. I do weird shit that confuses other people because I have an ulterior motive. It is not okay for someone like Presley, someone from outside my secure little bubble here at the academy, to infiltrate my brain and distract me in any way, shape or form. It’s not okay for her to disobey my wishes, either. I told her to come to the house, and she didn’t.
For that, there will be consequences.
Gradually, I rise to the surface of the water with a renewed sense of purpose.
The path down into the plunge pool took all of five seconds. The way up takes much longer. I know the route, though, even without any light to guide me. There's a well-defined goat track up the side of the cliff-face that's relatively safe to navigate. I clamber up, my bare feet used to the coarse, rough rock and the slippery sections where slick moss has claimed the handholds.
I'm dry when I reach the tree where I hung my clothes. Boxers first. Then socks. Then my t-shirt and jeans. Hunting down my pack of smokes, I light up as I shove my feet into my sneakers and fasten the laces, and then I sit and listen to the waterfall roar as I drag and pull, the smoke thick in my lungs, until I hit the filter.
My trip into the thick of the midnight forest has served its purpose; I'm grounded and focused as I set a course back up toward Wolf Hall. Parts of the trek are steep and rocky, but I've done this more times than I can count. Even with the odd twinge from my hip, I set a decent pace, practically running through the trees. It isn't long before the dark, ominous shape of the academy looms out of the forest, its twin towers with their slate rooves punching up out of the tree-line, forming a distinctive outline that I’d recognize anywhere.
The place stands in darkness. Even the lights in the entryway downstairs have been extinguished, which tells me that Jarvis has probably passed out in the tiny little room off the main hallway where the night warden sleeps. That room used to be a storage closet for the English department. Textbooks. Notebooks. Pens. Chalk. Other stationery and supplies. Then a series of events occurred, shit spiraled out of control, and Harcourt changed up the way things are done around the school. Now, a member of the faculty sleeps in a glorified closet during the week in order to 'keep an eye on us,' though how they're supposed to do that when they're fucking sleeping, I don't have a clue.
They lock the main entrance into the building now, too. As if that would stop any of us from coming or going if we felt like it. There are a hundred different ways into this old building, and you don't even need to jimmy a lock or climb under or through anything to utilize most of them. Tonight, I skirt around the perimeter of the building and let myself in through the air vent by the student laundry room, careful not to come into contact with any of the undergrowth that obscures the panel from view. Last time I used this access, I wound up covered in poison oak, and I am not keen on relivingthatbullshit, let me tell you.
The academy walls observe me silently as I make my way to the other end of the building, and then up the stairs to the fourth floor of the girl's wing. I pass the first door on the left, and then the second, and then three more doors. Presley’s is the room on the end. It used to be full of new mattresses still in the plastic, and furniture that other students left behind when they graduated or transferred to another school. It must have been cleared out, though, because Jarvis was very sure of herself when she said that Chase was in the old storage room.
I could break in; it'd be easy as fuck to pick the lock. I doubt the girl will be very receptive to that, though, and I want her listening, not hysterically screaming. So, like the good, polite, friendly young man that I'm not, Iknock.
It's one in the morning. There's no light eking out from under the door. Normal people are asleep at this time, but I get the feeling that Chase will be awake. We're alike, me and this girl. I look at her now and I feel the same way that I felt this afternoon, looking at that self-portrait that half developed in my makeshift dark room. I feel like I'm looking into the void, and people in possession of souls like ours don't sleep easily, I've found. Not at night. We prefer to sleep during the day, when the darkness can’t seep into our dreams.
I count out a couple of seconds, then raise my hand, ready to knock again, but then a soft voice on the other side of the door reaches my ears. “For fuck's sake, Pax. Come in already.”
Huh. She wasexpectingme. Of course she was. I enter, and instead of letting myself look at her, I make a point of inspecting the room first. The window’s open, and a cool breeze blows back the thin, voile curtains at the window. The gossamer fabric billows, causing a tiny wind chime with little dangling cut crystals hanging from it to sing musically. Presley’s room is decked out like a boho witch's apartment.
Books lay in stacks on top of wall mounted shelves. There are potted plants everywhere; they occupy every available flat surface. Two are even suspended in macrame hangers from the ceiling by the window. There are posters stuck to the wall depicting the moon's phases, and evil eyes, and Hamsa hands with weird geometric designs around them.
A yoga mat is spread out at the foot of the bed. A tiny little table in the corner, on the other side of a very cluttered desk, has an array of crystals and rocks arranged on it, as well as a series of candles, which are all lit, their flames guttering in the breeze.
“Go on, then. Say it. Mock me.”
I finally turn my attention to her. Chase sits in the middle of her bed, legs crossed, fully dressed, her blaze of red hair loose and wavy from the little buns she was wearing earlier. She shuffles a deck of oversized cards in her hands, her head tipped to one side.
“What should I say?” I ask her. “Oh, you're one of those? A hippy-dippy, new age loser who probably doesn't shave her legs?”
A tiny smile plays over the corners of her mouth. She sets down her cards and tugs the leg of her jeans up a couple of inches, revealing smooth skin. “Expertly shaved,” she says. “The rest?” She holds her hands up. “Guilty as charged. You can sit on that chair. I won't bite.”
Oh, that's fucking rich. I show up to her door in the middle of the night, and she thinksI'mthe one who should be worried about biting. Smirking to myself, I walk to the window instead and look out of it, surprised to find that this room overlooks a small roof, which belongs to one of the private study rooms downstairs, if I've oriented myself correctly.
“Lucky. You have your own private smoking spot,” I say. “There are guys on the other side of the academy who'd kill for this room.” I face her, smiling sarcastically. “But let me guess. You don't smoke.”
