When the Shadows Fall by Elise Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 28 - SKY

IF LENNY’S THERAPY sessions were anything like socio-emotional learning, then I sure felt sorry for him. Wednesday afternoon, and twelve of us were sitting around in a circle on the floor, waiting for the teacher to arrive. At Shadow Falls Academy, they liked to mix things up a bit for this session, and none of these people were in any of my other classes. The guy with the coloured bracelets, I wasn’t even sure he was on the same planet. He’d brought his own freaking cushion.

Eventually, the teacher arrived. Normally, she taught pottery, but today she was stuck with us lot.

“Apologies for being late. A freshman had a crisis of confidence and locked herself in a bathroom stall, but that’s all sorted out now. Just a reminder: if one of your peers seems troubled, be the friend they need. Working together makes each one of us stronger. That’s synergy.”

“She means symbiosis,” the guy next to me muttered.

“Today,” the teacher continued, “is all about problem-solving. Who can finish the saying for me? A problem shared is…”

“A problem halved,” everyone answered in chorus.

Although she should have added a disclaimer. If I shared most of my problems with the people here, they’d turn into even bigger problems.

“Each of you take a card from the pile and pass it on. I want you to write down an issue that’s bothering you—anonymously, of course—and we’ll share ideas as a group and see if we can come up with a solution.”

What a waste of time. For me, anyway. Perhaps the others might find it helpful. But all I could think of was that I’d be wasting eighty minutes, and I could have spent those eighty minutes doing something that actually mattered. Such as brainstorming with the team at Blackwood to work out how the hell we were going to find these damn paintings. Emerald and The Shepherd were ghosts. I’d been at Shadow Falls for almost two weeks, and although I’d made progress with the bugs and whatnot, none of the players were actually talking about the game. That was my problem.

I also had to watch my back as well as Vanessa’s because I’d pissed off the Britneys. Only a fool would have missed the glares they gave me every time we passed in the hallways, and I liked to think I was no fool.

And then there was my latest issue. Asher. He’d walked me back to New Hall yesterday evening, and I couldn’t get his final words out of my head. The ones he’d leaned in close and whispered right before I went inside.

“You want to know the real reason I covered for you with Deandra? Because I like you, Chem.”

What was a girl supposed to say to that?

I liked him too—I just wasn’t sure I was meant to, not in that way. Emmy was right—I’d be gone soon, and I’d already gotten in deep enough with Asher that I knew he’d be hurt when I left.

But I could hardly write any of those problems down on my piece of card, could I now?

Instead, when the time was almost up, I scribbled five words that bore a resemblance to the truth.

I feel like an imposter.

In a way, being assigned to this group was a blessing. These people weren’t my tribe. It didn’t matter what they thought of me.

“Feeling vulnerable in a new position is natural,” one girl said. “People aspire to attend this school. I think it’s natural for a person to feel that they don’t deserve to be here. But remember—you got here on merit, and that means it’s your home.”

I hadn’t come to Shadow Falls on merit, not by any stretch of the imagination, but what about my job at Blackwood? There’d been no interview. There’d been no bullshit test. Emmy had picked me based on my performance in a couple of awkward situations.

“We all make mistakes,” another girl said. “What defines us is how we act afterwards.”

I’d almost run after my fuck-up at the Grove, but I hadn’t. Surely that counted for something?

“Everybody feels like an imposter at some time or another,” a boy said. He’d played on stage with the woodwind ensemble on Monday, so presumably he knew what he was talking about. “Once you realise that, it’s easier to build up your confidence.”

What they said… It actually helped. Okay, so the cushion guy told me to listen to my cosmic influences, whatever those were, but everyone else helped. I wasn’t expecting them to, but they did. Perhaps it wasn’t such a waste of eighty minutes, after all.

But I still had bugs to plant.

After classes, I stuck to the deal I’d made last night with Asher and spent an hour studying with him, in the library this time since a bunch of his dorm buddies were lounging around in the communal living room at Linton Hall and I didn’t fancy walking through the middle of them. Gossip was rife on campus. I tried to stay out of it, but I still heard the rumours, mainly via Vanessa.

Chet Somerville got seen leaving Emily Morten’s room, and before that the door was closed for at least five minutes. *shocked face.*

Janie Beardsley caught a ride home on Hunter Shaw’s parents’ private jet at the end of last term, and they were meant to be sworn enemies. Can you believe that?

Melody Raine found a pair of boxers stuffed down the back of a couch in one of the practice rooms, and Tim Stevens said they belonged to Mike Hamburg. Mike Hamburg. He was meant to be dating Jenny Stewart, and she wore a purity ring. Gasp.

Asher’s apartment was on the second floor, and the fire escape was alarmed, unlike the one at the Grove. Asher knew that because one of his responsibilities as student liaison was to test the system once a month. Which meant I couldn’t sneak in that way. Nor did I want to become the subject of school scuttlebutt myself, not when I was supposed to be keeping a low profile and definitely not when I had no idea what, if anything, was going on between me and Asher Martinez.

So we’d shared a table in the reference section, and even better, Ezra Rosenberg happened to walk past, which lent weight to my alibi for the Deandra incident. Asher seemed relaxed. Chilled. Less bothered about the test than I was, which was kind of surprising because now that he’d confided in me, I saw the true extent of his struggles to read and write. If a book came in electronic format, he had his phone read it to him, but words on paper? A whole other story. Typing was fine—he said spellcheck was his best friend—but give him a pen and he’d dither. And then there was his mind. It was sharper than he’d ever let on, and his memory was phenomenal.

I could easily have talked to Asher all night, but I still had work to do, so at half past six, I told him I needed some girl time and went to eat dinner with Vanessa. Afterwards, I planned to slink out and sneak into a staff office or two. I still had half of the rooms in that area left to bug, including Saul and Ezra Rosenberg’s. Their offices were down a separate hallway, their own little enclave, and they both spent way too much time working in them.

Luckily, Vanessa assumed I was going to see Asher again.

“You’re going out? Where? Wait—don’t tell me, don’t tell me… I still think he’s a bum, but if he makes you happy, then I guess that makes him an okay bum.”

“An okay bum? What do you call people you don’t like?”

Vanessa giggled. “Go, go! Or you’ll be late for your hook-up.”

I didn’t bother to correct her, not about the hook-up—or rather, the lack of one—or about her perception of Asher’s laziness. I’d promised to keep his secrets, and I would. Plus it was better for her to think I was a wannabe slut than a wannabe spy.

Tonight, I planned to get into two more offices. We knew from Marshall’s information that staff at the school were involved, but finding out who was tricky. I decided that on this occasion, I’d go for the pottery teacher because Marshall said he’d once been hired to move an expensive vase and I figured she might know a thing or two about that, plus Professor Eastman—the biology teacher—because I’d seen him hobnobbing with Saul Rosenberg on several occasions.

I didn’t need to take much with me—just a pair of gloves, a set of lock picks, the bugs themselves, and a multitool. I’d gotten the process down to a fine art over the past two weeks, and I could install a bug in an electrical socket in under five minutes. At first, Nate had been on hand to help me, but I was confident doing them alone now. Ryder was listening in, but he didn’t say much. The sound of a TV in the background suggested he was multitasking.

The pottery teacher’s office looked more like a gift shop. Every surface was covered in trinkets, mostly pots and dishes but also paintings and beaded thingamajigs and bizarrely, several dozen pairs of chopsticks. I resisted the urge to poke around and focused on my goal instead. Remove the front plate. Find the right wires. Clip the bug in. Screw everything back where it should be.

Another one down. What was behind door number two?

A painfully tidy office, it turned out. Everything on Professor Eastman’s desk was lined up precisely, perfectly parallel. Nothing was out of place. Even the potted plant on the windowsill had been pruned to within an inch of its life. I crouched behind the desk and started work on the socket, stifling a yawn as I tinkered. The late nights were catching up with me. Five more minutes, and I could go to bed.

At least, that was the plan.

I so, so nearly made it out of there. I’d attached the bug and screwed the front plate back on when the sound of footsteps in the hallway made my heart seize. Go past, go past, go past. The steps were soft but steady, no hesitation, and karma obviously had it in for me because they stopped right outside the door. The sound of scraping came from the lock, then I heard a quiet exclamation.

“Huh?”

The doorknob began to turn. Shit. All I could do was squash myself as far under the desk as I could get and pray whoever was out there didn’t come right into the room.

No such luck.

My heart was thumping so loudly that I thought it would give me away, but the visitor didn’t seem interested in the desk. Instead, he—and it was a “he” judging by the size of his feet—headed for the filing cabinets that lined the far wall. They were all locked. I’d checked. But that pesky inconvenience didn’t stop the guy. Did he have a set of lock picks too? He definitely had a torch. Every so often, the beam bounced in my direction.

“What’s happening?” Ryder asked. “Is everything okay?”

A drawer opened and papers rustled. Then the footsteps came towards me.

There was nowhere I could go. Nothing I could do except smile and… What the…?

“Fancy seeing you here,” I said.

I wasn’t sure who was more surprised—me, Asher, or possibly Ryder.

“What the hell are you doing down there?” Asher hissed.

“Uh…”

“Tell him it was a prank,” Ryder said. “A dare. One of the other girls dared you to break into the office.”

Sweat beaded on the back of my neck as I scrambled to my feet. “Uh, a bunch of us were playing truth or dare, and guess what my dare was?”

“To hide under the desk in Professor Eastman’s office?”

I went for sheepish. “I was meant to take a selfie sitting on his desk, but then I heard you coming.”

“How did you get in here? Wasn’t the door locked?”

Busted. “I thought it would be, but… Wait—what are you doing in here?” And what was that look in Asher’s eyes? Shame? He glanced downwards, and I followed his gaze to the thin booklet in his hand. “Is that a test paper? Is that Saturday’s test paper?”

Asher slumped into Professor Eastman’s swivel chair, eyes cast down at the floor. Guilty as charged. This was his strategy for getting his high school diploma? To cheat? I wasn’t sure whether to be sad or horrified or impressed.

“I’ll never pass otherwise,” he mumbled. “I can’t even read the questions in the time allowed, let alone write the answers too.”

“But what will you do in a year? After you graduate? You can’t steal the answers to life.”

“I’ll get a job where I don’t need to read papers all day. I want to work with cars, racing them or customising them, but I can’t even get an interview at an auto shop without my diploma.”

Plus if Asher graduated, he’d have his father’s money to fall back on. What was I meant to do? Cheating was wrong, but I wasn’t about to march into Ezra Rosenberg’s office and tell tales. Not only would it draw attention to what I’d been doing, but the Rosenbergs were a bunch of dishonest bastards who deserved to get a dose of their own medicine anyway.

“Is there anything I can do to persuade you not to report this?” Asher asked.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Now you’re offering to bribe me?”

My morals might have been questionable, but I took offence at that.

Asher sucked in a breath. “Uh, no?”

Ryder chuckled in my ear. “This was not how I saw tonight going.”

I needed a timeout to ask for advice, but unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. I’d have to handle this by myself. In truth, I was the last person who should be giving Asher a lecture on ethics—how could I when Rune helped me to cheat my ass off in every class?—but turning a blind eye didn’t feel right either.

“You have to study, Shortcut.”

“I did study this evening.”

“I mean more than once. Every day.”

Asher put his head in his hands, but then he peeped out from between his fingers. It was oddly cute. “With you?”

“With me.” At least for the next week. “And maybe with Vanessa too.”

If I could convince him to confide in her as well, perhaps she’d change her stance on him being a bum and help. We might have got off to a rocky start, but now that she’d thawed out, I saw she had a good heart.

“Okay.” He held out his little finger. “Pinky swear.”

What age was Asher? Sometimes he acted like a kid, and sometimes he seemed old beyond his years. Jaded. Weary, even. If he’d repeated a year of junior high and then sat out a year of high school, he had to be at least nineteen.

I sighed and linked my pinky with his. “Don’t make me regret this. What do you do, photograph the test papers?”

He nodded.

“Hurry up. I’ll hold the torch. The flashlight.”

“You’re my kind of girl, Chem. Gutsy and morally grey.”

“Don’t forget to take your selfie,” Ryder reminded me.

“Wait a second.” I sat on the desk and snapped a photo of myself, making a mental note to destroy the evidence later. “Okay, now hurry up.”