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 reliving that bullshit, 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, I knock.
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 was expecting me. 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 thinks I'm the 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.”
She curves a bemused eyebrow at me, pushing herself forward so she can slide off the edge of the mattress. A second later, she produces a joint from the little nightstand by the bed. “I prefer to smoke this.” She holds it up, the offer implicit as she passes me, throws one leg over the windowsill, then the other, and drops down onto the small rooftop below.
A cloud of weed smoke wafts in through the window, curling up my nose. I stand very still, watching her as she pulls on the joint and the burning ember at its end flares bright red. “Come out or close the window. This stuff’s strong. Miriam’s uptight as hell. She won’t be cool if she smells this coming out from underneath my door.”
“Who the fuck is Miriam?”
“She’s the floor monitor. She private tutored you for six months, sophomore year.”
“Big butt? Glasses?”
“Nope.”
“Whatever.” I huff out a bewildered breath and boost myself out after her, acutely aware that this is already not going according to plan. I was supposed to confront her. Make it clear to her that, when I tell her to do something, she’s supposed to do it. But now that I’m here and I’ve seen her bedroom, I’m beginning to suspect that she’s infiltrating my brain via fucking witchcraft, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to combat that. My music tastes and my generally foul demeanor are deceptive; I’m not a master of the dark arts myself.
Not to mention the fact I’ve barely had chance to say more than five words and she's already ordering me about and passing me a fucking joint. Seriously. I’m getting whiplash with this girl. I hit the joint, because fuck it, it's a joint, and it does smell like good shit. The burn's pleasant, and the high is quick as hell. I'm feeling it before I've even finished drawing on it a second time. I pass it back to her, holding the smoke in my lungs. I blow it down my nose, a looseness settling over me, close to the same sensation I felt jumping into the plunge pool earlier.