We pushed the doors to the library hard, nearly knocking out Paper Boy Max, who was walking out.
“I just asked them, they don’t remember seeing her,” he called out as we ran. “I’ll keep checking.”
“Where the hell is the door?” Nolan ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck. The one tunnel we never fucking use.”
I lifted my phone and dialed Marcus. He was a nerd. He would know.
“It’s . . . shit. I never use that tunnel. I did once and it left me way further from where I was trying to go,” Marcus said. “I think it’s behind the classics.”
“Got it.” I hung up and looked at Nolan. “Behind the classics.”
We stood in the middle of the library, taking in the magnitude of it. In a building filled with old books, who was to say what was considered a classic? Nolan called Marcus this time.
“Dude, what the hell is a classic?” he asked, his gaze wandering. He looked at me. “He says it’s around Harry Potter.”
“Harry Potter’s a classic?” I frowned, walking in the direction of the information desk. The girl behind the desk looked up from her book. “Hey, where can I find Harry Potter books?”
She pointed toward the back of the library. I thanked her and headed in that direction.
“No running,” she called out.
I lifted my hand to stick my middle finger out, but just held it flat and slowed down. I didn’t know that poor girl and she’d just helped me out. Nolan caught up to me.
“Can you believe Harry Potter is a classic?” he asked.
I shot him a look. “Look for the door.”
We walked to the end of the row. There was an emergency exit door, but that was it. I exhaled, putting my hands over my head. Where the hell could this door be? It had to be here. Marcus had taken it. We’d heard about it. Amelia had never come back out of the library. She had to have gone through a tunnel. Maybe she’d gotten lost and had no cell phone reception. Maybe her phone died, like every other iPhone user in the world. Those thoughts eased my mind slightly.
“Look,” Nolan said, pushing a door behind us open.
I could’ve kissed him. I slapped him on the shoulder instead and started running down the stairs, the lights flicking on as we went. I looked up and down the tunnel. It was as big as they all were. This one didn’t even have funny street names up top like the rest of them, it was just white walls and endless gray floors. We searched it anyway. There were three exits. We went to all three, looked around and ended up right back where we started. Square one.
“There aren’t even cameras on each exit,” I said. “That’s just plain stupid.”
Nolan brought his phone out. He glanced at me. “I’m calling Adam.”
We walked out through one of the exits, the one closest to the apartments, and walked in that direction. I felt like the weight of the world was on my chest. Where could she have gone? What could have happened?
Against my better judgment, I played the game. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t remember anything that had transpired. I remembered the feeling—the anger as I skated the ice, the adrenaline as my legs pushed me forward. My first actual recollection was sitting next to Nolan in the box.
“What the fuck happened?” I asked.
He looked over at me. “What the fuck happened was that you sent someone to the hospital.”
“What?”
“Uh, yeah.” He chuckled. “That’ll teach him not to fuck with the Smash Brothers.”
I blinked, looking around. There was no one on the ice. I did see the blood though. Fuck. I turned to Nolan. “Is the game over?”
“Did you not hear me?”
“Yeah, but is it over?” It wasn’t like this hadn’t happened before. What was hockey without a little blood anyway? I’d already replaced five of my teeth and I hadn’t even started playing pro yet. None of this was surprising.
“Yeah, it’s over. I don’t think they wanted to feel your wrath after that last one.”
“Is he okay?” I frowned.
“Yeah, they called. Concussion, broken nose, split lip.” He shrugged. “He’s fine.”
That was a new record for me. I’d never sent someone to the hospital with all of the above at the same time. My thoughts drifted back to Amelia. She would’ve probably been horrified at whatever I did out there. I found that unlike insistences in the past, this one had left me feeling empty, not any better than I did when I walked out there today. It was the worst kind of feeling, the emptiness.
Rage, I could handle.
Sadness, I could handle.
Emptiness was something I didn’t do well with.
Chapter 47
Amelia
It felt like someone was squeezing my head together. The pressure was immeasurable. It wasn’t a migraine, not quite, because I felt it everywhere, in my skull, in my temple. Opening my eyes made it worse, but something had made me open them. I’d run out of oxygen soon. I could feel it in the way my breathing had turned shallow and my pulse was slowing. I’d die here in these woods, in this dark box. I’d gotten accustomed to being surrounded by people and I was going to die alone. It served me right for being a brat, for not appreciating what I had when I did. I heard something above me. A person?
“Hailey?” I tried to call out, but couldn’t.
I no longer had a voice. That had been the first thing to go. I was about to close my eyes again, but then I heard it again. A loud sound. I tried to move, but my body was sore, aching all over from kicking and screaming, from trying to fight the wood above me. I’d used the pipe to push with and it had done nothing but fill me with dirt. More dirt fell now, tiny granules, almost like sand seeping between fingertips. I tried to move again. Tried to scream, to no avail. The sounds got louder. Voices? There were voices. My heart seemed to accelerate at that. Maybe Hailey changed her mind. Maybe Lana made her. Maybe Deacon? Voices. Louder. Male.
“You’re going to stay in this one,” one of them said. “Don’t worry, it’s only overnight.”
The wood was pried open slowly, dusting more dirt onto me as they lifted it. It was evening, but my eyes still squinted as I looked up. Red cloaks.
“What the fuck?” one of them said loudly. “Will, is this her?”
“Who?” another guy asked, coming into sight. Another red cloak. “Holy fuck it’s her.”
“I’m gonna be sick,” a third guy said.
“Shut the fuck up. Go get me that towel,” the first guy shouted. “Oh my God, dude.”
“What the fuck is she doing in here?” the other one said.
They sounded panicked.
“What do we do with her?”
I felt my chest rake. I had no tears left. I had nothing. One of them came over with a bottle of water and opened it quickly. He yanked the red cloak from his head, took it off and tossed it aside.
“Dude,” another one said. “She’s going to know what you look like.”
“Shut the fuck up. She’s one of us,” he said, his blue eyes familiar, so familiar. Mine widened. Nolan. He looked exactly like Nolan. “Call my brother,” he said. “If we call Logan, he’ll total his car on the way over here.” He leaned closer with the water, but the sight of the clear bottle made me shudder. I shook my head. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be drugged again. “Hey, it’s just water,” he coaxed. “It’s just water.”