Will’s face was pale with terror.

“Gates killed Pruitt,” Will said.

“Who?”

“He’s a Saint. At least, I think he killed him. I just had to run … I had to get out of there—”

“Will, slow down,” Lucy said. “You’re freaking me out. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s Gates … he’s obsessed with me. He’s crazy.”

“What do you mean he’s obsessed with you?” Lucy said. She was getting more anxious as Will went on.

“He’s lost his mind. He’s going to come after me. He’s not going to stop. He killed his little brother …”

“Oh god. Okay, well, um … you can’t stay here. I can’t let you bring the Saints down on the Sluts.”

He nodded. “I know,” he said. “I like your hair.”

Lucy touched the bob she’d fashioned from what was left of her hair, then got ahold of herself.

“Will—” she said in a sharp tone. “This is serious.”

“Look, I know I shouldn’t have come here. I just had to see you.”

“You did?”

“In case it was the last time.”

“Everything okay?” Sophia said as she walked out of the kitchen. Lucy looked back to her, then to Minnie the flower, sitting on the stool.

Lucy picked up the flower and took Will by the arm. “I gotta go,” Lucy said to Sophia. “Cover for me.”

Will crawled through a ventilation shaft behind Lucy. The last time he’d been in a shaft with her, things between them hadn’t been so hot—it had been that dead silent crawl back from the Varsity pool. He was pissed at her then, but not now. He was grateful. She was putting herself in danger to keep him safe from a psychopath.

“I think this is it,” she said.

She was ahead of him in the narrow metal tunnel. Lucy was paused in front of a vent cover. She hovered her phone light over a crumpled piece of paper. She looked to the vent, reached out, and gave it a push. It fell away.

Lucy stuck her head into the pitch-blackness on the other side.

“Oh, wow,” he heard her say.

She pulled herself into the void, and she disappeared from view. Will pushed the potted flower ahead of him until he reached the opening. He looked down into a small room that was lit only by moonlight through a single narrow window that looked out on to the quad.

“Hand me Minnie,” she said.

“It has a name?”

Lucy reached up. “She,” she said. “She has a name.”

Will handed the flower down to Lucy, then lowered himself out of the shaft. Will’s feet touched down on a Xerox machine, and he jumped down to the floor from there. There was another copier in the room. It was pressed up against the only door. Like a lot of other doors in McKinley that weren’t meant to be opened, the handle had been removed.

He walked over to flip on the light switch.

“Don’t,” Lucy said.

Will turned to her, confused. She held up the crumpled piece of paper, her phone light still on.

“It says to never turn on the lights at night. Don’t want to attract any attention to this window, it says, on the off chance somebody’s in the quad.”

“What is this place?”

“A secret,” Lucy said. “I think you’ll be safe here.”

Lucy moved to the window and placed the potted flower on the sill. She gave it special attention, more than Will thought a flower needed. She turned it until it faced out the window, as if she wanted it to have a view of the quad below. Will walked to the shelving unit that spanned the entire wall opposite the copiers. The shelves were stocked with pickle jars and plastic cups full of quad dirt. In some of the dirt was dried fruit left to rot slowly. There were a couple spray bottles and a hot plate with a pot on it. At the end of one shelf was a black light that looked like it came from a science lab.

“Is all of this for that one flower?” Will said.

Lucy turned and nodded. “Makes you wonder what else is in this school we don’t know about.”

She crossed the room to a mattress of blankets on the floor next to the opposite wall. Lucy sank down to the makeshift bed, sitting with her back to the wall. Will sat down beside her. The room was as quiet as a snowed-in house. The madness he’d left behind in that sour-scented classroom seemed so far away. For now, he was safe from that demented red eye, but it would find him eventually. That thought made him treasure every moment he had alone with Lucy.

Her posture was better than ever before, her back was parallel with the wall. Moonlight made her short, red hair a shimmering purple. It highlighted the cuts that latticed her arms and the long thin scabs that lined her face. He hadn’t mentioned them before, in the cafeteria. He didn’t want her to feel self-conscious, but he was pissed off that anyone would lay their hands on Lucy. It was all part of the new her, he guessed.

“Who did that to you?” Will said.

“This is bad, Will. It’s really bad.”

“I know. I’m sorry I pulled you into this.”

“Yeah, but you always do this! You always do shit that means somebody has to bail you out! I’m not your babysitter.”

“I said I’m sorry,” he said, raising his voice.

“Can’t you ever just do the right thing? Why do you make friends with these lowlifes like Gates and Smudge? Does it make you feel better or something?”

“Feels better than being rejected by you every five minutes!” Will yelled back.

Lucy’s face flushed red, and their eyes locked. She grabbed his head and kissed him. Will’s mind reeled. How was this happening? Her lips were soft and hot. They felt unbelievable. They separated, but only a few inches. They stared into each other’s eyes. They were more intensely connected than Will had ever experienced with someone. She wasn’t pulling away either. In the Saints he got to ask for whatever he wanted, and he usually got it, but it never really made him happy. Right now, he was truly happy. The thing he really wanted, the thing he wanted most in the world, was still Lucy, and she wanted him back.

He took her head in her hands and kissed her. That second kiss would have been enough for him, but it was only the spark. It led to more kissing, and groping. Lucy’s raspy moans sent an electrical current crackling through his body. Soon, Will was tugging off her clothes and she was doing the same to him. He grabbed, he caressed, he tasted. He kissed around her bruises.

This was real. They were going to have sex. Will didn’t want to screw it up. For all the hours of porn he’d seen, once it was really happening, he felt like a tap dancer on a frozen lake. He wanted her to love it. Each thing he did, he did with a terror that she’d push him away and look at him like he was a pervert, or a child. She’d realize that he wasn’t good enough, that he’d never done this before, and she’d be disgusted. She’d demand that he stop.

She didn’t do any of those things. She kissed back with equal passion. She sucked on the skin of his neck. She grasped him, and guided him inside. Heaven.

35

WILL STARED AT THE COPIER ROOM CEILING. It was lit by sunlight now. He didn’t know how long he’d been doing it, picking out weird faces and shapes in the patterned tiles, like he was staring at a cloudy sky. It was impossible to sleep with Lucy in his arms. Her head was tucked warmly below his chin. He didn’t dare move and make her stir. He wanted her so happy she’d never want to leave. Her hip filled his hand. His heat mixed with hers until he couldn’t discern the border between them.

She purred. He felt her eyelashes tickle his chest. She must have opened her eyes.

“You awake?” he said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

She lifted her head and turned to face him. She smiled.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said.

One look, and she could dissolve him until he was nothing but a shadow in the shape of a boy.

“Wish we had something to eat,” Lucy said.

“Well, darn it, I forgot to go to the store.”

“That’s dumb,” she said through another smile.

“You’re dumb.”

He squeezed her and she squeaked, and he wanted to hear it again and again. Their clothes were strewn over their naked bodies like blankets.

“What time is it?” Lucy said.

Will groaned and pulled her closer. “Who cares?”

“Nobody knows where I am. I should’ve told Sophia. They might get worried.”

“Really? What do the Sluts look like when they get worried?”

Without missing a beat, Lucy bore her clenched teeth at him with wild, furious eyes. She looked like a constipated piranha. Will cracked up. Lucy shook with laughter, trying to hold the face until she couldn’t anymore. She covered her mouth and snorted a giggle. Will put his forehead to hers, she settled into him.

“I’m serious, what time is it?” Lucy said.

Will sighed and found his phone in his pants, which were laid over Lucy’s calves. The screen was shattered, but it was still in one piece. He clicked it on. The upper corners of the display were discolored, pinkish, and the rest was littered with dead pixels.

“Eleven a.m.,” Will said.

“What’s that?”

Lucy was looking at Will’s phone, the screen still illuminated. She sat up, holding his and her clothes to her front. She took the phone out of his hand to get a better look at his phone’s wallpaper. It was a dim snapshot of the Loners gathered around the TV he’d stolen from the Freaks and hung in the Stairs lounge. Lucy sat in the middle, in her pale blue dress, looking back at the camera and sticking out her tongue.

“I don’t remember this picture,” she said, staring at the pic, the phone’s blue light gleaming off her bare shoulder. She seemed mesmerized by her former self.

“It was a while ago.”

“Do I …,” she said, still puzzling over the picture. “Do I seem different to you now?”