I nearly doubled over as someone leapt onto my back; my automatic reaction was to grab their legs so that they wouldn’t fall off of the awkward, impromptu piggy-back ride. I was surprised, but only by the unexpectedness of it. There was only one person I knew who used sudden piggy-backing as a way of greeting.
“Do you know of a door that doesn’t have a number plate or window on it?” Mimi asked, her voice coming from somewhere around my right ear. She was trying to sound nonchalant, but I detected a hint of something in her voice that suggested it wasn’t an on-the-spot question.
I thought a moment, racking my brain. I knew the school top to bottom, all six floors of it. It was a good thing because I continued walking down the hallway, not looking where I was going as I drew a mental map of the building, seeing each and every door in my mind’s eye. I knew that I had seen a door like the one she described; I just had to figure out where.
We drew a few stares, me being a few inches taller than mostly everyone elseandcarrying a slender girl with blazing copper hair half as long as she was tall, worn in a loose braid that swung down her back.
A door without a number stuck out like the one green gummy bear left at the bottom of the bag among all the red and yellow and clear ones.
“It’s on the third floor, not far from the library. Why?” I finally said, slowly. Mimi, or Miranda as she loathed being called, was not a trouble magnet, as the saying goes. She was trouble incarnate, and thus my “this-is-going-to-go-swiftly-downhill” senses were tingling.
“Where does it go?” Mimi continued, dodging my question.
“It doesn’t, it’s always locked. What are you—”
She cut me off by abruptly sliding off of my back. “It’s nothing, just curious. I’ll see you...” Her words trailed off as she looked at me as if seeing me for the first time that day. “Nate, did you sleep at all? You look terrible.”
I mentally winced. It was stupid of me to hope that no one would notice the dark circles beneath my eyes, or the resigned sort of weary expression that remained on my face, but it had been worth a shot. After Nora had gone back to bed, I hadn’t slept a single second. My little episode before her interruption had a hand in that; I was too afraid of dreaming about voices. Or worse, my own death.
“No, but I’m fine. Just... one of those nights.” The excuse was lame and I’m pretty sure my face didn’t make it very believable, but Mimi didn’t press the issue. She just gave me a concerned look and shook her head. Neither her nor Nora knew of my gift, or the things it caused. Not even Tristan knew, and we were best friends. I had always felt that telling them would be dangerous, I just couldn't rememberwhy. Someone had told me to keep my gift a secret once, I think.
“I’ll see you at lunch, then. Have fun in Geometry.”
I waved as she headed off, weaving through the thinning crowd of students heading to their classes.
I could have laughed at the withering glare Mimi gave me when she saw me casually leaning against the very door she had inquired about hours earlier, if I had the ability to laugh in the face of danger. “How were you expecting to get in? It’s locked.” I tried to turn the knob to prove my point. Its metallic surface was oddly cold to the touch, and didn’t give way.
“I would have figured something out.” There was the expected stubborn set of her jaw; she would get through this door, even if she had to chop through it with an axe. There was no escaping when her curiosity fixated on something.
I pulled out my student identification card and slipped it perpendicularly into the crack between frame and lock with the ease of practice. Someone had taught me the trick, but their name escaped me at that moment. “No, you would have gotten frustrated and probably would have tried to kick it down, or something. Keep a watch out for trackers.”
Trackers patrolled the halls at night, and they loved catching students out of bed after curfew. It gave some entertainment to their boring lives of graveyard shifts and empty hallways. I wiggled the card a little, then bent it the opposite way. The lock clicked open.
With my hand on the door knob, I looked back at Mimi, eyebrow raised. She nodded impatiently. With a small push the door opened, and I stepped aside to let her see what lay beyond. The door led to a bare hallway painted white, with sparkling white tiles. At the far end the silver doors of an elevator waited. “That’s curious. We should go now, before—”
Mimi walked past me, towards the elevator. “They probably don’t even work, let’s just—” I stopped midsentence again, bringing a hand to my face with a sigh. There was no escaping her curiosity, indeed. Glancing back at the door we had come through I found it closed.
Somehow that gave me a bad feeling in my stomach, like when you eat more cookie dough than you actually bake.
The floor was slightly tilted, I noticed as I caught up with Mimi, as if it were leading us towards the elevator doors. The hallway was chilled, not quite the temperature of a refrigerator but close enough. Despite the jacket I wore over my white, short-sleeved t-shirt I had to start rubbing warmth back into my arms, as futile as it was. Mimi was no better off in her own Pokémon-emblazoned t-shirt layered over a black long sleeve.
Mimi paused in front of the elevator as I had at the door, hand and finger outstretched a bare inch from the only button there was: a down arrow. She looked at me with a question in her eyes, and until that moment I hadn’t realized that I was holding my breath. I breathed out slowly, nodding.
“If we don’t do this now, we’re going to die of curiosity.”
She pressed the button once, lightly, watching as it lit up with a dull, bluish glow.
The doors slid open smoothly and soundlessly after a few moments. Mimi slid her cold hand into mine as we stepped into the small metal box together, using her other to point at the various floor arrows on the panel inside. “I didn’t know the school had a basement.” She looked at me expectantly, but I didn’t have an answer for her.
“Neither did I,” was all I could say.
