Red Moon Rising

37. conspiracy

Chapter Song: Cradles - Sub Urban

XX

As soon as the room is quiet, I slip from bed and into the bathroom, feeling once more over where I long for a lock to be. What if Isaac comes back and invites himself into the shower with me? What if his anger makes my lack of interest a challenge? I think back to the night after we argued about the phone, the way he drew out the pain when I told him to stop. I see now the message that he was impressing onto my body. Isaac doesn't take no for an answer, Sam had said, and he was right. 'No' is a threat, a resistance to be bent or broken into a 'yes.'

Through the rush of the shower I listen for the sound of the door, but Isaac doesn't return, and soon I am clean of traces of him and dressed in clothes that don't smell so much like him. The emptiness in this room is daunting like it never was before, but I can't leave it now, not yet. I pull out each drawer in the bedside tables and rifle through the loose shit that Isaac has tucked away over the years. His desk drawers are largely empty; any important documents are probably kept in his office, which I know he locks with a key attached to his motorcycle keyring. And then there's that fucking safe. I try several combinations of Isaac's old phone password, but the translucent white buttons continue to blink red no matter how many times I punch in the code. Scanning the room doesn't turn up any better passcode combinations, and finally I sink to the floor in front of the dark metal box and lean my head into my knees.

There has to be something in this entire goddamn school that will help me. When I try the door, I half-expect Isaac to have locked it, but I step easily into the empty hallway. No stalker that I can see. I don't see any cameras in the hallway either, but then, most of Isaac's pack sleep in this wing so there would be little need for it. I walk down the hallway and try different doors that I haven't been through before, but many of them are locked with a deadbolt, and the other hallway branching from the cafeteria is busier than the old dorm hall.

No one speaks to me, but they all look—they're watching with an intensity that shifts quickly away when I try to meet their gazes. I can't measure the hostility in their eyes, but there certainly isn't any pity. I think I'm an enemy to them more than anything, an interloper who has only brought trouble. But they don't say a thing, whether out of dislike of me or fear of Isaac I'm not sure.

"Layla!" I don't like the voice that calls my name from behind. I don't turn around to acknowledge Reiner, but keep walking down the hall as his footsteps approach too quickly. "Hey, wait a second, I just want to talk."

"Do you tell that to all the girls before you tase them?"

"Come on, man, just wait up."

And only because I'm running out of hallway, I do. Some thirty feet ahead of me is a door with sunlight bleeding through the window, and Isaac's words are enough to make the sight of it flip my stomach. When Reiner is near enough, I whirl on him and grab a fistful of his shirt, shoving him hard enough into the wall that I know it will hurt. It hurts me too—I instinctively used my right arm despite the twist of pain that now creeps up my shoulder.

"Is this what talking looks like to you?

"I didn't say I wanted to talk to you."

He's humoring me though, motionless against the wall with his head leaning back against the blue painted brick. "You okay?"

"Unless you're offering to drive me to the border with a wad of cash in my pocket, I'm not interested in whatever it is you think you need to say."

"Layla—"

"And don't you fucking dare apologize to me. Your words don't mean shit if your actions are the opposite, you get that right?" He's just like Isaac, without the swing. He'll offer friendship and tase me in the back when he gets a chance.