The Book of Miranda | gxg | ✔︎

(10) The Staircase

Exie taps my shoulder. The lobby lies behind us, but we're closer to a pew set against the wall. Exie drops to the ground and scuttles underneath it. I copy her. There we lurk, me with numbing hands and fraught attempts to subdue my own breathing. No teachers come around the corner. I can't hear their voices anymore. Not through the pew's wood, and not over the runaway gallop of my own heartbeat. All I can see of Exie is her silhouette against the moonlit hall. Corpse-still. She's good at this.

After what could be a minute or an hour, she shifts. My whole chest clenches as she shimmies out from under the pew and rises to a crouch. Another eon, and she relaxes. She beckons to me. I attempt to replicate her crab-scuttle and fail; my hand slips, and I crack my elbow on the wall instead. Exie shoots me a look. I salvage what's left of my dignity and join her as she finally stands.

"They're gone," she whispers.

"Are you sure?"

"Do you want to check?"

I'm not taking a direct challenge like that without checking. Exie hisses as I push past her and return to the corner. A peek around it confirms the hallway is empty.

I draw back again. "They're gone."

"Is anyone else awake?"

I check again. There's no sign of other students. I can't believe nobody heard that scream.

"I bet the door blocked it," whispers Exie. "Maybe that's why all the doors in this place are built like siege gates."

I stare at her. Since finding my hideout upon arrival here, I have contemplated many reasons why a cathedral-turned-remedial-academy might have heavy wooden doors. "To block the screams of dying students" wasn't on the list. I can see Exie's face in the moonlight now, though, and she's dead serious. Or as serious as someone can look when they're zombie-pale, eyes wide and jaw clenched in residual terror. I wonder if I look the same.

We stand there like a pair of dressmaker's dummies until I realize staying here is probably a stupid move when someone in this school just went to glory. Exie startles when I move.

"Somewhere safer?" I whisper.

"I got a room alone."

No roommate? That's got to be a perfect-student perk. We won't be waking anybody, and I can hide under an empty bed if someone comes around tonight to prey on other students. We skulk across the lobby together and shadow the walls to a room at the far end of the dorm wing. Two doors from mine. Exie checks over her shoulder before she cracks the door—she left it unlocked—and ushers me inside. She locks it behind us both.

I sink down on the spare bed as my legs betray me. Exie remains by the door. In the fainter moonlight here, my eyes adjust enough to see she's listening for any mark of danger on the other side. Minutes elapse in silence. When no danger presents itself, Exie peels away and fetches a chair from a nearby corner. I squint to identify its contours. That's stolen from a carrel desk—though when and how she managed it without a teacher noticing is beyond me.

Exie wedges the chair-back beneath the door handle with the ease of someone who has done this before. Only then does she re-light her candle. That's got to be her own candleholder. I haven't seen a portable fire-device anywhere around this school, which is likely for the better. But that means Exie either found hers somewhere covert and made off with it, or brought it with her specifically. I don't know anyone who includes a candleholder on their boarding-school packing list. Not before now, anyway.

She's got matches in her pockets, too. I shoot a glance at the match-holder on the wall beside her room's lamp, but it's empty. She's pocketed the lot of them.