Key was reassigned to a new lab partner, a quiet girl with freckles and a nervous habit of clicking her retractable pen every few seconds. The three days when Hartley was in suspension seemed to drag on. On the second day, Key realized his muscles were always tense, ready to respond to whatever witty remark Hartley was bound to say. Of course, the witty remark never came.
When Hartley did come back to a loud chorus of cheers and applause, things seemed different. Occasionally, Key would look across the room and make eye contact with Hartley. When the teacher scolded a student, or when one student was found cheating and dragged out of the classroom, Key and Hartley would glance at each other and grin.
One brisk autumn afternoon, the students were asked to check their grades online. Key's total grade was 97. Not terrible, but he frowned. He could do better. In a quick, accidental glance, Key's eyes fell on Hartley's computer screen.
56.
Key felt his jaw drop. He forced himself to look back at his own screen.
The test they had been sent to the principal's office over was worth half of the entire semester's grade. Getting a zero on it was damnation for his grades.
Key didn't hear a word for the rest of the lecture. When the bell rang, Key quickly stood and dropped a note on Hartley's desk. He had rewritten it four times over the past half hour.
The note was simple: just Key's phone number and the words, "I can tutor you." Key expected that to be the end of it, but five minutes later as he was running to his next class, his phone buzzed with a message.
He grabbed his phone from his pocket. It was a text from an unknown number and a message. Okay. Wait outside the Exit W after school.
So Key did, and five minutes after the final bell, Hartley exited out of the western exit and the two of them stared at each other for a long, awkward minute.
"So, are we actually doing this?" Hartley asked.
"Guess so."
That afternoon, the two of them sat in Hartley's room. The conversation began as study sessions usually do, with being focused on the subject. But after a snack, meeting Hartley's mother— a nice woman who seemed ready to adopt Key and leave Hartley alone in the community park forever— and watching the sun go down, their focus waned. They talked about high school, lacrosse, and their friends. It was dark by the time Key said he needed to home. Hartley's mother insisted on driving him home through the suburbia. As they drove, Key saw something happening to the houses on the street. He wasn't sure why he was seeing it, or what it meant, but it didn't bother him at the time.
When the white Ford passed a house, the lights in the house went out. One by one, like shattered Christmas lights and snuffed candles, they shut off. Subdivisions faded into the night, and Key watched as he heard Hartley and his mom arguing in the front row. He wondered if the lights would go out when he got to his own home, with its sky-blue siding and industrial Home Depot lights. The neighbor's houses went dark, one by one at a speed of twenty-seven miles per hour, then the car turned into the driveway. The lights in the kitchen and Eugene's bedroom stayed on. So did the front porch lights, designed to pathetically fake flickering torchlight.
Key got out of the car and closed the door behind him. It was odd to see the rest of the area pitch-black, but he didn't focus on it too much. That was the fate of all things, he thought, to turn dark and enter the night.
"See you tomorrow!" a voice yelled out into the darkness, and Key turned around. Hartley was waving out the window, a huge smile on his face. Key couldn't help himself: he laughed.
The next day at school, Key walked out of his fifth-hour Spanish class and almost ran into Hartley. "Oh, hey," he said.
"Hey," Hartley said, sliding his phone back into his pocket. "Thought I'd wait for you. I'm in French II with Alverez," he said, jerking his thumb to the classroom next door.
"It is easier than biology?"
"Fuck no, I don't speak a word of French. I used Google Translate on all of the homework."
Key laughed, and they started walking to the lunchroom together. They grabbed the same pre-packaged salad. They were eating and talking about lacrosse when David, one of Key's friends, approached them.
"Oh, hey!" Key said, wiping his mouth with the paper napkin. "What's up?"
David had a deep, worried frown on his face. "Hey," he said nervously, then glanced quickly at Hartley. "What are you doing over here?"
Key looked around and realized that not only were Key and Hartley sitting together, but they were sitting on the opposite side of the room where their friends sat. Key saw his usual spot across the room, along with his friends with nervous frowns. Hartley's friends, a few feet away were whispering among themselves and pointing.
"Oh. I'm eating with Hartley today," Key said. "We're in biology class together, and I'm helping tutor him."
David still didn't seem happy.
"I'll sit with you guys tomorrow, okay?" Key said. A tuft of black hair fell into his eyes, and he brushed it away. David nodded and walked away.
"Did you have to tell him you were tutoring me?" Hartley said.
"Oh, fuck off."
A routine slowly formed. Key would eat lunch with his friends one day, then with Hartley the next. Then one day after winter break when the snow was waist-deep, Key found himself sitting next to Hartley. On his other side, were his old friends.
When spring came, all of them tried out for the lacrosse team. Key and three others made it onto the team, not bad for freshmen. As he ran through the field, Key would occasionally glance back at Hartley sitting on the bleachers. He never seemed sad or angry.
"Why not?" Key asked him one day during a break.
Hartley shrugged. "I cheated on a test. I could have been expelled. I can live with this. I'll kick all of your asses next year. What's the matter with you?"
"Huh?" Key said. He sat up and realized he had been rubbing his forehead. "Oh. I just have a headache, is all." Hartley's brow was creased, something he did when he was worried. "It's just a headache, stop looking at me like that."
Hartley yanked a bottle of acetaminophen out of his backpack and handed it to Key. He swallowed two of the pills.
"Do you always get headaches?" Hartley asked.
Key vaguely realized he had been having headaches often, but only since the beginning of the school year.
"They're just headaches," Key said.
"Bedtime, kiddies," Diana said, and both Melody and Key jumped.
"Jesus!" Key said, glaring at Diana. "This is a nuthouse, don't just sneak up on people!"
"How old are you, anyway?" Melody asked Diana. The girl seemed younger without her makeup. She had dark rings under her eyes and a few small spots of acne. Her hair was wet and clinging to her shirt where it soaked through and left blotchy spots.
Diana grinned. "Twenty-three."
"Then you can't call me 'kiddo.' I'm older than you."
Key giggled, actually giggled, with quick little breathy laughs. Then he saw Melody wasn't laughing. "Hold up, you're serious? How old are you?"
"Twenty-four."
Key burst into another fit of giggled, his skeletal frame shaking with the effort. He laughed until tears fell from his eyes. "That's the best thing I've heard all day. You're older than Diana. And here I thought only Puzzle and Jordan had the guts for that."
Diana scowled from the doorway. "Whatever," she said. "I'm just here to tell you guys to go to your rooms. Jim's going to start nighttime checks soon."
"Okay. Thank you, Diana," Melody said.
Diana seemed angry about being dismissed, but left.
"Keegan?" Melody said. "How old are you?"
All of the happiness Key had just moments before suddenly vanished. He sighed and swiped the bangs out of his eyes. The thin hair immediately moved back to the same place. "I'm twenty."
Twenty. The number seemed so young, so childlike. Melody thought back to when she was twenty years old. She was in her junior year of college, living in a dorm with a couple of roommates with whom she had icy relationships. Every Friday night there was trivia in the restaurant in the Commons on campus, and she hated her required Literary Theory class. For a time, she was borderline normal.
"How old were you when you got arrested?"
"Seventeen."
When Melody had been seventeen, she hated waking up in the morning. But at least she had not even known about places like Versailles. She had never considered she could end up in one.
"What happened?"
Key shrugged. "You know. The same thing that happened to all of us. We messed up. Hurt someone, even if we didn't mean to."
"Where is Hartley now?"
Key picked up the pencil, which had been abandoned on the table a while ago. He tried balancing it on its tip. "He moved to Boston. He has family there, apparently. Everyone wanted him to get away from Michigan. Or me."
"Is he okay?"
"I guess." Key finally looked up from the pencil to look at Melody. "He'll be okay. We used to send letters to each other but stopped a long time ago. I think everyone wants him to forget me."
"What does he want?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure anyone let him decide what he wanted." He lifted up the pencil again and it fell with a loud clatter. "I want him to be happy. If that means he forgets about me, then fine."
A slight ache was making itself known in Melody's wrist. She twisted it, but the pain didn't lessen. "You love him." She meant to phrase it as a question, but the statement from her lips.
He nodded. "I guess." Key jerked his head forward. "I like your drawing."
Melody looked down at the paper and saw she had sketched a night sky. Little stars covered the paper and the rest was shaded in. The side of Melody's hand was smeared with shiny graphite.
Key stood up. "Come with me," he said. "I want to show you something."
He grabbed the paper and pencil and led them out of the room. As they walked past the kitchen, Melody jumped when she saw Heidi standing in the kitchen.
"Pencil, Keegan," the woman said.
Key frowned and handed the dull pencil over. Heidi stuffed it into one of her pockets. Then her eyes grazed over Melody as if she had never seen her before. She looked back at Key, then gave a quick nod. "Good night," she said, her accent thick, then went back into the kitchen. The strange, operatic music began again, quieter now.
"Was she waiting for you?" Melody asked.
Key sighed. "Heidi is overprotective of me, I think. I appreciate her and everything. But she's a lot sometimes. Come on." He waved her over, and the two of them walked to where the boys' bedrooms were. The door to Colt's room was closed, but Cypress's was open. He was lying on his back on the bed and holding a novel with his arms outstretched to read. He smiled at them as they passed.
It was peaceful. It was weird.
Key's room was exactly the same as it had been when Melody was collecting laundry. He kicked off his slippers then stepped onto the bed, looking up at the large vent on the wall. Melody looked closer and realized there were small scratches in the paint on the wall behind the bed. Scratches that were small and far apart to be from fingernails. Melody swallowed. "Did you do that?" she asked.
Key stopped looking at the vent and followed Melody's line of gaze. "Oh," he said and tugged nervously on his hair. He held out his hands in front of him, and for a long second, they both looked at the bandages on his wrists. "I had a tough time when I first got in here. I've always had a bad time with separation, and of course, I was separated from everyone and everything. But I'm better now." He looked back at the wall and reached up.
"Do you know that, or are you just saying it because Riley told you you're better?" Melody asked. But before Key could reply, he lifted up the vent grate and lowered it to the ground with a dull thud.
He turned and grinned at her. "Come here." Then he lifted himself up and into the vent.
Melody felt her jaw drop in shock. "Key!" she whisper-yelled, glancing out the door to make sure no one was there. There wasn't, but the security camera above the doorway blinked its red light at her. "Get out of there! You're going to get in trouble!"
Instead, Key just went further into the vent, pulling his legs in. It was dark in there, and his black eyes glittered in the darkness when he looked back at Melody. "I've been coming up here since I got here," he said. "No one's ever stopped me before."
Melody frowned. "Really?" she said.
"I'm not hurting anyone and I'm not doing anything stupid," Key said. "I think that's all they care about. Are you coming up or not?"
She stepped onto the bed, her feet immediately sinking into the mattress. "You want me to go up there with you?"
"It's warm and there's plenty of room," Key said. His voice had a metallic ring to it. "Just don't be too loud, I don't want anyone else finding out."
"No one else knows?" Melody took a step closer and almost tripped as a bedsheet caught around her ankle. "Not even Cypress?"
"What Cy doesn't know won't kill him," was the disembodied answer from the vent. Melody wondered if she should be scared. She still didn't know what Key had done to get arrested, and she was pretty sure the camera couldn't see inside the vent.
But then again, Melody really didn't care.
Secretly, it took her a few tries before she was able to lift herself into the vent, but she eventually did it. It was a strangely large vent, certainly large enough to fit one normal-sized person. It probably would normally be a tight squeeze with two people, but Key was only half the size he should have been, so there was a small gap between him and Melody. Key smiled at her, a slight, tired grin. His breath smelled strongly of mint, and Melody vaguely recalled that the priest had given him a handful of mint candies that he had periodically popped into his mouth throughout the study. Melody wanted to ask why mints were fine to eat but nothing else. She thought better of it, though.
Melody looked around for a moment. Her eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness. She noticed that carefully placed in a straight line, were a few small trinkets. She reached for one "I keep a few things in here," he said. "Things I'm worried they'll take away." Melody froze, her hand midair. "Oh, nothing dangerous. They just don't really like us keeping things, other than books and clothes and whatever we earn for good behavior."
She let out a breath and picked up the object she had been reaching for. It was cool and smooth to the touch.
It was a tiny porcelain teapot, like from a child's tea set. Melody held it closer to the light and ran her thumb over the delicate paintings of flowers and white rabbits.
"That was from an antique flea market last summer," Key said. Jim was letting me walk around, and I started talking to this old lady with a stand. I didn't tell her what I was doing there, obviously, but we just talked. She was a little out of it, I think. She kept calling me Richard. Anyway, she told me to take something."
"Why a toy teapot?"
Key smiled. "Her stand was only old toys. That was the only thing I saw that could fit in my pocket. I had to be quick, so Jim wouldn't see." He gingerly took the teapot from Melody's hand. His skin, even his fingertips, was calloused and scarred. "They would take it away if they knew I had it. Too many sharp edges if I broke it, y'know?"
They sat in an awkward silence for several minutes. "Why do I get the impression you don't hate it here?"
He took a long breath. "I don't hate it here." He set the teapot back in its spot and picked up the thing next to it. He held it out to Melody, and she took it. It was a jeweled brooch in the glittering shape of a butterfly. The crystals were sharp and stung when Melody closed her fist around the piece of jewelry. "Like I said, I was a mess when I got here. Throwing myself into the walls, breaking furniture, all that stuff. They thought I'd have to be moved to the state place." He sighed. "But Doctor Riley gave me time to calm down. She let me talk on the phone to my parents as much as I wanted to. When I ripped apart pillows, she just gave me new ones. When I calmed down, they gave me stuff to do. I started working in the kitchen. It's one of the reasons I like cooking," he said quietly. "It's difficult enough to make you focus and almost forget everything else, but it's not stressful. If I mess up, I just add another spice or something and make it good. Like, if the bread I make is dry, I add some cinnamon and sugar and make icing and now I made a dessert bread that everyone loves. I can't fuck it up.
"Anyways. Not long after that, Cypress got here. The rest is history."
Melody twisted the brooch in her palm.
"I'll get out of here in two years. Doctor Riley and Heidi think I'll be able to get into culinary school. Cooking here isn't like cooking in a restaurant, but it's still work experience. Cy gets out in six years. By then I'll have graduated and will be working. Then we can go anywhere we want. I've heard that countries in the European Union are okay at accepting people with a criminal record." He laughed breathlessly. "You know, if no one had died, I would only have been considered a juvenile delinquent and could have had my record erased when I turned eighteen. Then, none of this would have happened."
"Do you really believe that Cypress helped?" Melody asked.
"Yes," Key said without hesitation.
"Why?"
"I mean, I care about him." Even in the dim light, Melody could see the blush on Key's cheeks and neck. "I know I'm literally, like, the worst person ever when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but I care about him. And it's convenient that I know he's not going to leave me." The last part was muttered quickly, a last-second attempt for a bad joke. "I like stability."
"So you love him."
The blush deepened. "I guess. Yeah. He's my best friend."
Melody nodded. She set down the brooch, exactly where it had been before. Next to it was a small dried rose. "I read this book once. Called The Secret History. It's by—" Melody snapped her fingers, trying to remember the name of the author. "Donna Tartt. There was this line I really liked. 'Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.'"
Key grinned. "I like that."
"I always thought that was the case. And so many crimes happen because of love. How could it fix anything?"
"I don't think love conquers everything either," Key said. He picked up the rose and gave it to Melody, the tiny petals making small crinkling sounds at the movement. "But I don't think it hurts to have it, either."