Refusing to allow herself to dwell on Midas's fate, Isa had dropped off to sleep mentally combing through the campus: what might she have missed? Was there a way out that she might have dismissed early on? Ought they to tear apart all the other residence rooms upstairs? Other faculty family homes? Though the prospect made her feel uneasy, these were desperate times. She traced the contours of Tristan's nose with her fingertip. The boy didn't stir.
They wouldn't both fit on the bike. She'd tried the road, and the forest. Should she try to steal one of the staff cars after all? Perhaps she might be able to figure out how to drive it, if she tried. It wasn't out of the question. But windows would need to be broken, and she had no idea how to hot-wire something, if everyone's keys were gone. What had people done before the internet? She'd never been in a position where information wasn't readily available.
But -- for all these musings, and in spite of all of her confident declarations to Tristan -- Isa woke up with a single thought on her mind: today, come Hell or high water, she was going to get into the laundry room.
Because. Because, because. Every way she looked at it, they seemed to be stuck here on campus, without a prayer of leaving unless they somehow sprouted wings. In her mind, this locked door represented a small, achievable goal in a world of insurmountable obstacles and questions with no answers. In addition, every single dream she'd had that week had revolved around that stupid door - started there or ended there. And the other piece was something she had only realized as she lay in bed two nights before - something that had caused her to sit bolt upright.
The laundry room was the only locked door that she'd encountered on campus. She'd gained easy access to nearly every other place she'd been - the office of the headmaster, for God's sake. The computer labs. The Alcott residence. The infirmary. Literally every other door had opened for her, or had appeared not to lock at all, and that didn't actually make much sense, now that she considered it. The school didn't trust the students as far as they could throw them (and she couldn't blame them for that, really).
During her explorations, she and Tristan had seen absolutely nothing to suggest that the former inhabitants of the campus had been dragged away kicking and screaming: no broken glass, or blood, or hastily abandoned possessions. But if the staff, faculty and students had left of their own accord, why wouldn't they have locked up their homes and offices? What sort of responsible nurse didn't lock the medicine cabinets in the infirmary when she left?
There was nothing that Isa needed in the laundry room. She had a library of clothes in the closets up and down the hall that she could pull from at will, but she found that she was far past caring about how dirty she was.
She didn't need to get in there for Tristan's sake, either. When at last she'd finally been able to persuade him to part with his worn-through t-shirt a few days before, she'd ventured into the closet of Emma Chu (the smallest freshman on the floor) and stolen some of her more close-fitting sweats and pyjamas. Despite Alice's slight frame, her clothes still hung off Tristan in a way that was downright comical, and so they'd had to roll up the cuffs on the pants halfway to his knees, and the sleeves to his elbows. Tristan hadn't seemed at all upset by the prospect of wearing girl's clothing - he considered Alice's pale aqua track suit an upgrade, and said so.
No, she wanted into that room for reasons she couldn't articulate, reasons that had nothing to do with escaping, or logic. How was she going to get in? She squared her jaw. She would. With absolutely nothing else within her power to control, this could be a win. And when they inevitably discovered nothing at all behind the door except a washer, dryer and ironing board, at least the unsettling dreams would stop.
As she pondered she walked over to the window and perched on the sill, drawing the curtains fully back for the first time in weeks. She fingered the polyester dully. Something about their most recent horrific encounter with Stagger had blunted the fear inside her somewhat: she felt like a concrete mould of herself - the same shape she had always been, but set and rigid, senseless to emotion even as she crumbled at her edges.
She felt a little pricking sensation on her upper thigh, and reached down in her pocket to pull out her Chickadee pin. The morning sunlight glinted off the gold. Chickadees found a way to survive in the coldest weather, Malcolm had said.
It was mid-morning now, nearing noon. She stared out at Eden's Bay in the distance, taking in the sun and sky. The water looked rough, though it was hard to tell exactly how rough from this distance. A grey-blue colour that spoke of untold depths. She wondered, as she had wondered many times, how her classmates managed to casually sail and canoe over a void such as this one. Could she and Tristan get into a canoe and simply paddle away? She didn't know much about what was across the bay, but the fact that her hands turned clammy at even the thought of getting into a boat made this rather a moot point. And she knew, as well as she knew her name, that if she were to sink into the depths of that water, she might never resurface.
Once Tristan awoke, she clued him into the day's goal as they lunched on the rest of their loaf of bread. He nodded numbly, his normally bright eyes puffy with drowsiness and grief. His despondency made her heart ache, but moving forward was their only option - if they weren't in motion, they might collapse and never get to their feet again. Isa glanced over at Midas's rope, which was on Cass's desk.
"Why?"
The question caught her off guard."Why what?"
"Why do you want to get in there so badly? You said it's just a laundry room, right? Is there something in there that you need?"
"It is just a laundry room. But I've been thinking, and I want to know why we can't get in. I've been able to get in everywhere else, even places I shouldn't have had access to. It's literally the only locked door I've encountered on campus. Don't YOU want to know what's in there? You told me on our first night here that you heard a noise in there."
Tristan shrugged, but looked more thoughtful. "Maybe I was dreaming, though. You said I was probably dreaming."
"And do you usually dream about laundry rooms you've never been in?"
"No. But what makes you think it'll change anything? Even if we do find a way to get in. "
She reasoned it out as she spoke, for she had no good answer. "I don't know that it will. But you have to understand that I'd been looking for answers for a long time. Why everyone's gone. Why I was left behind, and why no one has come back for me. For us. These are questions that I have no answers to. I can't afford to leave a stone unturned."
"Will we still kill Stagger?" He sounded hopeful, and she nearly laughed.
"We will. We just have to do this first."
"Ok, then." He stood up. "How do we do open it?"
"I have no earthly idea."
******
Isa had hoped that inspiration might present itself as they stood down the hall staring at the door in question a few minutes later. No such inspiration arrived. She and Tristan stood with their ears pressed to the door for a full minute, though Isa wasn't sure what she expected to hear.
Since she had already searched the Alcott's house for tools, Isa pushed into the housemaster's office to search again for the laundry key. With Tristan's help, she combed through the desk drawers and file cabinet. All that resulted from this was the discovery of a single bobby pin in a bed of pencil shavings. She held it up to the light.
"I saw a movie once where someone picked a lock with a hair pin. More than one movie, actually."
Tristan nodded, his expression neutral. "Do you know how to do it?"
"No." They stared at the hair pin together.
"It probably won't work, then, Isa."
They tried anyway, but succeeded only in bending the damn thing - the lock would not be picked. They located an expired membership card in the same drawer, and gamely tried several times to pass it through the crack in the door, jiggling it in an attempt to pop open the bolt. This also failed to produce the desired result. And so, with no key and no other way to unlock the door, they were left with brute force. A saw, perhaps? An axe or hammer? Isa had seen none of these things in her travels, but if ever there were a time to ransack the maintenance hut, this was it.
Since they had all but established that Stagger only appeared when there was some prospect of them leaving the campus, Isa found that she could walk about without fear. Tristan held her hand as they crossed the common, his eyes darting to and fro: she knew without asking that he was looking for Midas, not Stagger. He didn't seem to have fully internalized the implications of the rope on their door, and she had no desire to press the message home; if there was still hope in him anywhere, she wouldn't be the one to kill it.
They arrived at the maintenance hut (a small, squat building with a green roof) and pushed inside without meeting any barriers to entrance - this added to Isa's certainty that they were not wasting their time. Surely in a campus full of unlocked rooms, the single locked door must conceal something... mustn't it?
Cans of paint and cleaning chemicals lined the shelves that wrapped around the main room, and a ladder leaned up against the far wall. Paint brushes and rollers were slotted into a rack behind a desk, and these were mirrored by a similar rack of gardening tools on the opposite wall. Spades, hoes, rakes, gloves, wheelbarrow, a rusted pair of shears. Something that looked like a scythe, and was more impressive than any knife in the kitchen. Why exactly had they not raided this place before? A pair of tall black rubber boots were lined up on a mat next to the desk, as though someone had taken them off and arranged them there only a few moments before they'd come in. In a far corner, Isa caught sight of what looked like a collection of basic plumbing supplies - a drain snake, a plunger, pliers, a wrench.
Tristan tapped her on the shoulder, and indicated something that looked a bit like a fisherman's tackle box - a series of small compartments that were filled with different lengths of nails and screws. Where nails were plentiful, could a hammer be far away?
"Does it open in or out?"
She turned to look at him, and he repeated himself.
"Does the door open in or out, Isa?"
"In, I think."
"You don't know?"
"I don't go in there that often." She'd located a hammer, though it was smaller than she would have liked. "Does it matter?"
"If it opens into the room, we could try just kicking it down."
He spoke as though he had no idea that he weighed fifty pounds soaking wet, and she smiled in spite of herself. "That's plan C, Buddy."
"I thought we were already on plan C."
"Finding the key was plan A. We're on to B, now, with this." She shook the hammer in his direction, and looked around for an axe. There didn't appear to be one around. "Plan C is a chaotic windmill-style assault with our fists and feet."
"Is there a plan D?"
They were now back outside, the afternoon sun warming their shoulders as a light breeze blew up from Eden's Bay. A squirrel ran ahead of them; Isa looked around for Midas, and then remembered.
"There'll be a plan D if there needs to be. Suggestions?"
He looked thoughtful. "We could try setting fire to the door?"
"I like the way you think, Buddy. Let's put a pin in that one, shall we?"
***
She began by pummelling the hinges on the door in an attempt to destroy them with the hammer; it became clear that she lacked the strength to see this effort through within a few minutes. As she examined the hinge close up, she was annoyed to note that it was barely dented, even after she'd exhausted herself. Tristan watched from a nearby doorway and provided moral support, mostly in the form of unwelcome suggestions.
"Isa, keep your feet further apart."
She threw him a look, and he zipped it. She moved to pounding directly on the door with the hammer, using first one hand, and then both. The paint on the door cracked and flaked, but the structure itself wouldn't budge, even when she struck with all her might. She growled in frustration and dropped the hammer. Tristan was looking at her with expectant eyes.
"Windmill?"
"Windmill."
Tristan bounced to his feet, and raced towards the opposite end of the hallway. Reversing, he pounded towards the door and threw his weight against it, ending up in a giggly pile on the floor. The next time he took an even longer run at it, and threw his shoulder up against it. The third time around, once he got close enough, he ground to a halt and delivered a solid kick. None of these strategies made the slightest difference to the integrity of the door, but they seemed to amuse him hugely, which cheered her a little.
Heartened, Isa backed up and took a few runs at the door herself. Each time she threw her shoulder up against it she felt it give way a little -- but the movement was always temporary. After about ten minutes of hurling themselves repeatedly at a seemingly immovable object, they collapsed on the floor of the hallway, out of breath. They lay there panting for a few minutes. At length, Tristan giggled.
"That was fun. Again?"
She smiled wanly at the ceiling. "Again."
When at last they gave up, the sun was setting through Kate Caldwell's window. They retired, ate mostly in silence, and slipped into the sleep of the bruised and battered.