Good vs. Evil High (22 page)

Content that I could at least count on them,
I put my pen to paper and began.

Dear Headmaster,

You know my past with Luke Knight. Since I
got to Southland Cinder High, we’ve become closer than ever and it
would break my heart to leave him now. Obviously, I’m voting to
stay. Please, please, please let us stay.

Aside from that, everything I’ve heard and
read about the Winter Competitions makes it sound like they’re the
crowning moment of every year, the purpose of each school’s
creation, even. So again, please, please, please let us stay!!!
Please!

Sincerely,

Kristine Fayre

I went to hand it to Headmaster myself.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

~ Scared Child ~

I lay awake well into the night, worrying
about what would happen. If we did go back to North Haven, would
the Cinders still come next winter? Would there even be a way for
Luke and me to write or call each other? Headmaster must have a way
of communicating with his brother, I realized. It didn’t help.

I rolled over and planted my face in my
pillow to cry. It was so scary. Tomorrow I could lose him forever.
I felt helpless—absolutely alone. The part of me that had died with
his absence before was dying again. I couldn’t imagine it had hurt
this bad before, though.

A half hour or so went by like this before I
decided I needed Luke. As I climbed out of bed and took the Cinder
suit from my dresser, I felt myself becoming the scared child he
once was when he woke up from one of his nightmares. Once I’d
changed, I shoved my con into the one very small pocket and turned
my arms inward so I could hide in the shadows.

When I left the room and took the stairway
down, I was amazed, as always, when I looked down and saw right
through myself to the floor. Halfway to the dining hall I began to
wonder how I would find Luke since I really had no idea where he
slept. I racked my brain for anything he might have said as I
approached the gym where we always met.

Maybe Connie could tell me.
I stopped
and turned into the first floor bathrooms, somewhere I’d never been
before. They were just like the ones Luke had dragged me into, but
without the urinals. There were no mirrors and no electric
lighting, only a torch by the door and at the end of the compact
room, so there were plenty of shadows to make you feel like someone
could be hiding in there. I took my con out, the light and Connie’s
familiar face making me feel better. “You’re up late, Kristine.
What can I do for you?”

“Can you tell me how to get to the Cinder
boys’ quarters?”

“Of course. Exit the bathroom and turn right.
Then take the first door on your left. Go through the door in front
of you and take the stairway up four floors. You will enter the
male Cinders’ sleeping quarters.”

“Can you also tell me where to find Luke
Knight?”

“Let me see.” Neon green lines began drawing
a floor plan against a black background. Hallways crossed here and
there and little rooms came off of each one. One of these began
blinking and Connie said, “Once you’ve entered the fourth floor, he
will be the twenty-second room on your left.”

“Thanks. Kristine Con, return.”

My heart pounded as I left the bathroom and
took the first door on the left. I kept thinking a Cinder would
catch me sneaking around their terrain and call all the others out
of bed to jump me, even though I knew no one could see me.

On the other side of the door, I was relieved
to find myself standing alone in a long hallway. The only doors
were the one behind me and the one at the very end. So I followed
Connie’s directions and exited through the other door.

I entered the base of a winding stairway lit
by torches rising along the wall and I began to climb. As I stepped
onto a small second floor landing, I wondered if the North Haven
girls were sleeping right on the other side of it. Curiously, I
inched the door open outwardly, only to be met by a solid wall.
When I reached out to touch it, it shifted with the pressure of my
hand. It was only fabric. I managed to pull it to the side enough
to see the very dark girls’ living quarters on the other side. A
dresser was pressed against the bottom of a tapestry, so that meant
this secret door was right beside a girl named Liz’s bed, since the
only tapestry I’d ever seen in there was behind her dresser. As I
let it go and closed the door, I realized knowing about this could
prove useful one day.

“This is it,” I said when I reached the
fourth door. I took a deep breath before opening it just enough to
get through, because this time I knew there was a very real
possibility I would find someone on the other side. But the dim
hallway, stretching farther than I could see, was empty.

After walking past three doors, the fourth
one opened and I found myself face-to-face with a bulky guy about
my height. Petrified, it took me a minute to remember he couldn’t
see me. I moved out of the way a split second before he would have
walked into me. He yawned and let out a great belch. Then we went
in opposite directions.

I tried really hard to calm down.
No one
can see me...No one can see me...
But it was hard.

When I reached the twenty-second door and
opened it very slowly, praying I’d counted correctly, I realized it
was too dark to see anything inside. My breath became short as I
pulled my con out with shaky fingers. “Kristine Con, silent,” I
whispered as it began to open. Its light revealed a tiny room with
bunk beds against one side of the wall.

Shadows hid the identity of the guy lying in
the one underneath, but the above bed was empty, so I spun
around—terrified—looking for the missing Cinder. The fact that I
couldn’t find him only scared me more, because it felt like he was
always standing right behind me.

I licked my dry lips as I moved closer to the
bed. If that was Luke, he would protect me. “Turn around,” I told
my con. A big shirtless guy was lying on his stomach with his head
facing away, so I couldn’t be sure it was him.

Then I saw the two posters on the wall beside
the end of the beds. The picture of Luke with purple flames burning
at the bottom hung under a poster of Titus. This had to be the
right room. And if the empty bed belonged to Titus, then he
wouldn’t be returning to it anytime soon.

As I gently sat down beside Luke, my eyes
were drawn to something pink. One of his arms hung over the bed’s
edge beside me, and the other was clutching a wad of something—a
piece of pink clothing, it looked like. Instead of waking him up
and talking to him about what weighed so heavy on my heart, I
leaned over and reached for his far hand to take what was inside
and have a better look. All of a sudden, I felt the rising
fear—greater than the one I’d felt all the way to his room or the
one of having to go home early—that it belonged to another
girl.

As I tried to pull it out from under his
hand, he let go of it and grabbed my arm, shoving it against my
chest as he rolled over and grabbed my throat, pinning me against
the end of his mattress. I struggled and failed to draw breath. I
could feel myself crying, but it felt like someone else was doing
it, like I was hardly alive.

Luke’s eyes mirrored the horror he saw in
mine as he recognized me. He let go to pull me into his lap. “You
should never sneak up on a Cinder,” he said.

“How can you sleep when we might never see
each other again after tomorrow?” was all I could think to say,
tears falling against my chest as I turned to stare at the pink
thing lying on his bed...dancer’s leggings, perhaps...

“Because of this.” He leaned over to pick up
the bit of pink and hand it to me.

In spite of how faded it was, I recognized my
old v-neck shirt as I held it up in front of me. The white number
seventeen on the front was cracked and the whole thing was probably
way too small for me now, but there it was—the shirt I remembered
going missing not long before my mother died.

“Where’d you get this?” I asked.

“I took it from you years ago. It was on the
bathroom floor when I was over one night. It always looked so good
on you...I couldn’t help myself. There’ve been times when that was
the only thing keeping my head straight.”

“And you sleep with it?” Picturing him
sleeping with my old shirt every night kind of gave me a warm,
glowy feeling.

“On the really bad nights. I always picture
myself running into you and things working out like this...you
loving me back...”

“Yeah—” I drew in a breath and let out a
small cry. “—and now I might have to leave you. What then? What if
there’s never another Winter Competition and I never see you
again?”

Luke twisted my hair around his fingers and
laid his hand against the back of my head. “Then I’ll take out one
of our jets and come see you every weekend. You could pretend to be
sick and stay here some weeks in between. No one would ever know if
you wear your shadow suit.”

“But I don’t wanna do that. I want to see you
every day and go to the Christmas dance with you. I liked being
seen with you as your girlfriend this morning.”

“I know it sucks, but we would have had to do
this in a couple of months, anyway. Were you planning to break up
with me then?”

“No, I’ve been trying not to think about
it.”

Luke took my face in his hands and kissed
each of my eyelids lovingly. “Look at it this way. No matter how
crappy being separated is, it won’t be half as bad as the past
three years have been. At least we’ll each know where the other is
and that we’ll be together again. Seriously, I’ll take a jet to see
you every single weekend. I finally found you after years of pain
and loneliness. And hearing you say you love me like I love you and
getting to kiss you the way I’ve dreamed of almost every night
since I met you is something I didn’t think I’d ever have. I’m not
letting you go again. I survived five years without you; I can
survive five measly days out of each week, as long as I know you’re
mine.” He pulled my hand to his lips to kiss it and then wiped my
tears away.

“Every weekend?” I asked. “You promise?”

“I promise.”

I leaned against his chest and reached around
to hold him for a moment. “Can I stay long enough to watch a
cartoon with you?” I knew it would help take my mind off the
possible upcoming separation.

“Stay as long as you want. No one’s going to
bother us with Titus in the hospital wing.” He pulled me with him
as he lay down, leaning away just long enough to pull a blanket out
from under the bed and pull it over us.

“Kristine Con, please play a Jimmy Neutron
cartoon,” I said.

In spite of what he said, I clung to Luke as
it began to play, knowing things wouldn’t be the same when I had to
return to North Haven.

Chapter
Twenty-Eight

~ Go or Stay ~

The familiar sound of bubbling water roused
me from sleep. “Kristine Con, answer,” I mumbled without bothering
to open my eyes.

A few seconds later, I heard Connie’s voice
say, “Good morning, North Haven High School students. The time is
six a.m. Headmaster has asked that everyone meet in the dining hall
in twenty minutes. Please don’t be late. Have a great day.”

“Six a.m.?” I moaned as I tried to reach up
to rub my eyes. Something was wrapped around my front, holding my
arms in place. I gasped as I fought to sit up, but the thing held
me securely against a warm body.

“What’s the hurry?” Luke asked. He was lying
on his stomach beside me, smiling as he watched me.

“I can’t believe I fell asleep. What if
someone finds out I’m gone?”

“You only got here three hours ago. Everyone
probably thinks you got up early.”

“Well, what if one of your people came in
here and saw us together?”

“I was awake. If someone tried coming in
here, I would have pulled the blanket over you and told them to get
out.”

“You were awake all night?”

“Maybe.” He leaned up on his elbow and tucked
my torso under him to kiss me. “I like watching you sleep.”

“Aw.” I was tempted to stay there beside him
all day, but I knew Headmaster would wait for every student before
he made the announcement. I leaned up to kiss him quickly before I
scooted away from him and tried to climb out of bed.

Luke grabbed my arm and pulled me back down.
“Stay a little longer. They won’t miss you.”

“My headmaster will—and don’t you want to
know if I’m leaving today or not?”

He groaned and sat up. “I guess so...Why
don’t we head downstairs together? It went well yesterday.”

“No, it didn’t. Everyone hated me.”

Luke went to turn on a lamp that sat on his
dresser as I reached out to retrieve my con, still hovering in
front of me.

“Bane’s on our side, and he’s one of the top
six on the Cinder food chain,” he said.

“I don’t want everyone to know I have a
shadow suit, though, and I need to brush my teeth and my hair and
my bag’s in my room and—”

“All right, I get it. Girls have more stuff
to do in the morning. I’ll just see you in there.”

I nodded and looked over at the poster of him
on the wall. “Where can I get one of those?”

“You want one?”

“Yeah, it’s the best picture of you I’ve ever
seen. Almost as gorgeous as the real thing.”

He smiled and came to hold me close. “You’re
my fairytale come true, you know that?”

I reached up to run my fingers through his
hair. It was incredibly soft when the gel wasn’t holding it all
together. “This whole thing is a fairytale come true, a happily
ever after.”

“I love you.”

“I lo—”

Someone knocked on the door. I drew away from
Luke and turned my arms, disappearing into the shadows as someone
opened the door. Spinner walked in. “Hey, Knight. Headmaster wants
everyone in the dining hall.”