Locked (4 page)

“Hello, Irene.” The eyebrow settles back into place. “I wouldn’t say that I—”

“I
would
say that you. You’ve been at our school for half a day and you’ve already traumatized more than half the people here—”

“Er, Irene,” mutters Michael, who is struggling to his feet, his face beet-red.

“—and now you’re beating people up. You know what? Just go back to wherever you came from. We don’t want you here.”

Sherlock takes three steps toward me, and for a moment I’m cowed by his height and rigidity and dark expression—but he’s only gotten closer to lower his voice. “I’m sure you don’t,” he says. “Ares.”

A freeze settles over me. Impossible. How could he know? How could he already know?

“Irene, look, I appreciate it,” Michael mumbles, “but he didn’t hit me, I slipped.”

A shiny glint catches my eye. I look down. The floors. Freshly waxed.

“What’s going on here?”

It’s Mr. Collard, the principal, his face already mottled with furious color. The crowd dissipates in seconds, people speed-walking to their next classes. A girl, one of the ones who was crying in the bathroom, pipes “A fight with the new guy!”

“Yes, according to the standards of the universe at this school, someone slipping on an recently waxed floor constitutes a fight,” snaps Sherlock. “A fight with the floor, which he lost. I don’t have much faith in your powers of observation, so I’ll let you in on a little secret—I’m not the floor.”

My head is still pounding. Ares. He knows about Ares.

“You’re the new transfer student.” Mr. Collard folds his beefy arms—according to the rumors, he used to be a pro-wrestler famous for his voluminous mustache—and gives Sherlock the be-afraid look.

Sherlock is not afraid. “I am, and your wife is cheating on you with the gardener. Oh, sorry, I thought we were saying obvious things.”

I knuckle my forehead again. I’m going to get permanent knuckle marks if I spend much more time in Sherlock’s presence.

Mr. Collard’s face reddens, then purples, the blonde mustache standing out brilliantly against all the color. “Don’t be smart with me.”

“I’m smart with everybody. I am
smart
. I can’t be smart with some and not others.”

Mr. Collard’s skin tone is approaching a legendary shade of puce that’s only appeared once before, when two seniors took his car for a joy ride. “Ms. Adler. Escort him. To the office. Now.”

Sherlock tosses his hands up. “Reached the sending me to the office stage already, have we? Do you people have secret meetings where you agree to be predictable?”

I flatten myself against the row of lockers. “What? Why me?”

Mr. Collard starts striding away so quickly that I can barely hear what he mumbles to himself: “I have to call my wife.”

Sherlock watches him go, hooks his hands above his head, and yawns.

Great. Apparently it’s my fate to be frequently alone with Sherlock Holmes. Fate has it out for me. I hunch my shoulders and start off down the hallway. “Come on, then.”

He catches up to me almost instantly. “Aren’t you going to ask how I know about Ares?”

“No, because I have no idea what that is.” I want to keep in front of Sherlock so I don’t have to look at him, but his fast pace means I’d have to break into a run. I’m tempted.

“Oh, I think you do,” he says. If only I could beat the smugness out of his voice. “I think you know Ares as well as you know yourself.”

And then he checks his watch.

“Look,” I say. But I have no idea what to add. We’re close enough to the office that I can see through the glass door when he grabs my shoulders.

“Lunch time. The principal’s in the back. Someone’s brought donuts.”

“Maybe they’ll share one with you while you wait to get detention.” I try to pull away, but Sherlock spins me around and steers me through the front doors of the school. Sunlight blinds me and I shiver in the rush of cool air.

“What are you doing?”

“You. A favor. Come with me and I won’t tell anyone you’re Ares.”

I’m stiff with anxiety, and somehow I let him propel me all the way to the edge of the student parking lot. When he sweeps open the passenger door of a blue Sedan in the front row, I finally step back.

“No, no, I’m not skipping school. You’re supposed to go to the office.”

“You wanted a picture of his face. You had your phone out.”

“Whose face?”

“Your home intruder. I’ll take you to him, but he’s only available for the next half hour.” Sherlock taps the sheer face of his watch. Expensive watch. Dark and glossy, just like his clothes. Just like his everything. “The principal will be barely halfway through the donuts by the time we get back. He’ll be too busy with his emotional overeating to notice either of us were gone.”

I hug myself for warmth. “They always told me not to get in the car with strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger. I’m your neighbor.”

“My strange neighbor.”

But he just stands there, waiting. He looks different in the sunlight. A little less alien. And I can’t help it. I’m curious. I sigh, rub my eyes, regret my life choices, and get in.

I regret my life choices even more after five minutes of Sherlock’s driving, which I’m not even sure can be categorized as driving—more like gas-propelled falling. At one point I dive onto Sherlock’s lap to swing the wheel away from an old lady on the curb.

He glances down at me, the tiniest smirk pulling at his lips. “Less subtle than the drooling girl who asked me for coffee, but more unexpected, I’ll admit.”

“Shut. Up,” I gasp, trying to remember if I own anything valuable enough that I should worry about the fact that I don’t have a will.

Finally, he stops in front of a fast food joint. Captain Meaty’s. I’ve never seen anything so glorious. I hurl myself out of the car, balancing against the hood until my knees stop their violent trembling. “Did you learn to drive—by playing Mario Kart—”

“I’ve never put a Mario in a cart and I never will. Now…”

And then he’s very close to me. There’s a kind of energy thrumming through him. An excitement. His proximity is like a shot of adrenaline and for a millisecond I let myself breathe it in, and then he steals my phone from my pocket.

“Hey!”

“You’re clearly having some kind of issue with your knees, so I’ll do it for you,” he says, striding away from me through the parking lot until he reaches the grimy window of the restaurant. He aims the phone at the glass. The fake shutter sound snaps into the air.

And then he comes back and puts the phone in my hand. “There’s your home intruder.”

It’s a clean-shaven man in a Captain Meaty’s uniform, bags under his eyes, bent over a wilting salad in a plastic carton.

“From—last night?” I turn the phone sideways and right-side up again. “How did you guess?”

“I didn’t guess. I knew. In his scramble to get down the trellis, he dropped this.” Sherlock, clearly pleased with himself, waves a crumpled receipt in my face. “Time of twelve-ten p.m., salad, price half off. Another one, day before, same time, same order. Clearly a vegetarian, ordering the only item without meat at Captain Meaty’s, but why go to that restaurant at all if he doesn’t eat meat? Answer: he works there. He’s on his lunch break and he gets a discount. And he’s poor.”

A receipt. He picked all that up from a receipt. “How do you know he’s poor?”

“Trousers sewn up three times, Target-brand shampoo, I’d say so. That and the fact that Captain Meaty’s pays $7.25 an hour.”

“But the person who wrote to me said the intruder wasn’t taking anything, so why would a poor person break into a house if not for money—”

“The person who wrote to you? You mean the person who wrote to Ares.”

I lock my lips and throw away the key forever. I’m such an idiot.

“Our culprit is familiar with the house,” he continues without missing a beat. He speaks so fast, but without an ounce of nervousness. Just surety. “There was a gopher hole in the backyard, difficult to see in the dark, but he sidestepped it without looking down. Your contact said nothing was stolen. That just means nothing obvious was stolen. He’s been taking food, toilet paper, necessities. He’s not taking any money out of guilt, meaning the people he’s stealing from are family. He’s a college graduate too embarrassed to admit a high-profile career didn’t work out, so he’s pretending he’s still got his city job while secretly working one that doesn’t give him a living wage. Show the photo to your client and see if I’m wrong, but I can tell you in advance that I’m not.”

“That’s,” I say. My words are all tangled up. “That’s. Insane. You’re insane.”

“I prefer the term brilliant.”

“I mean, that’s what I meant…it’s incredible. That you can do that.”

“Forgiven me then, have you?”

“For what?”

“Bringing up your sister.”

“Oh. No, I wasn’t mad about that anymore.” I return my phone to my pocket. “It’s more just you. The way you talk to people.”

I say it without thinking, still distracted by the echo of Sherlock’s rapid-fire hail of revelations, but not distracted enough that I don’t see his expression slip. “I see. Admittedly, I’m not that likable.”

“I didn’t say that. I mean to say…thanks.” I clear my throat. “All this because you got ‘insomnia’ wrong? You must be more of a perfectionist than me.”

“A bored perfectionist.”

“How are you already bored? You just moved here.” A breeze dusts my hair over my shoulder.

“I was born bored.”

I envision an image of a dark-haired baby glowering at everyone, and I have to laugh.

“I’ll drive you back,” he says.

I take a step away from the car. And another one. And then five. And then I weigh Sherlock’s driving against the mark that a detention will put on my record.

On the way back to school, Sherlock leans against the seat, resting one elegant hand on the wheel, and drives so fluidly that I abandon my concern for the sidewalk-strolling old ladies of the world. Was Sherlock driving like that before just to terrify me? Could I ask him? Would that be weird?

Either way, the silence is oppressive.

“So now you’ve solved me,” I say to the windshield. “No insomnia. I’m Ares. Now will you leave me alone?”

“No.” Sherlock drums his fingers on the wheel. He’s not looking at me, so I feel more comfortable looking at him. His profile might as well have been carved from stone. He needs a haircut. The dark hair is nearly in his eyes. “Not quite.
Why
are you Ares? That’s what I’m curious about.”

“If you’re so bored, learn to knit. I’m not that good of a hobby.”

“If I ever learn to knit, the first thing I’ll make is a noose to hang myself with. Let’s talk about Ares. Took me less than five minutes to find out about it, obviously. It’s the only interesting thing going on at that school.”

“Less than
five
?”

He smiles his vampire smile. “I got the locker.”

Locker 247. The dented, empty one in the corner of the science wing. New students moved to Aspen so rarely that I’d figured it was safe to use as an anonymous drop-off point. I’d stolen the key from the janitor’s closet.

“You saved my life, Irene,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“I was about ten seconds from dying of boredom—painful way to go, they don’t pour enough research money into it—and then I opened that locker and I had something to
do
. Without that distraction, my first day would have been much worse. My best debut at a new school so far, I believe.” He turns a corner.

I choke. “What did you do to the other ones, burn them down?”

He withdraws several letters from his pocket and tosses them onto my lap. “Lots of standard
help me cheat on test
s and a few drawings of penises—your biology and art departments clearly need more funding—but there were a few fun ones. This one, for instance. ‘
I want to know in advance if my new boyfriend’s going to cheat on me. If you’re a girl, will you try to seduce Ethan Thomas and let me know how it goes
?’ Oh, and this one: ‘
Someone’s sending me love letters every day. Help me figure out who it is? I’ve enclosed one for reference
.’” Sherlock unfolds another piece of paper. “‘
Dear Ellie, know that you are the most beautiful and the loveliest and the smartest
—’ Hang on, I need to pull over and vomit.”

“Really?”

“Only metaphorically.” He sneaks a quick look at me. “You’re solving people’s problems. Their mysteries. And don’t ask how I knew it was you. It’s obvious that someone whose name you didn’t know asked you to be on that roof last night. Fits Ares perfectly.”

“I don’t do all of them,” I whisper. “Just the risk—”

“Just the risky ones,” He finishes. “I was right, then.”

“Right about what?”

But he refuses to answer.

“I saved your life and now you won’t even let me have a cigarette?”

|||

(written on the back of a crumpled love letter addressed to Ellie Perkins)

Was right. Death wish. Subconscious or conscious, not sure. Today: drove highly erratically, but subject agreed to get back in car. Most likely subconscious. Seeks out risky endeavors on one level to divert self from pain, on another level to put self in danger. Should probably inform “authority figure.” Subject would hate that. Will hold back for now.

Most interesting: obvious recent change in personality. Shoulders regularly hunched, yet no evidence of the spine problems that would arise if this were chronic. Occasional outbursts of anger and feeling; shoulders straighten. Subject is attempting to make herself smaller. Would say needs therapy, except therapy always makes it worse. Conclusion: has become markedly more reserved following death of sister.

Also interesting: has passed point by which most people either stop speaking to me or attempt to cause me bodily harm. Doesn’t need to respond when I speak. Why does she respond? Pities me? Childhood reinforcement to respond when spoken to? Will investigate.

Ares thing could be an effective distraction. Obviously I’ll partner with her on it. It is my locker.

|||

If someone saw me where I am right now, in Ethan Thomas’s room, wearing lace panties and a bra that makes my boobs look like they’re about to erupt all over Pompeii, they’d think they knew what I was here for.