Locked (5 page)

They wouldn’t.

“I did my legs,” comes the overeager voice from the bathroom.

“I said clean-shaven. That means every hair. I’ll be conducting an inspection—” I drop my voice to porno levels of husk— “and believe me, you want to pass.”

I can nearly hear him shaving faster.

This was easy. Too easy. All I had to do was come over and invent a question about the biology exam. Whoever this guy’s soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend is, she was right about him.

I thought this would be interesting. At the very least, exciting. It’s not. I just feel sleepy.

I can’t stop thinking about Sherlock. Who is infinitely more interesting than this.

At least now I know guys still find me attractive.

      
Focus. Proof. I need proof. I take out my phone and lean against the bed, making sure enough of Ethan’s possessions are visible that it’s obvious I’m in his room, and snap a picture of myself from the neck down.

Mission accomplished.

Then I waltz to the bathroom door and drum my nails on the wood while pulling on my pants with my other hand. “Ethan, you better pluck the nostril hairs too. Trust me, I’ll make every hair worth it.”

I leave him desperately deciding whether or not the nose pain is, in fact, worth it.

It’s not.

I’m already out the door.

|||

Sending…sending…

Ding!

Do you recognize this guy?
I type. I’m videochatting with Katie Patrice, a girl from my math class. And, as it turns out, the one who’d written to me about the burglar. Ares has a Skype account. But my camera’s turned off. Hers isn’t.

Ares also has Twitter account—over 550 followers, nearly everyone from school. Whenever I solve someone’s problem, I tweet about it, asking the person who’d written to me to message me privately. Then I give them my Skype username. I like to see their faces. The human touch.

There’s a faint click from Katie’s side as she opens the file, and an even fainter gasp.

Katie?

Her shock comes in brief, staticky breaths. “It’s my brother. He’s supposed to be in New York City.”

So Sherlock had been right. Incredible.
He’s the one breaking into your house
.

“I don’t understand,” she sniffles. “Why?”

I hesitate with my fingers over the keyboard. Sherlock would spit out the facts like gunfire, unaware that some facts can tear through people’s hearts as if they were.
I’d ask him.

“I will. Oh, I will.” She wipes her nose. “Thanks a lot. I mean it. Who are—”

I close out of the chatroom.

Silence settles, heavy. I tweet one more time:
This is for whoever was wondering about a certain person’s fidelity
. I’m DM’d within seconds.
Dangergirl
is the handle. No real name. I shrug—I don’t need to know who everyone is—and send the headless picture of myself on Ethan’s bed.

And just like that, I’m out of distractions.

I could go to bed, but it’s three p.m., and Mom will knock on the door when dinnertime comes and see me sleeping and be faced with the fact that her daughter is an utter mess. She tries so hard not to face that fact that I hate to undermine her efforts.

So I leave.

I wander around aimlessly for one hour or two, I’m not sure, but it’s long enough for the light to soften and turn evening-yellow. I head in the direction of the graveyard. Turn back. Turn around again.

Do the people living next to the graveyard know that they’re living next to my sister?

I’m at the gate. Curling my fingers around the bars. All the headstones look different. I want them to be indistinguishable. Want to not be able to pick Carol’s out. We’d spent too much money on the headstone. Carol’s college fund. But it didn’t matter. Carol wouldn’t have used it anyway.

I leave numbly, without going in. The sky is gray. Everything is gray. Everything’s been gray for a long time now.

I cross the road. There’s a car, but it will stop. They always stop.

This one doesn’t.

“Irene!”

I’m hit with a force so powerful I think it’s the car—I topple on my face and stomach and skid eight feet across the sidewalk—am I dead, maybe I’m dead, but I’m not, my wrist hurts too much.

“Hypothesis correct, then,” gasps a disheveled Sherlock, rolling upright next to me.

Next to me? I struggle upright, grit embedded in my palms. My wrist really hurts. “Were you—were you following me again?”

His elbow is bleeding where he scraped it on the pavement. “I was curious to see if you’d end up on someone else’s roof. Although I suppose ending up in front of a car is nearly as unusual.”

“Oh my God,” I manage. “You’re a stalker.”

“I prefer the term life saver.” He inspects his bleeding elbow dispassionately. “My hypothesis, incidentally, was that you’re suicidal. You looked at the car before you walked in front of it.”

“I thought it would stop,” I say and wince, touching my wrist. “Ow. Shit, that hurts.”

And then I decide that I really hate Sherlock Holmes.

Because he calls an ambulance.

The ride to the hospital is brief and incredibly embarrassing. Embarrassing because Sherlock is in the ambulance (“Do you want to ride up with your friend?” “She’s not my friend.” “Never mind, then—” “No, I want to come. It might be useful to know how the inside of an ambulance works”) and because I really, really don’t need an ambulance.

Especially when the doctor tells me it’s not broken.

“Not even sprained,” he says cheerfully. “You just wrenched it. Put some ice on it, take an ibuprofen and you’ll be fine.”

Sherlock is in the waiting room when I stalk through the door. I saw a Bengal tiger once at the zoo. Carol loved it, but all I could think was how out of place it seemed, all the people standing around with their stupid cameras. I feel the same way about Sherlock as I did the tiger.

“No cast,” he observes as I approach him. “Not broken, then. I’m assuming the expression on your face is because you’re angry at me for bruising it. But the balance of having saved your life outweighs that, I feel, so let’s agree to blame the sidewalk.”

“You really didn’t need to call an ambulance,” I say through gritted teeth, aware that a young mom to our left has stopped her dreamy staring at Sherlock to look skeptically at me.

“Your head hit the pavement. It’s always best to play it safe with potential head injuries. For instance, I believe you have a latent one that’s acting up, considering how you stepped out in front of that car.”

I bite my lip. Maybe the car will come back. Maybe it’ll crash right through the wall of the hospital and kill us both.

“You’re not angry because I called the ambulance.” His piercing eyes cut right into me. “You’re angry because you don’t want your mother to find out about this.”

“Will she?” I force out the words.

“The insurance bill will tell her, whether or not I do. You’re asking if I’m going to inform her that you’re a suicide risk. Which I’m sure is the proper thing to do, but it sounds rather tedious.”

My carefully constructed façade of an unbroken me is crashing down. “Sherlock—no—you can’t—I’m not—”

“You let yourself fall off that roof. You got back in that car even after I drove like a madman. You stepped into the street in front of a car that someone
else
was driving like a madman.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Hardly the most difficult deduction I’ve ever made.”

“I was just spacing out, all right? I didn’t realize they were going that fast.” The breath has been sucked out of me by some black hole. “You can’t—if my mom thinks—she has to think—”

“That you’re fine? That your sister’s death hasn’t affected you at all? That you’re still the perfect one? Try to be a little less obvious, Irene.”

I blink, hard. I am
not
going to cry. Especially not in front of Sherlock Holmes. Who, apparently, is the only one in the world who can see the ruined parts of me.

Which makes him very dangerous.

“You’re lucky I’m me,” he says. “Most people aren’t.”

“What?” I croak.

“I don’t want you to be committed, or caught up in hours of therapy, because you’re the only thing keeping me from utter, mind-crushing boredom at the moment. This Ares thing. It’s something. Better than nothing. I’ll keep your secret.”

I let all the air out of my lungs. He said I’m lucky he’s him. Meaning I’m lucky he’s selfish.

“But you need to promise me something.” He extends his hand. It hangs there, waiting. “No more putting yourself into these situations. Subconsciously or not. Shake on it.”

I do. I’m half-expecting his hand to be cold, like metal, but it’s not. He feels human.

He keeps his grip for a second too long, until I want to squirm away from his eye contact. “I mean it. If I think you remain a danger to yourself, I will tell someone. Even if therapy is self-indulgent quack science that reinforces the belief that one’s silly internal streams of thought are worth listening to.”

“Good to know your opinion on things.”

“I don’t express opinions. I express facts.” He takes a step back from me and I feel like a electric line has been broken. “Call your mother for a ride. Tell her you tripped.”

“Why don’t you give me a ride?” I ask, surprising myself.

“No car.”

“What do you mean no car? You drove me to Captain Meaty’s yesterday.”

“I can always tell who leaves their keys in the glove box by the bumper stickers.”

And with that, Sherlock strides out of the room, leaving me wondering why I’m not more surprised that he steals cars.

|||

I put my good hand out to knock.

And withdraw it again.

And put it out again.

It’s been two days since I bruised my wrist. Two days for Mom to freak out, find every scrape and cut, and order me to stay home from school, no matter how many times I insisted I was fine. (“You needed an ambulance, Irene! An ambulance! It was a bad fall and you need to recover.” “…I really didn’t need the ambulance.”) Two days since I’ve seen Sherlock. And two days for him to wreak havoc on Aspen High.

According to Robyn, in those two days, Sherlock had:

1. Won three fights.
   
2. Lost one fight.
   
3. Made Principal Collard turn an entirely unprecedented shade of pink, a color now universally dubbed
   Sherlock Cerise
   .
   
4. Deduced that Ms. Towill and Mr. Silverstein were sleeping with each other.
   
5. Been sent to the office four times.
   
6. Walked out of class five times after correcting the professor and muttering about increasing the amount of stupidity in the world.
   

Now I get why Mycroft asked me to keep an eye on him.

But Sherlock needs more than an eye. He needs—well, I don’t know what, but definitely more than an eye. An authority figure, at least. Unfortunately, judging by their empty garage, Mycroft hadn’t gotten back yet.

Meaning Sherlock’s in there alone.

I steel myself, take a deep breath, and rap my knuckles against the wood.

The door opens immediately. “No casserole this time, I see.”

“I’m guessing that’s from the fight you lost?” I say, gesturing at his face.

He touches the small cut on his lip. “Lovely to know you have an informant on me.”

He’s dressed in a loose-fitting silk shirt as dark as his hair, which tumbles handsomely around his cheekbones. The cut just makes his face more vivid. I look away. “I’m just here to say…”

“Come inside. I’ve already wasted ten minutes waiting to see if you were going to knock and I’m not going to spend another ten loitering on the porch.”

I try again as he leads me down the front hallway, which is bare as a skeleton—no carpet, no paintings on the walls, no shoes by the door. “I’m just here to say thanks. You saved—”

And then I start coughing.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got pneumonia now too.” Sherlock gets harder to see as he retreats into the kitchen. His outline is hazy. The room is full of smoke.

“Jesus Christ—”

“Sherlock Holmes, actually. And you were doing such a good job remembering my name.”

“We have to get out of here now.” Rubbing my watering eyes, I fumble for Sherlock’s arm. Where’s the fire? Upstairs? It doesn’t matter, I have to get him out before it spreads—

“I’m supposed to offer you tea, aren’t I?” asks Sherlock lazily.

“Your house is on
fire
and you think I want tea—?”

“Oh, please. I was smoking.”

I stare at the tall figure through the haze. “You were
smoking
? How many? A cigarette a minute?”

“Not bad, Irene. Not bad at all. You’re better at deductions than I gave you credit for.”

It’s then that I notice the heaps of empty cigarette cartons on the kitchen counter, strewn haphazardly across the granite. There are little piles of ash on the floor. “Jesus.”

“Wrong. Still Sherlock. Did you know you take the Lord’s name in vain about as often as you breathe?” He smirks. “You’re sinning.”

I ignore him, wrenching open the kitchen window before crossing to the living room to do the same there. I trip over a box, and then another one—the room is full of boxes. Nothing is unpacked.

“I believe you were thanking me for saving your life.” Sherlock is leaning on the door frame, dragging on a newly-lit cigarette. I open the remaining living room window before grabbing his cigarette and stubbing it out.

He frowns at me. “You’re welcome.”

I search for a trash can to put it in, finding none. “Why haven’t you unpacked anything?”

The living room, with its high ceilings, wooden floor, and lack of furniture, is chilly and barren. The boxes aren’t even stacked. They’re strewn everywhere. One is slightly torn open, spilling clothes onto the floor.

“Unpacking is tedious,” he says.

“You can’t live like this.”

“I’m alive, aren’t I? Here. A pulse and everything.” He grabs my hand and presses it to his neck. Even his stupid neck is beautiful. And warm. I don’t know why I keep being surprised by that. What am I expecting? A machine?

He pulls away. The smoke is trickling out of the room and I can breathe without feeling like I’m going to hack up my lungs. “It’s Mycroft’s favorite trick,” he says. “We move in, he goes off on some business trip, and he expects by the time he’s back I’ll have gotten fed up and put everything away for him.”