Sugar & Squall (9 page)

The janitor’s room was completely barren. There were schematics and maps of the school pinned to the wall, and that was it. I studied them, looking for anything we might have missed, a secret hatch or stargate. Unlike the others, his bed was made up. Wherever he’d been during the disappearance, it hadn’t been here.

Entering into the girls’ dorm, I started at the first room. Its occupants seemed particularly bonded. Pictures and posters were banned, but they’d gone one step further, a large board on the wall jam-packed with photos, concert tickets, things ripped out of magazines. I noticed one of the girls from the ferry. She’d had her hair tied up with two chopsticks. I’d always wanted to do that. Some pap would take of a shot of it and then the Chinese ambassador would be on the phone, blah, blah, international crisis.

This girl looked cheerful with her friends in the pictures. I reached out and touched her face like you would a loved one. It was weird, being able to connect to something, or someone, that wasn’t there.

The rest of the room was like any other. Clothes were hiding or strewn in every corner, hanging off any makeshift hook possible.

The bed nearest the window had one of those lacy, doily U-pillows. It was something you’d see in a nursing home. The next bed’s sheets were tangled up into knots.

Over the course of the afternoon, I made my way up and down the hall looking through the rooms. Each looked similar at face value, but they were miles apart when you looked closer, just as the girls that inhabited them were clearly individuals. Some showed cohesion, themes even. Others were sparse and minimalistic. Some were two-in-one – goth and emo on one side and prissy prom-ish on the other.

I was in the last room on the hall. It was by far the messiest of them all. Every drawer was pulled open, clothes spilling from their woody mouths. I walked around the perimeter, admiring the nicks and nacks.

There was a detailed
map of the school discarded on the floor, an A4 version of one I’d seen pinned up in the janitor’s room. I picked it up. It wasn’t in English. The characters were foreign and I couldn’t quite pick the language. It was probably for some international student to find her way around. I let it float back to the floor and noticed an open diary nearby. I bent down to read it.

It was thorough. Every date was filled with a brief summary of the day, with XOXO written at the end of each. I cringed.

I flicked through the pages, laughing a little at the squabbles laid out in exacting detail, the author’s crushes, wants, and worries.

The last entry was different. Every page
before had perfect handwriting, symmetry, but this was clearly written in a rush. I started to read just as a voice boomed over the PA.

“Kat Collins, report to the dining hall. I repeat, Kat Collins, report to the dining hall.” Shaking with fright, I muttered obscenities to the speaker.

A bedside clock showed six p.m. The sun would be on its way out. I hadn’t realized I’d been up here so long, spying and prodding through everyone’s personal life, literally trudging unabated through their dirty laundry.

I tore the page out and shoved it into my jeans’ pocket – I’d read the rest of it later – and headed to the hall.

#

The heavy rain that had been rolling over the last few days subsided come nightfall. We’d been locked in our own little world all day. The mystery surrounding everyone’s disappearance hadn’t come knocking on our door quite as o
ften as it had in days gone by, so when Logan said we should head to the pier after dinner to check for boats, I knew it was an excuse to get me outdoors more than anything else, probably so I would stop pestering him about where he’d been all afternoon. The moon was waning gibbous, so it was plausible there would be something to see.

I’d dressed up for the occasion. I’d found the jeans a day before rummaging around in the other girls’ rooms. They were label, a couple of sizes too small
. I put on a sweater, something athletic.

Outside, I took the lead.
I was glad I’d worn a sweater. The wind was whipping around in a fervor. It had a distinctly fresh chill about it. I could feel the tip of my nose reddening.

“At least it’s not raining,” Logan declared in optimism, raising his voice over the weather.

“Maybe we’ll see something out there tonight. But then what are we going to do? Send up smoke signals?”

“It’s an option.”

We walked on, down the hill toward the pier.

“
You know, everyone’s still missing and everything, but I had fun today,” he said.

I nodded. “I don’t know if I want to be found, rescued, whatever.”

I hoped for a response along the lines of ‘I don’t want to be found either,’ but there was only wind singing in my ears.

There was plenty of light. We were, however, careful where we placed our footing as we made our way down the hill. The ground was rocky, and there was little medical aid should one of us fall and break something.

Eventually, we stood side by side looking down the length of the pier. A string of lights ran down the right-hand side, but one was out in the middle, giving the impression there were, in fact, two piers with a break in the middle.

Logan
was concentrating, eyes locked on the ocean, which rushed in and away from the rocky beach beside us. “Can you see anything?”

I couldn’t. There were clouds, cumulus, if I remembered correctly. That was all. The ocean stretched out ahead, empty and barren.

Logan spoke. “Maybe we should walk to the end. It looks a bit lighter up there.”

“Sure,” I agreed. I’d skip to the moon and back if it meant being by his side.

We started walking up the pier. I jumped ahead again. The wind shifted and hit me directly in the face, forcing me to look sideways. I pulled my arms inwards to fend off the temperature drop and tilted my head away, walking blindly.

I was halfway down the pier, right in the area where the light was out, when I stepped on something. It slid out from under my foot and was enough to throw me off balance. I began to fall right. My arms went out trying to regain balance, but I was too far gone.

The railing was close. I knew that. As I fell, I reached for it with my right hand. It connected, solid, my full weight following behind. And then there was a sharp wince before the railing broke free completely and gravity took hold.

I felt myself fall further, without control, my left arm catching on something in my periphery. I hit water and spiraled down into the darkness. The mass and temperature around me pushed the air out of lungs. My b
ones pulled together like purse-strings in shock. I struggled, but the weight of my clothes dragged me deeper.

I spun
, unable to stabilize myself in the wash and black. Screaming in silence, I breathed out a string of bubbles and watched them climb through the water. I followed them in instinct, thrusting past each as their shapes bloated and distorted like airy sea jellies. I broke through the surface and into the night. I gasped, my chest filling and burning all at once.

There was no escaping the cold. It was the same on the surface as it had been down in the ocean’s icy heart.

The row of lights along the pier finally gave me bearing. Logan was there, leaning over the rail, yelling something. He was fading, moving further and further away as the current pulled me out into the ocean infinite.

I panicked and started to swim toward him, but all it did was fix me to the spot. Each stroke became leaden with my clothes on. I knew I would soon be exhausted. The ocean, undulating and relentless, would not.

I focused on Logan and doubled my efforts, pushing through the pain, the cold. In the timid light I saw something spin through the air towards me, hitting the water a couple of feet out from my position. I didn’t care what it was, only that it might offer stability. I lashed out for it, but my fingers slipped on its surface and the ocean’s underbelly heaved me back. My entire body was convulsing, shivering, and spasming. The next burst would be my last.

I kicked as hard as my legs would allow, put my head down and powered for the object. Timing could be nothing but perfect, so I threw my fourth stroke out wide and it caught hold. I pulled my other arm up and over the lifebuoy.

I laid my head against its red and white body. I could feel myself being pulled slowly towards the pier. Pain faded to numbness. The sound of my breathing grew hollow and ragged in my ears. Finally, after what seemed like hours, my feet found footing, but I couldn’t move, simply lying limp across the buoy, waves and sand washing over me. I could see the school in the distance looking down, the arc of the shore in front of me and rocks below. Logan shouted from above.

The next thing I knew he was lifting me up under my legs, easily. He held me out in front of him.

My head fell back, bobbing up and down as he started running up the hill. The night was a blur around me. I shook uncontrollably. There was a hollow ‘thud, thud, thud’ next to my right ear. Only later would I realize it was his heart, pumping away with all it had to get me back to the school, to safety.

I vaguely saw us enter a door, the aged green and yellow carpet
of the dorms below, and we were walking, Logan panting omnipresent above me.

My shoes hit something. My leg twisted slightly. I heard another door, echoes of feet, but the iciness was everywhere, bitter and bleak.

“I’m f-f-f-free–,” I stammered, but my mouth could not form the words.

I was being dumped into a shower stall. Logan
pulled off my sweater and T-shirt, yet through the biting pain all I could think about was what bra I’d put on and how ghastly my skin must look being this white.

He was swearing, trying to unbutton my jeans, drawing them off over my legs, which fell limply back onto the tiles. I didn’t protest until the water hit me. At first I thought it was on full cold. I cried at the pain until I realized it was warmth flooding across me. I glanced at Logan, my eyes all I could move, and his face terrified me all the more.

He stepped into the shower, clothes and all, sat down beside me and pulled me into his body like a mother would a child.

We sat there together with the water flowing over us, the shakes easing and our breathing synchronizing together. Up and down, up and down.

I was too busy trying to keep warm to let my mind wander any more. I didn’t notice when Logan picked me off the floor as if a feather, cradling me down the hall.

I was on a stranger’s bed. A blanket was thrown around me. Logan wrapped it tight. It was grey and rough, wool probably, but it was warm. That was all that mattered.

Slowly, feeling returned. Stabbing, penetrating pain was replaced with mild pins and needles. Mental capacity restored somewhat, I began to become self-conscious, stupid considering I’d dived naked into a pool last night.

I brought my legs together and hoisted the blanket right up to my neck so I resembled some hobo newborn wrapped up in muslin and left out in the rain. I was certain I looked as bad as I felt.

“Are you okay?” Logan held out a cup of what smelled like hot chocolate. I hadn’t seen him leave to get it.

I took it greedily with both hands, forgetting about the blanket, his question.

I sipped the chocolate slowly. The heat of it on my lips was almost too much to take. I shook from time to time, but nothing serious. We both realized the worst was over.

Logan sat on the bed opposite me, watching me drink and pushing at the joints of his right hand. We were in a room on the ground
floor of the girls’ dorm. I looked around at pictures of lolcats, tweeny heartthrobs and beds overflowing with plushies. Freshman stuff.

“Are
you
okay?” I asked, my voice wavering slightly and quiet, but making full words.

“You had me worried. The current was so strong…” He trailed off.

“What happened?” I questioned, unable to piece together how I’d ended up in the water in the first place.

“You slipped on something, went for the rail, but it was rusted through. It just gave way. There was nothing I could do. I should have seen it earlier, though.
Someone
must have known about it.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, my teeth chattering together like Chinaware. “I didn’t see it either. You couldn’t have known. And you did save me,” I added. “That counts for plenty.”

Logan pondered on this, trying to justify his actions as if the quick thinking he’d showed wasn’t enough. “If I’d dived in we would have both been swept out. That’s how strong the undercurrent was. You saw it yourself. Even a few seconds later, and–” He stopped, unprepared to speak the words.

“I trust you,” I said.

He looked at me with a vulnerability I hadn’t seen before.

I didn’t know if I should say any more, so I stayed silent. I wanted so much to reach out and touch him, even if just to place a solitary hand on his knee, his arm and let him know I was okay. Yet the blanket bound me tight. Reaching out would throw it off, exaggerate the movement, make it awkward. If something happened, if I dropped the blanket or couldn’t quite reach him, I’d look like an idiot. I remained still.

“Would your dad be worried if he was here?” Logan asked.