As a fac brat, I was caught in the middle.
Josh was coming over to make dinner tonight, so knowing my mom would be safe from a takeout menu, I stayed on campus and ate in the dining hall with my friends. Tonight’s enchiladas made us sweat, but we persevered through their spice before sharing a slice of chocolate cake and going our separate ways. Zoe and Pravika headed back to their dorm while I made one last stop: the mail room. Students checked their mail often at Ames, and not just because of Amazon Prime’s two-day shipping. Teachers returned homework assignments, lab reports, essays, and exams through the mail instead of spending class time distributing them. Administration notices also appeared in our boxes. Tonight, I unlocked my box to find a Latin paper from Mr. Hill—the A in his signature meandering handwriting—along with a reminder from the dean of students’ office that a draft of my salutatorian speech was due three days before graduation for approval. Mrs. Epstein-Fox had only given me a B-plus on my physics lab report, but before I could read her feedback, I noticed a strange piece of paper. It was a black envelope with spelled out in colorful cutout magazine letters.
Creepy ransom note-style.
My stomach began stirring as I quickly ripped open the flap and pulled out a piece of cardstock. Again, no handwriting—only the magazine letters. It said:
The game is almost afoot.
It’s happening in forty-eight and you have twenty-four to decide.
Will you join my band of fools?
Email [email protected] with your answer.
If yes, be ready for further instructions.
“Oh, Alex,” I whispered to myself, staring at the card so hard that the words blurred together. It was him; I was sure it was him. The note sounded like him! “Why me?”
TWO
I tried to remain cool, calm, and collected while walking home, but I failed miserably. Thank goodness most of the boarders had retired to their dorms for the night and that Campus Safety—or “Campo”—simply smiled and waved to me from their patrol Priuses, because my stilted, stupefied, paranoid gait suggested I was campus’s newest whispered-about dealer. Pot or coke, which would you prefer? No, I don’t do Venmo. Cash only.
Before fleeing the mail room, I’d stuffed the Jester’s invitation into the deep depths of my backpack. You would have to dig through all my heavy textbooks and spiral notebooks to find it. Just get to the covered bridge, I told myself, lungs sucked in tight. Once you get over the covered bridge—
“Hey, Lily,” someone said, and I turned to see Anthony DeLuca falling into step with me. He was the only other current fac brat on campus, a junior and Daniel’s sailing partner. He’d taken Tag’s place after Tag had dropped sailing to swim on a local club team.
I willed my heart to slow down. Everything was fine. “Hey, Anthony,” I said casually. “Good day?”
“Long day,” he replied as we crossed the bridge together. “Finals are gonna be a total nightmare.” He groaned. “You’re so lucky you’re a senior.”
I laughed. Seniors didn’t have spring exams at Ames. We’d already gotten into college, so what was the point? The last two weeks of school were simply a formality; we still had assignments to complete but didn’t do much in class. My “Reinventing Shakespeare” elective now spent each period watching various movie adaptations. We’d finished Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet today.
Anthony and I walked through the neighborhood together until we reached his house. It had a sprawling porch and was much bigger than mine since his father was the Dean of Students. The windows were open, so I could hear wisps of whatever Disney show his younger sisters were watching. “Do you have Vaseline?” he asked by way of a goodbye.
“Uh, yeah, at home.” My eyebrows knitted together. “Why?”
He gestured to my ballet flats. “You’ve been walking all weird. If you have blisters, Vaseline does the trick. Or helps, at least.”
“Okay, thanks.” I swallowed, realizing that my heels were screaming in pain. I’d just been a little too preoccupied to notice. “Night, Anthony.”
“Night, Lily.”
All the cottage’s lights had been turned on, a lighthouse to guide me in the dark. Josh’s Ford Explorer sat in the driveway, and I grinned, happy he was still here. In addition to running the Hub and coaching swimming, he was the freshmen boys’ housemaster and lived in an apartment in their dorm.
He must not be on study hall duty tonight, I thought. Otherwise, he’d have left hours ago to go supervise his young charges.
“Hi!” I called as I banged through the front door. “I’m home!”
“Lily!” a chorus of voices responded. Not just my mom and Josh.
I closed my eyes and stood in the doorway for a moment. Would I trade living at Ames for anything? No, absolutely not. But was it difficult that my teachers were also my neighbors and friends? Yes, sometimes. I could never truly leave school.
One, two, three, I counted, then walked into the family room smiling sunnily. “Mmm, something smells yummy,” I said. “What was for dinner?”
“Carrot-ginger soup and garlic bread.” Josh jumped up from the couch. “Do you want me to heat up a bowl? We saved you some.” He smirked. “Your mother loved it.”
“I did as well,” Bunker Hill, my Latin teacher, remarked from the purple velvet armchair near the bookcase. “At first I thought it sounded a bit too autumnal for late May, but Mr. Bauer here proved me wrong.” He toasted Josh with his whiskey-filled tumbler before focusing on my mother. “Leda,” he said, “I’ve always been a Scotch man, but this bourbon is quite smooth.”
“Thank you,” she replied. “The brand is Bulleit. Bulleit Bourbon.”
“Well, I must say you might’ve made me a convert tonight.”
My mom laughed. “I’ll get you a bottle,” she said. “Or my guy will take care of it.”
“You mean me?” Josh called from the kitchen.
“That depends!” my mom called back. “You know I have a lot of guys!”
Bunker Hill was one of them, her mentor. He had been teaching at Ames for who knew how long and was my mom’s de facto father, grandfather, and eccentric uncle all rolled into one. Some people said he’d been here two decades, others said half a century. Maybe as long as the Circle’s massive maple tree had been alive?
I always kept my lips zipped when pressed by my classmates, not wanting to spoil campus lore for them. The old man deserved to remain an enigma. “Just tell us his actual name!” Tag and Alex used to plead. “Because Bunker cannot be his real one. It’s way too cool!”
The family room was pretty crowded for a Monday night. Several other faculty members and their significant others had turned my mom and Josh’s casual dinner for two into a party. My mom always let neighbors wander into our cottage. She was one of those people who left the door unlocked.
I socialized for a while, but once I’d finished my soup and hunk of garlic bread, I rose from my spot at the driftwood coffee table. My mom must’ve cleaned it because there was no clutter. Our old issues of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and People were gone. “This was delicious,” I told Josh, holding up the empty bowl. “I’d give it a VFG.”