Directly in front of her was Lejeune Hall, with its strange ramped entrances, which always reminded her of a castle’s sally ports. Probably made the Marines feel at home. She took a deep breath. She had some unfinished business there.
She took her last bag to the car, locked it, looked around to see if anyone was watching her, and then walked over to Lejeune. She went in one of the side entrances, found the right stairwell, and went down into the basement. The familiar smell of pool chemicals hit her. How long have I been swimming competitively? she wondered. Twelve years? Seemed like forever. She could still taste those McDonald’s breakfasts, shoved down her throat after predawn practices while someone’s bleary-eyed mom drove her and her teammates to school. She already felt a little out of shape after not swimming for an entire week.
She walked along the narrow passageway that contained the pool piping and the racks of chemicals and chlorine bottles. The air was, as always, humid and warm, and the overhead lights were all encased in steam-tight globes. There was no one about, and her footsteps echoed quietly in the hot, wet air. The hum of machinery was almost comforting.
She reached the storage room, with its broken door. Nothing got fixed quickly at the Academy. She stopped in front of the door and listened for sounds of anyone else down in the basement, but there was only the whine of the filtration pumps. She pulled the door toward her, scraping its bottom edge over the tile. She stopped and listened again. Just to make sure. The light inside the storage room was still on. Some of the tiles were warping up off the floor, and there were hundreds of muddy footprints. Straight ahead was the three-foot square hole in the wall, with its hingeless metal plate dangling forlornly from its bullet-smashed latch. A faint smell of wet cement seemed to be welling up from the black hole. To her right, along the wall, there was a bank of empty rusted steel lockers, which had obviously not been used for a very long time. She poked her head out the partially opened door to make sure no one was coming down the passageway, then went over to the locker nearest the back of the ruined door. She hesitated and then lifted the rusted latch. The door squeaked open reluctantly on partially frozen hinges.
Inside, there was a mildewed laundry bag on the floor of the foot-square locker. She reached in, picked it up, and pushed the door shut. She took the bag over to the square hole in the back wall and pulled the strings to open it. Inside were all the elements of her Goth rig. The long black slit skirt. Those thigh-high fishnet stockings and black witch clogs. The studded dog collar. A bulging makeup kit. Fake fingernails. The fingerless gloves. The ridiculous wig. The very special video, its cassette broken and the tape pulled out in an unusable tangle.
All of it. She shivered, but now it was over. She felt bad about Dell, because she really should have anticipated how far Dyle might take it. And she felt even worse about what had happened to her father. But she’d warned her father not to provoke Dyle. He hadn’t really come to do anything to her. Even that whole scene in the dorm room had been aimed at getting that security officer into the room, so Dyle could boast. The popinjay commandant showing up like that had been gravy. Fucking Dyle. He’d taken her right out to the limits again, but he wouldn’t have dropped her. Not Dyle. He’d known, ever since Dell’s death, that he’d never make it out of there, never make it to the Marines. The only person Dyle was going to hurt that night at her house was Dyle. But give him that: He’d been a true believer, right to the end. Death before dishonor and semper effing fi, right? He’d only come up the river to find her so she could watch him finally do it. That had been part of their deal. She had been required to watch, to witness that he was man enough.
She felt another twinge of guilt about what had happened to her father. Her games with Dyle had been her sole, burning secret, the one part of her life that no one, especially not her father, had known about. That was the reason she’d lost it on the pier when Dyle shot her father: they had a deal, all right, but the second part was that no norms were to get seriously hurt. But Dyle had gone increasingly, frighteningly out of controclass="underline" first Brian Dell, then that agent, and Krill-what had he done with hapless Krill?
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. No future in this kind of thinking. Their secret game was over. And everything that had happened, well, that had been Dyle driving the train, not her. Which made it okay. Her father was going to recover. And now he had Liz, so he was going to be all right. She had her diploma and her gold bars. As long as everything worked out, then what had gone on before was just-history, that’s all. She nodded to herself and took another deep breath. Then she closed the bag and reached through the hole to drop it. She heard it hit somewhere way down below in the shaft with a muddy thump. No one would ever be going back down there. She popped her head into the hole for a moment, but there was nothing to see. Just the strong smell of old wet cement. She backed out, thinking about all that was to come, flight school, her new life as a naval officer, fast exciting men, all the new horizons, and, if she was lucky, really lucky, the feel of a hot jet in her hands and between her knees. Everything lay in front of her. And only a few tingling memories of the walking, talking chaos that had been Dyle Booth fading behind her. Every time with Dyle had been the ultimate highwire act, especially the last time. It was positively amazing how sheer terror could make you feel alive as never before or after. She hoped the jets would be that big a rush. Everyone said they were.
She smiled one last sly smile. A roofie. As if.
“Damn you, Dyle Booth, you crazy bastard,” she whispered, remembering still the way that sliver of wood had throbbed in time with Dyle’s final heartbeats. “Am I going to miss your zone or what.”
Then she cleared her face, reassembled her midshipman’s dutiful mask, no, her ensign’s dutiful mask, took a final deep breath, and left the storage room for her new life among the norms. What was done was done. Everyone, even the Dark Side, was ready to get past it. Closure: that’s what everyone always wanted, right? But, hell, she thought as she climbed the stairs: everyone says those jet jocks are crazy bastards. Maybe there was hope. Maybe Dyle wasn’t the first of his kind to get through here.