The only good thing about her third hour was that she was confident it would be over in under an hour. Professor Anderson had widely advertised today’s supposedly pop quiz; only a complete coma patient wouldn’t know to come prepared. Anderson was one of those professors—the ones who gave you plenty of chances, but the test was The Test, full stop. He gave only two a year, and if you didn’t do well on both of them, you were screwed. He had a reputation for being a nice guy who smiled a lot, but he’d never yet allowed anybody extra-credit work, or so Claire had heard.
The history majors liked to call his class Andersonville, which was a not very funny reference to the Civil War prison camp. Claire had studied her brains out, and she was absolutely sure that she would ace the test, and have extra time left over.
She stopped off in the restroom, since she was a little early, and carefully balanced her backpack against the wall of the bathroom stall as she did her business. She was going over dates and events in her head when she heard a soft, muffled laugh from near the sinks. Something about it made her freeze—it wasn’t innocent, that laugh. There was something weird about it.
“I hear there’s a test in Andersonville today,” a voice said. A familiar one. It was Monica Morrell. “Hey, does this color look okay?”
“Nice,” Gina said, fulfilling her job as Affirmation Friend #1. “Is that the new winter red?”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to shimmer. Is it shimmering? ”
“Oh yeah.”
Claire flushed the toilet, grabbed her backpack, and braced herself for impact. She tried to look as if she didn’t care a bit that Monica, Gina, and Jennifer were occupying three out of the four sinks in the bathroom. Or that the rest of the place was deserted.
Monica was touching up her hooker-red lipstick, blowing kisses at her reflection. Claire kept her eyes straight ahead. Get the soap. Turn on the water. Wash—
“Hey, freak, you’re in Andersonville, right?”
Claire nodded. She scrubbed, rinsed, and reached for the paper towels.
Jennifer snagged her backpack and pulled it out of her reach.
“Hey!” Claire grabbed for her stuff, but Jennifer dodged out of her way, and then Monica took hold of her wrist and snapped something cold and metallic around it. For a crazy second Claire thought, She’s switched bracelets with me. Now I’m Oliver’s property. . . .
But it was the cold metal of a handcuff, and Monica bent down and fastened the other end to the metal post on the bottom of the nearest bathroom stall.
“Well,” she said as she stepped back and put her hands on her hips, “I guess you’ll be finding out just how tough the little general can be, Claire. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’re so smart, you’ll just fill in those test answers by the power of your mind or something. ”
Claire yanked uselessly at the handcuffs, even though she knew that was stupid; she wasn’t going anywhere. She kicked the bathroom stall. It was tough enough to stand up to generations of college students; her frustration wasn’t going to make a dent.
“Give me the key!” she yelled. Monica dangled it in front of her—small, silver, and unreachable.
“This key?” Monica tossed it into the toilet in the first stall and flushed. “Oops. Wow, that’s a shame. You wait here. I’ll get help!”
They all laughed. Jennifer contemptuously shoved her backpack across the floor to her. “Here,” Jennifer said. “You might want to cram for the test or something.”
Claire grimly opened her backpack and began looking for something, anything she could use as a lock-pick. Not that she knew the first thing about picking locks, exactly, but she could learn. She had to learn. She barely looked up as the three girls exited the restroom, still laughing.
Her choices were a couple of paper clips, a bobby pin, and the power of her fury, which unfortunately couldn’t melt metal. Only her brain.
Claire took the cell phone out of her pocket and considered her choices. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Eve or Shane had experience with handcuffs—and getting out of them—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to endure the questions, either.
She called the Morganville Police Department, and asked for Richard Morrell. After a short delay, she was put through to his patrol car.
“It’s Claire Danvers,” she said. “I—need some help.”
“What kind of help?”
“Your sister kind of—handcuffed me in a bathroom. And I have a test. I don’t have a key. I was hoping you—”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I’m heading to a domestic-disturbance call. It’s going to take me about an hour to get over there. I don’t know what you said to Monica, but if you just—”
“What, apologize?” Claire snapped. “I didn’t say anything. She ambushed me, and she flushed the key, and I have to get to class!”
Richard’s sigh rattled the phone. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
He hung up. Claire set to work with the bobby pin, and watched the minutes crawl by. Tick, tock, there went her grade in Andersonville.
By the time Richard Morrell showed up with a handcuff key to let her loose, the classroom was dark. Claire ran the whole way to Professor Anderson’s office, and felt a burst of relief when she saw that his door was open. He had to give her a break.
He was talking to another student whose back was to Claire; she paused in the doorway, trembling and gasping for breath, and got a frown from Professor Anderson. “Yes?” He was young, but his blond hair was already thinning on top. He had a habit of wearing sport jackets that a man twice his age would have liked; maybe he thought the tweed and leather patches made people take him seriously.
Claire didn’t care what he looked like. She cared that he had the authority to assign grades.
“Sir, hi, Claire Danvers, I’m in—”
“I know who you are, Claire. You missed the test.”
“Yes, I—”
“I don’t accept excuses except in the case of death or serious illness.” He looked her over. “I don’t see any signs of either of those.”
“But—”
The other student was watching her now, with a malicious light in her eyes. Claire didn’t know her, but she had on a silver bracelet, and Claire was willing to bet that she was one of Monica’s near and dear sorority girls. Glossy dark hair cut in a bleeding-edge style, perfect makeup. Clothes that reeked of credit card abuse.
“Professor,” the girl said, and whispered something to him. His eyes widened. The girl gathered up her books and left, giving Claire a wide berth.
“Sir, I really didn’t—it wasn’t my fault—”
“From what I just heard, it was very much your fault,” Anderson said. “She said you were asleep out in the common room. She said she passed you on the way to class.”
“I wasn’t! I was—”
“I don’t care where you were, Claire. I care where you weren’t, namely, at your desk at the appointed time, taking my test. Now please go.”
“I was handcuffed!”
He looked briefly thrown by that, but shook his head. “I’m not interested in sorority pranks. If you work hard the rest of the semester, you might still be able to pull out a passing grade. Unless you’d like to drop the class. I think you still have a day or two to make that decision.”
He just wasn’t listening. And, Claire realized, he wasn’t going to listen. He didn’t really care about her problems. He didn’t really care about her.
She stared at him for a few seconds in silence, trying to find some empathy in him, but all she saw was self-absorbed annoyance.
“Good day, Miss Danvers,” he said, and sat down at his desk. Pointedly ignoring her.
Claire bit back words that probably would have gotten her expelled, and skipped the rest of her classes to go home.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a clock was ticking. Counting down to Bishop’s masked ball.
There was one comforting thing about the theory of complete apocalypse: at least it meant she wouldn’t have to fail any classes.
Just when she thought her Friday couldn’t get any worse, visitors dropped by the house at dinnertime.