Crap. There was nobody in the dorm she could trust, not now. Nobody who’d hide her, or who’d stand up for her. Claire retreated back up the steps to the third-floor landing and went to the fire stairs, flung open the door, and hurried down the concrete steps as fast as she dared, ducking to avoid the glass window at the second-floor exit. She made it to the lobby exit door sweating and trembling from the effort, with her backpack and the garbage bag dragging painfully on her sore muscles, and risked a quick look out the window to the lobby itself.
Monica-groupie Jennifer was on guard, watching the stairs. She looked tense and focused, and—Claire thought—a little bit scared, too. She kept fooling with the bracelet around her right wrist, turning it over and over. One thing was certain: Jennifer would see her the second she opened the door. And sure, maybe that wouldn’t matter; maybe she could get by Jen and out the door and they wouldn’t be attacking her in public, would they?
Watching Jennifer’s face, she wasn’t so sure. Not so sure at all.
The fire door a couple of floors up boomed open, and Claire flinched and looked for a place to hide. The only possible spot was under the concrete stairs. There was some kind of storage closet crammed under there, but when she tried the knob it was locked, and she didn’t have Monica’s lock-smashing superpowers.
And she didn’t have time, anyway. There were footsteps coming down. Either she could hope the person didn’t look back in the corner, or she could make a break for the door. Once again, Claire touched the phone in her pocket. One phone call away. It’s okay.
And once again, she left the phone where it was, took a deep breath, and waited.
It wasn’t Monica; it was Kim Valdez, a freshman like Claire. A band geek, which put her only a tiny step higher than Claire’s status as resident freak of nature. Kim kept to herself, and she didn’t seem to be all that afraid of Monica or her girls; Kim didn’t seem afraid of much. Not friendly, though. Just…solitary.
Kim looked back at her, blinked once or twice, then stopped before putting her hand on the door to exit. “Hey,” she said. She pushed back the hood of her knit shirt, revealing short, shiny black hair. “They’re looking for you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Kim was holding her instrument case. Claire wasn’t exactly clear on which instrument it was, but it was big and bulky in its scuffed black case. Kim set it down. “Monica do that?” She gestured at Claire’s bruises. Claire nodded wordlessly. “I always knew she was a bitch. So. You need to get out of here?”
Claire nodded again, and swallowed hard. “Will you help me?”
“Nope.” Kim flashed her a sudden, vivid grin. “Not officially. Wouldn’t be too smart.”
They had it worked out in a matter of frantic seconds: Claire zipped up in the shirt, pulled the hood down around her face, and held the instrument case by the handle.
“Higher,” Kim advised. “Tilt it so it covers your face. Yeah, like that. Keep your head down.”
“What about my bags?”
“I’ll wait a couple of minutes, then come out with ’em. Wait outside. And don’t go nowhere with my cello, and I mean it. I’ll kick your ass.”
“I won’t,” she swore. Kim opened the door for her, and she took a gasping breath and barged out, head down, trying to look like she was late for a rehearsal.
As she passed Jennifer, the girl gave her a reflexive glance, then dismissed her to focus back on the stairs. Claire felt a hot rush of adrenaline that felt like it might set her face on fire, and resisted the urge to run the rest of the way for the door. It seemed to take forever, her crossing the lobby to the glass doors.
She was swinging the door open when she heard Monica say, “That freak couldn’t get out of here! Check the basement. Maybe she went down the trash chute, like her stupid laundry.”
“But—” Jen’s feeble protest. “I don’t want to go down to the—”
She would, though. Claire suppressed a wild grin—mostly because it still hurt too much to do that—and made it out of the dorm.
The sunlight felt amazing. It felt like…safety.
Claire took a deep breath of hot afternoon air, and walked around the corner to wait for Kim. The heat was brutal out against the sunbaked walls—suffocating. She squinted against the sun and saw the distant glitter of Eve’s car, parked all the way at the back. Even hotter in there, she guessed, and wondered if Eve had gotten out of that Goth-required leather coat yet.
And just as she was thinking that, she saw a shadow fall across hers from behind, and half turned, but it was too late. Something soft and dark muffled her vision and clogged her mouth and nose, and pressure around her head yanked her off-balance. She screamed, or tried to, but somebody punched her in the stomach, which took care of the screaming and most of the breathing, and Claire saw a weak, watery sunshine through the weave of the cloth over her face, and shadows, and then everything got dark. Not that she fainted, or anything like that, although she was wanting to, badly.
The hot pressure of the sun went away, and then she was being dragged and carried into someplace dark and quiet.
Then down a flight of stairs.
When the moving stopped, she heard breathing and whispers, sounds of more than a few people, and then she was shoved backward, hard, and fell off-balance onto a cold concrete floor. The impact stunned her, and by the time she clawed her way out of the bag that had been jammed onto her head—a black backpack, apparently—she found there was a whole circle of girls standing around her.
She had no idea where this room was. Some kind of storage room, maybe, in the basement. It was crammed with stuff—suitcases, boxes labeled with names, all kinds of things. Some of the boxes had collapsed and spilled out pale guts of old clothes. It smelled like molding paper, and she sneezed helplessly when her frantic gasps filled her mouth and nose with dust.
A couple of girls giggled. Most didn’t do anything, and didn’t look very happy to be there, either. Resigned, Claire guessed. Glad it wasn’t them lying on the floor.
Monica stepped out of the corner.
“Well,” she said, and put her hands on her hips. “Look what the cats dragged in.” She flashed Claire a cold toothpaste-ad smile, as if the rest of them weren’t even here. “You ran away, little mouse. And just when we were starting to have fun.”
Claire faked more sneezing, lots of it, and Monica backed away in distaste. Faking sneezing, Claire discovered, wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. It hurt. But it provided time and cover for her to pull the phone out of her pocket, cover it with her body, and frantically punch *2.
She pressed SEND and shoved it between two boxes, hoping the blue glow of the buttons wouldn’t attract Monica’s attention. Hoping Shane wouldn’t be iPoding or Xboxing and ignoring the phone. Hoping…
Just hoping.
“Oh, for God’s sake. Get her up!” Monica ordered. Her Monickettes sprang forward, Jen taking one of Claire’s arms, Gina the other. They hauled her up to her feet and held her there.
Monica pulled the hood back from Claire’s bruised face and smiled again, taking in the damage. “Damn, freak, you look like hell. Does it hurt?”
“What did I ever do to you?” Claire blurted. She was scared, but she was angry, too. Furious. There were seven girls standing around doing nothing because they were scared, and of what? Monica? What the hell gave the Monicas the right to run the world?
“You know exactly what you did. You tried to make me look stupid,” Monica said.
“Tried?” Claire shot back, which was dumb, but she couldn’t stop the impulse. It got her hit in the face. Hard. Right on top of the first bruise, which took away her breath in slow throbs of white-hot agony. Everything felt funny, rattled by the impact of Monica’s jab. Claire felt pressure on her arms, and realized that the Monickettes were holding her up. She put some stiffness back into her legs, opened her eyes, and glared at Monica.