The woman adjusts her glasses and gives us an icy glare as she holds her finger to her lips, but then she turns and leaves. Her kitten heels click down the steps.
“Look,” Yellow whispers. “I’m not opposed to going to Peel. It’s the only lead we have right now, and we need to follow it through. But I’m not going to follow you blindly without any sort of plan just so you can resolve your daddy issues.”
I take a breath. I want to lash out, tell her I don’t have any unresolved issues, but that would be the biggest lie told since I was drugged and blindfolded on Testing Day. My head is swimming. Bits and pieces of information are flying through it, and I’m trying to grab on to anything that might make sense.
I take another breath. “There’s a chance that Vaughn recruited my dad when he was still in school, right?”
“I guess.”
“My dad graduated in 1982. If we go back to right before he graduated, then that’s our best shot of figuring out whether Vaughn was already using him. We need to find some sort of physical evidence if we want any chance of being believed. I don’t think our word is going to go very far.”
“It’s not,” Yellow agreed. “Not with all the damage control Alpha is doing in the present. He’s completely discrediting us.”
“So we go back, find something concrete, and we’ll figure out how to get it to the proper authorities. That’s the best plan I can come up with right now.”
Yellow takes a minute. I can see her processing what I said. Her eyes flick back and forth as she thinks. Finally she nods her head. “Okay. We go back right before graduation, 1982.”
I nod back. I don’t tell her the obvious wrinkle, that I have no idea when Peel’s graduation was in 1982. It could have been an early graduation, like mine was, or it could have been a later one, like in May. Or anytime in between, really. It’s a total crap shoot. We just have to pick a date and hope for the best.
“How’s February 25 sound?” I say.
“Cold,” Yellow says.
We project to 1982 inside the library’s basement bathrooms. Warmer that way.
“How much money do we have left?” I ask Yellow.
She counts it. “Enough for two bus tickets and some really, really cheap clothes. And after that we’re totally screwed unless we start stealing. I can’t believe we stayed at the Parker House. What was I thinking?”
“Let it go, Yellow.” I shrug. “We can always bet on football games we already know the outcomes of.”
“Which is what I like to call stealing.”
We take the T from Copley to Park Street, then hit up Filene’s Basement. Yellow hands me twenty bucks and tells me it’s all I’m getting. I find a pair of light-wash, tapered jeans and a really ugly lavender sweater on the clearance rack. But the sweater is thick and oversize and will keep me warm, along with the puffy blue jacket I also manage to find squeezed in between two shirts. The total comes to $19.82, which wakes me right up. It’s like a sign or something.
The bus leaves out of South Station. I slide into the window seat and lean my head up against it. It’s a cold, gray day in Massachusetts. Snow has turned to slush, which crunches beneath the big bus tires. I stare at the dead trees whipping past us, and I can’t help but think of my dad.
I’m going to see my dad. A seventeen-year-old version of my dad. A dad who’s my age. A dad who may or may not have already started down the road of selfishness and corruption. Butterflies flit around in my stomach. I wish there was some way I could convince him not to even join Annum Guard in the first place. Or I could—
I sit up straight as the thought hits me. Oh my God. Yes. I could do that.
I look over at Yellow. She’s slouched down in the seat and has her head resting on the seat back. Her eyes are closed. My teeth find my bottom lip, and I decide to let her be. I still need to think things through. My head isn’t exactly clear right now.
The bus stops in front of the old corner store a quarter mile from Peel’s campus. My heart is still bouncing around in my stomach as we walk through the woods.
“I’m nervous,” I say. “I’m trying to hide it from you, but my hands are trembling; and do you see that tree over there? That’s where Abe kissed me for the first time ever. I’m about to walk into a fountain of memories, then add my dead dad to the mix, and I’m scared shitless that I’ll blow the whole thing.”
Yellow squeezes my shoulder, which makes me jump. She pulls her hand away. “Sorry,” she mutters. “But you’re not going to blow this. I think you’re like physically incapable of blowing anything.”
“Oh, so should I not tell you about what happened at that tree over there?” I point.
Yellow looks at me with shock.
“That was a joke!”
But she’s already grinning so hard that she can’t contain it, and then she collapses into a fit of giggles. I tuck my head down and laugh, too. Just a little at first, but then so hard that it hurts to breathe. It hits me that I’ve forgotten how good it feels to laugh. To completely let go. I look at Yellow and see a similar realization on her weary face. She’s really come through for me. I misjudged her big-time.
Peel comes into view. There’s a guard at the gate, and I pull Yellow out of view.
“Can’t we just slip the guard a twenty to get us in?” she asks. “It will pretty much wipe out the rest of our funds, but if it’s going to get us in, I’ll part with it.”
“Only if you want to pay twenty bucks for the pleasure of getting arrested. Come on, there’s a way in around back.” Or, rather, a way for students to sneak out, frolic in the forest, and buy beer at the corner store. It’s supposedly been there for years. I’m pretty sure the administration knows about it, but no Peel kids have ever gotten into serious trouble on any excursions, so they allow it.
There’s an eight-foot evergreen hedge that runs the entire perimeter of the campus and an iron gate on the other side, but I know where to go. Right to where there’s a small hole in the hedge and the iron bars are bent enough that most kids can fit through them.
I go first, and Yellow follows behind me. We’re way back in the corner of campus. Right in front of us is where the maze was set up on Testing Day. Well, will be set up. Many years from now.
We stick to the perimeter rather than cut across the wide, open field. There’s no one around, so I guess classes must still be in session. I look down at my watch. Nearly eleven thirty. Assuming they haven’t changed the schedule, we have about twenty minutes to kill until the lunch bell rings and everyone fills the quad on the way to the dining hall. Headmaster Vaughn will be among them. He always eats with students, sitting up there on his dais looking down at us. I think it was supposed to make us feel nervous. It did.
We reach the quad, and my heart lifts for just a moment before crashing into my toes. Peel looks the same. The exact same. A wall of ivy snakes up Archer Hall, the dorm where I spent two years and a couple months of my life. The looming oak trees are bare now but come summer will provide a canopy of shade. Sidewalks crisscross in perfect order. It’s almost as if I never left. I half expect the bell to ring and Abe to trot down the steps. We’ll eat lunch together and swap physics homework.
Stop.
I force Abe out of my mind. This isn’t a homecoming, it’s a mission. Maybe the most important mission ever in the history of Annum Guard.
The bell rings and echoes across campus. I stand up straight and look all around as kids wearing the same Peel uniform as mine pour onto the quad. My eyes dart from the science building to the math building, over to the humanities building. I look for Vaughn. Not my dad. I really don’t even know what my dad looks like. My only memories come from the two pictures at home and the one in Alpha’s file. No, I train my eyes on the administration building. Any second now Vaughn will come waltzing down the steps and walk toward the dining hall.