18 Students Remaining #2
Then an hourglass appears on the screen. It fills up, slowly turns over, then fills again. I exhale, relieved. “I think it’s working.”
“How long is it supposed to take?”
I shake my head. “No idea, but Zo said the light on the device would turn green when it’s done.”
Ian leans back against the wall and takes a long, deep breath. “Want to tell me your life story while we wait?”
I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. “Right. Because you’ve been so forthcoming with yours.”
“I’ve been forthcoming.” Ian frowns. “I told you I was in foster care. I told you about my benefactor.”
I look up at him. “You never told me how you ended up here.”
“My benefactor knows Wyatt Sullivan,” Ian says carefully. “She thought the curriculum would be well suited for someone with my background.”
“Is that why you know so much about this place?”
“I don’t,” Ian says, exasperated. “I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t know what’s going on here any more than you do.”
“Okay,” I say. “You said your benefactor thought the curriculum would be well suited for someone with your background. What kind of background is that, exactly?”
The corner of Ian’s mouth twitches. Our eyes meet and warmth flutters through my stomach, but I quickly look away from him, pretending to fumble with something on the computer. Ian clears his throat and says, “No, it’s your turn now. Tell me why you got sent to juvie.”
“How do you know I went to juvie?”
“I know things.”
Has he been asking around about me? I wonder. Scar knows about my stint in juvie, but I can’t picture a scenario where the two of them were casually chatting about my past.
“So?” Ian prods. “Are you going to tell me?” He smiles and adds, “Or should I make up a story in my head?”
From the way he’s looking at me, whatever he’s making up would not be rated PG. I roll my eyes.
“Perv. It was nothing like that. I just sort of…stole a boat.”
Ian’s lip quirks. It’s clear he doesn’t believe me. “You stole a boat?”
“There’s a marina down by the Missouri River,” I explain.
“I noticed that no one uses the boats during the winter, so I snuck in and slept on this one big boat for a little while. Whoever owned it didn’t lock it up very well, and it was one of those really nice boats, with a living room and bedroom and stuff? ”
“A yacht?”
“Yeah, so anyway, I decided to stay there until it got warmer and whoever owned the boat started taking it out again. But after a few weeks, it occurred to me that I could probably…like, hotwire it. Sort of. I mean, I found a tutorial on YouTube and it didn’t look too complicated, so I figured I’d try it out, and maybe I could drive it around at night.
” That’s not the whole truth. I was only thirteen at the time, and I’d been daydreaming of taking the boat down the Missouri to where it connected to the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s obvious now that I didn’t entirely understand the geography of this plan, but that’s too mortifying to tell Ian.
Ian lifts his eyebrows. “It didn’t work?”
“No, it did work. Too well. Only the boat was really big, and I didn’t do a great job of steering the thing, so I wound up sort of…crashing it.”
“You hit another boat?”
I exhale through my teeth. I suppose I’m not getting out of telling him this part. “Actually, I crashed into the dock. Caused a ton of damage. I tried to get away, but they caught me on camera.” I spread my hands in front of myself: Happy?
But Ian doesn’t laugh. In fact, he looks impressed. He shakes his head slowly. “That’s…incredible. You were how old?”
“Thirteen. Give or take.”
And now he’s looking at me again. That same intense, focused look he gave me the other night, right before we nearly tore each other’s clothes off.
And there must be something wrong with me, because my chest goes tight and my breath grows shallow and all I can think about is how warm his skin felt the last time I touched him. How badly I want to touch him again.
I curl my fingers around the edge of the desk so I don’t reach for him.
We’re in the middle of breaking out of a school!
I think. And while my brain might know that, my body doesn’t seem to get it.
I feel magnetized, like some outside force is pulling me closer to him.
And yeah, okay, there’s a part of me that thinks it would be totally hot if he threw me over the desk right now.
The danger of it kind of does something to me.
In fact, there’s a part of me that can’t stop imagining it…
Ian’s eyes lock on mine and widen slightly. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing—
I pull my gaze away from his face. Time to cool down. Hot or not, that’s a bad, bad idea. Get it together, Michaels…
As the wall behind Ian’s head comes into clearer focus, I make out the edges of the sleek file cabinets, the winking silver of a lock.
Oh, thank God. A distraction.
I glance at the computer. The hourglass is still slowly turning in the corner of the screen. We’ve got some time.
I stumble to my feet, pulling my lockpick set out of my pocket. “Want see if I can get one of these cabinets open?”
Ian smooths his hair with one hand. “No, that’s not remotely what I want, but I suppose it’ll do.”
I glance at him. “I bet they’ll have records on the students who disappeared.”
I don’t wait for him to answer, but kneel in front of the cabinet with my picks and get to work.
After all our sharing and emotional eye contact, I’ve got to say it feels good to focus on something my brain is actually good at.
Locks aren’t like boys. They’re easy. All you have to do is thread a pick in a specific way, hold it steady, and…
I feel a shift and hear something slide back. The drawer pops open.
“Voilà,” I say, standing. I glance over my shoulder at the computer screen, but the hourglass is still turning over and over. “Okay, let’s see what this place is hiding.”
We sift through the folders in silence for a few minutes. It’s mostly financial information, invoices for construction work and materials, that sort of thing.
“The hell,” Ian murmurs suddenly. He pulls something out of a folder and holds it out to me.
I don’t stay a word. All I can do is stare at the page, horror gripping my chest as I see what I’m reading.
Luminary Institute Fall Semester
Jada Brooks
Sofia Diaz
Jenna Hughes Terminated
Zo Carter Held back
Seven Wells Held back
Lia Michaels
Aarav Patel
Malik Jones
Xavier Adams Held back
Tyler Campbell
Abigail Clark Held back
Keira Langley Terminated
Madison Robinson Held back
Lauren Garrett Held back
Grace Parker
Alexander Martin Terminated
Matthew Lamb Terminated
Daniel Lewis
Nicholas Roberts Held back
Gemma Shaw Terminated
Emma Johnson
Leah Gray Held back
Scarlett Randall
Chloe Campbell
Hazel Collins Passed
Mando Rivera Terminated
Diego Martinez Held back
Carlos Ramirez Held back
Gavin Fisher Held back
Jacob Voss
Mei Chen
Kaitlyn Turner Terminated
Ian St. Clair
Isaiah Moore Terminated
Ryan Green Passed
Shiloh Grant Terminated
Mark Bennett
Adam Bennett
Callie Harris Terminated
Ava Anderson Held back
Megan Holler Held back
Olivia Thomas Passed
Audra McKenzie
Rani Kapoor
Brandon Powell Held back
Taylor Winn Held back
Devon Evans Held back
Zachary Edwards Held back
Jonathan Samuels Terminated
Karly Neelon Held back
“Terminated,” I whisper. What the hell does that mean?
I swallow hard, my brain going completely blank.
I’d been hoping I was wrong, that this was all some sick practical joke.
But seeing that word written out in black and white makes my stomach churn.
There are only so many things the word terminated can mean.
And that’s not the only strange thing. I scan the list again. Held back. Passed. Held back. What does held back mean? And three students have already passed? What, exactly? This semester? This year?
There’s a soft beep. I turn back to the computer and see that the light on the Penguin has turned green. A window pops up on the screen:
Security will be disabled in 24 hours.
I exhale. It worked, thank God. My eyes flick to the time stamp in the corner of the computer screen.
It’s 12:32 a.m. right now. I make a note of the exact time, so I know when to be at the main gate tomorrow.
I close out of the notification, grab the Penguin, and slip it into my pocket.
“Come on. We should probably leave before—”
“Lia,” Ian interrupts me. He’s still staring into the file cabinet, only now he’s frowning slightly. “Look at this.”
He pulls another sheet of paper out of the file cabinet and hands it to me. It’s another class roster, but this one is titled:
Luminary Institute Summer Semester
Below, I find a list with the names of fifty students—and I don’t recognize one of them.
This is not my class.