4 Students Remaining
The guards don’t lead us back to our dorms. One says something about how the dorms aren’t secure considering we already broke out once tonight.
I want to tell him it wasn’t just tonight, because I’m pissed and I want to mess with him, but the gun he’s holding convinces me to keep my mouth shut as they march us into the basement of one of the townhouses lining the quad.
Here, they separate us, shoving us each into our very own dark classroom and locking the door.
I’m taken to another science lab, not the chem lab, one I haven’t been inside before.
There’s a janitor inside, pushing a mop over the floor.
The muffled sounds of music come from his earbuds, something with a solid beat—rap, maybe.
He looks up when one of the guards pushes the door open, eyes flicking to the gun he holds loosely by his side. His hands immediately go up.
“I just finished in here,” he murmurs, and skirts around us, into the hall, leaving his cart and cleaning supplies behind.
The guards take a cursory pass around the room, probably to make sure there aren’t any dangerous chemicals I can use to maim them. Once they’re satisfied, they motion for me to enter.
“Your final test will be held in a few hours. We’ll come back for you then,” one of the guards says.
“Am I supposed to, like, sleep here?” I ask, but neither of them answers.
They close the door, and the sound of a dead bolt echoes like a warning through the small, dark room.
Getting past a dead bolt isn’t really a problem.
I still have my lockpicks. But I hear the guards’ voices in the hall when I listen at the door.
And the windows are close to the ceiling and too small to shimmy through.
I close my eyes and slump against the door. I see Rani’s face in my head. I watch his mouth form the words I’m sorry. I hear that guard tell him, Good work, kid. And I feel so completely stupid for ever trusting him that it makes me want to throw up.
I slowly draw my knees up to my chest. The tile is unpleasantly cold through my jeans.
They must not leave the heat on overnight.
I eye the janitor’s abandoned cart, hoping for a sweatshirt, but there’s only a bucket of cleaning supplies and the remains of some meal he didn’t finish: a half-drunk water bottle, and a sandwich wrapped in tinfoil.
I sigh and let my head knock back against the door. Now that I’m here with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, my eyes fill with tears. I angrily brush them away.
Hank could be waiting outside Luminary’s main entrance right now, wondering where the hell we are. I picture him hunched in his cruiser, watching those ivy-covered gates for movement, and an actual physical pain forms in my chest.
We were so close. So, so close.
I’m picturing Rani again. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. How that guard patted him on the shoulder. A rush of shame floods my face. And now I can’t help it. I release an ugly, mangled sob. And then I start to cry for real.
At some point, I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, I’m jerking awake, the sound of screaming echoing in my ears. I sit upright, breathing hard.
It’s a horrible, guttural sound. Someone being hurt.
No, someone being tortured. I push myself to my feet and press my face to the glass window in the door, trying to see if there’s something happening in the hall.
Shadows move across the floor, and once, I see the black heel of a guard’s boot.
But that’s all I can catch from this angle.
I ball my hand into a fist. I want to pound against the door.
I want to yell and scream at them to stop.
But I don’t want them coming this way. After a few moments, I let my hand fall to my side, defeated.
I don’t remember ever feeling this powerless in my life.
It’s a horrible feeling, this utter lack of hope.
I turn back to face the chemistry lab.
It’s a shame the guards made sure all the dangerous chemicals had been removed before they locked me in here. At this point, I know enough chemistry to do some serious damage. It would be such perfect karma to use the knowledge I got from going to this school against them.
My gaze drops onto the janitor’s cart.
Wait a second.
I walk over to the cart, and I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until I start going through the bucket of cleaning supplies. By then it’s obvious my hands are shaking, so I stop and force myself to take a deep, steadying inhale.
Calm down. I don’t even know if I’m going to find what I need.
True, the guards made sure there were no chemistry supplies left behind in the lab.
But that’s not the only place you can find chemicals.
The janitor’s bucket is full of cleaning supplies.
I sort through old sponges and rags, and find a spray bottle of bleach, another spray bottle of Windex, and—I have to swallow a scream of triumph—a whole bottle of Drano.
I hear the sounds of guards pacing the hall just outside the lab. I had tried so hard to be what this place wanted. To show them I was reformed, that I was no longer the juvenile delinquent I’d been my whole life. That I was more than Eli Michaels’s daughter.
But what was it Ashlyn said? Something about how everyone at Luminary deserved to be here.
I wasn’t going to get some magical second chance.
I was only ever going to be the kid who went to juvie, the kid whose dad blew up a school.
No one cared about the truth. No one cared about who I really was, who I wanted to be.
I’d been judged and sentenced the day I walked into this place.
So, what was the point? The system was rigged, anyway. If they want a student who’s “prone to violence,” I might as well give them one.
I pull the Drano out of the bucket and look around. If this is going to work, I’ll need a few other things.
My eyes fall on the janitor’s abandoned lunch, and a smile unfurls across my face.