Page 41 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“Knock, knock.”

I opened my eyes and craned my neck toward the open door of my dorm room. Leo was standing there, leaning against the door frame. He was still dressed in his football practice jersey, which hung off his tall, muscular frame, and he had his gym bag slung over one shoulder. His blond hair was slicked back with sweat, his cheeks red and heated.

My mind was still groggy with sleep. I must have dozed off while studying. My laptop was warm on my stomach, the screen glowing and the cursor blinking in the middle of a sentence deconstructing Plath’s poem “Daddy.” I had the USB drive that Dalton had given me with the A’s cache of old literature essays from Mrs. Morrison’s class. There were several on Plath’s Ariel, and reading through them and “borrowing” some ideas was definitely making my essay a whole lot easier to write.

“What time is it?” I asked, my voice scratchy. The sky outside was a soft pink, like sherbet.

“Almost five thirty,” Leo said, setting his bag down at the end of my bed and sitting.

I nudged him with one of my socked feet. “Don’t sit there,” I said. “You’re all sweaty.”

His response to this was to climb onto the bed and spread out next to me.

“Is that lavender I detect?” he asked, smelling my pillow. “‘Clean linen’ perhaps?”

“Not anymore, thanks,” I said, pushing him away.

“I’m so tired,” Leo said, yawning and laying his head on my pillow. “Coach had us running suicides for, like, an hour. I could sleep for days.”

I turned my head and glanced over at him, hogging the other side of my pillow. He had his eyes closed, and I could see his long, girlish lashes fluttering against his cheekbones as he took slow, measured breaths.

“Hey, don’t get too comfortable,” I said, giving him a little shove.

His eyelids fluttered open and I saw the bright turquoise of his eyes. He smiled and sat up, running a hand through his trademark Calloway blond hair.

“Did you hear about Auden?” Leo asked.

“I was there when it happened,” I said. “We have trig together.”

“No—I know that,” Leo said. “Did you hear what they found in his room?”

“No,” I said. “What?”

“What was left of Mr. Franklin’s original photograph,” Leo said. “They searched his locker in the field house, too. They found a set of the janitor’s keys, the ones that were reported missing last week.”

The janitor’s keys—another item from the Game. A sour sense of foreboding settled in my stomach.

“The school has him on charges of theft, trespassing, destruction of personal property, and harassment of an instructor,” Leo said. “They’re saying he’s going to be suspended. He’s meeting in front of the Student Ethics Board at the end of the week.”

I sat up. “Did you know about this?” I asked. The set of the janitor’s keys had been Leo’s ticket, after all. “Did you know the A’s were going to do this?”

“No,” Leo said. “They didn’t tell me a thing.”

“So they’re—what—punishing Auden for not showing up? For not playing the Game?” I asked.

Leo shrugged. “Looks like it.”

“I never knew that was part of it,” I said.

I knew the consequences of snitching on the A’s—of giving up their secrets—but I had never suspected that we would be punished for failing to get a ticket item or for quitting the Game. I didn’t even know if Auden had actually quit playing or if he had just not been able to get his item in time. Maybe to the A’s, it didn’t matter either way.

At first, the photograph in Mr. Franklin’s room had seemed like a harmless prank—a small slap on the wrist. Maybe Auden would get a few detentions. But the planted janitor’s keys? Suspension? The A’s were messing with Auden’s future, his academic record. And for what reason? It seemed strange, because just last week, Auden had played poker with Dalton and Crosby and me and Leo. He was one of us.

“It’s like they’re sending a message,” Leo said. “Not just to Auden, but to the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” I said. When it came to the Game, not only could we not get caught, but we couldn’t stop playing.

“So I was thinking,” Leo said, “that we could form an alliance. When we get our next item, I’ll help you with yours and you help me with mine. Double our chances. The first ticket was hard enough, and I have a feeling they’re not going to get any easier.”