Keaton School 01: Escape Theory (22 page)

“And you stood up all proud when they called out the legacies.”

“Proud? Are you sure it was me you were looking at? Not some other handsome legacy?”

“No, pretty sure it was you. What? You’re not a proud Keaton legacy?”

Hutch let go of Devon and poured himself a glass of water from the sink. He sat on the counter opposite her. “You know, before I was even born, I was going to Keaton. It was a given. Nowhere along the way did anyone ask me what I wanted.”

“Sounds familiar. My mom sent in my application and had an interview set up before I knew this place existed. And once I got the scholarship there was no debate; I was going. And any time I try to talk about it with my mom she just thinks I’m being ungrateful. I’m not ungrateful, I just …”

“… would have liked a choice in the matter,” he finished for her. “I get it. The freaky thing is that our parents were easier than this place. Every minute here is accounted for, regimented. It’s like this creepy ooze that just gets in everywhere, and eventually takes over your life. I hate it. I’d take public school, or even just being a day student any day. When you live here you can’t escape it.”

“But, you can go into town and stuff on weekends? At least there’s that, right?”

“Not really; even there you’re still in it. You think if we ran into a teacher in Monte Vista they wouldn’t note what we were up to, who we were with, and what flavor ice cream we eat? All of it is noted. Filed away.”

“That sounds a little paranoid. It can’t be that bad.”

“I saw my brother go through it. His friends, their parents, his
teachers, everyone knows all this random stuff about him. He’s in the bubble for the rest of his life and he can’t get out. None of us can.”

“Okay, so let’s say we’re all in the bubble. What’s tonight then? Part of the bubble too? Because, it can’t be all bad if there’s Nutter Butter pancakes, right?”

He flashed a crooked smile. “This? This is a blip in the bubble. A glitch in the matrix. This is the ultimate not-supposed-to.”

“Right, your favorite group, the not-supposed-tos?”

“Something like that. You know, I was hating this week so far. I mean, I guess my roommate Matt is pretty cool, so that’s lucky. But, when you walked into the dining hall, that cute bitchy girl, Devon, from assembly, this week stopped sucking.”

“Yeah, you’re kind of the only good thing about this week.”

“I have a feeling you’re the only good thing about this whole place.”

Devon laughed off the compliment. “We just got here.”

“But what if I’m right? What if tonight is the best it will get around here for the next four years and everything else is just downhill?”

“If getting locked in the kitchen together is the best it gets, that doesn’t bode well for the next four years.”

September 26, Present Day

T
HE GREEN BOTTLES CLINKED
together at the bottom of Devon’s T-shirt drawer. The stale beer smell was worse than she thought and she grabbed the plastic bag from her trashcan to wrap them. The white torn labels caught her attention again. Were they purposely torn off because someone didn’t want it known what they were drinking? A Keaton student would take much smarter precautions than just ripping a label off a beer bottle. Vodka disguised in water bottles, flasks in the shape of cell phones, travel-sized perfume, extra shirts, and breath mints were all basic items everyone used for concealing drinking and/or smoking. Over the summer at a barbeque Ariel hosted while her parents were away, Devon drank a
few beers. They were fancy, apparently appropriate for Ariel’s beer connoisseur friends. But, Devon remembered not liking the taste very much and she peeled the labels off the wet bottles while she watched Ariel flirt with a new guy.

Maybe this person was an absentminded label-peeler too.

All at once, a thought occurred to her. Devon found her jeans from the other day at the beach on the floor of her closet and dug into the pocket. The balled up paper she found in Hutch’s car. Carefully she unraveled.it A label.
Gersbach
written in white letters on a gold background. The G matched the lettering on the metal cap Devon had found. She wrapped the paper over one bottle but the torn paper didn’t match. She tried the second and the label matched the tears from the bottle perfectly. Her pulse picked up. This put Hutch’s car at the Palace, didn’t it? Hutch could have driven up the hill from his grandfather’s, had a beer or two, left the bottles on the hillside. But somewhere along the way he had torn off the label on his beer and dropped it inside the car. But, when? The car driving up the hill, the beer drinking, and the bottles left behind could have happened at any time.
You haven’t really solved anything
, Devon thought.

“Bee-yotch! We’re gonna be late for the game, and I’m not running extra laps because of you.” Presley barged into Devon’s room wearing a short plaid lacrosse skirt and her cleats. She spotted the green bottles in Devon’s open drawer. “Oh, what are you hiding, Miss Mackintosh? Anything good?”

Devon slammed the drawer shut. “It’s nothing. Just a project. I’ll be right behind you.” She reached for her lacrosse skirt and started changing clothes.

“Whatever. See you out there.” Presley slapped Devon’s butt with her lacrosse stick on her way out the door.

The first game of the season
, Devon thought. Nothing could seem less important.

A
S
D
EVON JOGGED ACROSS
the parking lot, past the rival school Lewis Academy’s bus, she spotted a black Range Rover parked next
to it. Devon stopped.
The
black Range Rover. She peered in the windows. The doors were locked, dirt still streaked the seats and dashboard. Why was it here? How did it get here?

“Sweet car, huh?” Grant said behind Devon. She quickly turned, caught.

“Hey,” she said.

“You get my flower?”

“Yeah, totally. I tried to find you last night to thank you. It was really nice of you.” Devon’s cleats clicked on the pavement as she shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“So, are we cool?” Grant asked, his eyes sheepish below the brim of his white hat.

“Mackintosh! You’re late! Five laps! Let’s go!” Mrs. Freeman yelled from the lacrosse field across the parking lot to Devon.

“I gotta go, but yeah. We’re cool. Wanna come by tonight?”

“I’ll be there.” Grant’s smile returned. Devon started jogging toward the field. “Hey, Mackintosh,” he yelled after her. “Kill ’em.”

“I’ll try,” Devon yelled back over her shoulder.

Both teams were already warming up on the field: Keaton in its green-and-white plaid skirts and Lewis in their blue skirts and tops. Devon started her laps, jogging around the field. Weird: The Keaton cheering section wasn’t just a few over-eager parents on the sidelines. What seemed like every guy in school sat on the wooden bleachers. Girls in short skirts battling it out on the field did have a certain attraction, she figured.

Devon spotted a blond head of dreadlocked hair. Bodhi. Why was he here?
Raven … right
. She rounded the bend for her first lap and saw Raven putting on the hockey-mask sized helmet worn by lacrosse goalies. Raven must have worked her way up to becoming their second-string goalie. Smart way to get on the Varsity team; play the position no one wants. Raven warmed up with the assistant coach on the sidelines.

“Go, Devon!” Bodhi whistled as she passed, smiling and watching her finish her laps. Devon gave him a half-wave and kept running.
The black Range Rover crept back into her mind. Bodhi and Raven had access to the Range Rover, didn’t they? Either one of them could have been up to the Palace, although it seemed much more likely that Bodhi was the one with the taste for rare German beer.

A
T HALF-TIME
K
EATON WAS
winning 5-2. Devon, Raven, Maya, sat on the bench.

“All right,” Mrs. Freeman lifted her wraparound sunglasses onto her head and leaned her clipboard against her round belly and khaki shorts, “Let’s rotate a few of you in this half. Raven, you wanna get some goal time? Suit up. Maya, how you feeling?”

Maya smiled weakly, “Not great.”

“Fine, let’s not push it. Devon? Feel like a little defense?” Mrs. Freeman’s sunglasses balanced precariously on her spiky blonde hair.

Next to Devon, Raven wiped the sweat off her hands as she put on her shin and arm pads. “Come on, Dev. I could use all the help I can get.”

“Yeah, I’ll go in,” Devon said. She stood up and jumped up and down a few times to get her blood flowing. The other team took the field and the ref blew the whistle. Presley scooped up the ball first and charged across the field. Devon watched her go, staying on Keaton’s side of the field to protect the goal, but the crowd bustling in the bleachers caught her attention. They weren’t cheering for Presley.

“Yo, you don’t have the right to do this!”

It was Bodhi. And there were two cops from Monte Vista pulling him off the bleachers and struggling to pin him to the ground.

“Bodhi!” Raven threw down her stick and ripped off her pads, sprinting to her brother. At the other end of the field Devon could see the Lewis players were also distracted by the commotion. Presley kept running and whizzed her ball passed the goalie into their net, but she was the only one still playing the game. Devon ran to the sidelines as the ref blew the whistle.

“You’re under arrest for trespassing,” one of the cops announced. “You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Raven burst into tears, crouching next to Bodhi as he lay in the dirt. “What do you want me to do? Why is this happening?”

The other cop, a younger guy with a military buzz cut, wrapped plastic cuffs around Bodhi’s wrist and pulled them tight.

“Call Reed,” Bodhi gasped, spitting out dirt. “He’ll know what to do.”

The cops pulls Bodhi up and walked him toward the parking lot where their cruiser was parked, the red lights silently spinning around and around.

Raven cried as Bodhi was folded into the back seat. Devon put an arm around her. “I’m sure it’s just a mistake, right?”

“I’ve got to call Reed,” Raven choked out. She ran to her backpack near the player’s bench and pulled out her cell phone. Devon watched the police cruiser drive away. Trespassing? At Keaton? Was Bodhi caught for being here now or possibly for another time? The beer bottles, the prescription pills. Maybe Mr. Robins hadn’t been so far off base in his worry over Bodhi.

Behind the cruiser, Devon noticed Eric’s silver BMW sitting idle in the lot. The passenger door opened and a tall guy with shaggy blond hair stepped out.
Matt
. Even from this distance she could see that he had a swollen black eye. Probably from his fight with Bodhi on the beach. Behind her, Devon could hear Raven crying into the phone talking to Grandpa Reed. She wanted to help Raven; she truly did—no matter what was going on with Bodhi. Raven was on her side when it came to Hutch.

And maybe Raven could help her, too.

“This should do the trick.” Raven placed a small metal box on Devon’s bedspread. She zipped her backpacked closed again while Devon inspected it. Nothing but brushed metal and a single switch on one side of the palm-sized device. They had only ten minutes until first period. For Devon, first period meant doing a session with Matt. But after her last meeting with Robins and Wyler.…

“This little thing will jam the camera?”

Raven gazed into Devon’s mirror, rolling her nest of hair into one organized spiral at the nape of her neck. “It’s just a frequency jammer, super basic. Once you bring it in the room, it will automatically find the frequency the camera is recording on, set itself to the same frequency, rendering your video feed useless. They’ll record you, but it will all be static.” She turned her head toward Devon. “My hair look okay?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. And seriously, thanks. You’re totally saving me.
I had no idea how I could still do sessions without selling everyone up the river.” Devon tucked the jammer into her backpack. She noticed Raven twisting the hemp bracelets around her arm, her eyes on the floor. “Any update on Bodhi?”

Raven forced a smile. “Reed’s lawyers are working on it.”

“Did you find out who reported him?”
Matt. It had to be him. What other enemies could Bodhi have?

“Don’t know yet. But he should be home today.”

“That’s great. That should make your parents happy, right?”

“Our dad, sure. If he even noticed Bodhi was gone.”

“Oh, does he work a lot or something?” Devon realized she had no idea where Raven and Bodhi actually lived or with whom. If she wanted to know more about Bodhi, that seemed like an obvious place to start.

“Not really. He’s just not that present. Our mom died when I was five. Reed is kind of the best parent we’ve got. He’s looked out for us for years. That’s why we’re at the guest house at the vineyard most of the time. Reed always needs help with something, the wine, the land, security, you know.” Raven slung her backpack over her shoulder. They walked outside together and up the hill toward the classrooms. “You should come over sometime. Like, take a weekend to the guest house or something. Reed would sign you out. If you wanted.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool. Thanks.”

“Gotta make it to Spanish before the bell goes. Good luck with the session. And remember, turn on the jammer before you go inside so the camera doesn’t catch you doing it. See ya.” Raven quickened her pace up the hill.

“Wait, how will I know it’s working?”

Raven was already yards away. “You won’t!” she called without turning around. “But when it comes to this sort of thing, I don’t mess up.”