Locked Inside (7 page)

Marnie was reeling. Lunch? Out? With Ms. Slaight? Had she stepped through the looking glass?

Ms. Slaight added, all in a rush, “I’ve never been to the Halsett Grille—I just haven’t had the opportunity before, but I understand it’s very nice.”

“Yes, it is,” Marnie managed weakly. “I’ve been there with my guardian.”

“Well?” said Ms. Slaight. “Will you come with me?”

Marnie looked at her teacher’s transparently hopeful face and was consumed by curiosity. Here was Ms. Slaight, turning the other cheek with a vengeance. Why? Plus, that new outfit, and her open desire to go to the stupid Halsett Grille, where they put out three forks when you ordered a glorified
grilled cheese … In short, Marnie couldn’t help feeling just the tiniest bit sorry for Ms. Slaight. Didn’t she have anyone else in her life to go to lunch with?

“Yes,” said Marnie. “Thank you. I’d be very pleased.”

Ms. Slaight positively beamed. “Wonderful. I felt sure we could be friends if we just got past our misunderstandings. We can agree to let bygones be bygones. Right?”

“Sure,” said Marnie uncertainly. Polite, maybe. But friends?

“We’ll leave right after you take this test, then. Um … after you change, of course.”

Marnie clenched her teeth for just a second. She knew perfectly well that, despite the restaurant’s haughtiness, the people having lunch at the Halsett Grille would be wearing casual, preppy clothes. Ms. Slaight’s suit would fit in no better than Marnie’s own loud attire. Oh, well, why not make the teacher happy? Marnie knew there was a short black dress stashed somewhere in her closet. “Okay,” she said grimly. “I’ll change.”

Ms. Slaight nodded as if there’d been no other possible outcome. Utterly bemused, Marnie sat down to take—to
try
to take—the chemistry test.

The world is a strange place, full of strange people, including us.
Another of Skye’s aphorisms, and Marnie supposed it, too, was true.

“Order anything you like,” said Ms. Slaight expansively. Her good mood, Marnie figured, would dissolve after lunch when she corrected Marnie’s
test. Marnie had worked hard on Monday, but she didn’t fool herself. If she passed, it would be a near thing. Jenna’s fault. The test material had been in Marnie’s head yesterday, before she slept in the corridor.

No. Not Jenna’s fault. Her own.

And what would the Elf be thinking about Marnie’s no-show last night? She
had
to find another way to get her e-mail….

Ms. Slaight ordered filet mignon.

“And you, miss?” said the waiter, turning too quickly to Marnie. Ms. Slaight had to clear her throat to get his attention back so she could order a salad. Marnie winced. She had seen the waiter’s eyes flick disparagingly over Ms. Slaight’s cheap, too-dressy suit. It made her angry, perhaps most of all because she was harboring the same thoughts.

Her imp seized her. She could control which of them he gossiped about in the kitchen!

“I’d just like a plate of mashed potatoes, please,” said Marnie, with grand disregard for the contents of the menu. “With a lot of butter. Oh, and I won’t need these.” Retaining only her fork, she handed the rest of the cutlery over.

“Yes, miss,” said the waiter, and left. Marnie looked up at Ms. Slaight and realized, too late, that she was shocked. Had misunderstood, and thought Marnie was insulting
her.

There was no way to explain without making the situation worse.

The silence lasted a full two minutes. Then Ms. Slaight appeared to gather herself. She swallowed
once or twice; Marnie saw the movement of her throat. And then she said, “Marnie. I wanted to ask you some things about … about Skye.”

Something inside Marnie snapped.

Afterward she couldn’t remember exactly what she had said. That she had made some kind of a scene, she knew. That she had yelled, she knew. Some of the words floated through her head. And by the time Marnie finished, she was trembling, not unlike the way Jenna had the night before.

How dare you think you can buy my confidence with a lunch! Do you think I’m stupid? Or were you imagining you could buy stories about Skye with a passing grade? So you could sell them to some tabloid? Was that what you were thinking? Well, you’re not fit to even say her name! You’re nobody! Do you hear me? You’re nobody!

Ms. Slaight sat across the table, her eyes glistening, her body rigid.

Finally Marnie stopped yelling. The fog around her began to clear. Vaguely she became aware of other people in the restaurant, listening.

Ms. Slaight got up. She was not without dignity. She walked out, only tripping once, slightly, on her unaccustomed heels.

Suddenly, fully conscious of all the stares, Marnie held her head high. She summoned the waiter and paid the check for the meal that hadn’t been delivered. When she’d figured in the tip, she had exactly ninety cents left to her name.

It was ten miles back to campus. Well, Marnie would have a lot to think about while walking. Like
her newly inevitable expulsion. And … and other things.

When had her life become such a mess? How?

She had a terrible headache and a dark, dark feeling of impending doom. She hadn’t a clue what Skye would have done in this situation. She wasn’t sure Skye—even Skye, so famous for airing her emotions, her opinions—would have let loose in the restaurant.

You should only alienate folks when you mean and want to do it.

Well, that was fine. A fine philosophy. For those who could control themselves. For those who weren’t on the edge …

How had she got here?

Marnie left the restaurant. To her surprise, Ms. Slaight’s battered Volkswagen Jetta was pulled up to the curb just outside the door. Ms. Slaight sat upright in the driver’s seat, her window rolled down and both her hands flat on the wheel.

“I am a teacher,” she said evenly. “You are a student in my charge. I am responsible for getting you back to campus. Get in.”

“I’ll walk,” said Marnie.

Ms. Slaight turned her head and looked fully at Marnie. “You will get in now.”

Marnie got in. Ms. Slaight started the motor. Marnie closed her eyes, feeling the tension in the car like a physical force. Miles passed, and then Ms. Slaight stopped the car. “Get out,” she said.

Marnie opened her eyes. Everybody was telling her to get out, these days. They were not on
campus. Where were they? “You want me to walk the rest—”

“Get out,” said Ms. Slaight.

There was something in her voice. Worse than before. Worse than ever before.

My fault, Marnie thought. My fault.

Marnie got out. She would rather walk anyway.

But Ms. Slaight got out too. She grasped Marnie’s arm and forced her away from the car. She looked down into Marnie’s face, and her expression was like nothing Marnie had ever seen before. It hypnotized her. As if from a distance, she could hear Ms. Slaight speaking.

“I didn’t want it to be this way between us, Marnie Skyedottir. But from the very first time I met you, I think I knew that it would have to be.” And she raised her other hand. There was something in her clenched fist.

Marnie later remembered everything else, but not the actual feel of the sharp blow to her head.

W
aking up again—a few hours later? the next morning? afternoon?—was among the worst experiences of Marnie’s life. Not absolutely the worst; nothing could top the weeks after the plane crash that killed Skye. Marnie had retched helplessly nearly every morning then, too.

Just not over a concrete floor.

And her head had not hurt quite so much, perhaps.

And beneath her, her bed—oh, God. Marnie rolled quickly to her side again and retched a little more. She hadn’t had lunch, so there wasn’t much to come up. She kept her eyes closed and rested her forehead on the back of her hand. Canvas was stretched on the cot frame beneath her, silence hung heavy around her, and dull artificial light burned beyond her closed eyelids.

She remembered everything. Which did not help.

Drearily, breathing carefully in and out, in and out, she reflected that she’d do anything for a glass of flat ginger ale. Well, she wasn’t psychic, but she had the feeling she was not going to get it. She felt her lips curve into an involuntary grim smile and then rapidly retreat to a compressed line.

She reached up and gingerly explored her left temple with her fingers. There was a large bandage taped there. That was something; some care had been taken. She felt its edges; then a soft center of cotton. Beneath—She inhaled in a rapid little pant, and then took her hand down and tried to regulate her breathing again. She longed to curl up into a tight ball but was afraid to move. It wasn’t just her head. Her whole body ached, as if she’d been thrown down a flight of stairs.

She opened her eyes and looked blearily out at the room. It was a small square, with cement-block walls, no windows, and the dank feeling of a basement. The only objects in the room seemed to be the folding cot on which Marnie was lying, and a child’s large plastic sand bucket that incongruously depicted Yertle the Turtle. A single bare lightbulb hung suspended from the high ceiling, at least twelve feet up. A wooden door—the only exit—sat in the middle of the opposite wall; the lack of visible hinges indicated that it opened outward.

In movies, Marnie reflected sourly, doors always opened inward, so that imprisoned people could hide behind them and attack whoever took a few steps into the room. Of course, in movies imprisoned people didn’t lie as if paralyzed, afraid to cause more pain by moving, longing for ginger ale.
Lack of a toilet never seemed to trouble them. They jumped briskly up despite any number of injuries and conceived clever plans.

Marnie was not capable of a clever plan at this moment, but cautiously, as if this too would hurt, she began trying to think.

Initially, after Skye died, Max had been very concerned about possible kidnappers. He’d conducted careful interviews about security at the first school Marnie attended, gotten references from the rich parents of current and previous students, and even consulted with Skye’s old bodyguard firm. Security was vital, he had said.

But over time, the danger of kidnappers had somehow slipped down on the list of things to consider—if not entirely out of the picture. Marnie herself had not given it a thought in years. There’d been no reason; nothing to trigger any alarm.

Ms. Slaight. Who’d have guessed it? Did she have coconspirators? Was this truly a kidnapping, or just some comedy of errors? Maybe Ms. Slaight had lost her mind temporarily. Given the whole sequence of events, this seemed most likely to Marnie. Everyone at the Halsett Grille had seen them together.

Nothing about this felt like the professional kidnapping operations that had been described to her so thoroughly. She wasn’t in handcuffs or blindfolded or even tied up.

Marnie was suddenly possessed by the desire to laugh hysterically. Simultaneously, her stomach contracted again, and she rolled instinctively into a ball, even though her head hurt more from the movement, as she’d known it would. She panted a
little, and after a minute or two the pain retreated again to an intense background throb. Then, slowly, she became aware of feeling cold.

She unlocked her knees and tilted her chin down to look in the direction of her feet. There was a folded blanket at the end of the cot. She snagged it with one foot and dragged it upward. She huddled beneath it and began to feel warmer. That was another mistake she’d made, getting into this dress instead of staying in her jeans and wool sweater. Not that she was counting mistakes.

She wondered what was happening back at Halsett Academy. Had she been missed? It wasn’t like anybody would care that she wasn’t there. Jenna Lowry, for one, would rejoice.

To think Marnie had actually believed she had a problem when she couldn’t find a computer to e-mail the Elf. What an idiot she was.

She retched again over the side of the cot, though this time nothing actually came out. Looking distastefully away from the area, she spotted something out of the corner of her eye, on the floor near the head of the cot. Was it a bottle? A plastic bottle?

By dint of heroic effort, Marnie reached out and grabbed her prize. Not ginger ale, but President’s Choice lemon-lime seltzer. It was ridiculous how weak she was; the bottle felt as if it weighed twenty pounds. Somehow she heaved it up onto the cot with her. For a minute, it was enough just to hold it. Then she began to think about having a drink.

The best way to do that would be to sit upright. Marnie’s throbbing head told her she had exerted herself all she could right now. But her mouth and
throat were desperate. She managed to prop herself up against the wall. There was one awful moment when her fingers couldn’t grip the twist-top sufficiently well to break the seal and open the bottle. Somehow she succeeded. She drank quite a lot, then firmly re-capped the bottle. But then she was attacked by a wave of dizziness. She dropped the bottle and heard it roll away. She closed her eyes. She thought again, still distantly, about the lack of a toilet. The Yertle the Turtle bucket?

Please, no.

Maybe this was worse, in some ways, than after Skye died.

Somebody else—the Sorceress Llewellyne, for example—would be up now, examining the door closely, scouring the floor for possible weapons, figuring odds, strategizing. But this wasn’t Paliopolis. And she wasn’t the Sorceress.

Marnie moaned, clutched her head, and slipped back into a state of unconsciousness.

“
W
ake up!” said a voice that Marnie did not want to recognize. Ms. Slaight sounded sort of panicked.

Marnie kept her eyes closed. A cautious little voice in her head was wondering if she could fool Ms. Slaight into thinking she was so sick she was about to die. Which she was not. Oh, she still felt horrible—achy and dizzy. But she was better. She thought about emitting an artistic moan, tossing her head frantically, mumbling “Mommy.” She felt a hand on her forehead and only just managed to keep herself from shoving it away. The little voice believed, quite forcefully, that doing so would be a bad mistake.