The Scarlets (5 page)

Cal flinched, and Roger smirked.

“Just as I thought. She’s trouble, Cal. And the last thing you need is more trouble.” Cal closed his fingers around the pipe, but Roger didn’t let go, yanking him closer. “So I’m asking you, politely but
firmly
, to come to the other side. If you really want what’s best for you and Ms.
Seems Nice
, you’ll say yes.”

The pipe came free and Cal stumbled back a step. His eyes flicked to Roger’s pocket, where his list was hidden.

“If I don’t do it?” he whispered. His lips were painfully dry.

“There are others currently on the right side who could go right back to being in trouble.” Now his tone wasn’t ice but steel, and when Cal met his father’s eyes, they pierced. “Micah, for example.”

Cal’s fingers turned into a fist around the pipe. “He spent a few weeks in juvie for theft—who cares? It’s not even that big of a deal. Nobody would expel him for that.”

“Theft?” Roger’s head hung back as he laughed. “Is that what he told you?” His laughter died down, and then the steel was back in his gaze. “You’re even more out of touch than I thought.”

Roger stopped there, but Cal refused to give him the satisfaction of asking for an explanation.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it your way, then. Just . . . I don’t want Fallon to get in too much trouble.”

Roger waved him away, turning to pick up a mug of coffee from his desk. His smile was back, as if this was business as usual. “You just worry about upholding your end of the bargain”—he tapped the list in his pocket—“and let me worry about upholding mine.”

M
y paunchy old man is in the collegiate mafia,
Cal thought, dragging himself across campus to Fallon’s dorm. All day the pipe had sat like an anchor in his pocket, a heavy reminder of what he was supposed to be doing.

Sure, he didn’t
know
know Fallon, but she seemed decent enough. Not really in his social circle, maybe, but that didn’t mean she deserved to get kicked out of school. Some of her tutoring had sunk in, and hadn’t she let him borrow that comic book?

A comic book he had left in his dorm room accidentally.
Damn.
He would have to find a way to get it back to her, and hope that it could happen before an RA found the pipe in her room.

He passed the fraternity and sorority houses lining the road that led to the residential side. Cal watched the lights come on in the Sig Tau frat house, an old Victorian monstrosity with four white columns and a sandy brick facade.

Devon was probably inside playing Xbox with his frat brothers, telling stories about the underclassman who’d geeked out in Brookline’s basement like a little baby.

Something brushed Cal’s wrist. He looked down, expecting a bit of stray spiderweb or a bush frond, but it was that damn kid, smiling up at him.

The boy was holding his hand.

Cal gasped and jerked his fingers away from nothing at all.

The ghostly little boy was gone, leaving behind a whisper of cold on his skin. God, and he would have to go back inside that basement in—he glanced at his watch—three short hours.

But first, Fallon.

Cal hurried his steps to Jeffreys. He used the closer entrance, brushing past a guy who was ignoring the ten-foot rule and having a cigarette by the door.

There were elevators in the main lobby, but Cal took the stairs just inside the door. His footsteps echoed up all three floors, and music and soft laughter bled through the walls. In one room someone practiced the violin.

He made his way to Fallon’s door and knocked under the plastic dry-erase board. He saw that someone had left her a note in green marker.

Hey Fal, stopped by. Miss ur cute fais. Check the subreddit, k?—Holly

And above that, in curlicue script: No Admittance Except on Party Business.

Cal knocked again, leaning in and calling through the door, “I’m not on party business, but we had a session scheduled.”

He heard the latch go, and the door opened a second later. Fallon didn’t greet him, so he elbowed his way inside, sighing and letting his book bag droop down to his elbow. The damn thing had to weigh fifty pounds with all his textbooks crammed inside.

The room smelled strongly of incense, which was against the rules, but Cal was way past thinking this girl cared about the rules.

“Sandalwood?” Cal asked, nodding toward the brown stick smoldering away near the open window. She had used an empty soda can for a holder, wedging the incense stick through the tab. “Trying to cover something up?”

“Like what?” Fallon asked, giving him a blank look.

“Never mind.”

She had already laid out the books and notebooks on the desk for them. Cal joined her at the table, sliding into his chair with a grunt of relief.

“Long day?” she asked. She wore a dark-blue sundress over shiny patterned leggings. Today it was a chain-mail necklace instead of a bracelet.

“You have no idea.” Cal pulled out his copy of
Wide Sargasso Sea
and his notebook, opening it to find that message staring back at him.

Ghosts, ghosts in the shadows, ghosts in the light, and now I am become one too

He slammed the cover shut and leaned his elbows on it.

“You seem edgy. Want a beer?” She was already on her way to the mini-fridge.

“You sure that won’t get in the way?”

Fallon shrugged, bouncing the messy curls on her shoulders. “My job is to make sure you pass your lit class. I’m not your sobriety coach. Here, I’ll join you.”

Stop being nice, you’re making this harder.

“I got a good start on my essay last night,” Cal lied, cracking open the beer she offered. It was ice cold, and he had to admit, it helped the jitters in his stomach. “So thanks. I think this is helping.”

“Miracles really do happen,” she joked, raising her can in a toast. Then she browsed through her copy of the novel, trying to find where they had left off. “Your dad still giving you a hard time?”

More questions about Roger. Maybe his father was right about her, and the friendliness was all an act. Cal shrugged, glancing around her room, looking for a spot to hide the contraband. “You know that basement in Brookline?”

Taking another sip of her beer, Fallon nodded and then picked up a pen, tapping it on the open book in front of her. “You got to go down there, right? What was it like?”

“Gross. Dusty. Depressing.”

“So not a prime make-out spot then?” Fallon smiled and plucked at the tab on her beer can. It made a sharp twanging sound. “I’ll scratch it off the list.”

Cal blanched. “Oh, I’m . . . not really into girls.”

“And I’m not really into guys.” She winked, but it was friendly, and the jitters leaped again in his stomach.

He had to distract himself or he would come clean and tell her what his father was up to. “There was this part of the book I really liked. . . .” Cal searched frantically through his notes. “This line—‘There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.’”

Fallon nodded, her turquoise eyes suddenly distant. “Yeah. My favorite was always: ‘Blot out the moon, pull down the stars. Love in the dark, for we’re for the dark so soon, so soon.’”

“You know that by heart?” Cal asked, impressed.

She shrugged and went back to her book. “Some things just stick, you know?”

He ran his hand over his notebook. He did know.

Cal reached into his pocket and shifted the pipe closer to his leg, farther in where he wouldn’t be tempted to reach. It would stay hidden, where it belonged, and Fallon would stay at NHC, where she belonged.

C
al was feeling pretty proud of the fact that it only took two more beers before he had the courage to keep his appointment with Professor Reyes and the others. He arrived promptly, if not eagerly, clutching his book bag and a flashlight of his own.

Tonight I won’t touch anything or even look too hard at anything,
he promised himself.
I’ll stand still, I’ll watch what Devon does—which is really not such a bad way to pass the time—and that will be that.

But they were a man down when he arrived—specifically a
Devon
down.

Immediately, Cal thought of the folded piece of paper in his father’s suit pocket.
This isn’t good.

Just a coincidence, he assured himself. Devon was an athlete; he probably pulled a muscle in the weight room or took a bad fall in practice.

“Where’s Devon?” he asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and eyeing the two girls, then Professor Reyes. He had left the pipe back in his room, locked in a combination safe under his bed.

“It’s disappointing, but Devon won’t be joining us,” Professor Reyes lamented with a heavy sigh. “And since he was your supervision, that means you’re off the hook for this evening, Mr. Erickson.”

“Oh,” he said blankly. “Bummer.”

“Yes. I’m sure you’re
devastated
.”

“I’ll be going, then. . . .”

“But we’ll be seeing you tomorrow evening, the usual time.” Professor Reyes took out her key ring and turned away, finished with him. “Girls, I want to start in the office right away today. If you find another mention of that boy, you bring it to me. No need to make copies of anything, just bring me the originals.”

Cal didn’t dare let out a relieved breath until he had cleared the corner and was already bounding up the stairs. Devon’s unexplained absence was weird, but probably nothing. Cal’s relief was cut short, however, when he arrived back at his room.

He could hear the commotion through the door.

“This is BULLSHIT.”

Micah. Micah didn’t yell. Micah never raised his voice above a low Southern drawl. This was—

“Who told you?” he was screaming now. “Who told you!?”

Cal peered inside the door, afraid something would come hurling toward him if he busted in too quickly. His roommate paced the border between their halves of the room. The phone clutched in his white-knuckled fist looked like it was about to shatter.

“You couldn’t tell me this in person? You had to fucking text me?”

Cal could hear a high, frantic voice on the other end. A girl’s voice. He wedged himself farther inside, feeling his pulse crank up a few notches as he fit the pieces together. They were fighting, breaking up again, but this was sooner than he expected. Usually they at least lasted for a few weeks. . . .

“I’m not that person anymore,” Micah was saying, calmer now but still with that hint of breathless desperation Cal had never heard before. “You know I’m not that person.”

Finally Micah noticed Cal and swiveled around to face him with wet, shining cheeks.

“Is everything okay?” Cal mouthed silently.

“I have to go,” Micah said into the phone, hanging up and throwing it savagely at his bed. It skipped across the mattress, bumping against the pillow. “She broke up with me,” he said in a hollow whisper, staring at the floor as if he had never seen it before. “Again.”

The next morning, the goatee was gone.

I’m disappointed, Cal.

T
hree little words. Cal’s thumb hovered over the phone, but he didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t planted the pipe, and now he was left to hope that Roger had been bluffing about the potential fallout of his failure.