“What is this all about, Captain?” I ask.

  The captain flips through some pages in the book until he finds the one he wants. He stabs the book again with his index finger. “This additional information is about your role here, sir,” he says, “as the presiding officer. See, it says if the presiding officer leaves the house before four o’clock, then the entire scholarship process is null and void. Forever. Just like Mr. Hyde said that if the scholarship isn’t awarded during a given year, it’s forfeited forever. It really comes down to you. Emily and I thought we’d stay and then one of us would get the scholarship no matter what. But apparently that isn’t the case. It all comes down to you. You have to stay.”

  While I’m happy to be the good soldier as much as I can—especially on behalf of the college and its students—I don’t like feeling like I have no choice. And people’s lives are being put in danger.

  A trickle of sweat runs down my back. My armpits grow slick.

  “Captain, we’re not safe here. And that’s what matters. Let’s go downstairs and break a window. That’s it.”

  Emily puts her hand on the captain’s arm and gently moves him out of her way as she steps forward. Her glasses reflect the light from the fixture over our heads, making it tough to see her eyes.

  “Mr. Gaines, we all know the shape the school is in. The captain researched it, but he doesn’t live on campus.” She points past me to the three traditional students. “Those of us who live here know. This place is falling apart. The dorms never have hot water. Not enough heat in the winter, blazing hot in the spring and fall. Three times since I’ve been in school, a pipe has burst in one of the dorms and flooded everything. My friend had her laptop ruined, and it took three months for the school to pay to replace it. And that’s not even getting into the mold and the bugs and the dirt we have to live with.” She looks past me. “Am I right?”

  I turn to the other three. No one offers an argument. They nod along to Emily’s words.

  I can’t argue with her either. The school is struggling financially. And I know the facilities are in disrepair. The entire campus needs electrical upgrades and better Wi-Fi. Almost every building needs a new roof.

  “We’re not a rich school,” I say. “A lot of small private schools like Hyde aren’t. We offer something more than the fancy amenities other schools can offer. It’s something about the place and the people. You all know this.”

  “A few weeks back I visited my friend at UK,” Duffy says. “You should see how sweet those dorms are. Granite counters. Their own bathrooms.”

  “My friend plays volleyball at Davidson,” Sydney says. “Now, that’s a private school, and they’re living high on the hog. They have so many food options you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “That’s a private school with a lot of money,” I say. “Besides, do you think that stuff is the most important thing about a school? Bathrooms and . . . and food options?”

  Even as I say it, I know the students aren’t going to be convinced. It happens all the time—one school gets something, and the rest have to follow. One student tells a friend at another school about their amenities, and the friend feels like their school is lesser if they don’t have it. For years, Hyde has been getting by on being a special place with special people. It’s been selling its spirit and its magic.

  But when the hot water doesn’t work in the morning, how magical can the place be?

  Emily goes on. “You were kissing up to Mr. Hyde all morning. That was obvious. Clearly the college needs the Hyde money if they want to stay afloat.”

  “It’s my job to kiss up to anybody who wants to give money to the school. I’ve kissed up to people donating one hundred dollars just as hard as I kiss up to Mr. Hyde. I have to do that. But for now, let’s go downstairs and get the hell out by breaking a window.”

  “But if you walk out this door before four, then the whole thing goes away,” Emily says. “They might pull all the money from everything at the school if this is the first time this award isn’t given. That could be the end of Hyde College. Certainly it’s the end of this process.”

  I know Emily’s probably right.

  She’s not saying anything I haven’t been thinking on my own.

  But I don’t want to be pushed to do anything. Or be backed into a corner.

  Like I told the captain just moments ago—the safety of the people in the house is more important than any amount of money. And I think I know what I can do if they insist on staying.

  But before I can act, Natalia surprises me by speaking up.

  “Okay, okay,” she says. “I think I know an easy way out of this that doesn’t involve breaking or climbing out a window. You all just have to promise to be chill and not lose your minds when I tell you what it is.”

  49

  NATALIA SEEMS TO BE hiding inside her oversized sweater.

  “You can’t look at me,” she says.

  “I thought you wanted us to,” I say.

  “I have a solution, but you can’t look at me while I take care of it. And you have to promise not to be mad.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emily looks at me. “She’s not making any sense, is she?”

  “Natalia, if you know something that can help us—”

  She cuts me off by raising her hands, holding them up to the group palms out. Like she wants to push us all away. “Just don’t look. Okay? Everybody, turn your backs to me. For just a minute or two. Okay? That’s all you have to do.”

  “Sir, this is highly unusual. We’ve already had two people die, and she wants us to turn our backs to her.”

  “Natalia,” I say, “I want to respect your wishes and give you a chance to say whatever you want to say. But can’t you just tell us what your plan is so we can all know what we’re getting into? The captain is right. We’re in some trouble here, so we need to be open with one another.”

  “No more locked doors, then,” Emily says.

  “I locked the door,” Duffy says. “Not him. Not anybody else. Okay? That was me. So what gives, Natalia?”

  The giant eyes scan the line of us. Down one way and then back up the other. Natalia looks like she’s deciding something right in front of us.

  “Okay, fine,” she says. “I guess when you’re locked in a house with a group of people all day, privacy kind of goes out the window.”

  She uses her right hand and reaches for her back. The hand slides under the sweater and appears to be digging around, trying to get ahold of something in her jeans.

  “Are you getting a weapon of some kind?” the captain asks. “Sir, how do we know she doesn’t have something in there?”

  Natalia sighs at the comment but doesn’t say anything. She continues to move her hand around for another twenty seconds. She scrunches her face with the effort. Then her arm stops, and the tension eases from her face, indicating she has in her hand what she set out to get.

  “Okay,” she says. “Here we go.”

  She brings her arm out and holds the object up in the air in front of all of us.

  It’s red and oblong. Sleek, it catches the light.

  Sydney says it first. “It’s a fucking phone. A flip phone, but a phone.”

  “Where did that come from?” I ask.

  Natalia keeps her fingers wrapped around the phone. “I’d heard we all had to give up our phones when we got here. And I did. You took mine along with everybody else’s. But my friend had this old flip phone, and they said I should bring it. Just in case. I mean, I didn’t think anybody would get murdered, but it seemed strange to go somewhere without any way to call for help.”

  “Then we’re set,” I say. “We can call the police.”

  “Sir, this is highly irregular. You just heard what happens if—”

  “No, no,” I say. “We’re calling for help.”

  Natalia opens the phone and starts to dial but stops.

  “Wait. . . .”

  “There’s no service, I bet,” Duffy says. “I’ve tried to make a call out here in these trees before, and it didn’t work.”

  My heart sinks like a stone. But I know he’s right. Cell service is spotty away from campus. I’ve had my own share of calls drop as I drove away from my office and through the woods that lead out to the main road.

  Natalia presses buttons with her thumb. Over and over.

  “Shit. No service.”

  “A phone that old—”

  “Even newer phones struggle out here.”

  “Damn it,” Natalia says. “Shit.”

  “Do you want me to—”

  “Here, I can—”

  “Okay, okay,” Natalia says. “There’s a signal. One bar. Shit. Hurry. It’s not working— Oh, it is. Should I call campus police or nine-one-one?”

  “Just call nine-one-one,” I say. “Here. Let me.”

  I reach out. As I do, another hand comes over mine. I recognize the arm, the tattoos.

  Emily snatches the phone out of Natalia’s hand. Without hesitating for a moment, she takes each half of the phone in one of her hands and bends it back in a way it’s not supposed to go, the muscles in her arms tensing like wires. With a sickening plastic crack, she breaks the phone in half, rendering it useless.

  50

  THERE’S A COLLECTIVE GASP.

  Everyone makes a noise in the aftermath of the crack. Even the captain does, and he wants to stay in the house and keep me here as well.

  “Emily, are you fucking crazy?” Natalia says.

  Emily takes the two halves of the phone and tosses them out into the hall, where they rattle against the wood floors like large tumbling dice. “You can’t call that way. Not when we don’t all agree. Not when so much is at stake.”

  “That was our way out,” Sydney says.

  “We get out at four o’clock,” Emily says. “That’s it. The stupid phone wasn’t going to work out here anyway. We all know the service is for shit on this part of campus.”

  “So you just break it?” Duffy asks. “Are you the killer? Do you want us all to stay in here and not talk to the cops because you’re guilty?”

  “I want the fucking scholarship, okay? That’s what I want.”

  “We all wanted the damn thing. This morning.” Sydney points at Emily, looms above her. “But everything is different now. There are more important things going on. People are dying.”

  Emily folds her hands like she’s praying. She brings them up to cover her nose and mouth. She closes her eyes, like she’s deep in thought. And like the rest of us aren’t here. “I don’t just want it. I need it.”

  “We all need it too,” Duffy says. “None of us are rich.”

  “No . . .” Emily takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Sydney, you talked about my poem. And my parents. And how I’ve changed. My parents cut me off. Completely. Like nothing. They don’t understand who I am or how I’m changing. So I’m just here alone. And my friends want something else. They act like it’s so easy, but most of them have families who are paying their way. Do you know how easy that sounds? To have someone just mailing checks to the school whenever you need it? Buying you a computer or a car or clothes . . . on a whim.” She sniffles and runs her hand under her nostrils. But no tears spill from her eyes. “I need the money. I have to stay. I don’t want to. I don’t want to grovel for some millionaire’s handouts. But what else can I do?”

  “Not break other people’s shit,” Sydney says. “Right?”

  “I understand what you’re saying, Emily.” Duffy’s voice is calm, a soothing presence in the heated moment.

  Sydney looks at him like she doesn’t know who he is. Like she’s been betrayed. But he ignores the glance and keeps talking.

  “I know rich kids. There’s a dude in my dorm who came here with two cars—an SUV and a Mercedes. One for going out and having fun. One for driving around town. Whatever that means.” He shakes his head. “Goddamn, I’d like to have that money. I’d like to not worry for just one day. I’d like to go into town and eat at McDonald’s—McDonald’s, for fuck’s sake—and not feel bad because maybe I could be spending that money on something else. A book or clothes . . . or maybe send it home to my parents so they could relax a little. People like the Hydes . . . or any rich people . . . look, they have us at one another’s throats like we’re animals in a cage. In history class we learned about the Roman circuses. You know, stick people in an arena and tell them they have to fight a lion or something. Give them a broom or a feather as a weapon to defend themselves with. Things don’t change.”

  Natalia is giving Emily a death stare. “I have to buy my friend a new damn phone.”

  “Stay and win the scholarship and you can afford it,” the captain says.

  “That’s not helpful,” Natalia says, moving the death stare toward the captain for a moment.

  But Emily’s admission and Duffy’s empathy lower the temperature for most of us. Only Natalia seems unfazed. She swings her head toward Duffy.

  “You seem pretty unhappy with the wealthy,” she says.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “You seem particularly unhappy,” she says. “All those things you were saying earlier about your mom and the chicken-processing plant.”

  “What about a chicken-processing plant?” the captain asks.

  “It’s nothing—” Duffy says.

  “The Hyde family put a big dent in Duffy’s family farm because they put in a chicken-processing plant. And wouldn’t buy feed from Duffy’s family. Then his mom went to work in the plant, and the Hyde family fired her because she tried to organize her fellow workers. Is that about right, Duffy?” Natalia asks.

  The captain whistles.

  “You’re coming after me?” Duffy asks. “She just broke your phone.”

  “But you’re the one who hates the Hydes. And Mr. Hyde is dead.”

  “I didn’t hate Milo.”

  “Really?” Emily says.

  Even I can’t help it. I look at Sydney and then look away.

  But Duffy has caught it. “Oh, come on.”

  Natalia turns to the rest of the group. “He was coming on to her in the kitchen. Pawing all over her. We saw them. Duffy didn’t waste any time. Milo is barely cold and he’s moving in. He must have wanted Milo out of the way. I don’t think Sydney wanted anything to do with him. I was worried about her.”

  “That’s sick as fuck,” Duffy says.

  The cross talk starts. Voices rise in volume and pitch.

  Fingers point.

  I’m in the cross fire. And I’m sick of it. They’re too loud, too immature.

  Too crazy.

  I’m not staying in the house a moment longer.

  I don’t say anything. I just start out of the room, brushing past Emily and coming face-to-face with the captain. When everyone notices my movement, they stop talking and watch.

  “Sir?” the captain says. He still holds the bylaws, cradles the book to his chest like a baby. “Is something wrong?”

  “We’re leaving. And I know how we’re getting out now.”

  I start to go, and the captain puts his big hand on my arm. “Sir?”

  I look down where his hand has my arm. “Captain, let go.”

  He releases his grip. I lift my left hand and gently but firmly guide the captain out of my way.

  I start down the hall, the group following along behind like I’m the Pied Piper.

  51

  I GO INTO ONE of the bedrooms that faces the front of the house.

  The two large windows face the yard—and in the distance the cops and the protestors stand at the barricade. Duffy’s right—a sign pressed against the glass wouldn’t work. At best, someone looking at the house and seeing a sign in the window would be confused. They’d need binoculars in order to read any text in the window.

  And I doubt we even have anything to make a very large sign.

  And I’m past the sign stage anyway. I’m ready to do something more.

  I’ve been told the bedroom I enter was used as the nursery by the Hyde family. The Hyde children slept in here as babies, and a wooden cradle, something that no one in their right mind would stick an infant in today, sits in one corner of the room. At some point, someone refurbished it, because the finish is buffed to a high gloss.

  There’s a dresser and a wooden rocking chair. It’s easy to imagine Mary Hyde sitting in that rocker, holding a baby. Perhaps holding one of their children as they battled against the deadly illnesses that ultimately took three of them away. A very different time with very different stakes.

  But here we are—fighting for our lives and survival.

  If a sign won’t do to get the attention of the police, we have to go bigger. And there’s only one thing I can think of.

  The students come through the doorway and enter the room. They fan out near the entrance, watching me. Maybe it’s the way they might watch one of their parents who has flown into a rage.

  Or maybe it’s the way my students used to watch me in the classroom when I admitted some vulnerability. When my mother died, I spoke frankly to my students about it, going so far as to choke up in front of them. The students didn’t know what to do. It’s so strange to them when an authority figure loses their cool.

  “Sir?”

  “We’re leaving,” I say, bending down to pick up the cradle. “I’m going to alert the cops. And they can open the door.”

  “Sir, is that wise?”

  I lift the cradle, which is surprisingly heavy. Made of mahogany. About three feet long. The muscles in my arms and back strain. They burn, and they’ll burn more tomorrow.

  “Is it wise, Captain? Is it wise to stay in here with a killer? Is it wise to put money above everything else in life?”

  “I’m not sure this is the best approach,” Sydney says.