It’s Ms. Steiner, my least favorite librarian. Brisk and serious, she holds the door open with her left hand as she checks the alerts on her phone. Veró steps into the office, her hair glowing mauve against the office walls. At first, I smile at her, but then I see she’s crying. Her face is streaked and shadowy. It’s been only about twenty minutes since I saw her in the library stacks. What could have gone so wrong in twenty minutes? I hate to think.

  “Good morning, girls.” Ms. Steiner’s voice is a little jittery. She doesn’t catch her error. We aren’t all girls here. I try not to let it bother me, even though it does. I counteract the dull ache of Ms. Steiner’s casual misgendering by thinking of all the times Mom has called me her “precious they-by” instead of her “precious baby.” The thought of it makes my whole body smile. It’s a gender euphoria magic trick that I keep in my back pocket, but I can do it only so many times in a day before it loses its potency.

  “Are you all waiting for Chancellor Archwell?” Ms. Steiner asks.

  “Yes, we are,” Rory answers.

  “Didn’t she tell you to lock the office door?” she asks Rory in a low voice.

  “Yes. People kept showing up though.”

  “I see.” Ms. Steiner looks back at her phone before lowering her reading glasses and looking the office door up and down. “I need to return to the library and check in with Ms. Katz, but you better lock up behind me,” she says. “I just got a staff alert saying we’re going into Code Emerald right now. So the door should be locked.”

  “What’s Code Emerald?” I ask.

  “Campus-wide lockdown. Like the one we did last week,” Blythe murmurs to me before speaking to Ms. Steiner. “Is this a planned drill?”

  “Well, dear, I didn’t receive prior notification of it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not planned. Sometimes they do these lockdowns without warning to keep the staff on their toes. You can never be too careful about campus safety.”

  I know from experience that real lockdowns are different from drills, faster, more confusing. Still, I feel a tremor creeping back into my hands. I rub my palms together and try to unwind the tension.

  “I’ll text the chancellor. I can get us a time estimate on when the drill will end,” Rory says. She’s steady and buttoned-up, unphased by the term Code Emerald.

  “Wonderful,” Ms. Steiner whirrs. “If you girls will excuse me, I have to secure the library doors.”

  “You girls and Drew,” Blythe corrects Ms. Steiner. I’m not expecting this from her. After all, we only know each other from French: a language where even the lamps and tables fall into the gender binary. La lampe et le canapé. Hearing someone acknowledge me, even just a little, calms the tension in my hands and shoulders.

  Ms. Steiner screws up her face as if she doesn’t really understand Blythe’s comment. She turns to leave, but her phone shrieks another alert just as she pulls the door closed behind her. Before she shuts it entirely, she peeks her head in and says, “You might consider moving a piece of furniture or something heavy to block the door after you’ve locked it. Just a thought.” And with that, she leaves. The door closes and my tremors return, creeping from my fingertips up into my arms.

  Lockdowns mean danger. And even if a Code Emerald is just for practice, I know that there’s real danger out there. When Mom and I moved to Montgomery Avenue, back when I was really little, we kept hearing the pop-pop-pa out on the street every other night. The sound made my bones rattle. Mom sat me down to have a talk. “All guns are bad, Drew,” Mom told me. “Even unloaded guns. Even toy guns.” Still, I cried when Mom threw away my one and only Super Soaker. I won the thing fair and square in a raffle at my school’s spring carnival. But Mom wasn’t having it.

  Later, when I enrolled at Archwell, she said, “That campus is way out in the sticks. No one will be able to just waltz in off the street out there. No guns. It’ll be safer than Dundalk.” I heard her voice snag on the word safer. She shook her head just a little, as if she didn’t quite believe her own words. Then she stiffened up and spoke again, trying to convince herself of something. “You’ll be safer,” she repeated.

  The cold, jittery feeling that’s slithering through my body tells me that Mom was wrong.

  “How often does Code Emerald involve barricading the doors?” I ask the others.

  “Never,” Blythe says. “Rory, you said your mom left with security?”

  “Yes,” Rory says as she crosses over the blossomy carpet and bolts the door shut. “I’m sure it’s just a regular drill.”

  “Does she usually walk the grounds with Pendleton when it’s a drill?”

  “Yes . . . At least I think so,” Rory says stiffly. Her cheeks look more hollow than I first realized. She’s weary looking, almost skeletal. Death’s skull superimposes itself over Rory’s face and the cold feeling spreads to my gut.

  Blythe looks unconvinced and shifts her eyes onto the heaviest-looking armchair. “Can one of you help me with this?”

  Veró, still wordless, rises to help Blythe shove the thing across the carpet against the office door.

  “That’s unnecessary,” Rory mutters. But by the time she says it, the scarlet door is blocked.

  Veró breaks her silence. “Did your mom text you back yet, Rory? Is this a drill or what?”

  I try to ignore the fact that the room feels so much smaller now that we’re sealed into it. I sink into my seat, pretending I’m anywhere but here.

  Blythe returns to pacing, audibly breathing in and out. I am being consumed by the cushiony leather chair. The cold has gripped the bottoms of my feet.

  Rory looks at her phone again. “She hasn’t texted,” she answers Veró.

  “Rory.” Blythe pauses in front of her. “Could this have anything to do with . . .”

  “No.” Rory’s voice is a bracing wind. “It’s a drill,” she insists.

  “But what else could it be . . .” Blythe mutters, returning to her pacing.

  “The alarms just haven’t come on yet. I’m sure every girl on campus is safe.” Rory says that last sentence with a little lilt in her voice, like maybe there’s more to the story. Maybe she knows what I know: that we’re not really safe. We never are.

  My legacy membership to the Lilies Society was supposed to guarantee me safety at Archwell, but look how that turned out. I suppose I should’ve known better, should’ve known that I’d be on my own here.

  In the end, no one can really protect you.

  Death rudely hisses in my ear. Not every girl is safe. I put my hands on either side of my head, trying to push the memory of Charlotte out of my mind.

  You’re not safe. Not ever. Not as long as I know what you did.

  The room shrinks again. I close my eyes and Death is there to greet me once more.

  Then a new sound shakes the office.

  BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP . . . BLEEP-BLEEP-BLEEP . . .

  I am expecting the alarm, but it still paralyzes me. The sound is deafening. Louder than at Dundalk High. Louder than the roar of memory. Somehow louder than the alarm that blared through the campus during the lockdown drill last Friday.

  A robotic voice shouts underneath the sirens: Warning. Warning. Lockdown. Shelter in place. Secure doors. Warning. Warning.

  “Are you still sure this is a drill?” Veró asks Rory. “Or is there something else going on?”

  Rory is a stone wall. Blythe says nothing, but she looks like she’s about to cry.

  Death’s voice is an echo in my head: Not safe. Not ever.

  6

  Blythe

  You’re in this room.

  You’re in your body.

  You’re not dying.

  You’re safe . . . but actually.

  Warning! Warning!

  Shelter in place! Secure doors!

  Warning! Warning!

  The chancellor’s picture frames are trembling against the walls. The robo-voice on the intercom is too loud to block out. I feel the tide of panic swelling in my throat again.

  The curly-headed girl called Veró speaks. “Seriously, is this for real or what?”

  “I told you. It’s just a drill,” Rory insists, her voice a knot of thorns. “We had one just like it on Friday night, remember? The exact same sequence. Alarms on. Intercoms on. Shelter in place. This is all normal . . . And even if there were a real threat, this office is still the safest place on campus.”

  My pulse doubles. I glance at the red, barricaded door. The office doesn’t feel safe, at least not for me—not as long as Rory is holding the secret about Charlotte over my head. If I were to go missing, I would hope they’d send the campus into a lockdown and start a search. There’s a part of me that hopes that this is what they’re doing for Charlotte . . . even though it’s over forty-eight hours later. Maybe they are looking for her. Or maybe they are looking for the person responsible for what happened to her. Maybe someone called in a tip. The thought pushes hot tears against my eyelids.

  I have to get out of here. Away from Rory. Away from this room.

  Warning! Warning! Shelter in place!

  Panic washes me away, and I get lost in my memory.

  I’m thirteen again, holding Sean’s hand as we run through the crowded street. Riot cops are at the corner of Lafayette Park. We’re not supposed to be here. Mama and Daddy said we couldn’t stay at the protests past dark. But Salim wanted to stick around and Sean said okay. Now the air is filled with tear gas. I have to run faster, but it’s hard to keep up. My brother’s legs are longer than mine and my face mask is making it so I can’t breathe. I have to get out of here.

  Bing. Bing. B-bing. Every phone in the room wails an alert. Mine buzzes against my leg, dragging me into the present. I look at the screen. It’s an all-caps push notification.

  WARNING: ALL CAMPUS LOCKDOWN.

  My hand trembles as I swipe the notification away. I can feel my heart in my fingertip, beating against the phone’s gunmetal finish.

  “Shit. What’d I tell y’all?” Veró holds up her phone. I can see she has the same notification. We all do.

  “Does this usually happen?” Drew’s voice quavers. “I’ve never gotten a notification like this before.”

  “It’s just a system test,” Rory groans.

  “Then why didn’t we get a notification like this during the last drill?” Veró asks.

  “I . . . I don’t know . . .” For the first time, Rory seems scattered. Her fingers are frantic, tapping out texts to the chancellor.

  Veró picks up her bag and walks over to Drew, whose body has gone rigid in their chair. They have a funny expression on their face—half-frozen, half-scowling. She eyes them for a second. “You good?” she asks.

  Drew gulps and nods, snapping out of whatever trance they were in.

  I try to slow my breathing but my eyes are still burning. Then memory takes me again. I’m running through the DC streets, sweating in the summer swelter. Sean is too. Our hands are slippery. It’s hard to keep my grip on him as we run. I turn around. Salim was right behind me. Where is he now? We have to get out together. Sirens wail. I can’t think about this right now. I don’t want to think about this. Not ever.

  The voices in the chancellor’s office sound impossibly far away.

  “I don’t see anyone out on the quad. No one is outside at all.”

  “Get away from the window, Veró. You’re supposed to take cover during a lockdown.”

  “I . . . I really don’t know if that’s necessary . . . Once my mother texts back we’ll know if . . .”

  “Wait a second. Y’all saw the news this morning? That incel shooter on the national mall is still on the loose. What if this lockdown is related?”

  Oh god. Another thing to worry about. I try to ground myself, leaning into my senses. My eyes land on an image framed in silver on the chancellor’s desk—a photograph of Rory’s grandmother when she was a student at Archwell. I inhale through my nose, catching a whiff of peppermint and mildew. I listen for a sound underneath the blaring alarm, searching for something, anything, to focus on other than the noise.

  “You’re gonna be all right, baby,” I hear Grandma Rose whisper to me. “Just don’t pay those Archwell girls any mind.”

  “You’re in this room, Blythe,” I mutter to myself. “You’re in your body. You’re not dying.”

  “What was that?” Veró shouts at me over the alarm and the drone of the security system’s looped message.

  Warning! Warning!

  “We didn’t hear you, B.” Rory is at my elbow now. She can definitely tell I’m freaking out because she takes my hand. “Are you okay?”

  I nod.

  “I’m not playing with y’all anymore. This seems serious. Where can we hide?” Veró turns to Rory. “There’s gotta be a spot for us to go. A secret exit or something?”

  Rory shakes her head, her face ashen.

  “Damn, I thought Archwell was full of secret rooms and trap doors and shit your weird-ass family put here. You’re telling me we’ve got nowhere to take cover?”

  The alarm continues to blare.

  “What about in there?” Drew asks, nodding toward the extra-slim door behind the chancellor’s desk. Finished in polished walnut, it can’t be more than a foot and a half wide.

  “We can’t hide in there,” I say. “We won’t all fit.”

  But Veró is already at the door behind the chancellor’s desk, rattling the knob. “What’s back here?” she calls to Rory over the incessant beeping.

  “We shouldn’t go in there. It’s . . . it’s just a closet,” Rory says. “Maybe it’s better if we—”

  “Come on, Rory. I’m not doing this back and forth with you. Not right now,” Veró insists.

  My phone buzzes in my hand again. Another push notification.

  WARNING: CAMPUS INTRUDER. ASSUME LOCKDOWN PROCEDURES.

  “Shit,” Drew says.

  “I knew it,” Veró utters. “Come open this door, Rory!”

  “Seriously, trust me. You all don’t want to go in there.”

  Rory’s probably right. There’s no way we’re all going to be able to squeeze into such a tiny space. But it’s starting to feel like the only option.

  Warning! Warning!

  “Do you have a better idea, then?” Veró is almost shouting. “We have to do something!”

  Rory glowers but she gives in. Behind the desk, she yanks one of her mother’s drawers open and, hands shaking, takes out a ring of old-looking keys.

  Shelter in place! Secure doors!

  After fumbling through a few attempts, she finally unlocks the closet. “Happy?” she asks Veró as she holds the door open. Her face is a strange blend of fear and disgust.

  Veró and Drew disappear into its darkness.

  “Go ahead, Blythe,” Rory says.

  I have to turn my body sideways to successfully slide through the closet’s opening. It’s too dim to see inside. Rory stalks in behind me before she pulls the little door shut. Now we’re in total darkness.

  “I told myself I would not be forced back into the closet at this school.” I recognize Drew’s shaky voice in the dark. “Now look at me.”

  “Oh, so we’re joking now? Okay.” Veró’s voice is rounder, a bit stronger than Drew’s. “Can we get a light on in here, please?”

  “I’m trying,” Rory hisses. “There’s a cord around here somewhere. Ah.” Her tone softens. “There we go.”

  Click. I hear the delicate sound of the little metal chain igniting the bulb above. The glow is faint. The light buzzes. The sounds of the alarm and security message are muffled on the other side of the little door. My breathing slows as the inside of the closet comes into focus.

  It’s much bigger than I thought it would be, a little smaller than my freshman dorm room. But maybe that says more about the size of the dorm room than the size of the closet. The walls are lined with built-in shelves, just like the chancellor’s office, but here, the shelves are painted black. They’re supported by art deco–style arches, tiny women carved out of wood.

  “What’s with the costumes?” Veró asks, tugging on the velvet sleeve of one of the green robes hanging from a hook on the wall. I recognize the thing. It’s a Lilies robe. But Veró can’t know that. Every aspect of initiations, even the clothes, is supposed to be a secret. I glance around the shelves and notice they’re stacked with the stuff we’re not supposed to talk about. The rings, the candles, the blindfolds with the infinity symbols stitched on them. And then there’s the army of alarm clocks strewn around the shelves, something that has nothing to do with the Lilies as far as I know. Maybe the chancellor is a collector? That might explain why there’s a towering grandfather clock tucked in between the robes and gowns near the back of the closet.

  Before Rory or I can think of a lie to tell Veró about the velvet robe, my phone goes off once again. Yet another push notification:

  WARNING: INTRUDER PRESENT. ALL-CAMPUS LOCKDOWN.

  “Rory, look,” I breathe, holding the phone up. “Wouldn’t it say drill if it were actually a drill? It wouldn’t say anything about an intruder.”

  I can see it in her scrunched-up face, the pale white of her skin turning pink. Rory is starting to panic. The others might not notice it, but I can hear it in her voice. I see it in her body. Something isn’t right and she knows it. We all do.

  “Ugh, this is so stupid,” Rory says. “You all can do what you want. I’m going to find my mom and get the details.”

  “Don’t go out there,” Drew says. “It really doesn’t seem like a drill. What if there really is a shooter?”

  “They can’t all be drills,” Veró agrees.

  Bong . . . Bong . . . Bong . . . Bong . . .

  The sound of the grandfather clock ricochets around the closet like a bullet. We all jump.

  “Damn,” Veró says. “Why would someone keep something so loud in such a tiny space?” She eyes the antique’s dusty mahogany paneling and brass pendulum like they’re somehow responsible for the possibly-real-or-possibly-not lockdown.