The Initiation by Ridley Pearson

Author:Ridley Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

A MOST UNEXPECTED MOMENT

I MADE THE INVITATION A PUZZLE BOTH FOR secrecy’s sake and because I knew Lock appreciated such things. I waited inside the girls’ dining hall washroom, the door open just wide enough to peek through. Both washrooms, a custodial closet, a computer lab, and a number of school offices occupied the dining hall’s lower level. Most of the building was left dark at night as part of the school’s green program.

Two long days had passed since Sherlock had been summoned to the headmaster’s house. They had been uncomfortable days with little communication between us. Homework was getting much harder. Our first field hockey game was coming up on Saturday.

Being confined to a dark, stinky bathroom gave me time to worry more about the lack of correspondence from Father. Each day I opened my school mailbox I caught myself holding my breath. I didn’t want to ever have to follow the instructions he’d left me—the key in the ashes, his desk drawer. Send me another postcard! Anything!

Sherlock arrived to the bottom of the darkened stairs as a specter. The hallway floor of gray vinyl tiles and the dreary gray-green walls reminded me of French class from my former middle school.

Sherlock seemed to float, rather than walk, toward the computer lab. He produced what I took to be the same rabbit-footed master key I’d seen him with outside the observatory.

“You may come out now, Moria,” he said softly.

I had not signed the invitation, nor had I so much as breathed a breath upon his arrival. “But do be a love and bring me a damp face towel with you.”

I was so annoyed, so humiliated I’d been discovered, that I considered not responding at all. I could wait it out if need be. Anything but admit defeat to Mr. Pompous.

“Come on,” he said, “it was a good effort.”

I wetted a paper towel and brought it to him. I didn’t bother asking how he knew where I was; I didn’t want to give him that satisfaction of acknowledging his superiority.

“Over here,” he said, leading me to the bottom of the stairs. “Holding the rail, take two steps down and then onto the floor.”

I did as he asked, again without questioning him. I was determined not to feed that runaway ego of his. He placed the wet hand towel onto the vinyl floor where my foot landed, inspected his work, and led me to the computer lab. We entered and kept the lights off, presumably because of the classroom’s glass door. The far wall was also glass, creating a room of metal racks filled with the blinking colorful lights of computer servers and storage drives.

Lock caught me staring. “They wall it off, in part because they keep the room uncomfortably cool for the betterment of the computer equipment.”

“I see,” I said.

“You’re angry because I sussed you out. Don’t be. It was a clever puzzle and a decent enough hiding place. It happens I know your handwriting, so sourcing the note was easy enough.

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