Still, life had this nasty habit of going on. Will took a quick breath and jumped for the ladder. His hands struck the cold metal bar. His full bodyweight pulled against the grip of his fingers. His right foot slipped off its rung but the left landed solid. Will climbed quickly. He wanted this over with. When he pulled himself into the air duct in the wall, he was hyperventilating. His fear sickened him. He couldn’t even climb a ladder without falling apart.
For all the complaining he’d done last year, the amount of times he’d told David that he didn’t need him, that he’d be fine without him, what a crock of shit. He had needed David there, every minute, and he still did. Will needed someone to look out for him all the time, in case he seized. He’d always denied it, and wanted to disprove it, but now he knew it was a fact. And he’d either lost or driven away all the people who might even consider looking out for him.
Will stepped into the hall. He tightened the straps of his backpack, and ran.
If Smudge had been around, maybe Will would have had an easier time with living on the fringe, but there was no sense in wishing for things that couldn’t come true. Smudge was rotting under a pile of rubble in the East Wing ruins.
Will had heard about a trader that had filled the void left behind by Smudge, someone who would buy your stolen goods. The rumor was that he could be found somewhere on the third floor for an hour after midnight. Will had spent most of that hour trudging the halls in search of this mysterious, maybe mythical, character.
“This is stupid,” Will mumbled to himself.
He dragged his hand along the wall, coating his fingertips with char. The lights coming back on had revealed the scars left behind by weeks of hopelessness. A lot of walls were black and gray from torch soot, and some walls had been torn open and gutted by people looking for wood to burn for campfires. The entire school was starting to look like the ruins.
The hall Will was in ended with a circular space that people called the Lighthouse. It had been built to be a student reading nook, and it supposedly had a panoramic view of Pale Ridge and the mountains. Now, it was just a steeled-in cul-de-sac. He was about to bail when he saw a long, thin shadow stretching out in the flickering fluorescent light ahead. Then, it vanished.
Will approached cautiously, moving his hand to the toothbrush shiv tucked in his belt. As he got closer to the end of the hall, Will could see somebody leaning against one of the steeled-up windows. The guy had shoulder-length, black hair and a ripped-up, vintage, heavy metal T-shirt. He looked like a Skater. That would have been just Will’s luck, trading with some dude he’d probably punched before.
The Skater kid locked eyes with Will and pushed away from the window.
“’S up,” the kid said with a nod.
Will kept his distance. “Are you Heath?” he asked.
“Totes ma’gotes.”
“I’m looking for food,” Will said.
“Let’s see what you got.”
Will was about to unshoulder his backpack, but he paused when he noticed that Heath didn’t have a bag or any goods around him.
“Where’s your stuff?” Will said.
Heath shook his head. “Number one rule of doing sketchy shit, never keep your stash on-site. I’ll see what you got, then we’ll talk for real.”
That seemed reasonable enough, and Will wasn’t in a position to argue anyway. He unzipped his backpack and held it open for Heath to inspect.
“What am I looking at?” Heath said.
“Three pieces of mirror and some paper toilet seat covers, fifty count.”
“You got a sock in there too.”
Will glanced in the bag. Sure enough, there was a lone sock in there. He’d never seen it before and had no idea where it came from.
“What’s the story on the toilet seat covers? Used, unused? What’s the deal?”
“Unused.”
“Interesting.”
Heath pursed his lips while he considered the goods. This guy hadn’t acknowledged that he knew Will, but how could he not? Will didn’t want to lose out on this deal, he couldn’t.
“I like that shirt …,” Will said.
Heath looked down at his black-and-red logo’d T-shirt.
“Yeah? You like Fastway?”
“Sure,” Will said. Who knew, maybe if he’d ever heard one of their songs, he actually would like them.
“Rad,” Heath said. “What’s your top track?”
“All of ’em, dude. I mean, come on,” Will said. Heath smiled. He seemed to like that. Will moved on fast. “So, you’re a Skater, right?”
“Yeah, I roll with P-Nut, but a guy needs a little money in the bank these days. Not like it used to be. Nothing’s set in stonehenge y’know. Who knows what will happen next week?”
“Sure, right,” Will said, nodding along.
“You know better than anyone. One day your gang could be on top, the next it could be Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”
“Yeah,” Will said. What else could he say? It was true.
“I mean … no disrespect,” Heath said.
Will gave him a shrug that must have looked pathetic.
“So, anyway … I’m gonna pass.”
Will stared at Heath. “Wait … What do you mean ‘pass’?”
“Pass,” Heath said and stepped away from Will’s backpack, “like not interested. Like no dice. I just can’t unload this stuff.”
“Yeah, but … come on, man. I gotta eat. The guy I dealt with before, he—he woulda given me five cans, at least, for just those seat covers.”
“So, take ’em to him.”
“He’s dead.”
“Sucks,” Heath said. “But like I said, it’s just the way things are now. Even though the drops started up, people are still saving for a rainy day, know what I mean? They don’t want mirrors. They want food. They want batteries. And if they gotta sit on a toilet, they suck it up and hover. ’Cause who knows, man, those parents could split tomorrow. Then what?”
Will had stopped listening. “Is this because of that battle in the commons? Did I break your board too? Because if that’s what—”
“No, man, I’m professional here,” Heath said, offended. “Uncool.”
“I’m sorry …,” Will said, his voice choked with worry. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know what I’m gonna do.”
The Skater gave him a sympathetic look, the kind that usually made Will cringe, but at the moment, he’d take it.
“Tell you what,” Heath said. “It’s too bad you don’t have the other sock, but … I’ll give you a can of green beans for those shoes.”
Will looked down at his Converse. He was so damn hungry.
“It’ll save you a trip to the market,” Heath said.
He wasn’t that low yet. He refused to believe it.
“No,” Will said. “Forget it.”
He zipped his backpack, turned, and walked away. The night wasn’t over yet.
“Hey, if you every wanna just hang and crank tunes, lemme know!” Heath called out after him.
Will didn’t answer.
“All right,” Heath said, unaffected. “Later, man,”
Will searched for hours without finding anything of value, but when he did find something, it was a doozy. He was scouring the lover’s chapel at the time. The chapel was a second-floor classroom that looked out to the quad where two McKinley students, a Geek and a Freak, had once gotten married. Girls liked to talk about them, because they’d never broken up, and they’d both graduated on the same day. A lot of couples would come to this room on dates and carve their initials into the wall, and hope some of the married couple’s luck would rub off on them. The walls were covered in initials, written in pen, or carved in with a knife. The entire surface of the blackboard was scratched-in names inside scratched-in hearts.
He’d been searching the room for ten minutes before he found a plastic squeeze bottle of honey hidden above one of the dormant ceiling light panels. Most of the things Will had been finding on his night trips were things people were hiding from their own gangs. When someone snatched up something really nice, like sixteen ounces of honey, they’d pocket it, not tell their gang, and then keep it somewhere away from home.
Whoever’s honey it was, Will was thankful for their greed. He brushed shards of glass off the windowsill, and sat by one of the shattered windows that overlooked the quad. Will squeezed honey into his mouth, piling it high on his tongue.
He heard a voice through the open window.
“It’s me, Sam.”
Will swallowed the pile of honey, and nearly inhaled it. He looked down to the quad and saw Sam standing underneath the window, about fifteen feet from the wall. His first thought was that Sam was talking to him, but that made no sense. Sam was looking higher than Will’s window.
As Will watched Sam, his emotional wounds from three weeks ago reopened. Will wanted to hurt Sam. To make him cry. He wanted to humiliate Sam in front of everyone, and break him so completely that he would never believe in himself again. Will wanted Sam to feel everything that he felt.
“I kept looking at that amp that’s up there,” Sam continued on from outside. Sam’s head was craned back, and he was staring to about the height of the roof. Will was careful to keep out of the moonlight.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, then I realized I knew it. The stickers that are on it. The colors, the way they’re placed. It’s yours. I mean, it is you, isn’t it?”
Will wanted to drop a desk on Sam, but not before he understood what was happening. The only amp Will knew of belonged to the man in the motorcycle helmet.
“Just give me a sign,” Sam called up. “I know I’m making a scene, I shouldn’t be doing this. Just one sign and I’ll go. I just need to know I’m not crazy. Please,” he said, his voice drenched in a level of emotion Will never knew Sam was capable of.