Another Pan (33 page)

Tina sat on the bed in her RA dorm room, trying not to slap the poor, rich white girl that had been yammering on about her stupid problems for the past half hour (what kind of loon names their daughter Yale, anyway?).
Oh, my thighs are fat, my face is too square, there’s a lump in my breast, my boyfriend is not really my boyfriend, Chelsea bought the exact same skirt as me. Can you feel this lump?

Tina pretended to listen as she stared out of her window and watched the perfectly trimmed front lawn of Marlowe, with its resident squirrels that looked just a little plumper than the squirrels in Central Park, its trees that looked a little more lush, its Gothic buildings trimmed with spires and gargoyles and family crests carved into brick. Even after the underworld infestation had turned the school into a pit of despair, it still looked nicer than any place Tina had ever lived.
Please, please, someone show me the rule that says you can’t stab your advisees. ’Cause I don’t think it’s actually written anywhere. Right? Right?

Tina had never seen such needy teenagers in her whole life — and she had lived among
real
orphans,
real
runaways, kids with
actual
problems. The girls in her hall were at her door every chance they got, with every made-up reason and crazy need imaginable, and Tina was starting to suspect that they just wanted attention.
What kind of wack-jobs do they have for parents?
Tina wondered, putting out another plate of boxed donuts. Apparently, the superrich haven’t heard of Entenmann’s, and, what do you know, they can pack it away just like everyone else.

“OK,
chica
.” Tina took a deep breath. “I got about thirty seconds of patience, so I’ll make it fast. You don’t have breast cancer, you’re dangerously underweight, and all the purging is making your breath stink. If you wanna be loved, stop talking and get a dog.” Yale started to whimper.
Oh, geez
. “Kidding, kidding!” Tina patted Yale on the head like a puppy. She hoped the girl didn’t expect a hug. “Stop crying.”

“I can’t”— sniff —“because I have”— sniff, sniff —“a boyfriend . . . but”— sniff —“he’s not . . . really my boyfriend.”

Tina sighed. “You know what, Yale? I get it.”

Yale stopped crying.

“Yeah, I get it,” said Tina. “I have a guy just like that.”

“You?”
Yale said, because not even Tina could deny Tina’s hotness.

“Yeah, girl,” said Tina. “It happens. I’ve been with this guy — let’s call him Mr. Dirtbag . . . for years.
Years
. And now he’s running around, feeling up this new chick every chance he gets, making lame excuses, and I’m still sitting here, waiting for him to gimme the time of day. How’s that for fair?”

Yale sniffed and took another donut. “You mean Peter?”

“No, I do
not
mean Peter,” Tina snapped. She started roughly pulling a loose thread off her Marlowe bedspread.

“’Cause he’s kind of cute,” said Yale. She started digging for her diet pills in her Lady Dior handbag.

“All right . . . time for you to go,” said Tina. She wondered why she wasted her time with Peter. Why she did everything he asked. Why she stood by and watched him slowly seduce that private school brat away from her boyfriend. And Wendy . . . she was worse than Peter. Just another rich girl who can never be satisfied. Tina had seen how close Peter and Wendy had become in the past few days, and especially since getting that third bone. She hated Wendy for being the one to help him find it — for replacing Tina as Peter’s useful right hand. Tina had seen Peter and Wendy together in the halls, in empty classrooms, when they thought no one was looking. . . . Wasn’t one guy enough for her? Didn’t she know how hard it is out there just to get one man who’ll stick around, one decent guy who’ll take care of you? This Connor character wasn’t as bad as the other boys around here. Tina saw how he befriended Wendy’s nerdy brother and how he stood up to the LBs for their game-fixing scam. Couldn’t Wendy be happy with one good, honest man in her life?
Why does she have to come after mine?

Ever since the last time Peter, Wendy, and John had gone into the labyrinth, the changes to Marlowe had become impossible to ignore. Strangely enough, the students and faculty managed to do just that. Sure, there were cleanup crews dispatched, air purifiers installed, plumbing inspected, pest control called, and hallways fumigated. But in the end, no one acknowledged that this was all
one
thing — a single thread of changes that were very much related to one another. No one thought that the sadness they felt when they entered the grounds — now just a little grayer, drearier — had anything to do with the school itself.

This morning, Wendy had walked in on four faculty members marveling at a classroom that was filled —
filled —
with moths and flies. They were everywhere, inhabiting every nook, covering every surface, leaving no air for breathing and no ground for walking. No teacher could explain it. They all just stood back and watched. The assistant principal shook her head and said, “It’s an old, historic school. There are quirks with ancient buildings like this. Comes with the territory.” And weirder still, the new school nurse stepped right into the middle of it, as if she didn’t mind, and let the moths cover her for a second before stepping back and agreeing with the assistant principal. And so they had left it, the entire buzzing, fluttering mess. Wendy stayed a bit longer to watch, because this was not the kind of insect swarm you see every day. Peter had said that the moths were spies. . . . The darkness from below was watching them.

Peter and Wendy walked through the halls, trying to figure out what to do about Simon, while John followed behind with one of the LBs, a geeky-looking one that was probably the Marlowe-branch webmaster, trying to convince the guy to add him to the text-message group list, and occasionally chiming in on Peter and Wendy’s conversation.

“We’re so close,” said Peter. “If we just figure out the last two, then who cares about getting in trouble or losing my job?”

“Uh,” said John, “you might not care, but we still have a couple of more years here.”

“Simon won’t tell,” said Wendy. “He’ll work his butt off to get the other bonedust first, but he won’t tell. If Dad finds out about any of this, Simon’ll lose all leverage.”

Peter was lost in thought. He didn’t seem to be listening, which made Wendy mad and anxious. She wasn’t used to these erratic feelings. She was usually very levelheaded. She wished things with Peter could be clearer and that she wouldn’t have to keep going back and forth between elation and rage.

“Enough of this crap,” Peter finally said. “Time to go after the Nubian.”

John perked up. “What Nubian?” he asked excitedly.

“The fourth legend,” said Peter.

“I say it’s a desert,” said the LB, never taking his eyes off his phone.

John’s eyes were shining, and his mind was already working full time. “Nubian, huh?” he said, though neither he nor Wendy knew the fourth legend. “Then I bet it’s someplace with horses. Nubians were known for horse skills. . . .”

“Nah,” the LB said. “What about a battlefield? They were warriors.”

John jumped in, clearly feeling competitive with this fellow nerd who had the privilege of being an LB, while he was still a nobody. “An army barracks!” John countered.

“I’ve tried all those,” said Peter. “Hey, you,” he said to the LB, not bothering even with a nickname. “Get me a smoothie.”

The boy rushed off to the dining hall. “How did
he
get to be an LB?” John asked.

“He’s on my hall,” said Peter with a laugh. “Plus, he can hack into anything. I don’t know how I ever lived without one of
him
. . . oh, and he does whatever I say.” Peter handed John a five and said, “Forgot to ask for a bag of chips.”

Wendy could see John seething and considering at the same time. Poor kid. He really wanted to be an LB, but he obviously hated doing anything for Peter. He finally settled on taking the money and showing his contempt by huffing and stomping after the webmaster to the dining hall.

When Peter reached for Wendy’s hand, she felt her stomach tighten. She knew Peter was a good person, but sometimes his selfishness made her worry. She remembered when they were outside the school before Simon’s lecture on Harere, when Peter had almost admitted to letting someone die. She shook the thought from her head. For the first time ever, walking through her own school frightened her. Every two minutes, she felt chills, as if someone was running cold fingers up and down her back. More than anything, she sensed a lingering evil here.

“Don’t be scared,” Peter said when Wendy shuddered.

“I’m not,” said Wendy a little too quickly.

A tiny smile curled Peter’s lips, and he interlaced his fingers with hers. Out of nowhere he said, “Wendy, what if there were enough for two?”

“Huh?” she said, and then wished she had said something more graceful.

He leaned close to her and whispered, as if he thought someone else were listening, “If there were enough for two, I’d share it with you. I’d let you have half the bonedust, and then neither one of us would ever grow old.”

Wendy’s heart started to beat faster. What he was inviting her to do was huge. It wasn’t just a gift, a little present you give to any random girl. He was offering her an eternity. He might go away, run to the far reaches of the world, meet a hundred different girls, live a dozen different lives, but in seventy or eighty years,
she
’d be his oldest friend. She stopped walking. Despite the thumping of her heart, she wasn’t sure what she would do if given this chance. Living forever wasn’t necessarily a blessing to Wendy. She looked forward to growing up, even to growing old.

Suddenly Connor appeared at the other end of the corridor. Wendy was so taken off guard that she didn’t realize she was still holding Peter’s hand. But Peter didn’t let go.

“I can’t believe you,” Connor said, his voice more high-pitched than usual, his eyes darting. “What’s
this
?”

Wendy was dumbstruck. She couldn’t tell if Connor’s anger was genuine or caused by the school. He stared at Peter, his eyes angry and sad. “Aren’t you the RA?”

“No, Connor . . .” Wendy began.

“No, what?” he said. “No, you’re
not
one half of a statutory?”

Wendy wasn’t sure who moved first, but in the next second, three things happened almost at once: Peter dropped Wendy’s hand. Connor lunged toward Peter and shoved him against a locker. John reappeared with the webmaster and, seeing Peter in the middle of a beat-down, made his own contribution by drinking Peter’s smoothie.

Wendy tried to pull Connor off, but she just got shoved out of the way. Peter didn’t need help anyway. He kneed Connor in the stomach, then pulled back and punched him in the jaw, just as Professor Darling and two other teachers came running down the hall in time to witness the massive violation of the resident adviser code.

Peter was fired on the spot.

Wendy was dumped faster than she could say “Nothing happened.” Connor just said, “We’re through,” and walked away.

Professor Darling glared at his children, shooting them looks that said
Did I not tell you he was trouble?

John just stood there, sipping a smoothie, watching Connor walk off as if nothing had happened, probably wondering if he was still invited to lift weights tomorrow after school.

Simon sat at his desk and, for the hundredth time since losing the Garosh bone, thought about how he could get the book away from the Darling kids without giving away what he knew. He could not let that kook Darling get credit for such a discovery (which Simon had known
all along
to be real). “I am going to win the freakin’ Nobel Prize. Forget it, they’re going to rename it and give Mr. Nobel the Grin Prize.”

Once he had discovered that the legends were real, Simon had gone on a research rampage. He had perused all of Darling’s published works and even thumbed through several of Darling’s source materials — works that until now Simon had dismissed as garbage. He had camped out at the Egyptology Library with a sleeping bag and a thermos of coffee, bribing the guard not to kick him out at closing time. He read and reread all the seminal works on the
Book of Gates,
and even some of the obsolete ones, until finally he had found something. It was no more than a footnote in a dusty old volume from a hundred years ago. A book that had been tucked away in the last row of the back shelf, unread for decades. The footnote alluded to an old story about a portal and referred the reader to yet another volume, which Simon had to crawl through the cobwebbed stacks to find. But finally, he had it. He translated it and committed it to memory. The words were vague, but enough.