Live and Let Shop (10 page)

Luckily for me, Mrs. Clausen had become quite fond of me in my month in the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult to convince her that I wasn’t feeling well and might be contagious and shouldn’t be handling food in case I started an epidemic in the school. She shooed me off to my room pretty fast.

Instead I headed straight for Mr. Kim’s office. I hoped the others didn’t have trouble getting there without being seen.

When I got there, they were waiting. Alex had gotten
one of his buddies to “manufacture” a paperwork problem at the school’s loading dock, so Mrs. Marquardt had gone down to straighten it out. It would keep her out of our way for at least a little while.

I led them over to the bookcase in Mr. Kim’s office and moved the little picture frame forward on its spring. Just like before, the bookcase hissed and then swung out away from the wall. They were speechless.

“Hurry up, because it closes in a few seconds,” I said, starting down the stairway. They followed right behind me, too stunned to say anything.

It was another long walk down, but this time I was buoyed by the fact that I had these three with me. Now they would have to come around to my way of thinking. I love it when I’m right. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, I paused for dramatic effect, then swung the door open.

“Feast your eyes on this,” I said.

They stopped a few steps inside the doorway, like I had the night before. It was a lot to take in. There were a few mumbled “wows” and a couple of “I don’t believe it”s and then just silence.

I led them over to the computer consoles and
showed them the e-mail and all the stuff about Mithras that I’d found on the Internet. They didn’t know what to say.

“Look, Rachel,” Alex finally said, “I guess I owe you an apology. You were right. Something is up. What in the world is this place?” Brent and Pilar nodded along with him.

“It’s okay,” I said. “What we have to decide is what we’re going to do about Mr. Kim.”

“Right,” said Brent, “any ideas?”

“Well, how far are you all willing to go with this?”

They all glanced at one another. Then Pilar spoke up: “As far as we need to.”

“Okay, then. There is something else that bugs me about this whole thing, and that is the Top Floor. Why did Mr. Kim take those agents up there and what is that whole wing of the school for? Everybody has heard of the Top Floor, but nobody knows anything about it. I think we need to check it out.”

“We’re not allowed in that wing,” Brent said. “We could get kicked out of school.”

“We could get kicked out right now for being here. But until we know the whole story, we can’t decide what
to do,” I said. “We need to know what they were looking at up there.”

“But how do we get in? It’s always locked,” Alex said. “Someone must have a key. Maybe Mrs. Marquardt. We can search her office. Or maybe we can hang out in the hallway until somebody comes out the door and try to sneak in.”

“That could take hours,” said Pilar. I nodded.

Brent had moved away from us and was looking at the different weapons and other gadgets that were on the wall. He ran his hands over some of the equipment and picked up a small gunlike thing that had a piece of wire coming out of it.

“I can get us in,” he said.

“What? How?” I said.

“This is called a zip gun. It’s what cops use to get through locked doors when they don’t want to make a lot of noise. You stick this key part in the lock and wires spring out to find the correct tumblers in the locking mechanism. It’s silent and works in about three seconds.”

“And you know this how?” I was impressed and a little bit stunned as well, because that was the longest speech I’d ever heard him give.

“I just know, that’s all. I’ve seen them used before.”

“Where? Are you sure?” I said.

“In a past life. And yes, it will work,” he said. Men. You really have to drag information out of them. But the look on Brent’s face said
don’t ask me any more questions.

“Why don’t we try it and see? We don’t have anything to lose,” Pilar said.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s meet in the rec room after Tae Kwon Do tonight. We’re less likely to be caught, and hopefully there won’t be anybody up there.”

And that was how we planned our unauthorized entry into the Top Floor wing.

After Tae Kwon Do, almost nobody ever came out of their rooms at night. The average day at Blackthorn was pretty rigorous, and with studying and all you didn’t have a lot of energy left for wandering around. We’d need to be careful, but there was a good chance no one would see us. The four of us cautiously made our way to the back of the school, stopping at each intersection to make sure there was no one around. In a few minutes we were in front of the door that led to Top Floor.

Brent’s little unlocking gizmo worked just like he
said it would. He stuck the wire probe into the lock and pulled the trigger, and the door opened in about three seconds. We were in.

Inside the door a stairway led up to the top floor of the school. At the top, Alex volunteered to go in and make sure no one was there. He slowly pushed open the door and then slipped through. The door clicked shut. It was nerve-racking. If anyone came in the door below us, we were toast. Brent went back down the stairs to keep watch while we waited for Alex to come back.

Little beads of sweat started to form on my forehead. When Alex popped back through the door, I jumped because I was so nervous.

“There’s no one here. You aren’t going to believe this,” he said.

None of us were really prepared for what we found through the door.

The entire floor looked like a set for a movie or the backstage of some Hollywood studio lot. Most of the interior walls were missing, and the ceiling was very high. You felt like you were standing in a giant warehouse. Off to our right was a set of rooms that looked like the inside of a house. There was a kitchen, a dining
room, and a living room, all completely furnished with couches and chairs and pillows and stuff. Farther down on the right, we came to another area where a bank lobby had been set up. It had a row of teller windows, a safe in the back, desks, and chairs around it that made it look like a real bank.

“What the heck is this place?” Pilar said.

“I have no idea,” I said. “It looks like a movie set. Do you think maybe the school uses this space to film TV shows or something?”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Alex said. “If that were the case, why would it be such a big secret? Why would everybody keep so quiet about it?”

None of us had an answer for that. We found all kinds of similar sets. There was a complete interior of a Starbucks, a 7-Eleven store, and a Gap. It was so real I almost wanted to try on some of the jeans.

Then, over in the far corner of the wing, we spotted what we were looking for: an exact duplicate of the room we’d seen at the gallery on our field trip. There were replicas of the ornate paintings on the wall and all of the display cases with the exhibits, just like I remembered it. In the middle of the room was an exact copy of the
pedestal display that had held the
Book of Seraphim
.

“What in the world?” Pilar said.

“This must be why Mr. Kim brought the agents up here. Maybe they wanted to figure out how the book was stolen or something?” I said. My brain was starting to hurt.

“It must be something like that,” Alex said. “Mr. Quinn does consulting with the FBI, right? Maybe Mr. Kim consults with them too. Maybe this is some kind of special lab where they try to figure stuff out.”

It sounded too weird. There had to be more to it. But that was about the only theory that any of us could come up with. We spent another forty-five minutes combing the entire floor, and pretty soon we were back at the entrance.

“So what do we do now?” Alex said.

“I don’t think there is anything we can do, except wait for Mr. Kim to show up,” Brent said.

“I
hate
waiting,” I said.

None of us had noticed that Pilar was standing off to the side. She had been pretty quiet since we got up here. Now she was staring hard at the floor.

“We can’t wait,” she said suddenly. “We need to find Mr. Kim.”

“What do you mean? Why?” I asked.

“He’s walking into a trap. He’s out looking for something and he hasn’t found it yet, but when he does, it’ll be a trap. There is something dark out there that wants him, and it’s pulling him in. He knows about the darkness, but he’s going anyway, to try to stop it. But it’s a trap.” Pilar bent over and put her hands on her hips like she was having trouble breathing. Alex went to her and touched her shoulder.

“What the heck are you talking about?” Alex said. “What kind of crazy talk is that?”

“I’m not crazy, Alex,” she said. “Sometimes I have a sense about things. I’ve always been that way, ever since I was little. I can’t explain it. Things come to me—ideas, memories, dreams, whatever you want to call them. And this image of Mr. Kim in trouble just came to me.”

When she said “dreams,” my head snapped up. I remembered my dream the first night in the woods. And then I remembered the word “MITHRAS” on the piece of paper on Mr. Kim’s desk. Then that little pulling thread of memory clicked into place. I knew where I had heard that word before. For weeks Pilar had been saying “Mithras” over and over in her sleep! I had thought it
was gibberish, but now I realized what she had been saying.

“Pilar, come on. Are you saying you’re psychic or something? That’s just out there,” Alex said.

“What is it with you?” I snapped. “Not comfortable with anything that you can’t pick up and break in half? I would believe Pilar is psychic. For your information, I’ve heard her say ‘Mithras’ in her sleep several times!”

“You have?” Pilar gave me a shocked expression.

“Now you’re both crazy,” Alex said. He looked at Brent like he needed moral support, but Brent just shrugged.

“I’m not crazy!” Pilar yelled. “Don’t ever say that!”

“You are such a jerk, Alex,” I said.

“You’re the one running around sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong and stirring up trouble. And
I’m
the jerk?”

“At least your hearing is good,” I said. “Ignore him, Pilar. Do you get these feelings all the time?”

“No. Not all the time. It happens especially with some people. Like you, for example. When you got here, you seemed familiar, and sometimes I feel like I know what you’re thinking. Not specific stuff, like you’re going to wear a red shirt today, just general things. Like I knew
you were going to try to leave school that first night.” She shrugged.

“You said dreams too. What kind of dreams?” I asked.

“Different kinds. Often I’ll see people in a strange place doing something that I don’t understand. Last night, I had this really weird dream about Mr. Kim. Only, he was a matador and he was in this large stadium that was very dark and scary, and then a bull charged out of the dark—” I didn’t let her finish.

“A bull?”

“Yes, that’s what I remember. Why?”

“The symbol of the god Mithras is a bull. A bull that can take human form. And then you have this vision of Mr. Kim as a bullfighter? That’s like way too much of a coincidence.”

Pilar rubbed her forehead like it hurt. She got a very worried expression on her face.

“That’s not the only weird thing,” I continued. “I had a dream my first night here, when I fell asleep in the woods. I’m not usually a dreamer. I never remember my dreams, but this time I did. I was being chased by this guy, only sometimes when I looked back it wasn’t a guy anymore. He’d turned into a bull.”

Pilar looked stricken. “Were you running down a corridor?”

“How did you know?” I felt all the blood in my body drain straight to my toes.

“Because ever since you got here, I’ve had that exact same dream every night,” she said. “I’ve dreamed about you being chased down a hallway by some weird bull creature.”

Alex decided he’d had enough.

“Oh, come on,” he snapped. “I don’t believe in any of this psychic stuff. There’s got to be a logical explanation. It’s probably just a coincidence, and an irrelevant one at that. We should forget all of this.”

“We can’t forget about it, you big creep,” I said. “Whether you want to believe it or not, it’s all true. Neither Pilar nor I are making this up. How would either of us know about Mithras and the bull? I didn’t know anything about it until I looked it up on the Internet. Mithras is an ancient god in bull form, Pilar has been saying his name in her sleep, and it’s all connected to Mr. Kim somehow. So why don’t you cram your attitude and try to be a little more sensitive to your friends’ feelings,” I said, pointing at Pilar. Alex looked as if he’d really have
liked to shove me out a window if one were handy.

Nobody said anything for a minute. I was thinking about Pilar. I had had a sense that there was something unique about her—the way she sometimes said things like she knew what I was thinking. I don’t know if I believed in that psychic stuff or not, but who knows? It would explain a lot about her and the way she acted toward me. I actually started to feel a little sorry for her.

Finally it was Brent, the quiet one, who broke the silence.

“We’re not going to solve anything fighting with each other. We need to get out of here and think about what we’re going to do,” he said. He was quiet, but he was often sensible and right.

“Well, I don’t care what Rachel says,” Alex said. “We are way out of our league here, and it’s all her fault. We should go back to our rooms and forget about this whole thing.”

“Alex, come on…take it easy,” Brent started to say.

I was so angry I wanted to scream. I turned around, slammed through the door, and stormed down the stairs. At the bottom I stopped to make sure there was no one outside. I didn’t want my anger at Alex to make me do
something stupid. I cracked open the door. No one was there. I headed down the hallway, turned the corner, and ran right into Mr. Quinn. Of all the stupid luck.

He gave me a puzzled look.

“Rachel? What are you doing here?” he said.

“Oh…Mr. Quinn, hi! How are you?” I said.

“I’m fine,” he said. “What were you doing in that hallway?”

“The hallway? Oh. The hallway. Yes. Well. I was looking for something,” I said.

“What were you looking for?” he asked.

Mr. Quinn was still out of sight of the Top Floor door. Which was a good thing, because at that moment the door opened and Pilar, Alex, and Brent stepped out. I ran my hand through my hair and raised my voice.

“What was I looking for, Mr. Quinn? Oh…an earring. I think I lost an earring after gym this morning, and I wondered if it might have rolled down the hall here.” Pilar, Alex, and Brent all froze, with stricken looks on their faces. I tried to motion them back in the door, but it had shut and locked, and Mr. Quinn might hear it if Brent used his little gadget again. They were trapped in the hallway. And I’d bet Mr. Quinn was headed to Top Floor.

“Did you find it?” he asked.

“What? Oh, no, I didn’t. I was going to start searching the hallway back toward the
do jang
. Listen, I hate to ask, but would you mind helping me look? My grandmother bought me these earrings, and I really would like to find it.”

“Uh…I’m kind of busy, but…but, okay, sure, I’ll help you look,” he said. I led him down the hallway, away from where Brent, Alex, and Pilar waited.

“What does the earring look like?” he asked. I was so nervous I could hardly breathe.

“What ear…oh…it’s a black onyx, round and set in silver.” Mr. Quinn was studying his side of the hallway very intently. We were a few feet down the hall now, and I quickly glanced back at the Top Floor hallway. The three of them peered around the corner. Brent made a motion with the zip gun and pointed down, indicating they were heading back to the cave. They quietly crept down the hall in the opposite direction, and in a few seconds they had turned another corner and disappeared. Whew. That was too close.

“I’m afraid I don’t see it, Rachel,” Mr. Quinn said.

“See what?” I asked.

“Your earring,” he said. Darn it! I was so nervous I couldn’t keep anything straight. I wasn’t cut out for this. I’m a teenager and thus prone to being spacey at the absolute worst time.

“Oh. Yes. Well, you know what? I think now maybe I still had it when I got to my room. I’m going to go back there and look. Thanks for your help.” I started down the hall.

“Rachel, wait,” Mr. Quinn said.

I stopped.
Uh-oh.

He walked up to me.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re up to?” he said.

“What? What do you mean? I’m not up to anything,” I said. If he only knew.
Think, Rachel. Of all the tales you’ve ever told, this had better be a doozy.

“Of course you are. You’re sweating. You’re nervous. And in case you didn’t notice, you happen to be wearing both onyx earrings right now.” My hand flew to my ear. Sure enough, I was wearing both earrings. How stupid could I be?

“Okay, I guess you caught me.” I started laughing, that stupid nervous laugh that I get when I’m scared or in trouble. Mr. Quinn didn’t say anything. “If you must
know, I was trying to get into the Top Floor wing. I’ve been asking everyone since I got here what it is and what goes on there, but nobody knows, and the people who do know won’t tell me, which isn’t fair because you shouldn’t keep secrets, at least not from me. So I figured I would have a look for myself, but it’s locked and I couldn’t get in. Nothing else in this school is locked except the Top Floor wing. It’s driving me nuts and so I was trying to get in and then you came along and caught me.” I tend to ramble when I’m nervous. I’d also read somewhere that the best lies are the ones that are closest to the truth. So I hoped whoever said that was right. My mouth had gone completely dry.

Mr. Quinn smiled.

“I see. Well, I can appreciate and understand your curiosity. But I’m afraid Top Floor is for seniors only. I’m sure when it’s appropriate, Mr. Kim will tell you everything you want to know. But in the meantime, I’d forget about trying to get in there, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“All right, then. Back to your room. Good night.” Mr. Quinn turned around and headed back down to the TF wing. I heard the door open and shut. So Mr. Quinn had
a key. That might be useful future information.

Several minutes later I burst through the door into the cave. Brent and Pilar and Alex were pacing back and forth, waiting. They all let out yells when they saw me.