Quinn glanced at an expensive gold watch on his wrist. “We’ve missed breakfast. But that’s fine. I’ll get Ayaz to make us something when he wakes up. He’s a halfway decent cook.”
I threw the sheets off, panic rising in my throat. “I can’t stay here! What if Courtney sees me? I have to get to rehearsal…”
“Don’t worry.” Quinn climbed up on the bed beside me. I finished the rest of my coffee.Oh, god, that’s amazing. “You’ve got a bit of time before rehearsal, and we’ve got ways to sneak you around without anyone seeing. How do you feel?”
I rubbed my temple. “Like I was run over by a truck.”
“And you haven’t even had any alcohol,” Quinn grinned. “I wonder what you’d be like with a few drinks in you. I bet you’re wild.”
“Nope. I fall asleep and then I vomit on your shoes.” I remembered a night Dante and I had stolen a bottle of vodka from his foster dad and got drunk in the park together. For once, the memory didn’t sting as bad as usual.
“You didn’t vomit last night.”
“Give me time.” I took another sip of coffee. My stomach grumbled.
The pile of hotness on the sofa stirred. Trey raised his arms above his head, stretching his body like a cat. He turned his head toward me and his face lit up in a most un-Treylike smile. God, he was beautiful when he smiled – a whole different person. I could almost imagine him as a kid, running free without a care in the world.
“She’s up.”
There was a knock on the door. The black woman who I’d first encountered the day I arrived at Derleth was on the other side, bearing a pile of fresh laundry. Her eyes flicked over me with suspicion, but she didn’t say a word as she slipped out again.
Quinn kicked Ayaz’s sleeping figure. “Get up. Hazy needs breakfast. And so do I.”
“All right, all right,” Ayaz grumbled, tossing his pillow at Quinn. As he lifted his arm, I noticed a tattoo on his wrist. A rune, identical to Quinn’s and Trey’s. “Hazel, do you like eggs? I’ll make you my specialmenemen.”
“Take him up on that,” Trey said, standing up and buttoning his white uniform shirt. “It’s like scrambled eggs on acid.”
Okay, now they’re making me breakfast. This is insane.I needed to step out of the room for a moment. I needed to think. Also, I needed to pee.
I slid out of bed, tugging the hem of the t-shirt down so it covered my ass. “I need the bathroom.”
“It’s right through there.” Ayaz pointed to a door beside the kitchen.
I shut the door and sat down on the toilet, staring at the crisp marble tiles on the walls and admiring the gleaming shower with its multiple heads.Don’t imagine Ayaz standing in that shower, the jets spraying his body as he lathers up and…
I groaned and looked away, which was just as well, because I realized there was no toilet paper on the holder.Boys.Dante never used to replace it, either. I pulled open the door under the vanity to hunt for more paper. Something large and heavy fell out.
A book.
Curious, I picked it up and slid it onto my lap. The cover was some weird material, like leather, but more irregular and dry. The texture felt familiar, but I couldn’t describe it. I flipped open the cover to reveal yellowed pages covered in handwritten text in some weird foreign language, strange symbols, and dark illustrations of skulls and constellations and eviscerated corpses.
As I turned the page, a series of loose papers slid out into my hand. They were files. The first showed a picture of a young girl, about my age, with frizzy brown hair and glasses.Sadie Lancaster. Scholarship student. No parental details listed, only the address of a CPS case worker. The file was from nineteen years ago. Sadie’s picture had a giant cross slashed through it.
My chest tightened as I flipped to the next file. Another scholarship student, another ugly cross slashed through his face. I scanned his file, recoiling in horror from all the personal information it contained – newspaper clippings about his parents’ death, psychiatric reports, his eulogy from their funeral. All over the files, someone had scribbled notes, underlined sections, and made crude drawings – strange symbols, little maps, a hangman’s noose.
It was Ayaz’s handwriting. I recognized it from our history project. And the drawings bore his distinctive style, too. Frantic now, I flipped page after page – all scholarship students from the last twenty years, all orphans, all with their private files exposed and their faces crossed out.
What is this?
My stomach twisted. Pain slashed at my chest as the full horror of what I held in my hands dawned on me. My hands shook as I flipped through files for Loretta, Andre, Greg, and myself. My vision blurred, and I couldn’t focus on the words. Iwouldn’t.
I leaned over and threw up in the sink. My undigested coffee swirled down the plughole.
“Hazy, are you okay?” Quinn banged on the door.
“No.” I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair stuck straight up, rumpled from sleep. Ayaz’s t-shirt clung to my curves. My eyes were hollow, ringed in red. I looked like shit, like the gutter whore they said I was.
I reached up to touch the bruises on my neck left by Trey, exposing the burn scar on my wrist. As soon as I saw that scar, the reality of my situation came flooding back to me.
