“Unless Harrington sent us here because she wants to kill us.”
That makes a laugh burst out of me. Raven’s eyes get wide like she didn’t expect that to come out of her mouth or for me to laugh at it.
“I’m willing to take one for the team,” I tell her. “We need to get an A on this project.” After inhaling a deep breath, I reach for the handle and pull the door open.
Both of us peek inside. The room actually doesn’t seem that bad. There are boxes and boxes of things, as well as items thrown on the floor.
“I’m going to look over there,” Raven says, her tone telling me she plans on staying far away from me.
“Right. I’ll look over there.” I nod to the other end of the room.
“If you find something good, make a pile and then we’ll go through it and take whatever we need.”
“Sounds good. Let me know if you need help with anything.”
“I’ll be fine.” She heads to her side.
I clear my throat before going to mine. I spot an area that’s full of boxes and start rummaging through them. I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for, but maybe they’ll pop out at me.
Raven seems very focused as she searches through boxes, like she’s keeping busy so she won’t have to look at me or talk to me.
I keep busy as well, so I won’t think about the thick wall she’s built between us.
We work in silence for nearly an hour. My pile is quite big, but when I look at her side, I see a mountain that pretty much stretches from the ceiling to the floor.
“You got a lot of stuff there,” I call to her.
She stops sifting through another box and turns to me. “I guess.” She twists away.
Okay, Kylen. Stop trying to force words out of her mouth.She clearly would rather pretend I’m not here.
I heave a box off a shelf and my lips kick into a large grin when I spot what’s inside. “Jackpot! You have to see this, Raven.”
She gets up and makes her way to me. Keeping a distance so we won’t accidentally touch shoulders, she peers inside. It’s a large box full of Lego. I catch the smile on her face.
“Looks like someone else had the idea to use Lego for a project,” I say.
She frowns at her pile. “All that was useless.”
“You never know if we may need other stuff. Let’s put this aside to take up and look through your pile.”
She leads me to the other end of the room and pulls something from the mountain. “I found costumes we can wear for the scene we’re going to act out.” She shows me an outfit that would fit well for Juliet, and one for Romeo. “I think they fit the time period.”
I smile. “That’s great.”
We continue taking whatever we think we’ll need from her pile. Then we do the same for mine.
We reach for something at the same time and our hands collide.
“Sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay. I think we have everything we need. But before we go, we should clean up and not leave a mess in here.”
We spend some time putting the stuff away, then we’re ready to go back up.
We’ve stashed some items in our backpacks and filled a box with the rest. We also have that box of Lego we’ll need to take up.
I swing my heavy backpack over my shoulders, then stack the two boxes on top of each other. “Let’s go.”
