20
Atticus
Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?
—Emily Brontë,Wuthering Heights
Professor White walksat a breakneck pace through the empty campus, forcing me to jog at her side just to keep up. Her face is set in a determined stare, and she curses beneath her breath, barely looking at me.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Taken everything from me,” she mutters. “Everything.”
My stomach lurches. “Taken what? Who?”
She doesn’t answer; she only grinds her teeth, lost in thought.
I stretch out my mind, searching hers, trying to piece together the fractured mosaic that makes up her emotions. But she’s always been difficult if not impossible to read, and today her thoughts are no different. I capture only fragments:I’ll find…Rubble…Life’s work…Find a way…Down…Nothing left…
Police tape cordons off the area, with security patrolling the perimeter of what used to be Arches, making sure no one unauthorized can enter. There are no students around. Everyone’s taken refuge indoors elsewhere. The tower rests in a crumpled heap of shattered brick and stone, a far cry from the majesty that once was. Amid the rubble, workers sort through the debris, and bulldozers wait to clear the rest. Fire trucks still linger, thoughthere’s no sign of fire, and people with hard hats and high-visibility vests climb up and down the rubble, shouting to one another. One figure stands out from the others, overlooking the work with his hands on his hips and his head held high, his ruby earring glinting in the light.
A certain sharpness emerges in Professor White’s mood, and it’s directed at him.
“Warden Stone,” Professor White says, marching up to him, not even a little breathless. “I told you, I need more time.”
Warden Stone gives Professor White a cursory glance, as icy as the color of his eyes, before he returns his attention back to the site. “We need to start demolition immediately, Anna. It’s a danger to the students. The rest of the structure could collapse at any moment.”
Professor White stands firm, her head high, holding her ground. “I need time to investigate. I want to know why—”
Failing to hide his annoyance, he interrupts. “Was that not what you were supposed to have been doing this entire time? Investigating? Understanding the structure and what needed to be done to maintain it? Was this not your responsibility?”
Professor White bristles, her thoughts aflame with anger, burning like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. “These things take time. My associate here”—she gestures to me, and I would beam with pride when she calls me associate, not assistant, if not for the circumstances—“has found irregularities in the renovation. We were in the midst of analyzing the damage, but the rate of deterioration was much faster than we realized. If you just give me a week, I can investigate further.”
Warden Stone barely looks at me, which is a small relief. When I reach out and touch his mind, I sense frustration. I search deeper, expecting grief, but find nothing. There is no sense of mourningfor the dead student or the lost building. I sense only rigid determination. It’s like he wants both messes gone and he needs it done yesterday.
“You’ve had plenty of time. I cannot offer you more. My decision is final.” Without another word, he walks away, addressing a man in a hard hat as he leaves us behind.
“What an ass,” she mumbles, her head shaking, lips curled up in indignation. Apparently, his word is final.
I sense her mood hovering over her head like a storm cloud, thick and dark. “I tried reasoning with him, but he won’t…he won’t listen.”
“Is there something—anythingI can do to help?”
She studies me, looking me up and down, her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek as she does.
“Really, I’m here if you need me.” I want to prove myself to her, but I don’t want to come off as desperate, but then again, what else am I?
“I always knew I could count on you,” she says, a renewed spark of determination in her eye. “Come with me.”
Being deemed worthy lights something inside my chest, a warm glow, but I don’t have any time to bask in it. She beckons me forward, toward the site. We duck under the police tape, and no one stops us, especially when Professor White flashes her badge, proclaiming that she’s the lead architect and she’s more qualified than any of them to understand how to handle a magical building’s collapse. A smattering of pride warms my heart, seeing her work. I want to be just like her someday.
“By eight in the morning tomorrow, all of this will be covered in bulldozers,” Professor White says, sweeping her hand over the mound of debris. As she walks, she parts the sea of workers, guiding me around the ruined tower, then up and over the rubble,kicking away bricks and tattered beams. “The collapse exposed a series of century-old offices and archives deep underground. I had no idea they even existed. I am guessing they were used by the staff who were setting up the school of magic when Arches was first built. This is an unexpected and important find. If Stone demolishes it, he’ll be burying history along with it. It really is a tragedy.”
I know what she means. Forbidding access to knowledge is forbidding access to the past, and subsequently the future.
“There’s no way we can get to it?” I ask.
“The chambers are half-collapsed. It won’t be easy,” she says. “Given time and sufficient preparation, I had hoped to search the site myself, to learn more about Arches and why it was made. There could be old books and important relics down there, but if Stone has his way—” She cuts herself off when she spots a figure lingering in the rubble nearby.
