“I get off at nine. Meet me here and walk me home.”
“Uh, you sure about that?” I rocked on my heels. “I don’t want to get crossways with Callahan. I might outweigh him by thirty pounds, but under the right circumstances—like me walking his girl home—he’s damn likely to kick my ass.”
“He won’t mind. Trust me.” She patted my shoulder again. “Meet me here at nine or a little before.” She picked up my duffel and my backpack, handing them to me with one hand while making a shooing motion with the other. “Go on. Grab some real food, maybe do some homework, and show up back here on time.”
“Why—?”
“I’ve got a plan, Finn. One that’s going to fix this one way or the other. Trust me.” For such a compact woman, she demonstrated impressive physical strength when she turned me and pushed me out the door.
Turning back, I said, “But what if I wanted to buy some candy?” I let a grin ghost over my mouth.
“You didn’t though. See you in a couple hours.”
I was leaning against the wall across the hallway from the Sweet Shop when Jamaica locked up a few minutes before nine.
“Hello, Finn.” She smiled. “Two things I appreciate about you. You’re dependable and you’re on time.” She linked her arm with mine and started walking toward the stairs.
“Yeah? Tell that to my coaches next time you see ’em, wouldja?”
“Okay, sometimes you’re early.” She smirked.
“Ah, come on, Jamaica. You don’t even know all the rules to football well enough to take shots at me for being offsides,” I grumbled.
“Callahan’s taught me so much about the game. You’d be surprised what I know.” She let go of my arm to climb the stairs.
At the top, I opened the door for her, and we stepped out into the humid air that said spring was on its way. Darkness had descended while I’d been inside the Union downing a mediocre pepperoni pizza and finishing some homework for my organic chemistry class. The one thing that hadn’t suffered in my involuntary hiatus from Chessly was school. Somehow I’d managed to keep my grades up—probably because burying myself in my classes was my only escape from thinking about her.
“So what’s your plan, Batman?” I asked as we headed across campus to her dorm.
“You know how in our dorm you have to call a room from the lobby and wait for the resident to escort you?”
“Yeah?”
“The rule only applies if you arrive on your own.” The smile she gave me was so conspiratorial, I wondered if we were about to commit a crime. “If, however, you show up with a resident of Hanover who walks you to a certain person’s door and knocks, you can bypass the system. When the resident opens the door, there you are.”
“If she doesn’t invite me in, will alarms go off alerting the police to come arrest me?” I wasn’t entirely joking with the question.
“She’ll invite you in.” Somehow, her enigmatic tone did little to reassure me.
When we arrived in the lobby, Jamaica waved at the desk clerk who waved back as we kept walking. Since I’d never been to anyone’s room in this dorm before, I stayed one step behind her and paid attention to my surroundings. A mural of mountains and mountain sports decorated the walls of the hallway she led me down. Outside of each doorway hung a corkboard, each of which said something about the people living behind the doors—photos, notes, girly trinkets with feathers and flowers.
While I was busy checking out the floor, I forgot to be nervous. Then, abruptly, we stopped at a door that was recessed into the wall. In the tiny entryway, I noted a whiteboard about twice the size of a standard notebook with Chess’s schedule neatly written on it, along with the hours she had available for residents.
“Are you sure she’s even home?” I whispered to Jamaica as she raised her hand to knock.
Jamaica’s eyes glittered up at me. “She’s here.”
“But what if she—?” I swallowed hard. “What if she kicks me out? Are you going to escort me back to the lobby?”
“She won’t kick you out.”
Before I could ask how Jamaica could be so sure, she rapped hard on the door twice.
A muffled “Just a sec,” filtered through the door. Then before I had a chance to figure out what I was going to say, Chess swung the door wide and stared. “Finn?”
I nodded.
“How did you know which room? How did you get past the front desk?”
