This isn’t personal, I reassured myself.It’s a prank.
“Brilliant,” Tag said. “Who’s ready to count constellations?”
SEVEN
My lungs quivered with nerves when we headed back to Hubbard Hall’s entrance. Sneaking out of my house, sprinting through the faculty neighborhood, and breaking into a school building were one thing, but trekking across Ames’s four-hundred-acre campus? That felt like another quest entirely.
“Now therealfun begins,” Alex whispered as I walked straight into Tag’s back when he stopped short near one of the windows. Both his arms swooped back to steady me in case I wobbled. It was like being wrapped in a backward hug; I had to fight the urge to lean into it. He smelled faintly of chlorine and his flannel shirt was so soft.
“Headlights,” Tag murmured. Alex motioned for us to retreat to the nearby stairwell before we listened for the mechanichumof an engine to pass. Once Tag had double-checked that the nocturnal streets were again quiet, we slid out a side exit.
“Harvey is on duty tonight,” I told Tag. “With Guardhouse Gabe shadowing him. He told me the other day.”
“I know,” Tag said.
“You do?”
“Lily, you aren’t the only one who talks to Gabe.”
“We mostly discuss chess,” Alex cheerfully chimed in. “Believe it or not, he’s really into it. Sometimes we’ll play during my free periods. Taggart comes and watches…”
I rolled my eyes. “And subtly takes pictures of the weekly guard schedule?”
“I’ll neither confirm nor deny,” Tag said.
“You knew but didn’t plan this for Mr. Harvey’s day off?” Manik asked. “Or during his retirement party?”
“Oh, shitballs,” I said. “My mom and I are supposed to bring dessert to that.”
Tag chuckled. “Leda wears an apron now?”
“Only for dramatic effect,” I said. “I’ll whip up brownies or something while she supervises and then taste tests. Same as always.”
Tag was silent for a beat. “She’s going to miss you next year.”
A lump formed in my throat. I was going to miss her too once I left for Georgetown. “She’ll be okay,” I whispered. “She has Josh to keep her well fed.”
Especially since he was finally moving in this fall. It was perfect timing because I’d be gone, and he’d have fulfilled his five-year housemaster requirement. Most Ames faculty members lived in a dorm before they graduated to the neighborhood. At twenty-four, my mom had arrived on campus with a toddler on her hip and became housemaster in the juniorgirls’ house. “Everyone was very eager to babysit you,” she once told me. “Although after you turned six, it became difficult wrangling you into bed with Taylor Swift blasting on the other side of the door. You always wanted to go dance with the girls in the common room.”
Honestly, it explained why my go-to karaoke song was “The Story of Us.” One of the girls must’ve been going through a tough breakup.
The Galloway Observatory sat atop the big hill behind two boys’ houses, and while it sounded grand, alas, it was not. White brick with arched windows and a small rotunda, it desperately needed a new paint job, and sections of brick were eroding.
No one spoke as we crossed the Circle toward the dorms. Biting my tongue, I felt like we were in the Hunger Games, creeping through the arena with all eyes trained on us. There were no Campo cars in sight, but dorm housemasters…they were different from neighborhood faculty members. They kept unusual hours since they both parented and policed students. I caught Manik glancing over at the darkened Bates House and knew he had the same thought. My mom and I’d lived there once upon a time, and now it was home to the Epstein-Foxes. My physics teacher was probably asleep, but I couldn’t help but imagine her and her fellow housemasters armed to the teeth with knives, ready to hunt us down and skin us alive.
Get a grip, I told myself, hugging my pullover closer. The breeze had picked up and I again wished I’d worn a sweatshirt.
A second later, Tag was behind me and draping something over my shoulders. The flannel he’d been wearing over his sweatshirt. “Right on schedule,” he said after popping the collar for the finishing touch.
My eyes prickled a little. Tag—he’d remembered how easily I became an icicle. When we were together, I’d always be running my hands up his sleeves to get warm. “Thank you,” I told him, slipping into the shirt. It felt like chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
We kept walking until we reached the base of the hill. A twisting and turning stone stairway had been carved into the side; it was wide with repurposed driftwood banisters, and tonight it felt like Mount Everest. Save for Tag’s iPhone flashlight, we were surrounded by darkness so there was seemingly no end in sight. “God, I’m so happy my parents never let me take astronomy,” Alex commented. “This climb is…”
He went silent. We’d reached the top of the hill, and while the observatory was dark, the cedar-shingled cottage just a few leaps and bounds away wasnot. It was entirely illuminated, as if expecting someone.
As if expectingus.
“Holy hell,” Alex breathed. “Was he supposed to be home?”
