Just before Tag and I reached the covered bridge, I texted Anthony:No body.
No crime, he wrote back.
EIGHTEEN
Not that Tag and I wanted to run into anyone, but we tried cleaning ourselves up before crossing the bridge to campus. I redid my ponytail while he smoothed down his hair and then pulled his sweatshirt back on before dipping his hand in the bubbling creek below to rub the ketchup off my leg. “I could’ve done that myself,” I managed to say, my lungs refusing to release any air. It was too precious.
“I don’t mind,” Tag replied. “I know you don’t like snakes.”
A shiver went up my spine. There were somehow snakes all over Ames, but the creek bank was their haven. “Remember when I found one in my boot last year?” I asked. “And you didn’t believe me?”
He chuckled, hand now resting on my thigh. I didn’t have the strength to shake it off. “Yeah, because it was Halloween and you wereJessie.”
Okay, fair. My friends and I had all gone to Ames’s dance dressed as female Pixar characters, and of course I’d been Jessie fromToy Storybecause of my red hair. Tag and I had left thedance early, and after finding a quiet spot for some alone time, I’d walked home barefoot. “How was the dance?” my mom asked when I’d deposited my cowgirl boots in the family room, but before I could answer, a snake slithered out of one. It dove straight under our couch and Josh had gotten a broom to sweep it out. “Taggart Swell,” I now said, “why would Jessie steal Woody’s line?”
“‘There’s a snake in my boot!’” he answered in his best Tom Hanks impression, but then his voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you hear that?”
“Yes,” I whispered back, taking Tag’s sweatshirt sleeve and tugging him into one of the covered bridge’s dark corners. Something was rustling nearby, and I couldn’t tell if it was someone on foot or the breeze swirling through the trees or—
Meow.
I rolled my eyes. “You’vegotto be kidding me.”
Tag took out his phone and tapped its sleeping screen so we could see Puck pattering toward us. “Hi, pal,” he said when the cat sat at his feet.
“Don’t encourage him,” I said.
“He’s only a cat.”
“Yeah, and cats are independent thinkers,” I said, quoting Josh. “Dogs are eager to please, but cats have hard opinions on things.”
Tag considered. “I agree. Stevie can be narrow-minded at times.”
I punched his arm. “And Puck seems hell-bent on joining us.” I glanced across the bridge and sighed. “We should go, Tag.”
Admissions was all the way across main campus; it was the first building you saw when you passed through Ames’s front gates. Once we conquered the bridge, Tag and I would need to play tic-tac-toe past all the underclassmen dormitories and most of the academic village.
Together we shuffled sideways, feeling our way along the bridge’s wall until we reached its far corner. Puck meowed again and even brushed himself up against our legs, but I refused to engage with him. Instead I spotted a Campo car cruising by the bridge before Tag and I stepped out into the shadows. The only problem was there weren’t enough of them. “Howdid we do this earlier?” I breathed as we took in the shining streetlamps, cheery and bright dormitory windows, and imagined the other Campo guards circling. The day squad didn’t start their shift until 6:30 a.m., when students were allowed out of their dorms.
“I have no fucking clue,” Tag replied. “But somehow we’re gonna do it again.” He offered me his hand and squeezed my fingers tightly when I took it.
We began by edging around the streetlamps’ stationary beams but had to dash behind some bushes when a seemingly nondescript Toyota RAV4 came into our crosshairs. Puck, naturally, stood right in the middle of a streetlamp as it drove by us. “I recognize that car,” Tag said quietly. “It’s Ms. Kathy’s, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.” I gulped. Ms. Kathy managed the dining hall, whose food did not just magically appear when the doors unlocked at 6:30. More dining hall staff members would be driving onto campus soon. Not to mention…
“I think we need to get off the streets,” Tag whispered.
I nodded. “Yeah, traffic’s about to pick up.” My stomach twisted. “What do you suggest we do, though? Taking the sports fields won’t lead us to Admissions.”
Tag was quiet for a moment, then said, “We use the dorms as cover.”
“Are you blind?” I asked as Puck squeezed between us. “Have youseenthe dorms?” I gestured to the freshmen girls’ fortress with its gleaming windows. “Everyone’s suddenly an early bird.”
Because finals.
“Not everyone,” Tag countered, nudging me so that I looked at the dorm across the street: Macalester House, our beloved freshmenboys’house. Almost every window was blackened.
I gritted my teeth. “That’s because they’re catching up on sleep.”
