Page 38 of Sinister

I am obviously not going to text him out of nowhere. It’s better to do things this way.

Safer.

More . . . impersonal.

By the end, I’ve rewritten the note a bunch of times. But the one I’m holding now is as good as it’s going to get.

I haven’t signed it with my name, as if wishing to preserve my privacy, my anonymity, for as long as I can. Or maybe I’m scared that he will not do as the note says once he finds out it’s from me.

Furtively, like some two-bit detective from a sitcom, I make my way to Sin’s locker, trying to look casual.

The hallway is still crowded with students, but they are all busy chatting. Probably crowing about bagging a seat in Art History, I think glumly.

I walk briskly till I reach his locker, and once there, I glance around before slipping the note into the slats.

Even I’m surprised at the smoothness with which the maneuver is executed. After securing the note in place, I simply walk away, but its message lingers in my mind, clear and simple:

Meet me after class in the gardener’s shed.

11

PETRA

I attend the rest of my classes in a dreamless stupor, the incessant exhaustion of my body seeping into every movement. The voices of various teachers merge into a background drone against which I struggle to structure my scattered thoughts.

In a few hours, the final bell rings, and a weight seems to drop on my chest. My stomach is a nervous knot, and I feel like I might be sick—though this could also be attributed to the you-know-what condition of my body.

The walk feels surreal, like I’m moving through a wall of fog. Though the larger streams of outgoing students head for the main gates or the posh café near the fencing area, I turn down a little-trodden path, a shortcut that mostly the janitorial and security staff use.

After a few minutes of walking, the shed comes into view—an arched, single-storied wooden building surrounded by overgrown bushes.

The gardener’s shed is at the edge of the school grounds, tucked away behind the old gym. Not like St. Anselm Hall prides itself in the farm-fresh organic fare it feeds its wards.

No, the job of the head gardener and his handful of minions is to maintain the sprawling school grounds that are dotted with flowerbeds and groves of elms, all with the aim of making the place look tastefully wild and unmanned.

If for nothing else, at least for the two times a year when alumni walk inside the gates of the school and marvel at the beauty of their alma mater—and bestow large amounts of money as a result, of course.

The shed itself is quiet and secluded, as I had discovered pretty early on when I first started hanging out on my own, years ago.

The tall-ceilinged structure is made of wooden beams and meticulously lined with shelves on which rest the gardeners’ tools. Birdsong from the nearby woods weaves between the thin columns of light that fall crisscross on the floor.

I watch dust motes swirl in a lone ray of sunshine, wondering how this spot, which had been a comfortable nook to recede into and catch up on some sketching, has now become the loneliest place in the world.

I can see the figures of other groundspeople walking up and down the narrow path outside, so I find a spot near the back of the shed from where I can still see the door but won’t be immediately visible.

My thoughts race through innumerable scenarios. What will I say?

“Hey, Sin, remember me? I’m the girl you knocked up at Elias Rutherford’s party!”

Or, “Hey, Sin, guess who it is? The mother of your future child!”

I shake my head to dispel the increasingly hysterical visions of the very near future.

At that moment, a creaking sound halts my mental spiral. The door opens, and Sin pokes his head inside, looking around.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

I can’t do this. A sense of certainty sends a chill down my arms. I can’t face him. I can’t tell him. Already my feet are rooted to their spot, and I can barely squeak a word to announce my presence.