Then she was there, hands clutching the cold bars as if she could somehow slow their progress. But the gate was automatic – unstoppable. Its movement was steady. Uncaring.
Allie didn’t hesitate – shooting through the tight gap as the bars yanked at her jacket like bony fingers, shoving her shoulder so hard her breath hissed between her teeth at the pain.
With a strangled cry, she ripped herself loose, tumbling to the ground on the other side just as the gates clanged shut.
She was free.
TWO
Allie hadn’t started out that day planning to run away. She’d started out intending not to go to class.
She’d been doing that a lot lately.
Studying just didn’t seem pertinent to her life any more. So why bother?
After being dragged, sullen and unrepentant, to class on several occasions, she’d begun using hiding places to avoid that unpleasant possibility. The rambling Victorian school building provided numerous nooks and crannies for this purpose – she was especially fond of unused rooms and servants’ stairwells where no one ever thought to look. The crypt, the chapel… really, her hiding options were limitless.
Today, after enduring a few morning classes, she’d climbed out of her bedroom window, tiptoed along the narrow stone ledge to a spot where the roof dipped low and made her way up to the rooftop where Jo had once danced madly with a bottle of vodka, and where Allie and Carter had saved her life.
There she’d sat for hours in the cold, alone with her memories, watching the students and staff on the ground below. It was amazing how they never looked up. The roof bristled with chimneys and ornate, wrought-iron decoration, so it was easy for her to observe without being noticed; a living gargoyle.
And so the day slipped away from her, as so many others had lately, until she heard familiar voices, surprisingly close. At first she tensed, wondering if she’d been discovered. It took her a moment to realise the sound was rising from her own bedroom, through the open window just below her rooftop perch.
Holding on to a waterspout elaborately designed in the shape of a dragon, Allie leaned over the edge of the roof to listen.
‘You haven’t found her then?’ Isabelle’s voice was taut.
‘No.’ Raj spoke so quietly Allie had to strain to make out his words. ‘My team is searching the grounds now.’
They wouldn’t find her. They never did. The thought gave her dull satisfaction. Maybe she was a complete failure at saving lives but she could outwit security guards who were supposed to be the best in the world.
Then Isabelle spoke again – her voice sounded closer now. Allie realised she must be standing by the window, looking out at the same view.
‘How is she… do you think?’ the headmistress asked hesitantly. ‘Has Rachel said anything?’
A sigh.
‘Better?’ Raj said. ‘Worse? Hard to tell. The same, maybe. Rachel’s worried about her. Is she still seeing Dr Cartwright?’
Allie frowned; Dr Cartwright was the shrink Isabelle brought in after everything happened.
‘Not any more,’ Isabelle replied. ‘She did at first, but he said he couldn’t get much out of her. He described her as “unresponsive”.’
They shouldn’t talk about that, Allie thought reproachfully. That stuff is supposed to be private.
She thought about the nightmares and the horrible thoughts – the very few things she’d shared with Dr Cartwright before shutting him out.
She didn’t want them to know about that.
‘How do you just go back to class after you’ve seen your friend die?’ she’d asked in one of the few sessions she’d actually attended. ‘How do you care about French verbs? Or the Spanish Armada?’
‘You just do,’ the psychologist had said. ‘You put one foot in front of the other every day. And you try. You keep trying.’
‘Bollocks,’ Allie had replied with venom in her voice.
He couldn’t know what it was like to be afraid of falling asleep because of the awful dreams. There was no way he knew what that felt like.
No one knew that.
Raj barked a humourless laugh that said he thought Allie was unresponsive, too.
‘He felt she wasn’t accepting Jo’s death – she’s looking for someone to blame,’ Isabelle said. Allie leaned further forward, eager for this insider information. ‘He said blame is a kind of crutch; it allows the anger phase of grief to extend indefinitely. Until she gets through it she will never accept what happened and learn to deal with it.’
Whatever, Allie thought with hot impatience. I’m angry for a reason. Because of you.
Still, underneath her anger she knew there was some truth in what Isabelle said and it nagged at her.
Below her, Isabelle was still talking. ‘But then Allie decided she didn’t like him. He’s meant to meet with her this afternoon and’ – Allie could almost visualise Isabelle’s weary shrug – ‘right on schedule she’s AWOL.’
Raj’s voice grew louder – even from the rooftop Allie could hear his anger. ‘This can’t go on, Izzy. You have to take action. My entire team is out looking for her right now when they should be working to keep the school safe. We still don’t know what Nathaniel is planning. He could hit us at any moment. She is wasting our time. We can’t keep doing this. Allie is behaving like a —’
‘Like she used to behave,’ Isabelle said, interrupting him. ‘This is exactly how she was after her brother disappeared. She’s just angry and I can’t really blame her. I’m angry, too. But I’m not sixteen so I have ways to channel it. She doesn’t.’