Fallen

By then, Pe

"Okay, that's enough. Snoop," she said. "Isn't there research we should be doing on family trees?"

"Speaking of snooping." Pe

Luce stared at her blankly. "Huh?"

"Look." Pe

"Shhh!" Luce hissed, jumping to close her door. She stuck her head into the hall and sca

Satisfied, Luce closed and locked the door and turned back to her friend. Pe

Luce locked her hands behind her back and dug her toe into the circular red rug near her door. "What makes you think I want to know anything about him?"

"Give me a break," Pe

"Shhh!" Luce said again.

"B," Pe

Pe

"I'm only saying," she continued, "assuming hypothetically you did want to know more about a certain u

"I'm listening," Luce said, sinking down on the bed. Her Internet search the other day had only amounted to typing, then deleting, then retyping Daniel's name into the search field.

"I was hoping you'd say that," Pe

Luce grimaced. "I don't know. Prying into Daniel's files? I'm not sure I need another reason to feel like a crazy stalker girl."

"Ha." Pe

It was a nice day—precisely the kind of nice that made you feel lonely if you didn't have anything fun and outdoorsy pla

She used to spend these golden early-fall days tearing up the neighborhood bike path with her friends. That was before she started avoiding the woodsy trail because of the shadows none of the other girls ever saw. Before her friends sat her down one day during recess and said their parents didn't want them inviting her over anymore, in case she had an incident.

Truth was, Luce had been a little panicked about how she'd spend this first weekend at Sword & Cross. No classes, no terrorizing physical fitness tests, no social events on the docket. Just forty-eight endless hours of free time. An eternity. She'd had a queasy homesick feeling all morning—until Pe

"Okay." Luce tried not to laugh when she said, "Take me to your secret lair."

Pe

Luce smiled, glad Pe

At the edge of the commons, they passed a few kids lazing around on the bleachers in the clear late-morning sun. It was strange to see color on campus, on these students with whom Luce so closely identified the color black. But there was Roland in a pair of lime-green soccer shorts, dribbling a ball between his feet. And Gabbe in her purple gingham button-down shirt. Jules and Phillip—the tongue-ringed couple—were drawing on the knees of each other's faded jeans. Todd Hammond sat apart from the rest of the kids on the bleachers, reading a comic book in a camouflage T-shirt. Even Luce's own gray tank top and shorts felt more vibrant than anything she'd worn all week.

Coach Diante and the Albatross were on lawn duty and had set up two plastic lawn chairs and a sagging umbrella at the edge of the commons. Aside from when they ashed their cigarettes on the lawn, they could have been asleep behind their dark sunglasses. They looked utterly bored, as imprisoned by their jobs as the charges they were monitoring.

There were a lot of people out on the commons, but as she followed closely behind Pe

"What about the reds?" Luce asked, remembering the omnipresent cameras.

"I just stuck some dead batteries in a few of them on my way over to your room," Pe

Pe

"Is this basement from the Civil War era, too?" Luce asked. It looked like an entrance to the kind of place where you could stash some POWs.

Pe

Luce tried not to breathe through her nose as Pe

When the key turned in the lock, Luce felt an unexpected shiver of excitement. Pe

They walked a short distance through a warm, damp corridor whose ceiling was only a few inches higher than their heads. The stale air smelled like something had died there, and Luce was almost glad the room was too dark to clearly see the floor. Just when she was begi

Inside, the records office reeked of mildew, but the air felt much cooler and drier. It was pitch-black except for the pale red glow of the EXIT sign over their heads.

Luce could make out Pe

With a gentle tug, Pe