Obedience

On her side of the room, Mary tried to figure it out. She worked it around in her head, fused the two narratives, Polly’s and Dea

“How could it all be related?” She realized, too late, that she had said it aloud.

“I don’t know,” Brian replied. “But I just have a feeling now, after all we’ve seen today, that it was too coincidental. Too freakish, you know. How could Elizabeth Orman have been there just as I was driving back to campus? It was like she-like she was waiting for me.”

“We have to go to the police,” Mary said.

“No.” De

“What do you mean ‘no’?” Mary said angrily.

“I mean no. Out of the question. It’s too soon, Mary.”

“People’s lives could be in danger, De

“I know Elizabeth Orman,” De

“What do you mean?” Brian asked.

“I mean I knew her. I’m familiar with her. Listen…” De

“The San Francisco thing?” Brian asked.

“Well, that wasn’t first but that cemented it in my mind,” De

34

De

“It was a few years ago,” De

“Do you think he’s part of this thing?” Brian asked.

“No,” De

“What?” Brian urged.

“But I don’t know what this means. I don’t know why Pig would hurt Elizabeth. Unless, you know, unless it’s just random. Unless it’s just a random thing and Pig just flew off the handle one night. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Williams says there is no randomness,” Brian said, sarcasm thick in his voice. “Everything happens for a reason.”

The two boys laughed at that, but Mary had stopped hearing them. She could only think of De

35

In the morning Mary found Brian outside on their little balcony, sitting on a plastic chair and looking out at the bustling traffic moving down Highway 72. She took a seat beside him, and they silently watched the gray Wednesday morning shift in the early, diffuse sunlight. “We’re at the end, aren’t we?” she asked him.

“Six weeks to the day,” Brian replied. “Williams’s deadline.”

Neither of them knew exactly what it meant. But something was going to happen today-something horrible, perhaps. They just had to figure out what it was. That was the only way they could stop it: by going back, back to the clues Williams had supplied them regarding Polly.

Polly is Dea

When they had all showered, they decided to return to Cale Central. Even if Bethany Cavendish was a player-an actor-in this thing, she might be able to lead them somewhere they hadn’t been. The book was the key, De

They arrived before 8:00 a.m. School had yet to begin. Students were pulling into the parking lot in their converted cars, trucks that rode low to the ground and had been painted outrageous colors, sports cars that were blinding with chrome. Brian and Mary waited for De

“Him?”

“De

“I dated him once,” she said. There was no reason to keep it from him now.

“I know,” Brian said.

They let that hang between them. Mary sat on the curb and Brian kicked pebbles around the parking lot. It was now 8:15. Dr. Kiseley’s lit class would have started by now back at Winchester. They would be discussing the book City of Glass, pondering on Qui