The Unbound

The morning coffee and lunch soda can’t make up for the days—weeks, really—without sleep. And having Owen in my head for most of last period hasn’t helped my nerves. A shaky yawn escapes as I push open the outer doors of the history hall and step into the afternoon sun, abandoning the crowded path for a secluded patch of grass where I can stop and soak up the light and clear my head. I free my Keeper list from my shirt pocket and am relieved to see that there’s still only one name on the page.

“Who’s Harker?” asks Cash over my shoulder. I jump a little at the sound of his voice, then unfold the paper slowly, careful to seem unconcerned.

“Just a neighbor,” I say, tucking the paper back into my pocket. “I promised to pick up some info on the school for him. He’s thinking about it for next year.” The lie is easy, effortless, and I try not to relish it.

“Ah, well, we can swing by the office on the way to the parking lot.” He sets off down the path.

“You really don’t have to escort me,” I say, following. “I’m sure I can find my way.”

“I have no doubt, but I’d still like—”

“Look,” I cut him off. “I know you’re just doing your job.”

He frowns, but doesn’t slow his pace. “Saf tell you that?” I shrug. “Well, yes, okay. It’s my job, but I chose it. And it’s not like I was assigned to you. I could be imposing my assistance on any of the unsuspecting freshman. I’d rather be accompanying you.” He chews his lip and squints up toward the summer sun before he continues. “If you’ll let me.”

“All right,” I agree with a teasing smile. “But just to spare those other unsuspecting students.”

He laughs lightly and waves to someone across the grass.

“So,” I say, “Cassius? That’s quite a name.”

“Cassius Arthur Graham. A mouthful, isn’t it? That’s what you get when your mother’s an Italian diplomat and your father’s a British linguist.” The ivy-coated stone back of the main building comes into sight. “But it’s not nearly as bad as Wesley’s.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Cash gives me a look, like I should know. Then, when it’s obvious I don’t, he starts to backtrack.

“Nothing. I forgot you two haven’t known each other that long.”

My steps slow on the path. “What are you talking about?”

“Well, it’s just…Wesley’s name isn’t really Wesley. That’s his middle name.”

I frown. “Then what’s his first name?”

Cash shakes his head. “Can’t say.”

“That bad?”

“He thinks so.”

“Come on, I’ve got to have some ammunition.”

“No way, he’d kill me.”

I laugh and let it drop as we reach the admin building’s doors. “You guys seem close,” I say as he holds them open for me.

“We are,” says Cash with a kind of simple certainty that makes my stomach hurt.

With Wes haunting the Coronado halls all summer, I just assumed that he lived the way I did: at a distance. But he has a life. Friends. Good friends. I have Lyndsey, but we’re close because she doesn’t make me lie. She never asks questions. But I should have asked Wes. I should have wondered.

“We grew up together,” explains Cash as we make our way toward the glass lobby. “Met him at Hartford. That’s the K-through-eight that leads into Hyde. Saf and I showed up in the fourth grade—third for her—and Wes just kind of took us in. When things started going south with his parents a few years back, we tried to return the favor. He’s not very good at taking help, though.”

I nod. “He always bounces it back.”

“Exactly,” he says, sounding genuinely frustrated. “But then his mom left and things went from bad to worse.”

“What happened?” I press.

The question jars him, and he seems to realize he shouldn’t be sharing this much. He hesitates, then says, “He went to stay with his aunt Joan.”

“Great-aunt,” I correct absently.

“He told you about her?”

“A little,” I say. Joan was the woman who passed her key and her job on to Wesley. The one the Archive cut full of holes when she retired just to make sure its secrets were safe. The fact that I’ve heard of Joan seems to satisfy something in Cash, and his reluctance dissolves.

“Yeah, well, he was supposed to go stay with her for the summer,” he says, “to get away from the divorce—it was brutal—but Hyde started back up in the fall, and he wasn’t here. Our whole sophomore year, it was like he didn’t exist. You have to understand—he didn’t call, didn’t write. There was just this void.” Cash shakes his head. “He’s loud in that way you don’t really notice till he’s gone. Anyway, sophomore year comes and goes without him. And then summer break comes and goes without him. And finally junior year comes around, and there he is at lunch, leaning up against the Alchemist like he never left.”

“Was he different?” I ask as we reach the office door at the mouth of the glass lobby. That was the year he became a Keeper.

Cash stops with his fingers on the handle. “Apart from the black eye I gave him? Not really. If anything, he seemed…happier. And I was just glad to have him back, so I didn’t pry. Wait here, I’ll grab you some prospective student pamphlets.”

He vanishes into the office, and I glance absently around the hall. It’s covered in photographs—though covered suggests chaos, and these are all immaculately hung, each frame perfectly level and perfectly equidistant from the others. Each one has a small, elegant date etched into the top. In every picture, a group of students stands, shoulders touching, in several even rows. Senior classes, judging by the gold stripes in the more recent color photos. The years count backward along both walls, with the most recent years here by the mouth of the lobby and the older ones trailing away down the hall. Like most of the posh private schools, Hyde hasn’t always been coed. As I backtrack through the years, the girls vanish from the group photos, appearing in their own set and then disappearing altogether, along with the reds and blues and golds, leaving only boys in black and white. I let my eyes wander the walls, not knowing what I’m looking for until I find it. When I do, everything in me tenses.

He could have gone to any of the schools in the city, but he didn’t. He went here.

In the frame marked 1952, several dozen boys stand in rigid rows, stern, well-groomed, elegant. And there, one row down and several students in, is Owen Chris Clarke.

His silver-blond hair registers as white in the colorless photo, and that, plus the shocking paleness of his eyes, makes him look like a flare of light in the wash of black uniforms. The ghost of a smile brushes his lips, like he knows a secret. And maybe he does. This would have been before—before he graduated, before he was made Crew, before Regina was murdered, before he brought her back, before he killed the Coronado residents and jumped from the roof. But at the time of the photo, he was already a Keeper. It shows in his eyes, in his taunting smile, and in the hint of a ring on the hand resting on another student’s shoulder…

“You ready?”

I pull away from the photograph to find Cash standing there, holding a short stack of pamphlets.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice a little shakier than I’d like, as I cast another glance at the photo.

You and I are not so different.

I frown. So what if Owen went here? He’s gone. This is nothing more than a faded photograph, a glimpse of the past—a perfectly reasonable place for a dead boy to be.

“Let’s go,” I say as I take the papers.

Cash walks me out.

“Where’s your car?” he asks, surveying the parking lot, which has already emptied out quite a bit.

I cross to the bike rack and give Dante a sweeping gesture. “My ride.”

He blushes. “I didn’t mean to assume—”

I wave him off. “It’s like a convertible, really. Wind through my hair. Leather seats…well, seat.” I dig my workout pants out of my bag and tug them on under my skirt.