held Mark’s gaze. “Remember how to escape.”
When I entered witness protection, it was the first lesson I learned for a reason. Escaping wasn’t just about crawling through a window or shimmying down a vent. It was mental. Knowing how to push past the fear and stay calm and think was the most important part. Maybe breaking and entering wasn’t the best way to start off in a new town, but it was our routine, our way of preparing for every possibility.
Plus, a little extra practice disabling a security system never hurt a girl.
I took a few steps back, letting the rain, which had lightened considerably, mist over me. Everything smelled fresh as I examined the school, shadowy in the moonless night.
Mark moved to my side, his shoulder brushing against mine. “New school, new you,” he said, as soft as the rain.
I nodded.
“I’m going to make sure everything’s back the way we found it. You coming?”
“In a sec,” I whispered as he disappeared back into the school.
I stared at the brick wall in front of me, darker in spots from the rain. The breaking in, the chase, the cleaning up after ourselves—it was all familiar. Yet the more I studied the rough bricks, the more my stomach twisted.
Thunder rumbled low in the distance. For a second, I thought I saw a flash of blue against the faded red of the bricks. But when I blinked, it was gone.
A tight knot settled in my chest.
It was just another wall of just another school. It was all familiar, except for the tiny voice inside my head that warned, This time’s going to be different.
Out of all the names I’d had in the last five years, I liked this one the best: Sloane Sullivan. It looked right, printed there at the top of my new class schedule. Good thing too, since it was the last one I was ever going to have.
“There’s just one more thing I have for you and you’re all set,” the secretary said. She was a little hard to hear over the buzz of voices coming from the hall on the other side of the glass wall behind me and the incessant ringing of phones inside the front office.
I glanced up from my schedule to find the secretary smiling. Her short, curly white hair and deep crow’s feet screamed helpful grandmother. She actually looked a little like our neighbor eight towns back who was a grandmother of eleven. I didn’t trust her for a second.
“I figured it must be hard to transfer so late in your senior year,” the secretary continued, “so I marked up a map of the school with the location of your classes. That way, at least you won’t get lost on your first day.”
Okay, I thought. That’s actually kind of sweet. I peeked at the nameplate sitting on the side of the tall counter separating me from the rest of the office. “Thanks, Mrs. Zalinsky. That’s really thoughtful of you.”
Little did Mrs. Zalinsky know that, thanks to my adventure with Mark last night, I already knew where every classroom was located. We didn’t use our more nefarious skills, like lock picking and camera tampering, just to practice escaping. I’d realized pretty quickly that having to ask for directions or stumbling into classes late didn’t help with blending in. And that was always the goal: to blend in. Blend in, follow the rules and don’t let anyone get too close. That’s what I’d learned after almost six years on the run.
Besides, if we got caught snooping around, Mark could just flash his badge and we’d get off scot-free. Of course, then we’d probably have to move again.
Mrs. Zalinsky grinned, pleased to be appreciated. “You’re welcome, Sloane.”
The little thrill that always shot through me when I heard someone say my new name for the first time danced in my chest. Sloane. I liked the way it sounded too.
“Let me grab the map for you.” Mrs. Zalinsky headed for an immaculately clean desk on the other side of the office.
I gazed at my name again, still surprised Mark had agreed to it. I’d thrown Sloane out on a whim and he didn’t even blink. He just nodded in that slow way of his, which made his thick hair, which was dark brown at the time, fall into his eyes, and said, “Sure.” I knew he would’ve preferred Sara or Samantha or something more mainstream for my nineteenth identity. He’d totally vetoed some of my more unusual suggestions—being Leia like the princess from Star Wars would’ve rocked—but he let Sloane slide by. Maybe it was because we were both counting on this being the last time we had to switch names.
I rubbed my thumb over my name. God, nineteen different people in almost six years. Well, twenty if you count my real name. But I don’t remember who that girl was anymore.
“Here you go,” Mrs. Zalinsky said, interrupting my thoughts. She handed me a map. “I circled your classrooms in order based on the colors of the rainbow. You know, Roy G. Biv? Red for first period, orange for second, and so forth. Except since we only have four periods, I stopped at green.”
I let out a low whistle. “That’s some serious organization. I’m impressed.” And I was. It sounded like something Mark would do, and I didn’t think anyone was as anal as he was.
“It takes a lot of organization to keep a school of more than 1,800 kids running smoothly,” Mrs. Zalinsky explained as she straightened an already perfectly aligned stack of papers.
I grinned. 1,800 kids. It was going to be so easy to be invisible in a school this size. All I had to do was coast through these last nine weeks of my senior year without any complications and I was free. In more ways than one. I’d be Sloane Sullivan forever. There was no going back to the person I was for the first twelve years of my life. I’d asked, but the Marshals felt dropping me back into my old life so soon after the confession was too risky, even with a plausible cover story. But honestly, I didn’t care. If being Sloane was what it took to get out of witness protection, I’d do it.
Out of WITSEC. I never thought it was possible.
“I’m not sure you’re going to need the map, pretty girl like you.” Mrs. Zalinsky nodded in my direction. “You’ll have the boys lining up to escort you to class if you smile at them like that.”
I took a moment to let the compliment sink in. Usually, I ignored anything people said about my appearance because it was never about me. Not the real me anyway. It was about a person with dyed hair or colored contacts or—after one horrendous experience with a hairdresser who had to have forgotten her glasses that day—a frizzy black wig that felt like a steel wool scouring pad. But this was the closest I’d looked to my true self in almost six years.
I was wearing contacts that turned my green eyes dark brown, but my hair was its natural pale blond. “The color of real lemonade,” my mom always said when I was a kid. Mark had never agreed to my natural color before. He’d deemed it “too light and distinctive,” and I hadn’t seen it since we left New Jersey. But since this was the person I was going to be for the rest of my life, I’d begged to go back to my roots. Washing my hair seventeen times in a single shower to get out the temporary auburn color I’d had as Ruby had been totally worth it.
I
