mouth. Then he spun to glare at the man—didn’t he see him there? But the man was laughing, wiping the fuel off his lips and slapping his thigh. The whole carnival began to tip slightly, the ground shifting under Dan’s feet. This was probably what being drunk felt like, he thought, wandering aimlessly through the striped tents.
No, not aimlessly … Something was guiding his path. He didn’t know what he was heading toward, only that he had to get there. Answers. Answers to questions he was only now brave enough to ask. What if he could make his family do anything he wanted? What if mind control wasn’t magic, but science?
He was getting closer, just barely staying upright as he left the last of the tents behind and approached a ragged stage. In his sweaty hand, Dan clutched a slip of firm paper. “Admit One.” The old coot waited for him onstage, patient, watchful. He really didn’t look like much, but appearances could be deceiving …
A shrill bell pierced the vision, and just like that the dream vanished.
Dan sat up fast in bed, instantly dizzy. The dinging outlived the dream, and he scrambled, trying to find his phone on his bedside table. In the process, he knocked over the bottle of Benadryl, which he’d left open after taking a pill to fall asleep.
Bleary-eyed, he found the phone next to the overturned bottle. He rolled onto his back, bringing the screen close to his face.
Missy had texted him.
Wish u had made it 2 the party. We all missed u!
Dan groaned and dropped the phone back on the bedside table. He probably should have at least texted her to say happy birthday, but it had slipped his mind. Too tired to reply, he pulled the blankets up over his head and tried to fall back asleep.
A single thought kept him awake, and for once, it wasn’t a bad one: soon he wouldn’t have to worry about Missy and Tariq. He would get to see Abby and Jordan, his real friends.
Chill drizzle flattened his hair, and Dan parted it and combed it with his fingers again. He fidgeted on the sidewalk, cold and anxious, drumming on his legs from inside his pants pockets. Cars drifted by, filling the air with the soft shhush-shhush of tires slicking across wet pavement.
Finally, a new bus pulled up, brakes squealing, and he could see Abby’s bright face peering out at him from above.
He waved, adjusting the heavy laptop bag slung over his shoulder. Already he had checked three times to make sure he had packed all of his meds, but now he checked the laptop bag again, almost as a nervous tic.
Just like when they first got to NHCP, Jordan and Abby had taken the same bus. The smell of diesel wafted over Dan, mingling with the wormy petrichor scent lingering on the pavement. He hunkered down into his jacket and stamped his feet to get warm. It was slightly colder here than at home, already wintry in late October. Tiny filaments of rain clung to the cold trees, benches, and cracks in the sidewalk. Down the block from the bus stop, the town businesses had put jack-o’-lanterns and twinkling purple lights out to decorate for Halloween.
Mist rolled down from the hilltop campus, blanketing the town in a milky glow.
“Hey,” Dan greeted. “You guys finally made it.”
Abby was the first one off the bus, and he hurried forward to help her with her bags. She wore a bright yellow peacoat with a sprig of peacock feathers pinned to the lapel and a floppy knit cap. Sometime since the last time he had seen her, Abby had dyed a chunk of her hair electric blue. They hugged, and Dan gave her a light kiss on the cheek.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said, blushing. “Here, let’s get Jordan’s stuff.”
She turned to assist Jordan, who wore his usual dark, stylish clothes—a leather jacket and skinny jeans, with woolly socks just visible above the tops of his scuffed ankle boots.
Dan had forgotten how tragically unhip he felt in their presence. He also noticed slips of scrap paper poking out of Jordan’s jacket pockets.
“I don’t suppose those are hangman games?” Dan asked.
“These?” Jordan pulled out one of the slips. “Just messing around.”
From what Dan could see, “just messing around” meant hundreds of rows of mathematical calculations. He had to wonder what it was like inside Jordan’s genius head. They picked up their bags and waited for the street to clear, then they crossed to the paved path winding up toward the college itself.
“How was the trip?” Dan asked, walking as close to Abby as he could without tripping her. “It’s been raining like this since the second I stepped off the plane.”
“Jordan wouldn’t shut up about his host,” Abby replied. “He looked him up on Facebook. Very rich. Very athletic. And very handsome with a capital H-O-T.”
Dan laughed nervously.
“And probably very straight with a capital Disappointment,” Jordan added.
“I doubt we’ll see much of them anyway,” Dan pointed out. “We’re here on a mission.” He tried to say this lightly, like it was all a funny joke, but neither Jordan nor Abby laughed. “Besides, they probably don’t have time for lame high school students like us.”
“Yeah.” Jordan tossed his curly hair and gave Abby a sideways look. “Let’s hope they don’t pay too much attention to the Scooby gang sneaking off.”
“I don’t remember this hill being so steep,” Abby said, puffing. “Man, this place must get freezing in the winter.”
With every step they took up the hill toward the college, Dan felt his breath becoming shorter and his mood darker. It was one thing to talk about coming back here; it was another thing entirely to be here, to be back. Felix, possessed or inspired by the Sculptor, had tried to kill them. Dan had seen an actual dead body. But as anxious as the place made him, it was as if someone had opened him up and hidden a magnet in his chest—he felt pulled back to this place and its as-yet-undiscovered secrets.
A buzz in his pocket jarred Dan out of his thoughts. He pulled out his phone to find a new text message from Sandy.
Hey! Make it to Jordan’s safely? Just checking in. Have fun on your visit!
Dan chewed the inside of his cheek, his finger dodging over the screen to type back a vague if reassuring message.
“Jordan’s?” Jordan himself eyed the phone over Dan’s shoulder as Dan typed a quick reply. “What exactly did you tell your folks about this weekend?”
“Not the whole truth, if you want to be technical about it.” It hadn’t felt good to lie to his mom, but it hadn’t exactly been hard, either. “I mentioned you were checking out a tour at Georgetown this weekend and said I was going to tag along. And then I might have changed my flight with the emergency credit card.”
“At
