Keaton School 01: Escape Theory (16 page)

A
S
D
EVON TRUDGED UPHILL
to her dorm, she saw a few guys with lacrosse sticks playing catch on Raiter Lawn. A white baseball hat glowed in the faint moonlight.
Grant
. She had ducked out to the Health Center the second study hours were over at 9:30
P.M.
to try to avoid him and now she had to cross the lawn to get to Bay House.

She hung back for a moment on the dimly lit path. To her left a silver BMW idled in the day student parking lot. The interior lights were on, highlighting a figure in the driver’s seat with a phone pressed to his ear. Devon didn’t remember any day students driving BMWs. Someone’s father must be picking them up after study hours. How nice that would be, if someone showed up to whisk her away to a cozy home somewhere, just for one night.

It’s not that she was really avoiding Grant. But she had other things on her mind than making out in the bushes with him. And at 9:30
P.M.
, she knew that’s what he probably wanted to do. She watched him toss the ball, his back still turned. There were other places to play a game of catch; she wondered if Grant parked his game here on purpose. The dirty yellow ball came whizzing toward her, and Grant ran for it. His lacrosse stick reached out and swooped up the ball into its net before it could reach Devon.

“Bam!” He grinned and twirled the ball in the net. “Where you been, Miss Mackintosh?”

“Chatting with Nurse Reilly.” The curfew bell would ring any minute. She squinted across the lawn at the guy with the waiting lacrosse stick: Raj Kahn. Grant lobbed the ball back to him. Devon barely knew Raj, other than that he was a junior with Indian parents who’d moved to Dallas, and had one of the more confusing accents at Keaton. She wondered if
he
were part of PharmClub 2.0. Chances were more likely than not.

“We missed you, Devon,” Raj teased across the lawn. “I mean, Grant missed you.” He cackled.

“Hey Raj, aren’t you missing a date with your right hand?” Grant said, rolling his eyes. Raj waved his middle finger back, and made his way toward his dorm for the night.

“But I did miss you,” Grant murmured. He pulled Devon’s hair off her shoulder and kissed her neck. “I thought we were gonna hang.” Devon’s eyes fluttered. For a second she wondered why chatting with the school nurse was more pressing than sneaking off with Grant. She looked up at him and ran her fingers across the brim of his hat. He just wanted to be with her. So why did that make her so nervous?

The curfew bell rang.

“Tomorrow, we’ll hang,” she promised. She gave him one quick kiss and hurried off to Bay House.

“Y
O
, L
INDSAY
W
HORE-HAN
,” P
RESLEY
yelled as soon as Devon entered Bay House. She stood at Devon’s door, wearing oversized purple pajama pants and a flowered pink bra, drawing a very explicit graphic representation of the male anatomy on the dry erase board. “Where you been? And more importantly, were you there with Graaaaant?”

Devon ran her hand across Presley’s drawing, wiping it out. She immediately took off her shoes and started clearing books off her bed.

“What’s up, Whore-den Caulfield?” Presley hung in her doorway, waiting. “Seriously, cough it up.”

Devon collapsed face-down on the covers. Presley took this as an invitation to settle in for a chat and plopped in the armchair. Devon couldn’t help but smile. “I saw him,” she started, “But, I don’t know, I just don’t want it to be like we have to hang out every night. Is that weird?”

Presley threw her legs over the arm of the chair. “I don’t get how you two are not like bunnies right now. He’s hot, you’re hot, these all equate to good sex whenever you want it. Kind of a no-brainer if you ask me. Do we have to have the birds and the bees talk?”

“No, I got that covered, thank-you-very-much.”

Presley frowned. “But, you’ve still got your V card? I thought you took care of that last year. Last summer at least.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t.” Devon rolled over in bed. “Nothing ever really seemed right, like, would I want to think about this person for the rest of my life as the person I gave my V card to? No one really fit the bill.”

“Until Graaaaant.”

Devon laughed. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Well, if it matters, from what I’ve heard, he won’t disappoint.” Presley stood up.

“Wait, what do you mean?”

But Presley was already running down the hallway, laughing.

“Slut!” Devon yelled after her.

There was a tap on her shoulder. Devon whirled around.

“I assume you did not mean me,” Mrs. Sosa said with a smile.

“Sorry, no, that was for Presley.” Devon slunk back into bed. Mrs. Sosa hung in the doorway a minute longer.

“Maybe instead of me punishing you for using that language, you two come up with more,
Como se dice
, appropriate nicknames?”

“We can do that,” Devon replied. “Night.”

“Buenas noches,”
Mrs. Sosa said and closed Devon’s door.

O
NE HOUR AND THREE
chapters of
The Birth of America
for her AP History homework later, Devon pulled open her sliding glass door. The campus was dark. The fog had rolled in, which meant the stars and moon couldn’t help light the way. Devon grabbed a small flashlight from her desk drawer.

Just as she stepped onto her outside patio, the payphone in the hallway rang.

Devon froze. Late night calls were rare, especially since the students weren’t allowed to be out of their rooms past curfew. Only family emergencies or secret boyfriends could justify the risk of
getting caught on the phone in the dorm hallway. Plus, if it was a secret late night call, why not just call on a cell? Maybe it was a wrong number. Devon waited, listening for footsteps. The phone rang again. And again. Hurrying back through her room, she poked her head into the hallway. Maya, in a bathrobe and towel wrapped in a turban on her head opened the door to the phone booth. She said a few words that Devon couldn’t hear, then slammed the phone down and went back to her room in a huff.

The phone started ringing again.

Let Maya handle it. I’ve got a break-in to attend to
.

G
ETTING THROUGH THE WINDOW
was no problem.

As she hoisted herself up, a red light glowed in the distance. The day student parking lot again. Brake lights. The fog made everything blur together. Could it be the same BMW from before? The engine kicked into gear with a deep hum and peeled out, gravel churning.

Would the car wake up Nurse Reilly? If the light went on, Devon would have to abandon her mission. She sat there, halfway through the window, the word
mission
hanging in her brain. Only when Hutch was involved did she find herself taking on secret missions.

Ten seconds passed. Then another ten.

The night settled back into a constant cricket chirping. Nurse Reilly hadn’t stirred from her apartment.

Devon’s tennis shoes whispered softly as hopped down and padded to the filing cabinets. Nurse Reilly refused to update the school system to a computer database: “Cards have served this school since its founding.” The result was a room full of putty-colored metal file cabinets with the medical history of every student that had ever attended Keaton.

Devon used her flashlight to locate the file drawer marked C-D.
Dolgens, Matt
. A note about a broken finger his freshman year. Devon remembered him sitting on the lacrosse bench that season with a cast on his arm and a grumpy look glued to his face. The flu
freshman year. Chlamydia sophomore year. Ha! Being that good-looking and constantly hooking up with girls did have its downside. Nothing whatsoever about prescriptions for anything, which meant that any pharmaceutical Matt took, he was taking illegally. Abusing a substance is how the
Keaton Companion
would look at it. Rule #2a.

Devon’s head swam with how many other students could possibly be in the same boat as Matt. Did Hutch get his Oxy illegally? Despite almost everyone’s insistence that he wouldn’t take the stuff, what if he had a prescription for some unknown reason? Her fingers walked to the G-H drawer. She put her hand on the metal handle, but stopped and closed her eyes. What if she opened this drawer and found out that Hutch did have a prescription for Oxy? What if his file mentioned bouts of depression, or bi-polar disorder? She promised herself: If any of that were in his file she would drop this whole murder theory and begin to accept that Hutch did indeed commit suicide. But she needed proof.

She opened the drawer and scanned the files.
Harris, Sasha. Harrington, Joel. Heyman, Alexa. Hoth, David. Hutchins, Eric. Hyde, Grace
.…

No ‘Hutchins, Jason’? She ran through the drawer once more. No. She pulled Eric’s file, maybe something in there would help. Stomach flu, sophomore year. Torn ACL junior year. And that was it.

Devon closed the drawer as quietly as she could. Why would Hutch’s file be missing? Would the police or coroner have needed it? Nurse Reilly would have made copies for them rather than let any of her files out of this office. There had to be a reasonable explanation, except that the gnawing pit in her stomach was acting up again, telling her there was nothing reasonable about any of this.

What about Isla? Matt had said Isla was the one with the problem, not to mention, Isla had actually given Devon Oxy to hold on to. What secrets was her file keeping?

Martin, Isla
.

Wow: a regular in the Health Center. Freshman year; the flu and panic attacks that followed with a prescription for Xanax. A chest infection, sore throat, and severe cramps. Sophomore year: a cold, severe cough, sinus infection, prescription for Z-Pak. Then she had a bruised tailbone, for which a small dose of Vicodin was prescribed. Complaints of depression, followed by a prescription for Paxil. As of junior year she started the year with a prescription for Xanax, 10 mg. No Oxy or Adderall. But the line between abusing pharmaceuticals and using pharmaceuticals was starting to seem pretty thin.

Devon’s eye caught the flash of
Mackintosh, Devon
, as she started to close the drawer. Well, she had already broken into the Health Center. One little peek at her own file wouldn’t hurt. Mackintosh, Devon. Freshman year, height, weight. Sophomore year,
jeez, they weren’t kidding about the Freshman 15
.

That’s weird
. Why would her father’s blood type be listed? Was that a date next to it? As far as Devon knew, her father was a sperm donor. Did her mom even know the blood type of the donor? Maybe the school had asked for it and her mom had to go back to the sperm bank to find out?
Wait, why did this matter now? My blood type is not why I broke into the Health Center in the middle of the night. Stick to the game plan, Devon
.

She had to think about Hutch’s death scientifically. The files didn’t point to anything helpful. What would she need to prove that it wasn’t suicide? If everyone’s prescriptions were registered and stored here, that meant that Hutch’s Oxy might still be here if it was legally administered to him. A stretch, but at least Devon could cross Hutch’s possible legitimate need for Oxy off her list. But where were the meds stored in here?

The one locked cabinet in Nurse Reilly’s office was a giveaway. Why attempt the security unless it was something worth securing? Devon tried to imagine where she would keep the key if she were Nurse Reilly. Opening and closing the drawers on Nurse Reilly’s desk would be loud, and she didn’t want to waste time guessing.

The top of the desk was clean. Nurse Reilly had to open that cabinet every day when students came to take their medication in the mornings, so she would want easy access. Devon patted her hand along the bottom of the cabinet, along the sides … nothing. The “When Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy” needlepoint hung on the wall, mocking her struggle. Did the needlepoint know something she didn’t? Devon slipped the frame off the wall, careful not to let it make any noise. A sliver of gold fell to the floor with a slight
clink!

With trembling fingers, Devon unlocked the cabinet.

Her eyes widened at row after row of labeled orange pharmaceutical canisters—easily over a hundred. This didn’t even account for the kids taking pills that didn’t have prescriptions. There had to be a system to this cabinet, otherwise it would take Nurse Reilly all day to find everyone’s designated meds. Devon scanned the labels; they appeared to be organized by student last name. The first row, A-D. Nothing, just a lot of Ritalin and Adderall. E-K. More of the same. An asthma inhaler or two. L-R. Asthma medicine. Eczema cream. Valtrex. Devon made a note never to make out with Park, Robert. The last shelf, S-Z had more Adderall than the other shelves, insulin pills, and … nothing. No Oxy. No prescriptions for Hutch sitting unused.

It seemed the only Oxy at school was hiding from Isla in Devon’s dresser drawer.

Name: Isla Martin

Session Date: Sept. 18

Session #2

“You been feeling any better?” Devon asked. Isla sat in the leather chair opposite, winding her hair into small braids.

“I don’t know, whatever,” Isla said with a shrug. “Fine, I guess.”

“Kind of a gnarly week, huh? Last session you wanted me to hold onto your pills, Hutch’s funeral happened, and classes kicked into full gear. You handling everything all right?”