Punk 57 (7 page)

I pause for a moment, knowing full well that anything could be lurking down there. Animals, homeless people…dead people.

“They used to control the animatronics and stuff from down here,” he calls up to me as he descends with his light. “It’s a way for the staff to get around the park quickly. Come on!”

How the hell would he know all that?
I didn’t know theme parks had an underground.

But I can feel the threat of Trey at my back, so I let out a breath and swing around the bannister, heading down after Ten.

“There are lights on down here,” he says as he reaches the bottom, and I come up behind him, glancing over his shoulder to see what lies ahead.

My stomach somersaults. The long, subterranean path is built solely of concrete, a square tunnel about ten feet wide from side to side and top to bottom. There are scattered puddles, probably from rain run-off, a pipe leak, or maybe cracks in the walls letting in ocean water. They glimmer with the track lighting overhead.

A black void looms at the end of the tunnel, and I run my hands up and down my arms, suddenly cold.

“The lights are probably connected to the city,” I say. “Maybe they’re on all the time.”

Of course, I have no idea—and why would they be on all the time? But lying to myself makes me feel better.

I hear a door slam up above, and I jump, glancing up the stairs for a split-second before planting my hand on Ten’s back and pushing him forward.

“Shit,” I whisper. “Go, go, go!”

We race down the tunnel, my heart beating against my chest as we pass random doors and more passageways leading off to the sides of the main one we’re running down. I stay straight, though, feeling an excited smile creep up despite my fear.

I can’t help but think if it were Misha chasing us, he wouldn’t run after me. But he wouldn’t lose, either. He’d find a way to outsmart me.

I hear footfalls behind us, and I glance over my shoulder to see a light bobbing down the stairwell. Holding my breath, I grab the back of Ten’s T-shirt and yank him into the room on the right. The door is missing, so we swing inside and hide behind the wall, breathing hard as we try to be still.

“Careful, babe,” Ten says. “You’re acting like you
don’t
want to be caught.”

Yeah, I don’t want to be caught. I’d rather be waxed. Every day. Right before a scalding hot salt bath.

It’s not that I’m not attracted to Trey. He’s good-looking and built, so why wouldn’t I be?

But no. I won’t be one of his girls prancing down the hall at school in my skin-tight skirt while he slaps me on the behind and his friends pat him on the back, because I’m his newest piece-of-ass trophy.

Insert hair flip and giggle.

Not fucking likely.

Pressing my head close to the wall, I train my ears, gauging how close he is to us.

Did he turn back? Take a side tunnel?

But then I narrow my eyes, noticing a faint whine instead. As if there’s a mosquito buzzing around the room.

“Do you hear that?” I whisper to Ten.

I can’t make out his face, but his dark form stills as if listening. And then I see him digging in his jeans for something. A moment passes, and then his phone casts a small glow into the room, and I turn, widening my eyes at the sight of a bed, mussed white sheets, and a small table.

What the hell?

Ten moves farther into the room, getting closer to the bed. “So there
is
a caretaker on site. Shit.”

“Well, if there is,” I speak low, approaching him as I study the items on top of the sheets, “why didn’t he kick us out when we got here?”

Ten holds up his phone, looking around the room, while I skim over the things on the bedside table and bed. There’s a watch on an old, black suede cuff laying on top of a picture of, what looks like, nearly an identical watch. There’s also a couple of paperbacks sitting on a pillow, an iPod with headphones attached, and a notebook with a pen lying next to it. I pick up the notebook and flip it over, seeing what looks like a man’s writing.

Anything goes when everyone knows

Where do you hide when their highs are your lows?

So much, so hard, so long, so tired,

Let them eat until you’re ground into nothing.

Don’t you worry your glossy little lips,

What they savor ‘ventually loses its flavor.

I wanna lick, while you still taste like you.

My chest rises and falls in shallow breaths, and my thighs clench.

I wanna lick…

Damn
. A cool sweat spreads down my back as a picture of lips whispering those words against my ear hits me. I’ve never been much into poetry, but I wouldn’t mind more from this guy.

A familiar feeling falls over me, though, as I study the tails of the y’s and the sharp strokes of the s’s that look like little lightning bolts.

That’s weird.

But no, the paper is cluttered with writing over more writing and scribbles and scratches. It’s a mess. The rest looks nothing like Misha’s letters.

“Well,” I hear Ten’s voice mumble at my side, “that’s creepy.”

“What?” I ask, tearing my eyes away from the rest of the poem and turning my head to look at him.

But he’s not watching me. I follow to where his flashlight is shining, and I finally see the wall. Dropping the notebook to the bed, I peer up as Ten runs the light over the entire surface.

ALONE.

It’s written in large black letters, spray-painted and jagged, each letter nearly as tall as me.

“
Real
creepy,” Ten repeats.

I inch backward, glancing around the room and taking it all in.

Yeah.
Photos on the wall with faces scratched out, ambiguous poetry, mysterious, depressing words written on the wall…

Not to mention someone is sleeping in here. In this abandoned, dark tunnel.

The distant whine suddenly catches my attention again, and I follow it, leaning down closer to the bed. I pick up the headphones and hold them to my ear, hearing “
Bleed It Out”
playing.

Shit.
I immediately drop the headphones, a breath catching in my throat.

“The iPod’s on,” I say, shooting up straight. “Whoever he is, he was just here. We need to go. Now.”

Ten moves for the doorway, and I turn away from the bed, but then I stop.

Spinning back around, I dip down and rip the page out of the notebook. I have no idea why I want it, but I do.

If it is a guy living here, he probably won’t miss it, anyway, and if he does, he won’t know where it went.

“Go,” I tell Ten, nudging his back.

And I fold up the page and stuff it in my back pocket.

Holding up our phones, we step out of the room and turn left. But just then someone catches me in their arms, and I yelp as I’m squeezed until I can’t breathe.

“Gotch-ya!” a male voice boasts. “So how about that ride now?”

Trey
.

Squirming, I pull out of his hold and twist around. Lyla, J.D., and Bryce stand behind him, laughing.

“Damn!” Ten shouts, breathing hard. He was obviously caught off guard by their sudden appearance, too.

“You might’ve turned off the flashlights,” Lyla scolds with a smirk on her face. “We could see them as soon as we came down.”

I move past them, back toward the stairs, ignoring her. If we hadn’t been investigating that room, the flashlights on our phones
would’ve
been off.

“What are you guys doing down here anyway?” J.D. asks.

“Just go,” I order, losing patience. “Let’s get out of here.”

Everyone moves ahead, back down the tunnel, and I glance over my shoulder, scanning the nearly pitch blackness and the doorway to the room where we’d just been.

Nothing.

Dark corners, shadows, dank glimmers from the fluorescent light hitting the puddles of water… I see nothing.

But I breathe hard, unable to shake the creepy feeling. Someone is there.

“This was not the kind of fun I was thinking of when you guys suggested the Cove,” Lyla whines, side-stepping the small pools of water.

I turn back around, ignoring my fear as I rush up the steps. “Yeah, well, don’t worry,” I mumble just loud enough for them to hear. “The backseat of J.D.’s car isn’t far away.”

“Hell yeah.” J.D. chuckles.

And I resist the urge for one more glance back down the dark tunnel.

I climb the stairs, still feeling eyes on me.

“Let’s go, ladies!” Coach pounds her fist on the lockers twice as she passes by. The girls giggle and whisper around me, and I comb my fingers through my hair, sweeping it up into a messy ponytail.

“Yeah, I hear they’re installing cameras,” Katelyn Stephens says to a group as she sits on the bench. “They’re hoping to catch him red-handed.”

I roll on some deodorant and toss the container back into my gym bag before checking my lip gloss in the mirror on the locker door.

Cameras, huh?
In the school?

Good to know.

I pull the top of my cheerleading uniform down over my head, covering my bra, and smooth my shirt and skirt down. We’re recruiting new team members, since so many of us are graduating soon, so Coach has been asking us to wear our uniforms to school some days to hopefully get more freshman interested.

“I was wondering what their next move was going to be,” another girl chimes in. “He keeps getting past them.”

“And I, for one, hopes he keeps it up.” Lyla adds. “Did you see what he wrote this morning?”

Everyone falls silent, and I know exactly what they’re looking at. I turn my head, glancing to the wall, right over the doorway to the gym teachers’ offices. Flapping ever so gently from the AC blowing out of the vent is a large piece of white butcher paper taped haphazardly to the wall.

I smile to myself, my heartbeat picking up pace, and turn back to finish getting ready.

“Don’t knock masturbation,” Mel Long says, reciting the message we all saw laying behind the butcher paper before morning practice a while ago, “it’s sex with someone I love.”

And everyone starts laughing. I bet they don’t even know it’s a Woody Allen quote.

They discovered the graffiti this morning, here in the girls’ locker room this time, and while the teachers covered it up with paper, everyone saw what was behind it.

The school has been vandalized twenty-two times in the last month, and today makes twenty-three.

At first, it was slow—one occurrence here and there—but now it’s more frequent, nearly every day, and sometimes several times a day. As if “the little punk,” as he or she has come to be known, has developed a taste for breaking into the school at night and leaving random messages on the walls.

“Well,” I say, hooking my bag over my shoulder and slamming my locker door shut. “With the cameras going in all the hallways and covering every entrance soon, I’m sure he or she will either wise up and quit, or get caught. Their days are numbered.”