Secret of the Sevens (9 page)

He stares deep in my eyes. “Let's just say that I was told you have information that can be used against me.”

“You were told wrong. I have no idea what you're talking about.” I stand up and push my chair back.

“If you're lying, I can make your life very hard.”

It makes me laugh. “Yeah, well, my life has always been hard, as you know from reading my file.”

“I can also make your life very easy.”

“Like I said, I have no idea what information you're talking about. So I guess I'll be taking care of myself.”

As I head to the door, Kane raises his voice behind me. “But can you take care of your friends, Talan? Because if you cross me, I assure you that I can make their lives harder too.”

I push the door open without looking back. There's no way I'm turning around. No way. Because if I turn around, Kane will see that he actually scared me with that last threat.

Fourteen

After football practice, I find Laney tapping away at a keyboard in the computer room.

“Good, you're here. I need to talk to you.” I quietly close the door. “Remember how I got called out of Solomon's class today?”

She nods, but her eyes remain on the screen.

“Stephen Kane called me into his office for a meeting.”

Her head jerks up. “Oh my God. What did he want?”

I park myself sideways in the chair next to her. “He said he heard I had some info that could be used against him.” There's no way I'm telling her the part where he said I was Pillar material.

“What info?” Her head tilts. “You mean all that stuff we heard at their party?”

“I don't think so. That's probably going to be common knowledge eventually.”

“About bribing the Pillars?”

“They'd just deny it. They're all liars, like him.”

Laney's eyebrows lift. “Do you think he knows about the Sevens?”

“I'm not sure. I told him I didn't know what he was taking about. Then he threatened me and I left.”

“What?” Her voice cracks. “He threatened you?”

“Well, kind of. He said he could make my life hard or make trouble for my friends if I crossed him.”

Laney leans back in her chair. Her eyes look huge against her pale face.

“Don't worry, Kane's all talk,” I say. “I just wanted you to know.”

She gnaws her thumbnail as her eyes drift back to her computer.

I lean around her to see what she's staring at. “What are you doing?”

“Working on the clue. I've tried every method on the Internet to decode it: ciphers; substitution methods; even frequency analysis. I still can't make sense of it.”

“Translate to English please.”

She points at the screen. “I'm keying the first row of characters into Google to see if anything comes up.”

“Still lost. What are you talking about?”

“The clue from the Sevens. I swear, you have the attention span of a drunk ferret. I'm typing in the first row of characters exactly as it's written on the paper. I know it's a long shot, but I've tried everything else.”

I scrunch my eyes and read the screen over her shoulder. A piece of paper lies next to the keyboard covered with some kind of gibberish. On the screen, the same kind of random letters, numbers, and symbols stretch across the search field.

I shake my head. “My message from the Sevens didn't have letters and numbers like that.”

Laney's head twists around. “You didn't get a poem about a challenge coming in parts like puzzle pieces?”

“Yeah, I got that. But it didn't have rows of letters and numbers on it.”

She sits back in her chair and lifts the paper next to the keyboard. “The second page did.”

“I didn't get a second page. I got a plastic thing with black marks on it.”

“So our clues were different?” she says. “Were we supposed to put them together?”

A light bulb goes on in my head. “A message in code, that can't be decoded … ”

Laney finishes my sentence: “If you only have half a clue.”

“Duh! I'll be right back with
my
half clue.” I hop up and bolt for the door.

I charge down the hall, but Mom Shanahan waylays me before I make it to my room. “It's suppertime. Can you call everyone for me?”

I lap the house, knocking on doors and giving the two-minute dinner warning.

On my way back around, Chris stops me outside the computer room. “Did you hear about the statue?”

“What statue?”

“The statue of William Singer outside the school gate. Someone smashed it in the middle of the night.”

“Smashed it? What do you mean?”

“Like, took a sledgehammer or something and smashed the head off. Then they spray-painted sevens around the base.”

“What?” My legs grow wobbly.

“You know. Sevens. Like the number ‘7.' They wrote it on all four sides of the base. I heard Boyle was pissed. He has Security all over it. He said it's an automatic expulsion when he finds out who did it.”

“But who would do that? Who would have anything against William Singer?” I ask.

“And sign it with sevens,” Chris says. “Is that supposed to be funny? What's that about?”

“Talan!” Mom yells from the kitchen. “Did you call everyone for dinner?”

Chris veers around me as I answer her: “I'll be right there! I still need to get Laney.”

I duck into the computer room, but Laney is already on her way out. “I just heard. About the statue and dinner. We'll have to finish this later—how's Founders Hall at seven?”

I nod. “Ready for another mystery, Dr. Watson?”

“Sure,” she says. “Except I think I should be Sherlock and you should be Watson.”

“I want to be Sherlock.”

“We'll talk about it later, Watson.”

“Whatever, Watson.”

Fifteen

The wind picks up a handful of leaves and whips them into the corners of the quad. They fly around like ghosts chasing each other. Maybe it's the gloomy October sky or the way the quad is empty tonight, but something feels creepy.

I'm all alone, but I hear footsteps echo mine. I stop to throw my Barbecue Ruffles bag out and they stop. I rush past Headmaster Boyle's office window and they speed up. But when I look around, all I see are the shadows of the buildings stretching across the walkways.

It happens again when I reach the Visitors Center. I spin around fast enough to see a figure dart behind the maintenance building. He's dressed completely in black, from the hoodie pulled up around his face to his dress shoes.
Dress shoes?

If someone is following me, I need to lose them before I meet Laney. I duck inside the Visitors Center and hide in a stall in the restroom.

My heart thrashes against my ribs when the bathroom door creaks open. I watch through the crack in the stall
door, holding my breath. Whoever it is lingers by the sinks. Underneath the side wall, I see black penny loafers shining in the fluorescent lighting.

A gloved hand dips down, slides an object into my stall, and disappears. I jump away, banging into the other wall.

Heart racing, I fumble with the lock and sprint out just as the restroom door closes. I tear into the lobby, but black-hoodie-and-penny-loafer guy has vanished. I take a few steps toward the door and—

Damn.
I left my backpack in the bathroom. My backpack with the clues from the Sevens in it. I race inside, and it's still right where I left it.

When I lift it, something rolls at my feet—the object that penny-loafer guy slipped under the wall. My heart hammers in my ears as I bend down to pick it up.

A crinkled piece of paper is Scotch-taped around a softball-sized object. Loose pieces rattle inside the package. There's writing on the paper, so I carefully peel off the tape. Inside it are large, cream-colored fragments of a broken shell or something. I start to assemble them together until it becomes obvious what they are.
A human skull
.

My hands shake so hard I set the pieces down before I drop them. Someone's written my name on the outside of the paper. I flip it over and read:

The Sevens are dead and buried.
Keep your mouth shut or you will be, too.

Sixteen

Laney glares at me from a bench outside Founders Hall, tapping her foot as I approach. “Late as usual. I've been—”

I ignore her and rush inside, ducking down the first hallway.

She appears a moment later. “What the heck?”

I peer out into the atrium to make sure we're alone. “Laney, I was followed coming here.”

“What?”

“I tried to lose them. I ducked into a john at the Visitors Center. Whoever it was slid this”—I dig into the backpack and fish out the skull—“under the door.”

“Gross!” She jumps back at first. Then she creeps forward and pokes it. “Is that real?”

“I think so. And this was taped around it.” I hold out the note.

She reads the paper and flips it over. Her lip trembles when she says, “Do you think it's from Kane?”

“It was someone a lot skinnier than Kane. From the clothes, I'd say it was a student, but I couldn't see his face under his hoodie. He was wearing a black jeans, and get this—black penny loafers. All shiny and stiff like they were new. ”

“It was a Pillar.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard Zack bragging today. They all got new clothes and shoes over the weekend. Kane apparently took them on a shopping spree. Who else would have new dress shoes around here?”

My brain is buzzing. “Yeah, but how would the Pillars know about the Sevens?”

“I'm not sure,” she says. “Maybe we were careless with a clue or missed something. Did we leave a note or invitation somewhere they'd see it?”

“I don't know. We've been pretty careful. Unless. May-be—”

“Maybe what?”

“Ah, crap!”

“What?”

“When I first got the invitation to join the Sevens, I thought it was a prank. Remember? I told you I thought the Pillars were trying to make fools of us?”

“So?”

“Well … ” My voice lowers. “I might have said something to Cameron Moore.”

Her face goes slack. “You might have or you did?”

I lean my back against the wall. “I did.”

“Oh my God, Tal! What were you thinking?” She drops to the floor and runs her hands through her hair. “What did you tell him?”

“Give me a second to think here.” I slide down the wall to the ground next to her. “I remember telling him he fucked with the wrong person. I blurted something out about the Sevens and him messing with me. Then I stormed back inside so Boyle wouldn't catch me out of detention.”

“Dang it! Dangitdangitdangdangit! We're screwed!”

Five
dang its
and a
screwed
. The girl is worked up.

“Don't panic. I couldn't have said anything important, I didn't know anything about the Sevens then, much less you being part of it. They're probably feeling me out, just in case. In fact”—I grab the letter to show her—“your name isn't even on here. It's only addressed to me, so they probably don't know about ‘us' at all.”

“This is getting complicated. First the vandalism to Mr. Singer's monument, and now this? Maybe you should lay low for a while.” Laney fingers the crushed skull in my hand. “We're dealing with some seriously messed-up people.”

“We knew that going in. The Sevens warned us in the invitation.”

“Still,” she says. “If they don't suspect me and they're watching you, maybe I should take it from here.”

“No way. You think I'm letting Kane and the Pillars bully me? Screw that. We'll be more careful, that's all. We'll just double-check if we're being watched, avoid each other in public, hide our clues—”

“The clue!” she cuts me off. “Come on, we still have to share half-clues.” She stands up and peeks around the corner before sliding the envelope out of her backpack. She pulls out the same cover letter I have, along with the other paper with the random letters and symbols. I dig out my marked-up report cover and slide her page inside it.

Words instantly appear through the plastic sheet as blocks of characters are hidden under the black marks. The uncovered letters pop out, forming phrases and sentences.

“Success!”

“Finally! What a relief. Okay, how about if I read the words and you jot them down?” She pulls out a spiral notebook and pen and hands them to me.

For the next twenty minutes, I transcribe as Laney reads the words that emerge from the unshadowed letters. We fiddle with the spacing and punctuation for a while. When we're done, we've got another poem:

At Founders Hall, let the hunt begin,
your lesson starts the moment you're in.
Look for a truth hidden inside a lie,
it's a warning you ought to know—
eight letters spell it out

*if you*

check the column along with the row.

—oh—

& last but not least,
for later … a clue:
Sevens are bred to be loyal and true.
Your founder was wise … indeed.
are you?

“Man, there's a warning in here, too.” I sigh.

“I know. Let's check it out.”

The two of us tiptoe into the atrium, quietly peeking down the vacant hallways that extend from it. When I'm convinced no one is lurking anywhere, I let out a breath that could fill a balloon.

We spin around like synchronized swimmers, mes
merized by architecture and artwork I hardly ever noticed before. We occasionally have meetings and assemblies at Founders Hall, but this late in the evening it looks totally different. A cloudy night blackens the atrium windows, coloring the place with gray shadows. The lights in the adjacent corridors and meeting rooms are turned off. Darkness reaches out from every doorway I pass.

There are secrets here, I'm sure of it. Laney stares at every wall as if a hidden passageway is about to pop out at us.

As I circle back to the front door, my eyes are drawn up to the dome ceiling. Laney walks over and stands next to me. She lifts the sheet and reads the first clue. “It says, ‘Your lesson starts the moment you're in.'”

My eyes dart around, searching for an envelope or message somewhere obvious.

“Keep reading,” I tell her.

She holds the notebook close and whispers, “Look for a truth hidden inside a lie, it's a warning you ought to know—eight letters spell it out if you check the column along with the row.”

Decorative columns stand at the entrance of each hallway, but there's nothing written on or near them.

Our eyes catch on the ceiling above us. The seven virtues
that Solomon taught us are painted around the top of the atrium, circling the base of the dome.

“Is that it?” I ask. “Are they saying the virtues are a lie?”

“There's a lot more than eight letters up there, and there isn't anything written on the columns. Let's keep looking. We need to check everything with letters and words. And we should split up,” Laney adds. “I'll take the art on the walls. You search the architecture.”

She looks over each painting, print, and photograph, including the brass plates that name the piece and artist. At the same time, I'm inspecting every column, wall, and sculpture for anything with writing.

After a while, my brain surrenders. “There's nothing that makes sense with that clue.”

“Keep looking,” she says, studying a painting nearby. “It's here. We just have to find it.”

Frustrated, I trudge back to the main door to start fresh. A plaque by the entrance dedicates the building to Mary Singer. I skim over the words and letters again.

“Laney!”

She races over before I even lift my head.

“The lesson starts from the moment you're in
. Here it is. Just like the clue said.”

I point out the plaque and she reads the inscription:

THE SINGER BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WITH RESPECT AND AFFECTION,
HEREBY DEDICATE FOUNDERS HALL TO MARY HARPER SINGER.
ERECTED TO HONOR HER LIFETIME OF SERVICE TO UNDERPRIVILEGED
YOUTH. SHE REMAINS AN INSPIRATION FOR HER UNYIELDING DEDICATION,
LOVING DEVOTION, AND UNSELFISH EFFORTS FOR OUR STUDENTS.
IN MEMORY OF OUR COFOUNDER, MARY HARPER SINGER, WHO REMAINS
EVER IN OUR HEARTS.
DEDICATED ON THIS DATE, THE 7th of JULY, 1995.

She shrugs. “I don't get it. What am I missing?”

“Put it together with the other clue. It said:
eight letters spell it out if you check the column along with the row.
You have to read the column of letters going down
.
” I point to the first letter in each row on the dedication.

“T-H-E-Y-L-I-E-D,” she says. Then she gasps. “Oh my God!”

She stares at the plaque for a minute before turning back to me, wide-eyed. “
They lied
. Wow … He must have been really angry at them to write that here.”

“Now
I
don't get it,” I say. “Who put that message on the plaque?”

“William Singer, of course. Founders Hall was Mr. Singer's pet project after his wife died. They taught us all about it when I gave those parent tours for Student Council last year. After his wife died, he devoted himself to Founders Hall and expanding the school in her honor. Some say he was totally obsessed with the project.”

I shrug. “Okay, so Singer worded the plaque and hid the message. But who was he saying lied?”

“Well, if you read it ‘along with the rows,' then it refers to the Board of Directors.”

“What'd they lie about?”

Her shoulders lift. “I think he's calling them hypocrites, but I'm not sure why. That wasn't exactly in the script for the parent tours.”

“What are you two doing here?” The voice makes both of us jump.

When we spin around, Kollin is standing five feet behind us.

Laney stutters, “We were, we were … ”

“We were researching our Ethics project,” I tell him. “We decided to write about William Singer. This place is loaded with history on him.”

His voice lightens. “Oh.”

“What are you doing here?” Laney asks.

Emily comes in the front door right then and stops in her tracks. She stares at Kollin and then marches past like she didn't notice any of us. Kollin follows her with his eyes. She crosses the atrium and walks straight out the back door.

Kollin's face is red as a rash when he turns back to Laney.

“That was weird,” I say.

Laney shakes her head and shrugs. “So anyway,” she says, “what are
you
doing here?”

Kollin rubs the back of his neck. “I … the same thing as you. I'm here to get ideas for my presentation. Maybe we'll do Mary Singer.”

The three of us stand there saying nothing. It's more awkward than a sixth grade dance.

“Well, I guess we're done then,” I tell them. “I'll leave you two alone.”

“No, I gotta go too.” Kollin glances toward the back exit. “I'll see you tomorrow, Lane.” He kisses her quick and jogs across the rotunda.

When the back door clacks shut, I move alongside Laney. “That was strange. He just got here and he's leaving? And did you see how he and Emily looked at each other? What was that about?”

Laney brushes past me toward the front door. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

I follow her outside. “They looked like they—”

She turns and says through gritted teeth, “I know what you're implying. Kollin wouldn't cheat on me with Emily Dombrose.”

Laney's pissed. Again. Time for another dose of damage control. “Of course not.”

She ignores me and walks faster, her hands balled into fists at her sides.

I tag along beside her. “Only the dumbest guy in the world would risk losing you.”

The creases in her brow evaporate. “You're such a BS-er.”

“No I'm not.”

“Really?” Her head cocks to one side as she imitates my voice. “We're here because we're working on our Ethics project for Solomon's class. We're doing it on William Singer.”

“Well, that was different. That was to save my ass.”

“Same reason you're BS-ing me now.” She dismisses me with a wave of her hand and continues walking. “Just drop it.”

My brain scrambles to think of a way to keep her talking. I nudge her with my elbow. “Hey, did I ever tell you how I got this last envelope from the Sevens?” She avoids my eyes, focusing on the windows of the buildings we pass. “It was in my room when we got back from the city.”

She stops cold and turns slowly to face me. “What?”

“The envelope was in my bedroom after we got home Sunday.”

“How'd it get in your room? Do you think one of the guys put it there?” Her jaw drops. “Oh crap. Maybe you were right all along. Maybe this is some elaborate prank.” Her eyes skip around to check if we're being watched.

“No way. I stopped believing that a long time ago. I don't know a single person that'd know enough to mastermind all this.”

We start to walk again. Her eyes are locked on the sidewalk, but the way she's chomping her bottom lip tells me she's worried.

“In fact, it's
definitely
not someone in our house,” I reassure her. “I was the last one out to the van and the first one back to my room when we got home. It couldn't have been left by someone in our house. It has to be someone outside our family.”

She lifts her eyes and says in a low voice, “Then how'd they get into your room?”

I wouldn't admit this to her, but I spent last night with one eye open, wondering the same thing. “I don't know. My window was locked, but maybe someone left another one open. Or maybe your parents forgot to lock the back door.”

“I guess.” She nibbles her nail. “My envelope was in the student council mailbox. It was locked up in the office when I went to pick up the tickets for the homecoming dance.”

The look on her face makes me wonder if she just got the same chill I did.