Lex Thomas - Quaranteen

“No way. It’s gonna be fun.”

He prayed he wasn’t wrong. He reached back through the hole and closed the locker behind them. It felt like closing a coffin from the inside. The hallway’s light barely illuminated the underside of the locker’s horizontal vents. Will got a little scared himself. They were inside the guts of the school, head-ing who knew where. He didn’t let go of Lucy’s hand. Her palm was the littlest bit damp now, just a trace of sweat.

“This way,” he said.

Will followed the arrow and pulled Lucy down the thin pas-sageway. His phone’s anemic light only revealed a few feet in front of them.

“How do you know about this?” Lucy asked.

“I know a lot of places in here you’ve probably never been to.”

“Is that so? Like what?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Lucy chuckled. “Bullshitter.”

The passage came to an end at a drywall and stud wall, with another hole knocked through it. Again, there was only darkness beyond it.

Will stepped through the hole. By his phone’s illumination he saw a light switch on the wall. He flicked it. Bright ceiling lights sputtered on. Will and Lucy were in a small ten-by-ten-foot

room with a metal access panel, sort of a hatch, in the middle of the floor. The hatch was open, revealing a maintenance shaft with a utility ladder that led down toward the basement level. The room had a single door on the far wall, but the knob was missing.

“Is this… it?” she asked.

“Yeah, I just wanted to show you a supercreepy room.” She rolled her eyes.

“Keep your pants on. It’ll be worth it,” he said.

He had the distinct feeling that he was digging himself deeper each time he said something like that. He was depending entirely on Smudge’s good will now, and that was less than reassuring.

“I should tell Sasha about this place. She’s always looking for a private place for her and Gonzalo to have sex,” Lucy said.

“Maybe you should. I hate having to listen to them go at it.”

“I know, right?”

Will peered down the shaft. The metal ladder extended down to a dirty concrete floor. He was getting nervous that this wasn’t leading anywhere good at all. Lucy tried to open the knobless door, but it wouldn’t budge.

“This way,” Will said.

He climbed into the maintenance shaft and took the ladder down one cold metal rung at a time.

“Don’t look up my dress,” Lucy said as she followed him onto the ladder.

He looked. But she was just a black silhouette against the light of the room above. The shaft emptied into a small hot room full of large humming machines with blinking control panels, and a network of square metal air ducts coming off them. He hopped off the ladder. He spotted another arrow.

It pointed to a square hole in the side of a low-lying air duct.

The vent cover was missing.

Lucy stepped off the ladder and took in the room. For the first time, she looked genuinely disappointed.

”Now what?”

“It’s just through here,” Will said, pointing toward the hole in the air duct.

“There? Come on. You’re joking. I’m going to get my dress dirty. Can’t you just tell me what it is?” He was losing her.

“I promise it’s worth it,” Will said. Lucy pursed her lips and waggled them from side to side, weighing the decision in her mind.

“Is it far?” Lucy asked.

“It’s super close.”

He should just shoot himself now. He had no idea how much farther it was, or how the hell he’d know when he was even there. His big romantic date was going off the rails. Not that Lucy knew this was a date.

Will didn’t wait for her answer. He climbed headfirst into the air duct. He shined his phone ahead. The duct seemed to extend forever and the air inside was hot and dry. It flowed in the direction he crawled, away from the room full of machines.

He could hear Lucy climb into the duct behind him.

“Oh, my God, it’s so hot in here,” she said.

“It’s not that bad,” Will said.

But it was. The farther he crawled, the hotter he got. He hoped she liked sweaty guys. The duct metal was hot, and it hurt the skin on his forearms.

“Will, I’m getting burned. I don’t like this.” He could hear the aggravation in her voice.

“Not much farther.”

With every foot he crawled, Will could feel Lucy slipping away from him. She was probably wishing she had never agreed to come out with him at all. Whatever was at the end of this journey had to be huge. Impossibly huge.

“I want to go back,” she said. Will ignored her.

The end had to be soon. Either that, or Smudge had boned him. Hard. He’d probably hit a dead end, or pop out of a vent in the middle of the trash dump. Smudge was probably holding his stomach, cackling at that very moment at the thought of Will stuck inside this hot metal esophagus, ruining any chance he’d ever had with Lucy.

“Will, are you going to answer me?”

The duct turned again. He saw a faint blue glow ahead.

Finally. He crossed Smudge off his mental To Kill list.

“We’re here,” he said.

“Really?”

It had to be it. He didn’t know what it was, but it had to be.

“Yup.”

Will crawled faster. The blue glow was shining through the black slats of a large vent cover. He scurried up and pressed his face to the slats. The vent cover popped right off and clanged down onto a white-tiled floor below. The sound hung in the air.

“Holy shit,” Will said softly.

It was the pool. Giant, six lanes. The water’s surface was absolutely still. It looked like clear blue glass. He could smell the chlorine. Damn, it smelled so clean. There wasn’t a soul in the room. He knew the pool was under the gym, inside Varsity territory. But he didn’t care. He had to get out of this hot tunnel and into that cool, serene water. He climbed out of the duct.

Lucy popped her head out right after. The bothered scowl on her face reversed at the sight of the pool. She beamed.

Relief drained the tension from Will’s muscles. Now Lucy was finally smiling her full smile.

“The pool!” she said. “Will! You took me to the pool?” Her voice echoed through the tiled room. Will pressed his forefinger to his lips with a smile. He didn’t know if Varsity was lurking. Lucy lowered her voice.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know, maybe four?”

“That’s perfect. Hilary doesn’t go for her morning swim until six thirty, and free swim isn’t till after that. So nobody’s going to be down here.”

“Free swim?” Will said, his jaw hanging open. “You guys got to swim every day?”

“Believe me, it takes all the fun out of it when Varsity guys are watching you like sharks trying to cop a feel under water.”

“Lucky bastards.”

“Will!” she laughed.

He laughed too. This was the moment. She was happy, he was happy. He needed to take her head in his hands and kiss her.

But he didn’t. He froze, when right in front of him, Lucy unzipped the back of her dress, and let it fall to the floor.

The tiles felt cold and fresh under her bare feet. Lucy stepped out of her dress, which lay puddled around her feet. She walked two steps to the edge of the pool and dove in.

Chilly water caressed every inch of her. She loved being underwater. She spread her arms out and dug through the water. Deeper. The pure silence was almost as refreshing as the water. She closed her eyes, relishing her weightlessness.

She ran her hands down her body and kicked hard.

Deeper still. It was so familiar. Every summer she swam at her family’s lake house. She and her cousins would lie on the wooden raft anchored near the shore and bake in the sun until they couldn’t stand it. They’d jump into the crisp water and swim all the way down, racing to be the first one to touch the silty bottom. Those were some of her favorite memories.