Harlan Coben - Shelter

“Funny.” And then I couldn’t help but smile.

“What?” she said.

I started laughing.

“What?”

“You,” I said. “Selling Girl Scout cookies.”

She laughed too. The sound was melodious. “What, you don’t buy me as a Girl Scout?”

I just looked at her-in the black clothes, with the black nail polish and silver studs in her eyebrow. “Yeah, nice uniform.”

“Maybe I’m the goth Girl Scout.” She lifted up her cell phone to show me. “Oh, I typed in the license plate number of that black car. I don’t know what you can do with it, but I figured what the heck.”

I had an idea about that. “Can you text it to me?”

Ema nodded, typed a little, hit Send. “So what are you going to do now?” she asked.

I shrugged. What could I do? I couldn’t call the police. What would I tell them? A man in a dark suit walked into a garage? For all I knew he lived there. And how would I explain to the police my being inside the house in the first place?

I told her about the photograph, the butterfly emblem, and the light in the basement. When I finished, Ema said, “Whoa.”

“You say that a lot.”

“What?”

“ ‘Whoa,’” I said.

“Actually, I don’t. But hanging around you, well, it seems awfully apropos.”

I checked the time on my cell phone. It was time to meet Spoon so we could break into the main office. If I made it through today without going to jail, it would be a miracle.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Thanks for the adventure.”

“Thanks for being the lookout.”

“Mickey?”

I turned and looked at her.

“What are you going to do about Bat Lady?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What can I do?”

“She told you your dad is alive.”

“Yeah, so?”

“We can’t just let that go.”

“We?”

Ema blinked and looked away. There were tears in her eyes.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Her saying that to you,” Ema said. “It’s so mean. We should egg her house-except then it would look and smell better.” She wiped her face with the tattooed forearm. “I better go.”

Ema started walking away.

“Wait, where do you live?” I asked. “Do you need me to walk you home?”

She frowned. “Are you for real? Walk me home? Yeah, right.”

She hurried her step and vanished around the corner. I thought about chasing after her, but she’d dig into me about the fat girl needing protection and I didn’t have time for that. Spoon was waiting for me.

I jogged back to the school and found him alone in the parking lot. I pushed away all images of the Bat Lady and her house. I was still riding the adrenaline wave-might as well see where it led me. Spoon was sitting on the hood of a car.

“Hey, Spoon.”

“Guess what?” He jumped down from the hood. “Beyoncé’s favorite makeup is mascara, but she’s allergic to perfume.”

He waited expectantly for me to reply.

“Uh, interesting,” I said.

“I know, right?”

I should have nicknamed him Random instead of Spoon.

Spoon led the way toward the side door of the school. Using the card in his hand, he swiped it through the magnetic reader. There was a click, and the door opened. We entered.

There is no place more hollow, more soulless, than a school at night. The building had been created for life, for constant motion, for students rushing back and forth, some confident, most scared, all trying to figure out their place in the world. Take that away and you might as well have a body drained of all its blood.

Our footsteps in the long corridors echoed so loudly I wondered if our shoes were amped up. We headed for the main office without speaking. When we reached the glass door, Spoon had the key at the ready.

“If my dad finds out,” Spoon whispered, “well, no revival of Guys and Dolls for me.”

He looked back at me. I guess I should have given him an out here. But I didn’t. Maybe because I was that desperate. Or maybe because I don’t like Guys and Dolls . He turned the key, and we stepped into the office. The front desk was tall enough so you could lean on it. Three school secretaries sat there. Going behind the desk was, of course, strictly offlimits, so I confess that I got a thrill when we did just that.

Spoon took out a penlight. “It’s darker in there. We can’t turn on any lights, okay?”

I nodded.

We stopped at a door that read GUIDANCE. I always found that term wonderfully vague. The dictionary definition of the word is “advice or information aimed at resolving a problem.” In short, an attempt to help. But to us students, the word-this office-is far more frightening. It conjures up our college prospects, growing older, getting a real job-our future.

Guidance seemed more like a term for cutting us loose.

Spoon fished out another key and opened the door. The school, I knew, had twelve guidance counselors. Each had a small private office within this larger office. Most of the doors were unlocked. We entered the first private office. It belonged to a young guidance counselor named Ms. Korty. Like most people, she had left her computer on for the night, settling for “standby” mode.

Spoon handed me the penlight and nodded for me to go ahead. I sat at her desk and started typing. As soon as I hit the keys, the following prompt popped up:

USER NAME:

PASSWORD:

Damn! I hit the return key several times. Nothing. I sighed and looked back at Spoon. “Do you have a clue?”

“The user name is easy,” Spoon said. “It’s just her e-mail. Janice Korty, so it’s JKorty at the school dot e-d-u.”

“And the password?”

Spoon pushed the glasses up his nose. “That’s going to be a problem.”

I tried to think. “How about paper files?”

“They’re kept off-site. And if Ashley is a new student, she probably doesn’t even have one yet.”

I sat back, defeated. Then I let myself think about Ashley. My shoulders relaxed. I thought about the way she nervously played with a loose thread on her sweater. I thought about the way she smelled like wildflowers and when I kissed her, she tasted gently like berries. I know how corny this sounds, but I could kiss her all day and never get bored. Barf, right? I thought of the way she would look at me sometimes, like I was the only person in the universe, and then I thought that this girl, the one who looked at me like that, had just vanished without a good-bye.

It made no sense.

I had to think harder. Ms. Korty was young-the youngest guidance counselor at the school. Something about that triggered a thought. I turned to Spoon. “Who are some of the oldest guidance counselors?”

“Oldest? You mean, like age?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Humor me.”

“Mr. Betz,” Spoon said without hesitation. “He’s so old he teaches a class on Shakespeare because he knew him personally.”

I had seen Mr. Betz in the corridors. He used a walking stick and wore a bow tie. I thought about it-he could definitely be my man. “Which office is his?”

“Why?”

“Just show me, okay?”

When we got back into the hallway, Spoon pointed to the office in the far corner. As we headed toward it, I peered quickly into each office we passed, glancing at the computer monitors for Post-it Notes. No luck. Mr. Betz’s desk had antique-globe bookends and a matching pen holder with his name engraved on it. There was an old Swingline stapler and several Lucite awards.

I sat at his desk and turned on the computer. The same prompt came up:

USER NAME:

PASSWORD:

Spoon looked at me and shrugged. “What did you expect?”