Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

The bars were one large unit, all attached together. Jazza pushed them out. There was an opening of about a foot and a half for us to squeeze through, and a short drop to the ground.

“Ready?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You first,” she said. “Because this is your idea.”

We awkwardly switched positions. I got up on the seat and stuck my head outside, taking a deep breath of the cold London air. Once I went out this window, I was breaking the rules. I was risking everything. But that was the point, really. And who cared what we did when there was a killer out there? We were only going a few feet to another building, anyway. Mentally, I was already rehearsing my “but it wasn’t off the grounds” defense.

I got up on the sill and put my legs through the opening. It was an easy jump to the ground, barely a jump at all. For a moment, I thought Jazza wasn’t going to come, but she got up the courage and did the same thing.

We were out.

12

IT HAD TURNED INTO A CRISP, PERFECT AUTUMN night. The sky was clear, and I could smell leaves in the air, and just a little bit of burning wood. We couldn’t walk through the square, obviously; we’d be seen by someone looking out one of the windows. So we had to run over a street and come around the long way, using off-school property. We’d approach Aldshot from behind. It would take about ten minutes to go this way, and we were now definitely breaking the rules, but we’d started this thing, and we had to continue it.

Once we were clear of the building and around the corner, we slowed to a fast walk.

“Rory,” Jazza said breathlessly. “Is this stupid, what we’re doing? Not because of the school thing, but because of, you know, the Ripper thing. What with him being out right now, killing people.”

“We’re fine,” I said, blowing on my hands as we hurried along. “We are literally walking around a corner. Together.”

“This is stupid, though. Isn’t it?”

“What you need to remember is that you are doing the interesting thing, and Charlotte is not. And if we get caught, I will claim I made you go. At gunpoint. I am American. People will assume I’m armed.”

We walked faster, speeding down one of the small residential streets that backed up to Wexford. Inside many of the flats, I could see lights and a few parties of people drinking. You could see the reflection of televisions in so many of those windows—the now-familiar bright red and white logo of BBC News shining out into the dark. We made a sharp left at the shuttered shoe repair shop and ran the last block to approach Aldshot from behind.

Aldshot was the twin of our building, except that it had the word MEN carved in bas-relief over the front door. Even without that hint, you could tell that this building was full of guys. Hawthorne had distinctive and pretty curtains in many windows, the occasional plant on the windowsill, or some other decorative item. Even the light was different, because of all the lamps girls brought in, with paper shades diffusing and coloring the light. In Aldshot, no one changed the curtains, so they were all the standard grayish green. The decorations on their windowsills tended to be stacks of bottles or cans or—in fancy cases—books. The lights were all the standard issue. Weird how two identical buildings could be so different.

I could already see our point of access—it was a fire escape door, which had been propped open an inch or so by a small book wedged in the opening. We made it across the street and pressed ourselves against the side of the building, then we crept along, under the ground-floor windows. I reached forward and carefully opened the door, and we slipped inside. We were in the cold, fluorescent-lit concrete stairwell. I closed the door softly.

“We did it,” Jazza whispered.

“Seems that way.”

“Now we just wait here?”

“I guess.”

“I don’t feel very hidden.”

“Me either.”

We quietly approached the inner door that led to the ground floor of Aldshot. I could hear male voices and a television. Jazza and I huddled together, unsure what to do next, until we heard a door open on the floor above us. Jerome’s curly head peered down at us over the railing, and he waved us up.

“I disabled all the alarms,” he said. “Prefect secret. Everyone’s downstairs watching.”

He looked very satisfied with himself. He took us up two more flights, until we reached another door. This one was a lot more serious-looking, with a bar across it and a huge DO NOT OPEN: DOOR ALARMED sign in red. Jerome pushed this open with a bold stroke. The Klaxon I had been expecting didn’t sound. We were suddenly on the wide roof of Aldshot in the bright cold, nothing but the sky above us.

“My God,” Jazza said, cautiously stepping out. “I did it. We did it. We really did it.”

We all took in the freedom for a moment. Jazza stood back, but Jerome and I went up to the edge. Below, I got a good view of our square, the halls, and all the streets around. Everything was lit—every streetlight, every window, every shop. The tall buildings of the City—the financial district of London that was right next to our neighborhood—were beacons, filling the air with even more light. London was awake, and watching.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” he asked.

It was great. This, I realized, is what I came for. This view. This night. These people. This feeling buzzing through the air.

“I suppose it’s safe up here,” Jaz said, coming a little closer and hugging herself for warmth. “The building is locked, and it’s not easy getting up here. Plus, there’s police all round. And helicopters.”

She pointed at the bright lights of the helicopters drifting above like oversized bees. There were at least three we could see from where we were standing. The dragnet was on.

“Safest place in London right now,” Jerome said. “As long as we don’t fall off.”

Jazza backed up a few steps. I peered down carefully. It was a sheer drop down to the cobblestones. When I looked up again, Jazza had wandered off to examine the view from the other side. It was just Jerome and me facing the square and the sky.

“Worth it?” he asked, smiling.

“So far,” I said.

He laughed a little, then took a few steps back and sat down.

“It’s almost time,” he said. “And we don’t want anyone to see us.”

I sat next to him on the cold roof. He had everything ready—several windows on his computer open to various news and Ripper sites.

“You really like this, don’t you?” I asked.

“I don’t like people getting murdered, but . . . yeah, people are going to ask us where we were when this happened. This is going down in history. I want to be able to remember where I was and have that somewhere be cool. Like on the roof.”

Just the way he looked, the wind lifting up his hair a little, his profile in the low light . . . Jerome was different to me now. He was more than just the friendly and somewhat strange guy I’d gotten to know. He was smart. He was adventurous. He’d been chosen to be a prefect, which had to mean something. I felt the like blossom in me.

“What happens now?” Jazza asked, coming over and joining us.

“We wait,” Jerome said. “Catherine Eddowes was killed sometime between one forty and one forty-five. It’s going to happen soon.”

1:45 arrived. Then 1:46, 1:47, 1:48, 1:49 . . .

The newscasters spun on and on, filling time by showing the same film of police cars going through the streets. I started to feel weird waiting on the roof for someone to die. It was obvious that the news people had run out of ways of saying “nothing has been found.” They returned to descriptions of the third body. The early reports confirmed that this was indeed a third Ripper murder. This was the quickest one, just a slash to the neck.