"But - "
"Trust me. They're not exactly amateurs around here at making that happen. So let's just get this done and hope like hell your plan works, okay?"
Eve steered slowly through crowds of lunchtime students walking across the streets, hit the turnaround, and followed Claire's pointed directions toward the dorm.
Howard Hall didn't look any prettier today than it had yesterday. The parking lot was only half-full, and Eve cruised the big Caddy into a parking space near the back. She clicked off the ignition and squinted at the sunlight glaring off the hood. "Right," she said. "You go in, get your stuff, be back here in fifteen minutes, or I start launching Operation Get Claire."
Claire nodded. She wasn't feeling so good about this idea, now that she was staring at the door's entrance.
"Here." Eve was holding something out. A cell phone, thin and sleek. "Shane's on speed dial - just hit star two. And remember, fifteen minutes, and then I freak out and start acting like your mom. Okay?"
Claire took the phone and slipped it in her pocket. "Be right back."
She hoped she didn't sound scared. Not too scared, anyway. There was something about having friends - even brand-new ones - that helped keep the tremors out of her voice, and shakes out of her hands. I'm not alone. I have backup. It was kind of a new sensation. Kind of nice, too.
She got out of the car, waved awkwardly to Eve, who waved in reply, and turned to walk back into hell.
Chapter Six
The cold air of the lobby felt dry and lifeless, after the heat outside; Claire shivered and blinked fast to adjust her eyes to the relative dimness. A few girls were in the lobby with books propped up on tables; the TV was running, but nobody was watching it.
Nobody looked at her as she walked by. She went to the glassed-in attendant booth, and the student assistant sitting inside looked up from her magazine, saw her bruises, and made a silent O with her mouth.
"Hi," Claire said. Her voice sounded thin and dry, and she had to swallow twice. "I'm Claire, up on four? Um, I had an accident yesterday. But I'm okay. Everything's fine."
"You're the - they were looking for you, right?"
"Yeah. Just tell everybody I'm okay. I've got to get to class."
"But - "
"Sorry, I'm late!" Claire hurried to the stairs and went up as fast as her sore ankle would allow. She passed a couple of girls, who gave her wide-eyed looks, but nobody said anything.
She didn't see Monica. Not on the stairs, not at the top. The hallway was empty, and all the doors were shut. Music pounded from three or four different rooms. She hurried down to the end, where her own room was, and started to unlock it.
The knob turned limply in her fingers. Great. That, more than any graffiti, said Monica wuz here.
Sure enough, the room was a wreck. What wasn't broken was dumped in piles. Books were defaced, which really hurt. Her meager clothes had been dragged out of the closet and scattered over the floor.
Some of the blouses had been ripped, but she seriously didn't care that much; she sorted through, found two or three that were intact, and stuffed them in the garbage bag. One pair of sweatpants was fine, and she added that, too. She had a lucky find of a couple of ratty old pairs of underwear that hadn't been discovered, shoved in the corner of the drawer, and added those to the sack.
The rest was another pair of shoes, what books she could salvage, and the little bag of makeup and toiletries she kept on the shelf next to the bed. Her iPod was gone. So were her CDs. No telling if that had been Monica's doing, or the work of some other dorm rat who'd scavenged later.
She looked around, swept the worst of the mess into a corner, and grabbed the photo of her mom and dad off of the dresser to take with her.
And then she left, not bothering to try to lock the door.
Well, she thought shakily. That went okay, after all.
She was halfway down the steps when she heard voices on the second-floor landing. " - swear, it's her!
You should see the black eye. Unbelievable. You really clocked her one."
"Where the hell is she?" Monica's voice, hard-edged. "And how come nobody came to get me?"
"We - we did!" someone protested. Someone who sounded as scared as Claire suddenly felt. She reached in her pocket, grabbed the phone, and held on to it for security. Star two. Just press star two - Shane's not far away, and Eve's right downstairs.... "She was up in her room. Maybe she's still there?"
Crap. There was nobody in the dorm she could trust, not now. Nobody who'd hide her, or who'd stand up for her. Claire retreated back up the steps to the third-floor landing and went to the fire stairs, flung open the door, and hurried down the concrete steps as fast as she dared, ducking to avoid the glass window at the second-floor exit. She made it to the lobby exit door sweating and trembling from the effort, with her backpack and the garbage bag dragging painfully on her sore muscles, and risked a quick look out the window to the lobby itself.