Rent a Boyfriend - Gloria Chao Page 0,53

front of my eyes, but I didn’t dare let go to move it aside.

“Push yourself off the wall!” Nicolette screamed at me.

I flung my head to clear the hair from my vision and stuck my foot out just in time, pushing off and sending myself down the next hallway. My chair spun in a circle, making me giggle with dizziness. I felt so free. Free of secrets, if just for a moment.

As the incline decreased and the chair slowed, I finally let go and threw my hands in the air. I shrieked, feeling the anger, frustration, and disappointment escape my body through my lungs. The chair hit a bump. I tried to right myself, but it was too late. I went flying . . .

Straight into Darren.

He managed to wrap his arms around me as my momentum knocked him into the wall. The chair crashed and a wheel popped off. His messenger bag dug into my ribs, and I prayed that he didn’t have a laptop in there. He was probably on his way back from the library and using the tunnels to stay warm.

I was still catching my breath when Darren said, “Chair surfing?”

“How does everyone know about this but me?” I was still pressed against him, our faces inches apart, and he was the only thing I saw. Meaning, I didn’t see Nicolette approach. I had completely forgotten about her.

Her magenta lips turned up in a sly smile. “Well, well, what’ve we got here?”

I reluctantly stepped out of his arms and made introductions.

“We’re helping Mei forget about her overbearing parents,” Nicolette told him. “They disowned her earlier.”

I was partly relieved that Darren knew and I didn’t have to be the one to say it, but I was also peeved that Nicolette was speaking as if she were reciting the symptoms of a damaged sympathetic cervical trunk.

I gazed up at him. “Kiemasu, right?”

He smiled sadly, then nodded. “Kiemasu.”

Nicolette clapped him on the back. “Want a turn?”

“I think I’ll go flying immediately on account of these.” He waggled a long leg. “That’s a nice chair. Where’d you get it?”

She grinned proudly. “Did you see that Tech article about how three chairs went missing from the Reading Room?”

“That was you?”

“No, but it sounded like a good idea, so I went in and stole two more.”

Darren raised his eyebrows at me. “I need to be more careful around you. You’re running with the rough crowd.”

Nicolette laughed. “Yeah, that hack we pulled last week during the football game? Where we tricked those Crimson preppies into spelling out ‘Harvard Sucks’ in the stands? That was all me.”

“Hack” was MIT’s term for sneaky pranks, and it spawned the word computer geeks use today. We liked to play jokes on other schools and put weird things, like cop cars, onto MIT’s iconic Great Dome.

“Hey, is that where you are most nights?” I asked Nicolette. “Hacking?”

She nodded. “Yeah. What’d you think I was doing?”

“No idea,” I lied, then flashed an innocent smile. She chuckled. My first guess couldn’t be that far off; she hadn’t gotten chlamydia crawling in tunnels and climbing on pipes.

“Come on, big guy, Hello Kitty,” she said, nodding at each of us. (I rolled my eyes.) “You guys are in for a treat—just follow this hacker.”

After weaving through the tunnels, a basement, and too many stairs to count, we made it to the door. Which door, I had no idea. I lost track of our whereabouts hundreds of steps ago.

“Keep an eye out for cops,” Nicolette said as she turned the lock pick with expertise. “I just need another . . .”

Click.

“Ha!” she exclaimed as the door swung open. “Welcome to MIT’s famous domes.”

I followed Darren onto the roof of Building 7. From this height, the Boston skyline was visible both in the distance and reflected on the Charles River. Despite the lights on the horizon, the stars scattered across the dark sky shone brightly.

“Orion,” I whispered, pointing at the constellation’s three-pronged belt. My mother used to take me stargazing. The thought of her made my heart lurch.

Darren took my hand and we strolled toward the little dome. He ascended the neck-high platform first (chest level for him) and extended a palm down. I grabbed hold, thankful that it had warmed slightly the past few days and I was wearing my thin, flexible down coat (curated by scared-of-the-cold Mǎmá Lu, of course). With Darren’s help, I heaved myself onto the limestone.

I turned to assist Nicolette, but she was nowhere in sight. That sneaky wonderful