I settled for “I MISS YOU, TOO!” and a quick description of Jason. Well, minus the werewolf bit. No sense in worrying her, right?
When the bell rang for lunch, Scout and I stuffed our books into our lockers and headed to the cafeteria.
“I’ve got a surprise for you today,” she said, her arm through mine as we joined the buffet line.
“If it crawls or bites, I don’t want to know about it.”
“Hey, what you and Shepherd do on your own time is up to you.”
That stopped me in my tracks. “What do you mean, me and Shepherd?”
She did a little dance. “We’re going to have lunch in the park with Jason and Michael.”
“You arranged a double date?”
“Not if you’re calling it a double date. You can scratch it right off your list. But we are sharing in a communal meal, or whatever fancy East Coast terminology you folks like to use.”
“I’m not sure upstate New York qualifies as ‘East Coast.’ But either way, we call it lunch.”
“Lunch it is.” She grabbed two paper bags from the buffet. Since our lunch hour was one of the only times the powers that be at St. Sophia’s let us off campus (at least as far as they knew), they were pretty good about stocking brown-bag lunches. According to their decorator-perfect labels, one held a turkey sandwich, and the other held a Greek wrap with hummus. Being the resident vegetarian, I assumed the wrap was for me.
“Nothing for the boys?” I wondered, pulling two bottles of water from an ice-filled tub.
“The boys are bringing their own lunch. I told you it wasn’t a date.”
“Well, not a fancy date anyway.” Unless, of course, you counted Scout’s rainbow-esque ensemble. She’d paired her blue-and-gold plaid with red wool clogs, a lime green cardigan, and thin orange-and-purple head-bands to hold back her hair. Whatever you might say about Scout, her wardrobe was definitely not boring. With my blue cardigan and yellow Chuck Taylors, I felt practically preppy.
Lunch in hand, we passed the brat pack and their snarky comments and thousand-dollar messenger bags and went through the school to the front door of the main building. The fresh air was a relief, especially after spending most of my days moving between the classroom building and the suite, and most of my evenings in damp tunnels.
It was a gorgeous fall day. The weather was crisp, and the sky was infinitely blue, the color reflected across the glass buildings that surrounded our gothic campus in downtown Chicago.
We walked up the street and past St. Sophia’s next-door neighbor, Burnham National Bank. The bank was housed in a fancy glass skyscraper. It was a pretty building, but still a strange sight—it looked like a giant kid had stacked glass boxes on top of one another . . . but not very well.
My heart sped up as we reached the next building. It was a pretty, short brick thing—like the slightly mousier older sister of the bank building. It was also the home of the Sterling Research Foundation, the other link in the chain that connected my parents to Foley and St. Sophia’s. While I’d basically promised Foley not to ask any questions that would hurt my parents, I didn’t think checking into the SRF was going to hurt anyone. I just had to figure out how to do it on the sly.
For a moment, I thought about walking to the front door and peeking inside, maybe offering up some excuse about it being the wrong building. I chewed the edge of my lip, considering the possibilities.
“Lils?”
I glanced back, saw that Scout was waiting at the corner, and nodded my head. “I’m right behind you.”
We slipped into the alley that separated the two buildings, and then to the left when the alley dead-ended. No—we weren’t meeting Jason and Michael in a dirty alley among Dumpsters and scattered bits of trash.
The alley held a secret.
Well, actually, it was the grass just beyond the alley that held the secret—a secret garden of lush grass and concrete thorns. It was a hidden refuge that was technically just beyond the wall of St. Sophia’s, but it carried the same sense of mystery as the convent itself.
We slithered in between the concrete columns and found Jason and Michael in the middle, sitting on a fleece blanket they’d stretched over the grass. Both of them wore their Montclare Academy uniforms. The plaid skirts were bad enough, but at least our school didn’t make us dress like accountants.
They’d already spread their lunch—or what passed for lunch for sixteen-year-old boys—on the blanket: fast food burgers, fries, and foam cups of pop.
“Welcome to paradise!” Michael said, lifting a cup. It was a high school toast, I guess.
“Shepherd. Garcia,” Scout said, kneeling down on the blanket. I joined her. Jason leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“Hello there,” he whispered.
I got a full and complete set of goose bumps. “Hello back.”
Michael munched on some fries. “How’s life at St. Sophia’s today?”
Scout unwrapped her sandwich. Little fringes of turkey peeked from between the layers of bread. “Pretty much the same as every day. Brat pack. Teachers. Lily getting her learnin’ on.”
Jason smiled and his dimple perked up. “Her learnin’?”
“Thomas Jefferson,” I said, nibbling a black olive that had fallen out of my wrap. “I do a lot of thinking about federalism.”
“It’s true,” Scout said. “She is all up in the federalist period.”
“Mad props for checks and balances,” I said, offering her knuckles. She knuckled back.
Jason snorted. “How did you two survive before knowing each other?”
“That is one of the great mysteries of the universe, amigo,” Michael said. “But since we’re all here together, maybe we should talk about the other mystery.”
“Not a bad idea,” Jason said. He half unwrapped his burger and arranged the paper so it made a sleeve, then took a bite. “At least Daniel believed us about the—what are we calling them? Rat things?”
“That’s close enough,” Scout said. “And Daniel is definitely an improvement. So far, I approve of him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to hear it,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you’re crushing on him, too?” Jason asked, mouth full and eyebrow arched. Scout’s cheeks flushed.
She popped a corner of her sandwich in her mouth. “I don’t crush. I appreciate.”
“You should appreciate someone your own age,” Michael muttered.