Sugar & Squall by J. Round Read Free Book Online

bold gold copperplate. I pushed against it, noting it was heavy.
    There was a sense of taboo about heading towards the boys’ dorms. It was like the weight of the door was trying to will me away from going any further.
    I was in a corridor. There were no windows in this small passage. The stone pressed in. My pulse quickened with what might lie beyond that corner. Possibilities streamed into my head. All I could do to stop them was carry on, faster now.
    I tripped on something and fell hard. It was a shoe, solitary, a slipper to be precise. I left it there and picked myself up. Time was wasting.
    I edged through the archway, around the corner and came into another hall the exact mirror-image of the one in the girls’ dorm.
    Random doors were open, others only just, along its length. I walked on.
    There was no doubting this was where the guys lived. I found it hard to imagine after only a single day there should be any kind of scent that differed so much to the girls’ dorm, but it was there all right, and disgusting.
    There were one or two art icles of clothing on the floor. The room to my immediate right looked like a teacher’s. It was hard to believe anyone lived in there at all it was so sparse, but there were rows of technical-looking manuals on wall-mounted shelves and a desk hard against the wall with the lamp still on.
    I moved in carefully to look. Wouldn’t this be the ultimate? I thought. Busted in a teacher’s room, prodding around like a common burglar.
    There was a pile of papers on the desk. One was angled out. ‘Year 7 Geography – Introductory Quiz’ was written across the top. This belonged to Ben Harris, who, given the ratio of ticks to crosses, looked like he had a brain. I scanned down the page. The last tick had gone wrong. It continued in a big red streak that ran right off the page and onto the desktop. The pen was on the floor.
    I stepped backwards into the hall, not willing to explore any further. I’d check the other floors and then try my luck in the classrooms and upper floors of the middle building. Someone had to be around. This was a school for God’s sake.
    Each door along the way revealed a different room. While posters were prohibited, a few guys had bucked the rules, throwing them up on the drawers next to their beds, posters of girls, cars, girls on cars.
    One of the doors was hanging off its hinge, angling over into the hall. There was an indentation in the middle of it, a foot-print.
    Jesus, I thought. Someone really hates doors.
    I kept moving until I was about to reach the staircase. That’s when I heard it. The sound was rhythmic, yet tempered. Footsteps? Whoever it was, they were doing a good job of keeping quiet.
    I put my back up against the wall and made myself as flat as possible. Panic returned, hard. I could hear them clearly, each single depression as feet slowly descended the staircase.
    My temples thumped along in tune. What if this was some crazed loon who’d just murdered the whole school, a whack job mental patient who had been hiding out here for a hundred years? In seconds I was buying into it. Nothing about what was headed my way felt friendly. I just knew it.
    I scanned around. Next to me the door to the last room on the floor was completely open. There was a suitcase inside the doorway. On top of it was a hockey stick. It was no samurai sword, but it’d do. If I was going down, I’d damn well do so fighting.
    I stretched my arm out and grasped it, surprised at how light it was, and slid into the room. I gripped the stick tight away from my body in fear it might rattle against my very bones if it were any closer.
    What to do. What to do. What to do.
    I calculated there could only be a few steps left. They’d round the corner in seconds. I instinctively drew in a breath, told myself not to strike out, but when I heard that breathing, when I felt them pause near the doorway, I couldn’t stop myself. Horror filled my head. I acted out of pure reflex,