Sugar & Squall by J. Round Read Free Book Online Page B

powered upwards, desperate.
    “I think there’s a phone in the principal’s office and one on the secretary’s desk that’s for student use. We’ll try them both. If that doesn’t work, we can jump on the net in the library.”
    “You really know your way around for a newcomer,” I said, growing bolder.
    “I like to be prepared,” he replied, turning and walking into the principal’s office.
    I spoke to his back. “Like a scout?”
    He didn’t turn, or reply.
    I followed him in. Sadly, I’d been in this position more than a few times. The principal at my last school had been a hard old hag. There was no corporal punishment. I wasn’t bent over any desk and belted. No, she just looked at you in a certain way, a slant of the eye, and that would be enough.
    “You’re a deeply troubled girl,” she’d said to me, knowing full well the childish connotation of ‘girl’. That was good, but she was saving her trump card. “It’s sad, really, that your mother isn’t around. She’d be deeply disappointed.”
    I ’d thought of my mother on the street, cut down by some junkie for fifty dollars, bleeding out onto the pavement, the bloody knife by her side. I’d thought of the ice-cream falling from my hand as I ran to her, the coward running away with her purse, people pointing but doing nothing. I’d thought of her and I’d wanted to hurt this bitch in front of me. I’d wanted to hurt her so bad.
    Instead I’d sat there simmering until the cops came, trying to burn right through her with my eyes. All the while she just looked at me – a piteous look that I’ll never forget.
    “Nothing,” Logan said.
    The phones in the office were both dead. We moved onto the library, books our only accomplice. Logan kept tapping the enter key on the computer keyboard so that the same thing cycled on the screen over and over.
    “There’s no network. Power, yes. Internet, no. It probably goes down in bad weather, but I don’t remember a storm last night.”
    “What about cell phones?” As I said it I remembered there was no reception. Stupid.
    “No, it’s not a bad thought. Somebody said they keep a bunch of prohibited items in a box in the principal’s office, but I already checked. They’d be no use anyhow.”
    “How far is it to shore?” I was rolling now.
    “It’s too far to swim if that’s what you’re thinking. Plus it’s winter, and there’s supposed to be a really bad undercurrent that runs right around the island. Apparently, no one swims in the ocean. It’s too dangerous. That’s why there’s the pool.”
    “Yeah, I know.”
    I didn’t.
    He held my gaze and then suddenly averted his eyes, as if he couldn’t bear me.
    I suggested we do a final check of the perimeter of the school. We walked around until it was clear to all parties involved we were doing nothing but chasing our own tails. The sun fell all the while. It would be dark soon.
    “Hungry?” Logan said casually, his shirt flapping in the breeze.
    On cue, my stomach gave out something between a chirp and a groan. I pressed on it through my sweater, mortified.
    Logan laughed a little, for the first time. “I think it’s settled. Come on.”
    “W hat about the others?” I protested.
    “We have to eat,” he said, harsher than I expected, and then h e was already off back to the school.
    In the kitchen, he opened the one of the five or six industrial-sized fridges one-handed, peering inside with deep concentration. Even under the Freon glow inside, a light that would be most unflattering to most, he looked angelic.
    “See anything you like?” he said, nodding his head at the fridge’s innards.
    But I wasn’t looking inside the fridge . Sure do.
    I peered in, noting a large container of what looked to be lasagna labeled ‘Monday’ up the back.
    Logan went to grab it, but I stopped him. “No, I’ll do it. Find some plates and cutlery.”
    It’s the least I can do, I thought, as Logan skated around the kitchen with