Hello, Ollie.
Not a question, and yet it had an inquisitiveness to it, like whoever had sent it was testing the water.
Umm, hello?
More typing, the little gray dots watching him in a strangely nerve-racking way.
Ollie, this is Binah :D
All his worries vanished in a puff of curly brown hair and fairground smells, cotton candy and salted caramel like a day at the beach. His whole mind was overcome with her warm hickory-brown skin that glowed when she smiled, the smile that could melt the whole world, curious, warm, and wise. This was what Ollie remembered when he read the name, even though he’d only met her once. He fumbled for a minute, not sure what to say.
Everything OK?
More typing.
We need your help with something but, before I add you to the team, I need to know . . . Will you do anything and everything for the sake of adventure?
Blinking at the message, he wondered if it was a prank. But . . . if I were Lottie, would I take this as a sign?
Yes, he replied.
Binah wrote back almost instantaneously.
That is wonderful news. I’ll add you to the chat, but just so you know, no one else in there knows about Lottie’s secret.
Ollie sat up when he saw the name of the group chat he had been added to.
The chat colors were red, and there were two other people in the group, besides Binah—Percy and Raphael. And at the top of the phone screen, in big bold letters, the group name read: OPERATION: BREAK INTO ROSEWOOD HALL.
20
SLEEP REFUSED TO WELCOME LOTTIE, and she tossed and turned on the sinking futon. A storm like she’d never seen before raged beyond the screen door, the room quaking with each flurry of wind and rain. Everything rattled—the floor, the wall, the ceiling, her mind—and every time she felt her eyes get sleepy the world would bark at her to wake up again. And every bark sounded the same: a single name in her head, tormenting her. Jamie.
Her phone buzzed next to her pillow, and she fumbled to find it, praying for the sign she was waiting for.
The screen showed Ollie’s name and a childish message she could barely decipher, with a photo of him pretending to be dead. Horrified and furious at the flippant words, she threw the phone to the floor, the screen cracking. Beside her, Ellie turned over, trapped in an unknowable nightmare, but asleep nonetheless.
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m weak,” she mumbled.
Lottie wanted to wake her up, tell her she was wrong, only the real world seemed even worse. How could everything she’d been working toward have been destroyed in one night?
She wanted to run again, to say to hell with the storm and dance around in it, accepting all the fiery rage the universe had to offer.
Why the princess of Maradova? Why would Ellie be at the center of it all? But the thought only made her want to run even more, to run away from the very idea of it, because if it was true, she wasn’t sure Ellie could handle it.
Her hands reached for her rain clothes, fingers curling around the yellow slicker, but before she’d had a chance to consider putting them on, a mew came from the other side of the screen door. A towering black shadow was illuminated by a crack of lightning, a giant cat pawing desperately at the paper door.
The breath caught in her chest and she did not dare make a sound as the vampire cat flooded her mind, here to punish her for overlooking Jamie. But then she threw off her covers and went to welcome him in.
The screen rattled as she pulled it open, and the wind pounded in. With the wind came the desperate creature, the same oversize black cat from over a week ago, Vampy, yellow eyes wide with panic and fur drenched from the rain. She closed the door again and the cat dived into her arms, its heartbeat vibrating against her as she wrapped her arms around it, warming it.
“Now, now,” she whispered, careful not to wake Ellie. “You’re safe now.”
But Vampy refused to rest, diving out of her arms and landing on her rain clothes, where it began to paw at the yellow material, before moving again to the door, scratching at the screen and leaving marks on the wood. It wanted to go out again.
Thunder growled, the room quaking at the furious weather, and she felt in that moment that something terrible was happening within the school.
“I will be kind, I will be brave, I will be unstoppable,” Lottie said, squeezing her eyes shut before reaching for her rain clothes and an umbrella.
The storm screamed at her when she stepped outside. A paper-thin river cascaded over the edges of the decking, the lake in the center of the school growing and spraying its murky dark water upward.
Lottie stepped clumsily with the cat darting between her legs, careful not to lose her footing. She was cold, and her exposed skin stung from the biting fury of the storm. It nipped and snapped at her ankles, tangling her hair menacingly with each step she took, but she persisted.
The cat took her to the very edge of the forest again, the path covered in mud and dripping debris. All-consuming darkness drifted from between the bamboo, the rain turning silent in the midst of the towering trees. Holding her breath, Lottie prepared for the cat to guide her back into the otherworld of the wood, but instead Vampy turned back, leading her to the narrow path to the overgrown back of the dojo, where it vanished. Tangled weeds and tall wet grass clawed at her legs as she stepped into the clearing. Her feet stopped, frozen, as she saw the large dark figure skulking, a sword extending from his palms.
Miko’s stories
