Nat wasn’t so sure. “Suppose she was out in the hall.”
“What hall?”
“Your hall, in Lanark. When your father was in the room. What if she came up to tell us something and heard what he was saying about her?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Wouldn’t it make her angry?” Nat said. “It made you angry.”
Izzie watched him, saying nothing.
“Maybe she was angry enough to come back here and… do this.” Do this, down at the subterranean level, in the time he and Izzie had spent in bed, above.
“You don’t know her,” Izzie said. The candle she held lit her face from below, casting cheekbone shadows over her eyes, at the same time lightening her hair. “You talk about her like she’s some kind of monster.”
“Not a monster. But she can be funny. You’re the one who told me that.”
“Did I?”
“On the beach.”
“How loyal of me,” Izzie said.
He overcame the urge to shine the light on her face again, to get a better look at her. “What’s wrong with you, Izzie?”
“How can you ask a question like that? Something bad is happening. And you don’t care. You think she’s off by herself, in a sulk.”
“What other explanation is there?”
She gazed at him. “You’re starting to remind me of my father.”
An uncommon feeling stirred inside him, that same anger he’d felt when the campus security officer had implied he knew something about the theft of the HDTV from the student union.
“But here’s an explanation if you need one,” Izzie said. “Wags.”
“Wags? Wags doesn’t even know about this place.”
“Maybe he found out.”
“How?”
“Maybe she did come up, as you said, but went to your room. What if he was there?”
“Why would he be?”
“Why not? Where else can he go? What if he was there, popping those green pills, kidnapping plots buzzing in his brain?”
“So?”
“So he made her bring him here.”
“Wags couldn’t make Grace do anything.”
“Or tricked her, then.”
“He couldn’t trick her either.”
Izzie’s face softened. “You think pretty highly of her.”
“It’s not so much that,” Nat said. The soft look faded. “More that Wags is-” He started to say harmless, stopped himself. Wags wasn’t harmless. Plus: leaving Lorenzo on the pillow. That was Wags; he’d probably seen something like it in a movie. “We’d better check my room,” Nat said. He shone his light around the wreckage one more time. There were movies like that, too.
They started up the rope ladder, Izzie first. As he reached for the ladder, Nat stepped on something slippery. He shone his light on it, picked it up: a black satin jacket.
“Wags’s?” said Izzie, coming back down.
Nat had never seen it before.
“The kind of thing that would amuse him,” Izzie said. A black satin jacket, two snaps ripped from the material, with Saul’s Collision in gold and crossed bowling pins on the front, and a gold crest, Runners-Up ’99. “Especially that runners-up part,” Izzie said.
“Sure it’s not Grace’s?” Nat said.
“You think she’d wear something like this?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“Trust me,” Izzie said.
Nat’s room. And there was Wags, sitting at Nat’s computer, fingers on the keyboard, face almost touching the screen.
“With you in a sec,” he said, not turning toward the door. “Just checking out the Fatty Arbuckle Web site.”
Nat glanced in the bedrooms. No sign of Grace.
Izzie jabbed off the monitor.
“Hey,” said Wags as the screen went dark. “I was downloading.” His eyes went to Nat; actually to a spot in midair a few inches off target. “Hope you’re not pissed about our little… debate last night, or the night before, Nattie, my friend. No harm done. And I brought you some chocolates, as a bribe.”
A box of chocolates lay on Wags’s old desk. They’d been gift-wrapped, but now the wrapping was ripped off, the box open, and three or four of the chocolates gone.
“Fact is, roomie, I’m moving back in. I can’t afford to neglect my education for another second. So if you’ll excuse me…” He reached for the monitor button.
Izzie grabbed his wrist. “Where is she?”
“That hurts a bit,” Wags said. “Ouch. I mean it.”
“Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
With her free hand, the back of her free hand, Izzie smacked Wags across the face; harder than a smack, from the way his head jerked to the side, stunning him. Nat was stunned too.
“Where is Grace?” she said.
Wags gazed up at her, wide-eyed. “Is that like metaphysical or something?”
She raised her hand again; he winced in anticipation, like a dog Nat remembered in his neighborhood.
“Izzie,” he said. She froze, slowly lowered her hand. Her other hand still gripped Wags’s wrist.
Nat went to them, put his hand on Izzie’s. Her hand, so cold, relaxed. He uncoiled it from Wags’s wrist, looked down at Wags. “Do you know where she is?” he said.
“I don’t understand the question,” Wags said, his eyes still locked on Izzie. They filled with tears, like the eyes of a child badgered by the teacher.
“Did you take her down in the tunnels?” Nat said.
“The tunnels?”
“The tunnels under the campus.”
“There are tunnels under the campus?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Real, physical tunnels?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been in them?”
“Yes.”
“And you never told me?” Wags smiled, a smile Nat didn’t like at all, with only one side of his mouth turning up and the eyes not participating. “Why am I surprised?”
“No time for therapy,” Izzie said. Wags’s smile, what there was of it, vanished. “Does this belong to you?” She held up the black satin bowling jacket.
“No.”
She shoved the jacket at him. “Put it on.”
Wags rose, unsteady, as though his legs were weak, put on the jacket. “Is this like Cinderella?” he said. It was much too big.
Izzie reached behind the collar, turned it out. “XXXL,” she said.
“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Nat said.
