FIFTEEN
Three-fifteen finally came, and Robert ran to meet Glenn in the school auditorium. The space was as grand and majestic as any Broadway theater, with a curtained stage and enough seating for an audience of seven hundred. In the center of the ceiling was a large dome, currently under reconstruction. A few weeks earlier, its glass had been shattered after Robert unwittingly summoned a giant harpy during a student council debate.
Glenn was waiting in the front row.
“Why are we meeting here?” Robert asked. “This is nowhere near the basement.”
“Let me explain,” Glenn said. “I’ve been thinking about the ventilation ducts. Basically, they carry heat from the basement and deliver it all over the school. But some rooms need more heat than others, right?”
“I guess,” Robert said.
“A tiny room like the nurse’s office needs a tiny amount of heat, so it has a tiny vent. But a bigger classroom needs a bigger vent. And a giant auditorium needs a giant vent … one that’s big enough for a person to climb through.”
Glenn stepped aside, revealing a large slatted vent at the base of the stage. He had already removed the screws so Robert could peer inside. Behind the vent was a cramped metal tunnel, eighteen inches high and stretching into the darkness.
“You’re a genius,” Robert said, grinning. “Do you think this goes all the way to the basement?”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Glenn said. “Are you coming with me?”
“Absolutely not!” a distant voice exclaimed.
Ms. Lavinia had entered the auditorium through the backstage entrance, and now she was crossing the stage. Her shrill voice echoed throughout the theater. Karina Ortiz trailed a few steps behind, carrying her skateboard.
“Why not?” Glenn asked.
“It’s far too dangerous,” Ms. Lavinia insisted. “We’ve already lost the rats. If anything happens to you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Glenn said.
“You have no idea, Mr. Torkells.” The librarian only used their last names when she was extremely upset. “We are talking about thousands of insects. Dozens of different species. What if they joined forces and attacked you simultaneously?”
Glenn reached into his coat pocket for his secret weapon: a large aerosol spray can of Dead Bug. “ ‘One blast kills virtually anything,’ ” he said, reading aloud from the label. “ ‘Ants, bees, flies, wasps …’ ”
“And people!” Ms. Lavinia exclaimed, snatching the can from his hands. “Are you crazy? If you spray this garbage inside the ducts, you’ll poison yourself and the entire school. Absolutely not.”
Karina remained silent. Robert hadn’t seen her since two nights earlier, when he lost his temper and called her a ghost. She wouldn’t even look at him.
“Karina?” he asked. “Can I talk to you about something?”
She shrugged. “Go ahead. Talk.”
“In private,” Robert said.
Grudgingly, she followed him to the back of the auditorium. Ms. Lavinia didn’t even notice—she was still lecturing Glenn on the stupidity of spraying bug poison into the school ventilation system.
“I’m sorry I called you a ghost,” Robert said. “I know you don’t like that word. And I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It was right after Pip and Squeak disappeared, and I was scared.”
“I know,” Karina said. “I was scared, too.”
“The first couple times I met you, I didn’t even realize you were … not living. Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“I never thought of you that way. I still don’t. When we’re hanging out and stuff, I think of you as a regular, ordinary girl.”
“Ordinary?”
“Totally ordinary,” he insisted. “If we were strangers? And I saw you standing in a crowd of other kids? I wouldn’t even notice you.”
“That’s very sweet,” Karina said, shaking her head. “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“So you’re not mad anymore?”
“I was never mad. I’m just frustrated, that’s all. I’m tired of being trapped in this place.”
“We have fun hanging out, don’t we?” Robert asked.
“Yeah, but in a few years, you’ll be in high school. You’ll have a driver’s license. And I’ll still be stuck here and I’ll still be thirteen. Will you like hanging out with me then?”
“Of course I will.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look, I’ll probably be a ghost myself,” Robert assured her. “If Tillinghast gets his way, Glenn and I will be dead before I leave this place. And then the three of us can hang out all the time.”
Karina scowled. “That’s not even funny,” she said, and all of a sudden she seemed angry again. “You don’t ever want to be stuck here. You’d hate it, and I’d spend the rest of eternity blaming myself.”
With that, she abruptly returned to the front of the auditorium, where Glenn and Ms. Lavinia were still arguing.
“I’m going with the boys,” Karina announced. “They need my help.”
Ms. Lavinia frowned. “Now you think this is a good idea?”
“We owe it to Pip and Squeak. We sent them into the vents and told them everything would be fine. They trusted us.”
“The basement will be full of insects,” Robert reminded her. “You hate insects.”
“I only hate spiders,” Karina reminded him. “Technically, they’re not insects. They’re arachnids.”
“Same difference.” Back when they first met, Robert, Glenn, and Karina shared a close call with a giant spider and thousands of spiderlings in Tillinghast Mansion. But whatever was waiting in the school basement was likely to be much, much worse.
“The bugs can’t touch me, and I can’t touch them,” Karina said. “As long as I remember that, I’ll be fine. I want to do this.” She turned to Ms. Lavinia. “Please let us do this.”
Against her better judgment, Ms. Lavinia stepped away from the vent. “Keep your voices down,” she warned. “Any sounds you make will echo through the school.”
Glenn crawled into the duct first, followed by Robert and then Karina. Once they were all inside, Ms. Lavinia replaced the vent cover and screwed it in place. “Be careful,” she said.
Right from the beginning, moving through the duct was much harder than any of them had imagined. It wasn’t big enough for Robert to crawl on all fours. He had to creep forward in tiny increments, pushing off with his sneakers and “walking” with his elbows. It was hard work; he was using muscles he didn’t normally use, muscles he wasn’t even aware he had. After ten minutes, he was exhausted.
“You guys need to be more quiet,” Karina said. “You’re making a racket.”
“I can’t help it,” Glenn told her.
“Are we almost there?” Robert asked.
Glenn laughed. “Look behind you.”
There was barely enough room for Robert to turn his head and shoulders. Karina was directly behind him, and just beyond her was the vent cover. Robert was still close enough to see Ms. Lavinia watching them through the slats.
They had barely traveled twenty feet.