Escape Theory

CHAPTER 10




September 10, 2010

Freshman Year



“Want another?” Hutch dipped a Nutter Butter into the gallon of molten chocolate and careful to catch the drips, he fed the cookie to Devon. “Amazing, right?”

“Reh. Ah-mreh-zrhing,” was all Devon could muster in between chews. Hutch smiled, watching her chew. He wiped at a drizzle of chocolate on her lip and leaned in and kissed her.

“Chocolate,” he explained.

Devon self-consciously wiped a hand across her chin. “I’m probably a total mess right now.” She hopped off the counter and started washing her hands in the sink. If only there was a mirror in here, she could at least fix her hair. It was probably too dark to see her reflection anyways. Please, don’t let me have cookie and chocolate all over my face.

“Hey, I need your help,” Hutch said. Devon turned and saw Hutch had a glob of chocolate on one cheek. “I think I got some chocolate on me, could you tell me where?”

Devon laughed. “Right there.” She pointed to her own cheek.

“Here?” Hutch put a glob on his other cheek. Devon laughed more.

“No, here,” she wiped at her own cheek again.

“Oh, I get it. Here,” Hutch left a streak of chocolate across his mouth.

She kept laughing. “Nope, that’s not it.”

“I need you to show me then,” he said. He reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her against him.

Devon used the paper towel in her hand and wiped at Hutch’s cheek. “Right here,” she kissed his cheek. She wiped the chocolate off his other cheek and kissed that spot too. “Right there.” She wiped the towel across his lips. “And right here.” He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She lifted onto her tiptoes to meet his kiss again. But this time, both of his hands were around her waist, the small of her back, pulling her up against him. Now this is making out, Devon thought. Goosebumps ran down her arms. She felt his fingers slip under her bra strap.

“Whoa, wait a sec,” Devon said pulling away. “What if someone comes in?”

“I’m sorry. Do you want to stop?” Hutch ran his fingers along Devon’s cheekbone, her jaw, over her shoulders.

“No, I mean, it’s just.…”

“It’s fine. I get it.” Hutch smiled softly, his eyes inches from her own.

“You don’t think I’m like some prude now, do you?”

“Devon, there’s a lot of things I think about you, but that is not one of them, okay?”

“A lot of things? Really?”

“Really.”

“Just from tonight?”

“Not just from tonight. You sat in front of me in that Orientation assembly.”

“You kept kicking my seat.”

“You got bitchy about it.”

Devon laughed and felt her cheeks go red. “I did, didn’t I? But you were pretty annoying, you have to admit.”

He shrugged, his arms still around her waist. “Hey, I would have hated me too.”

“And you stood up all proud when they called out the legacies.”

“Proud? Are you sure it was me you were looking at? Not some other handsome legacy?”

“No, pretty sure it was you. What? You’re not a proud Keaton legacy?”

Hutch let go of Devon and poured himself a glass of water from the sink. He sat on the counter opposite her. “You know, before I was even born, I was going to Keaton. It was a given. Nowhere along the way did anyone ask me what I wanted.”

“Sounds familiar. My mom sent in my application and had an interview set up before I knew this place existed. And once I got the scholarship there was no debate; I was going. And any time I try to talk about it with my mom she just thinks I’m being ungrateful. I’m not ungrateful, I just …”

“… would have liked a choice in the matter,” he finished for her. “I get it. The freaky thing is that our parents were easier than this place. Every minute here is accounted for, regimented. It’s like this creepy ooze that just gets in everywhere, and eventually takes over your life. I hate it. I’d take public school, or even just being a day student any day. When you live here you can’t escape it.”

“But, you can go into town and stuff on weekends? At least there’s that, right?”

“Not really; even there you’re still in it. You think if we ran into a teacher in Monte Vista they wouldn’t note what we were up to, who we were with, and what flavor ice cream we eat? All of it is noted. Filed away.”

“That sounds a little paranoid. It can’t be that bad.”

“I saw my brother go through it. His friends, their parents, his teachers, everyone knows all this random stuff about him. He’s in the bubble for the rest of his life and he can’t get out. None of us can.”

“Okay, so let’s say we’re all in the bubble. What’s tonight then? Part of the bubble too? Because, it can’t be all bad if there’s Nutter Butter pancakes, right?”

He flashed a crooked smile. “This? This is a blip in the bubble. A glitch in the matrix. This is the ultimate not-supposed-to.”

“Right, your favorite group, the not-supposed-tos?”

“Something like that. You know, I was hating this week so far. I mean, I guess my roommate Matt is pretty cool, so that’s lucky. But, when you walked into the dining hall, that cute bitchy girl, Devon, from assembly, this week stopped sucking.”

“Yeah, you’re kind of the only good thing about this week.”

“I have a feeling you’re the only good thing about this whole place.”

Devon laughed off the compliment. “We just got here.”

“But what if I’m right? What if tonight is the best it will get around here for the next four years and everything else is just downhill?”

“If getting locked in the kitchen together is the best it gets, that doesn’t bode well for the next four years.”

September 26, Present Day

THE GREEN BOTTLES CLINKED together at the bottom of Devon’s T-shirt drawer. The stale beer smell was worse than she thought and she grabbed the plastic bag from her trashcan to wrap them. The white torn labels caught her attention again. Were they purposely torn off because someone didn’t want it known what they were drinking? A Keaton student would take much smarter precautions than just ripping a label off a beer bottle. Vodka disguised in water bottles, flasks in the shape of cell phones, travel-sized perfume, extra shirts, and breath mints were all basic items everyone used for concealing drinking and/or smoking. Over the summer at a barbeque Ariel hosted while her parents were away, Devon drank a few beers. They were fancy, apparently appropriate for Ariel’s beer connoisseur friends. But, Devon remembered not liking the taste very much and she peeled the labels off the wet bottles while she watched Ariel flirt with a new guy.

Maybe this person was an absentminded label-peeler too.

All at once, a thought occurred to her. Devon found her jeans from the other day at the beach on the floor of her closet and dug into the pocket. The balled up paper she found in Hutch’s car. Carefully she unraveled.it A label. Gersbach written in white letters on a gold background. The G matched the lettering on the metal cap Devon had found. She wrapped the paper over one bottle but the torn paper didn’t match. She tried the second and the label matched the tears from the bottle perfectly. Her pulse picked up. This put Hutch’s car at the Palace, didn’t it? Hutch could have driven up the hill from his grandfather’s, had a beer or two, left the bottles on the hillside. But somewhere along the way he had torn off the label on his beer and dropped it inside the car. But, when? The car driving up the hill, the beer drinking, and the bottles left behind could have happened at any time. You haven’t really solved anything, Devon thought.

“Bee-yotch! We’re gonna be late for the game, and I’m not running extra laps because of you.” Presley barged into Devon’s room wearing a short plaid lacrosse skirt and her cleats. She spotted the green bottles in Devon’s open drawer. “Oh, what are you hiding, Miss Mackintosh? Anything good?”

Devon slammed the drawer shut. “It’s nothing. Just a project. I’ll be right behind you.” She reached for her lacrosse skirt and started changing clothes.

“Whatever. See you out there.” Presley slapped Devon’s butt with her lacrosse stick on her way out the door.

The first game of the season, Devon thought. Nothing could seem less important.

AS DEVON JOGGED ACROSS the parking lot, past the rival school Lewis Academy’s bus, she spotted a black Range Rover parked next to it. Devon stopped. The black Range Rover. She peered in the windows. The doors were locked, dirt still streaked the seats and dashboard. Why was it here? How did it get here?

“Sweet car, huh?” Grant said behind Devon. She quickly turned, caught.

“Hey,” she said.

“You get my flower?”

“Yeah, totally. I tried to find you last night to thank you. It was really nice of you.” Devon’s cleats clicked on the pavement as she shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“So, are we cool?” Grant asked, his eyes sheepish below the brim of his white hat.

“Mackintosh! You’re late! Five laps! Let’s go!” Mrs. Freeman yelled from the lacrosse field across the parking lot to Devon.

“I gotta go, but yeah. We’re cool. Wanna come by tonight?”

“I’ll be there.” Grant’s smile returned. Devon started jogging toward the field. “Hey, Mackintosh,” he yelled after her. “Kill ’em.”

“I’ll try,” Devon yelled back over her shoulder.

Both teams were already warming up on the field: Keaton in its green-and-white plaid skirts and Lewis in their blue skirts and tops. Devon started her laps, jogging around the field. Weird: The Keaton cheering section wasn’t just a few over-eager parents on the sidelines. What seemed like every guy in school sat on the wooden bleachers. Girls in short skirts battling it out on the field did have a certain attraction, she figured.

Devon spotted a blond head of dreadlocked hair. Bodhi. Why was he here? Raven … right. She rounded the bend for her first lap and saw Raven putting on the hockey-mask sized helmet worn by lacrosse goalies. Raven must have worked her way up to becoming their second-string goalie. Smart way to get on the Varsity team; play the position no one wants. Raven warmed up with the assistant coach on the sidelines.

“Go, Devon!” Bodhi whistled as she passed, smiling and watching her finish her laps. Devon gave him a half-wave and kept running. The black Range Rover crept back into her mind. Bodhi and Raven had access to the Range Rover, didn’t they? Either one of them could have been up to the Palace, although it seemed much more likely that Bodhi was the one with the taste for rare German beer.

AT HALF-TIME KEATON WAS winning 5-2. Devon, Raven, Maya, sat on the bench.

“All right,” Mrs. Freeman lifted her wraparound sunglasses onto her head and leaned her clipboard against her round belly and khaki shorts, “Let’s rotate a few of you in this half. Raven, you wanna get some goal time? Suit up. Maya, how you feeling?”

Maya smiled weakly, “Not great.”

“Fine, let’s not push it. Devon? Feel like a little defense?” Mrs. Freeman’s sunglasses balanced precariously on her spiky blonde hair.

Next to Devon, Raven wiped the sweat off her hands as she put on her shin and arm pads. “Come on, Dev. I could use all the help I can get.”

“Yeah, I’ll go in,” Devon said. She stood up and jumped up and down a few times to get her blood flowing. The other team took the field and the ref blew the whistle. Presley scooped up the ball first and charged across the field. Devon watched her go, staying on Keaton’s side of the field to protect the goal, but the crowd bustling in the bleachers caught her attention. They weren’t cheering for Presley.

“Yo, you don’t have the right to do this!”

It was Bodhi. And there were two cops from Monte Vista pulling him off the bleachers and struggling to pin him to the ground.

“Bodhi!” Raven threw down her stick and ripped off her pads, sprinting to her brother. At the other end of the field Devon could see the Lewis players were also distracted by the commotion. Presley kept running and whizzed her ball passed the goalie into their net, but she was the only one still playing the game. Devon ran to the sidelines as the ref blew the whistle.

“You’re under arrest for trespassing,” one of the cops announced. “You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Raven burst into tears, crouching next to Bodhi as he lay in the dirt. “What do you want me to do? Why is this happening?”

The other cop, a younger guy with a military buzz cut, wrapped plastic cuffs around Bodhi’s wrist and pulled them tight.

“Call Reed,” Bodhi gasped, spitting out dirt. “He’ll know what to do.”

The cops pulls Bodhi up and walked him toward the parking lot where their cruiser was parked, the red lights silently spinning around and around.

Raven cried as Bodhi was folded into the back seat. Devon put an arm around her. “I’m sure it’s just a mistake, right?”

“I’ve got to call Reed,” Raven choked out. She ran to her backpack near the player’s bench and pulled out her cell phone. Devon watched the police cruiser drive away. Trespassing? At Keaton? Was Bodhi caught for being here now or possibly for another time? The beer bottles, the prescription pills. Maybe Mr. Robins hadn’t been so far off base in his worry over Bodhi.

Behind the cruiser, Devon noticed Eric’s silver BMW sitting idle in the lot. The passenger door opened and a tall guy with shaggy blond hair stepped out. Matt. Even from this distance she could see that he had a swollen black eye. Probably from his fight with Bodhi on the beach. Behind her, Devon could hear Raven crying into the phone talking to Grandpa Reed. She wanted to help Raven; she truly did—no matter what was going on with Bodhi. Raven was on her side when it came to Hutch.

And maybe Raven could help her, too.