“What do I do?”
“Uh—let me think—” He pressed his palms to his forehead and spoke rapidly. “They can live over twenty years—feed on large rodents or other mammals—average about twelve feet but can reach nineteen—” He groaned loudly and spoke even faster. “Trinomial name is python molorus bivittatus, can be domesticated, nonvenomous, can kill a child when they’re young and crush a full-grown man when they’re older—”
“Miles! Shut up!” My voice rose an octave, my heart pounding against my ribs. The snake shifted against me. I fought the urge to scream.
“Someone call Animal Control!” Theo cried.
“No, that’ll take too long!” Tucker was suddenly beside me. “It’s hungry. C’mon, Alex, you have to get down from there.”
“How do you know it won’t”—I shivered as the snake’s waving head brushed my calf—“kill me?”
“It’s hungry,” Tucker insisted, avoiding the question. “I can help get him off; you have to come down here.”
“Him?” I squeaked.
“Please, please get down! It’s going to be okay.”
“God, Beaumont! What the hell is wrong with you?” Miles shoved Tucker out of the way and held out a hand. I slowly lowered my left hand from the ceiling to reach out and take his.
“No more facts,” I whispered.
“No more facts,” Miles agreed. “Go slow—step down.”
I moved slowly.
The snake hissed.
“Tucker!” I waved my other hand, the one attached to the arm that had the snake’s tail wrapped around it. Tucker looked surprised, but took my hand. “Where are we going?”
“The janitors’ closet,” he said.
“Lead, lead.”
We headed toward the door, passing stunned classmates and a freaked-out Mr. Gunthrie.
I crushed their hands. We shambled out into the hallway and toward the stairs.
“I think you’re breaking my fingers,” said Miles.
“Shut up.”
As we painstakingly descended the stairs, they kept up a steady stream of small talk. We stopped at the bottom and took our time turning, then set off for Tucker’s Cult in a Closet. The snake weighed on me like the heaviest piece of clothing I would ever wear.
“So, um, Miles.” I squeezed his hand harder. “Have I said how much I really don’t want to be stuck in Crimson Falls? But I’m pretty sure my mom is going to put me there anyway, and this situation made me realize the direness of that whole thing. . . .”
“Crimson Falls,” Miles repeated. “What’s Crimson Falls?”
God, we were not about to play this game. “The psychiatric hospital. Where your mom is.”
“Alex, the hospital is called Woodlands. Where’d you get Crimson Falls?”
I sucked in a breath under the snake’s weight, trying to keep calm. “That’s what the sign out front said. It said Crimson Falls.”
“The sign in front says Woodlands.”
Panic gripped me. Made Miles panic.
“Hey,” he continued quickly, “what’d you do with my Christmas present?”
“What present?” I breathed out. “The cupcake? I ate it.”
“No, not the cupcake—oh dammit, I forgot to explain.” He flexed his hand in mine. “I left it on your desk before we got out for Christmas break.”
“The rock? The one that’s been sitting in my locker all semester?”
“Yeah.”
“That was you?”
“It’s a piece of the Berlin Wall. I thought you’d like it.”
I looked over at him, felt the snake constrict again, and could only say, “Shut up.”
“God, Alex, I am so sorry,” Tucker breathed. “I never thought this would happen—I thought it would die soon. . . .”
“Do you even have a club in that closet, Beaumont?” Miles growled.
“No! Of course not! You seriously think I have friends?” Tucker shot him a glare over my head. “You have a club. I have a python. You can stop rubbing it in my face now, all right?”
“Both of you! Shut. Up.”
Somehow we made it to the janitors’ closet. Tucker hurried to the back of the small room and pulled open a freezer. The snake swung its head up, tasting the air. Tucker pulled a whole frozen raccoon from the freezer. He dangled it near the snake, and then tossed it on the floor.
The snake slithered off me.
I stumbled back and fell on my butt in the middle of the hallway.
Miles backed out of the room and turned to me.
“You gave me a piece of the Berlin Wall,” I whispered.
“What?”
“You gave me a piece of the Berlin Wall.”
“Yeah, Opa gave it to me. I’ve had it for a really long time, and I thought you’d like—”
“MILES.” I grabbed the front of his shirt and hoisted myself up to his level. “YOU GAVE ME A PIECE OF THE SYMBOL OF THE DOWNFALL OF COMMUNISM IN EUROPE.”
“I—well, yeah—”
“Crimson Falls isn’t Crimson Falls.”
“No, it’s—”
“I almost got killed by a fucking snake.”
“Yeah—”
“I think I’m going to faint.”
My hands fell away from his shirt, blood rushed to my head, and the world went black.
Chapter Forty-five