Piece by piece, Isaac disassembled his recording equipment, unscrewing the cage-like shock mount from the mic stand. As his quick hands worked, my heartbeat slowed. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten outright angry, but Nihal would’ve said something if he’d heard us.
He slid open one of Isaac’s desk drawers, peering in with mild interest. “Isaac, do you have time to double-check some of the Fall ’99 stuff I transcribed?” he said, pulling some sort of hair-product aerosol out of the drawer. “The ‘Baby One More Time’ arrangement is strangely complex—I might have gotten the bridge wrong.”
“Yeah, sure,” Isaac said. “Also, I can start on Spring 2000, if you haven’t yet.”
The guys glanced at me, as if waiting for me to offer my help. I would have, if arranging weren’t a foreign language to me. Instead, I checked my watch and grimaced, as if it had told me something important. “Oh, I gotta run. See you at rehearsal?”
“Later,” Isaac said, lifting a hand. I ducked out of his room and hurried for the stairwell.
Thursday night arrived, clear and bright. At 12:45 a.m., I zipped up my dad’s old winter coat and slipped out my dorm room window.
My body went tight with cold. California had nothing like this sort of chill, although the air still hadn’t started to bite properly. Winter was sinking slowly into the earth, layering the crisp scent of frost over campus night by night.
I slunk down the wall of Burgess and paused. Three windows down, Reese’s light was still on.
I snuck a peek over the windowsill and through the glass. The housemother’s quarters were a more legitimate-looking living space than any dorm in Burgess. We had diseased-looking carpets and furniture that looked like it’d been swiped from a rejected IKEA concept catalog. This room had hardwood floors and a kitchenette, and Reese sat at a sleek glass desk, poring over a thick stack of essays. Her thin hair was down, half-curled from being in the grip of her bun all day; her reading glasses were on and her eyes unlined. She looked entirely relaxed.
For a second I watched, weirdly entranced by the quiet, personal sight. Then she stretched and looked toward the window, and I flung myself flat to the flowerbed, my cheek pressing hard into the mulch. I shimmied forward with my forearms and hips, cursing my own curiosity, and once I’d escaped sight of her window, I fled toward August Drive.
The starlight showered around me, stark and revealing. Brightness you’d never see in a night sky in San Francisco. I always found myself staring up on nights like this—cloudless, infinite sky nights. I brushed mulch off my jacket and hustled forward, curls of white warm breath winding between my lips.
I froze at the southeast curve of August Drive. A mechanical whir echoed down the road—one of the ATVs that electricians and maintenance used to navigate campus. I dashed for the nearest cluster of bushes and crouched behind them, waiting for the sound to pass.
A minute later, the ATV’s back lights disappeared down the street, a distant pair of red eyes. I crept out and up the road. Movement caught my attention—Isaac crossing the street. A long silhouette stretched out from his feet, cast by the streetlamp. His narrow shoulders were wrapped in a black fleece, his hood up.
I jogged up. “Hey,” he whispered, eyes bright with mischief. “Ready to break and enter?”
“Definitely.” We darted behind the row of film buildings, heading for the rim of the woods.
The old cinema was a single-screen theater from the 1940s that had been on the renovation list for a decade and a half. I doubted it’d ever happen. The newest film house had a screening hall in the basement, complete with a projection and sound system, so there wasn’t much reason to fix this old place up. Still, there was something to the aesthetic of it. The cinema stood, tall and rickety, on the edge of the woods, looking like something out of a horror movie with its boarded-up windows and padlocked doors.
“All right,” Isaac whispered, stopping at the tree line. “That window’s the way inside. Let’s get in, get the Bear, and get out.”
“How do we get the boards off?”
“Uh. Not sure.” We advanced. A thick white band of stone ran above the double doors, where the shadow of scrubbed-away letters read the carnelian picture house. Isaac crept to the corner of the building and brushed a hand over the thick board that lay across the window. His finger caught on its underside. One of the board’s edges rested on a nail, unfixed to the frame. He rotated the board up until the window was free.
Isaac pushed on the peeling white frame. The window whined upward.
I nodded to the dark gap inside. “Wanna go first?”
“Go ahead.”
I braced my foot against a pipe that ran down the building’s edge, planted my palms on the rough stone windowsill, and hoisted myself up and through.
My shoes hit filthy tile that might’ve been beautiful mosaic once. I blinked a few times, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. Years and grime had made this foyer the picture of decay. The damp air smelled earthy, something like mold. Near the ceiling, the wallpaper had swollen and wept with water damage, long streaming stains that flanked the smeary windows.
Isaac landed lightly next to me. He pushed the window back into place and flicked his hood back, revealing excitement that made his dark eyes gleam. We prowled toward the crimson double-doors in the center of the hall.
I heard something and stopped, throwing my arm out to catch Isaac. He stilled. I leaned toward the door.
Low voices echoed in the theater.
“They’re here,” I breathed.
Alarm flashed across Isaac’s expression. He glanced around the foyer.
The voices grew louder. I heard the clutter of footsteps. “They’re moving,” I hissed. “I think they’re leaving.”
“Come on.” Isaac dashed for the opposite end of the foyer, where a dark archway led to a pair of bathroom doors, Ladies and Gentlemen. I grabbed the Ladies knob. It wouldn’t turn. Isaac tried the other, which rattled and stuck as he twisted it. “Shit,” he hissed.
I spotted a tiny closet in the corner and lunged for it. The door squeaked open, revealing a space barely larger than a crevice. Isaac folded himself in. I squeezed in afterward just as the theater doors opened. Isaac reached past me to grab the knob, pulling the closet shut with a click. Unyielding dark folded over us.
The sound of voices in the foyer seeped, muffled, through the door. Isaac let go of the knob, which made a tiny sound. The air stirred. Something bumped into the side of my face—his chin, maybe? His nose? I flinched.