“Hide,” I said.
We dragged our bikes off the road and into the surrounding woods, then dove behind shrubs to conceal ourselves. The Beetle motored past, and we saw five sisters in black habits through the windows, crammed inside like clowns in a circus car. We crawled out from our hiding places to watch the VW ascend the mountain. Even with switchbacks cut into the sides, the incline was steep, and the car climbed slowly, gears grinding and engine groaning.
“I can’t pedal that,” Alf said. “I’m already whipped.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “We’ll leave the bikes.”
We charged the road at a full-on sprint, but the pitch was brutal and after a minute we were all walking again. The sun beat down on our necks. The black asphalt was broiling, and I was soaked with sweat. But we were close. I touched my back pocket, checking for Mary’s letter. Soon she would have it, and that was all the motivation I needed to keep going. In another thirty or forty minutes, she would finally know the truth, and I’d be able to live with myself again.
We had just climbed the second switchback, not even halfway up the mountain, when I peered down to the road below. Another vehicle was emerging from the grove of trees. This one was a brown UPS truck, and it was going well over the speed limit, building momentum before the first ascent.
“Shit,” Alf said.
We started running, but I already knew we weren’t fast enough. The truck was coming way too fast; it was bound to overtake us before we reached the top. At once I understood why the old man at the gas station had predicted our failure. We were running up the road in plain sight, three boys on private property where boys were expressly forbidden.
“We’re not going to make it,” I gasped. We’d just rounded the fourth switchback, and the truck had rounded the third. We had to hide, but there was no place to hide. There were no trees or shrubs—just rocky slopes covered with roses and wildflowers, everything in full bloom. We were moments from being spotted. We had to get off the road, had to camouflage ourselves.
“Get down,” I told the guys, and then I dove face-first into a bed of pink roses.
Now, up until that moment I guess I’d never seen a rose in real life. I’d watched countless music videos in which half-dressed girls lay down on beds of roses, caressing crimson petals against their milky white skin. But none of these videos prepared me for the fact that real rose stems are covered with hard, brittle spikes. Before I’d even hit the ground, hundreds of thorns were piercing my clothes, puncturing my skin and drawing blood. By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. I tried to push myself off, but the hooks had me snared. I shrieked. I howled. Everywhere I moved, there were more thorns, biting deeper into my ankles and gouging the soft tender flesh of my forearms. I might have been stuck there forever if Alf and Clark hadn’t grabbed my belt and pulled hard, peeling me off the vines like a strip of Velcro.
The three of us lay gasping and out of breath on the side of the road as the UPS truck rumbled past. The driver hadn’t even noticed us.
I touched my fingers to my forehead and they came away red. “Am I bleeding?”
“It’s just a scratch,” Alf said. He pointed to my temple and traced the outline of a large trapezoid. “Right here . . . and here and here and here.”
There were more gashes in my shirt and little spots of blood were blooming through my khakis. But I could see we were nearing the top of the mountain, and this gave me a surge of confidence.
“Are you all right?” Clark asked.
“We’re almost there. Let’s go before another car comes.”
We ran up the last two switchbacks without any problems, and finally the pitch of the mountain leveled off, but the road kept going, winding through a dark grove of trees. We followed it from a distance, trampling over ferns and rotting branches, ready to drop at the sound of another car.
I soon realized the school map wasn’t drawn to scale. We seemed to be lost in the middle of a primeval forest, not minutes away from a chapel or classroom building.
Alf looked around, skeptical. “Are you sure this is right?”
“It has to be,” Clark said. “This is the only road in.”
“Up there,” I said, pointing. “See?”
Through the trees we glimpsed a large wrought-iron gate that looked like it had risen up out of the earth, all twisting vines and pointed leaves and the words MOUNT SAINT AGATHA’S PREPARATORY SCHOOL FOR GIRLS arched across the top. On either side of the gate was a tall wrought-iron fence. It was seven feet high and stretched off into the forest, forming a boundary around the entire campus.
“If that’s an electric fence,” Clark asked, “where are all the wires?”
“They bury the wires,” Alf said. “That’s how they fool you.”
I pointed to a cluster of sparrows on top of the fence, happily chirping. “Maybe you should warn those birds.”
Clark pointed out that the fence—electric or otherwise—was the least of our concerns. Next to the gate was a small shed that looked like a tollbooth. Inside sat a man reading a newspaper. We crouched behind a fallen tree and studied the man through Alf’s binoculars. This was no snoozing old-timer we could easily distract. The guy looked like a Navy SEAL; he sat on a stool that was too small for his huge, hulking frame, sipping coffee from a thermos and reading the Sports pages.
I handed the binoculars to Clark. “Now what?”
He peered through the lenses. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s easy,” Alf said. “We wait for another car to drive up. While the guard’s distracted, we make a break for it.”
“That’s not going to work,” I said. I’d seen too many World War II movies where a lone guard radios for help and suddenly the whole prison camp is teeming with Nazi soldiers.
Clark agreed. “Let’s follow the fence,” he suggested. “Maybe it stops after a while. Or maybe there’s another way inside.”
Anything seemed better than confronting the guard, so we set off into the woods, trampling through mud and weeds and fallen branches. I carried the map but there were no landmarks to guide us—no buildings or roads on either side of the fence, just tangled forest and an occasional boulder. The fence twisted and turned, weaving its way around the largest trees. Every twenty feet or so, Alf would give the bars a gentle tap, still determined to find an “electrified section.” Clark pushed even harder, hoping to find a spot where the fence was weak and we might pull it down. But the fence never budged. It seemed like it was built to repel an army.
Suddenly Clark stopped walking.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
I stopped and listened. I didn’t hear anything.
“It was a girl,” he said. “I heard a girl calling for someone.”
Alf looked skeptical, and I guess I was skeptical, too. We were so hot and tired and thirsty, it seemed possible that Clark might be hallucinating.