The Birch House

Chapter Six

The cold air of the lobby felt dry and lifeless, after the heat outside; I shivered and blinked fast to adjust my eyes to the relative dimness. A few girls were in the lobby with books propped up on tables; the TV was running, but nobody was watching it.

Nobody looked at me as I walked by. I went to the glassed-in attendant booth, and the student assistant inside looked up from her magazine, saw my bruises, and made a silent O with her mouth.

'Hi,' I said. My voice sounded thin and dry, and I had to swallow twice. 'I'm Evie, up on four? Um, I had an accident yesterday. But I'm OK. Everything's fine.'

'You're the - they were looking for you, right?'

'Yeah. Just tell everyone I'm OK. I've got to get to class.'

'But-'

'Sorry, I'm late!' I hurried to the stairs and went up as fast as my sore ankle would allow. I passed a couple of girls, who gave me wide-eyed looks, but nobody said anything.

I didn't see Millie. Not on the stairs, not at the top. The hallway was empty, and all the doors were shut. Music pounded from three or four different rooms. I hurried down to the end, where my own room was, and started to unlock it

The knob turned limply in my fingers. Great. That, more than any graffiti, said Millie wuz here.

Sure enough, the room was a wreck. What wasn't broken was dumped in piles. Books were defaced, which really hurt. My meagre clothes had been dragged out of the wardrobe and scattered over the floor. Some of the tops had been ripped, but I seriously didn't care that much; I sorted through, found two or three that were intact, and stuffed them in the rubbish bag. One pair of trackies was fine, and I added that, too. I had a lucky find of a couple of ratty old pairs of underwear that hadn't been discovered, shoved in the corner of the drawer, and added those to the sack.

The rest was another pair of shoes, what books I could salvage, and the little bag of make-up and toiletries I kept on the shelf next to the bed. My ipod was gone. So were my CDs. No telling if that had been Millie's doing, or the work of some other dorm rat who'd scavenged later.

I looked around, swept the worst of the mess into a corner, and grabbed the photo of my mum and dad off of the dresser to take with me.

And then I left, not bothering to try lock the door.

Well, I thought shakily. That went OK, after all.

I was halfway down the steps when I heard voices on the second-floor landing '-swear, it's her! You should see the black eye. Unbelievable. You really clocked her one.'

'Where the hell is she?' Millie's voice, hard-edged. 'And how come nobody came to get me?'

'We - we did!' someone protested. Someone who sounded as scared as I suddenly felt. I reached in my pocket, grabbed the phone, and held on to it for security. Star two. Just press star two - Chase's not far away, and Lyss's right downstairs... 'She was up in her room. Maybe she's still there?'

Crap. There was nobody in the dorm I could trust, not now. Nobody who'd hide me, or who'd stand up for me. I retreated back up the steps to the third-floor landing and went to the fire stairs, flung open the door, and hurried down the concrete steps as fast as I dared, ducking to avoid the glass window at the second floor exit. I made it to the lobby exit door sweating and trembling from the effort, with my backpack and the rubbish bag dragging painfully on my sore muscles, and risked a quick look out the window to the lobby itself.

Millie-groupie Ellie was on guard, watching the stairs. She looked tense and focused, and - I thought - a little bit scared, too. She kept fooling with the bracelet around her wrist, turning it over and over. One thing was certain: Ellie would see me the second I opened the door. And sure, maybe that wouldn't matter, maybe I could get by Ellie and out the door and they wouldn't be attacking me in public, wouldn they?