Greysight, Ch. 1

[lostsheep_inprogress]

 CHAPTER ONE

 

"It will be good for you," Gram said. "Your father and mother loved it there."

 

Dorian sat very still and kept his breathing even. It was just a car. Cars were just cars. He wasn't afraid of staircases, was he, or bathtubs, or electrical sockets, because that would be stupid. They were just things.

 

His stomach hurt.

 

"He always talked about the library," Gram said. "As much as you like books, I'm sure you'll enjoy the library." 

 

It was the same stuff she'd been saying about Youngblood Academy for days now, since the evening she mentioned casually at dinner that she was sending him away to boarding school, like a dog being sent off to a kennel when his existence was inconvenient. I guess I'm lucky she can't just drop me off at the pound. Except she is, basically, isn't she? Only I'll never be adopted. Just kept in my little cage forever.

 

The Rolls Royce hit a bump, and Dorian gasped before he could stop himself, digging his nails into the seat. Gram hadn't noticed; she was looking out the window. Dorian's gaze followed hers for a moment, accidentally, and he caught a glimpse of trees blurring by, so fast, so fast. He looked away immediately, swallowing hard.

 

"Look at you," Gram sighed, "still wearing your lunch. Are we twelve or two, hmm?" A handkerchief was poking a neatly pointed head out of the breast pocket of her perfect charcoal-grey suit; she pulled it free and wiped the corner of his mouth, where Dorian could only assume some trace had remained of the pea soup he'd choked down for lunch. He was surprised when, after cleaning his face, Gram lingered a moment, brushing her thumb back and forth on his cheek. "Your mother's eyes," she murmured. "She was beautiful. Your daddy would have followed her to the ends of the earth."

 

He didn't get the chance, Dorian thought. It was she who did the following.

 

Gram sat back with a brisk sort of sigh. "This will be better for you, Dorian. You'll see." She turned back to the window, but kept the handkerchief in her hands, twisting it and twisting it.

 

Dorian tried not to flinch when the car hit another bump.

 

 

 

The headmaster's office was very neat, and not nearly as large as Dorian would have expected. A potted plant crowded into a corner threatened to engulf one side of Dorian's chair. Most of its leaves were yellow and brittle; the whole thing seemed covered with a grey haze. Dorian almost thought he could see it withering, like a sped-up film, racing to its doom before his eyes.

 

The office wasn't big, but the headmaster was – a big burly black man with a voice so deep it was hard to hear. He looked more like a wrestler than a teacher. Actually he looked more like a refrigerator than a teacher.

 

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Dorian," the headmaster rumbled, holding out his hand.

 

For a second Dorian stared at the enormous hand, wondering if it would crush him. Gram bumped him delicately with her elbow, managing to make it hurt despite the grace of the movement.

 

"Dorian, sweetheart, say hello to Mr. Crosby."

 

Dorian was tempted to just stare blankly, as he'd done for those first few days in the hospital, when nothing seemed worth the effort of talking or moving and he hurt too much to move, anyway. But if he did that now, he'd just end up at a looney bin instead of a school. He doubted they had summer breaks at looney bins. So he said, "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crosby," and shook the giant dark-brown hand with his tiny pale one.

 

Dorian was used to being tiny and pale – last year he'd been the second-smallest in his class – but next to Mr. Crosby he looked like spun sugar. Spun sugar, his mum had told him, was what they made windows out of in action movies, so that the actors could crash through them and not get hurt.

 

When real glass shattered, it hurt people. Very, very badly.

 

Mr. Crosby's eyebrows had risen at the sound of his accent, which he was used to. Here in America he sounded British. In Britain, he sounded American.

 

Would he ever see London again?

 

When you grow up, he told himself while Mr. Crosby and Gram talked over his head. As soon as you're eighteen, you can do whatever you want, whether Gram likes it or not. A little less than six years. It seemed like a very long time to be stuck with Gram.

 

"—should be him now," Mr. Crosby said as a knock sounded at the door. "Come in, Mr. Pierce."

 

The man who entered the room was Mr. Crosby's physical opposite, short and slight and fair. His suit was light gray, his glasses didn't have frames around the lenses, and his hair was solid white, though his face didn't look that old. It was like he was trying to be as colorless as possible.

 

"This is Mr. Pierce, Dorian, the guidance counselor here at Youngblood," Mr. Crosby said.

 

"So this is young Mr. Rivers," Mr. Pierce said, with exactly the sort of overly sad-and-gentle smile and hushed voice Dorian had gotten so sick of at the hospital. He was spun sugar, and everyone was afraid of breaking him. He forced himself to shake Mr. Pierce's hand, which was startlingly cold. "Perhaps it's been explained to you," Mr. Pierce said, "that we'll be having sessions together twice a week? Your grandmother thought it might be helpful."

 

Great. So this was a school and a looney bin.

 

"If you'd like, Mr. Rivers, we can step outside and I can give you a bit of a tour while your grandmother and the headmaster get the boring grown-up stuff settled."

 

Oh, please no. Dorian glanced at Gram, hoping for one of her stay-right-where-you-are glares, but instead she nodded her head toward Mr. Pierce and said, "Go on, Dorian."

 

Dorian sighed heavily and followed Mr. Pierce out of the office.

 

He hadn't taken off his coat in the car or in Mr. Crosby's office, even though he was uncomfortably warm, because if he did that Gram would see that he was wearing Dad's old black jacket underneath. Gram wanted him to wear the fancy coat she bought him and throw away "that ratty thing, it's much too big for you" but it was Dad's and it smelled a little like his pine-and-ginseng cologne. He was glad of the double layer of jacket when Mr. Pierce led him outside, where dead grass crunched under a veil-thin layer of snow.

 

"This is what we call the quad," Mr. Pierce said, gesturing around at the wide expanse of snow-dusted grass. There were benches and trashcans and dirt paths, and a few thick-bellied trees rattling with dead leaves. "The boys' dorm is there, the girls' over there, and there are classrooms in the other two. The cafeteria is on the back side of that building opposite."

 

Cafeteria food three times a day. One more thing to look forward to about boarding school.

 

While Mr. Pierce droned on about the beautiful grounds and something about sports teams, shivering in his light-grey suit coat, Dorian watched his own breath crystallize in the air. It's there all the time, that's the weird thing, he thought. You only see it when it's cold out, but it's always there. This is what it would always look like, this drifting fluttering thing, if only we could see it.

 

Mr. Pierce stopped talking after a minute, looked at Dorian and sighed. "Sit down, Dorian." He took a seat on the nearest bench.

 

Dorian hesitated, but it wasn't like he had anything better to do. He sat on the other end of the bench, as far from Mr. Pierce as possible. The thick plastic mesh of the bench was ice-cold under his thighs.

 

"Dorian, I know this is a difficult time for you. I want you to know I'm here to help."

 

Words boiled in Dorian's throat. A difficult time? Like other times are going to be better? Like if I stick it out and stay strong, my parents will come back to life, and the 'difficult time' will be over? You don't know anything about anything and you think you're going to help me? Are you going to use your Guidance Counselor magic to bring back the dead? To make my grandmother love me or fix my eyes or let me leave this stupid kennel for unwanted children?

 

None of the words made it out of his mouth. That happened a lot lately.

 

"I'm sure you'll have no trouble settling in and making friends," Mr. Pierce was saying. "But I'll be here for you to talk to, about whatever you want, whenever you want to. Okay?"

 

Friends. Dorian hadn't even thought about making friends, really. He had friends at home – or he did have, before the accident. Before he spent over a month in the hospital, alternately drugged to the gills or in too much pain to think, with nobody left alive who even knew who his friends were, much less thought to tell them what had happened. No one had told the school, or the post office, or the neighbors. And then he'd gone to live with Gram, and now he was here, and Dorian's old friends seemed like ghosts.

 

"Your parents were both students here, I'm told," Mr. Pierce said, expectantly, as if Dorian should be excited about that. Why would he be? They weren't here. And it wasn't exactly shocking that Gram had chosen to store her inconvenient grandson in the same warehouse where she'd stored his inconvenient father.

 

I bet he hated it here. I bet they both did. I bet me being here is the last thing either of them would have wanted.

 

"What's that?" Mr. Pierce asked, and Dorian realized he was fiddling with Mum's necklace again. Quickly he dropped it back inside his shirt.

 

It wasn't a girly necklace. Gram acted like it was weird for him to wear something of Mum's, but it wasn't a girly necklace and Mum had let him wear it lots of times when he was little. She would want him to have it.

 

"We have a dress code here," Mr. Pierce said. "Boys aren't supposed to wear jewelry. Just keep it inside your shirt, I won't tell." He winked, and Dorian hated it, hated for the man to have any excuse to feel like they were friends. But he could have taken away Mum's necklace and he didn't, so Dorian forced himself to say, "Thank you, sir."

 

"You're welcome," Mr. Pierce said, and yes, he was smiling now like they were friends. Ugh.

 

"Here come the headmaster and your grandmother," Mr. Pierce said at last, after an awkward silence. "It's probably time to meet your roommate."

 

 

 

The boys' dorm was an ugly two-story stone building with drafty hallways and hardwood floors that magnified every footstep. Dorian figured those floors were going to be cold as any London sidewalk, all winter long. At the moment, with many classes still in session (grades six through eight let out at 3:20, Mr. Crosby said; the high school grades had another hour), there wasn't much activity in the building—a few boys lugging schoolbooks, a few muffled voices from behind doors. Dorian's door was at the very end of its hallway, on the right-hand wing of the first floor. Room number 25, according to the metal numbers on the door.

 

Mr. Crosby knocked and, at the sound of a faint "Come in," opened the door to give Dorian his first look at the kennel he'd be living in for the next five months.

  

The dorm room, already half the size of Dorian's real bedroom at home, (the one he would never seen again), was divided in half again with a strip of masking tape. On one side of the tape was a bed, wardrobe, and desk. Dorian's handful of boxes and suitcases were already piled against the foot of the bed; Gram's driver had been busy. On the other side was the same furniture plus a bookshelf, dresser, and television, crammed along the walls and surrounded by mountains of overflowing stuff – books, movies, clothes, model ships, video game equipment, and all manner of odder things, piled in unstable, haphazard heaps that crept right up to the edge of the masking tape. On the bed – also piled with stuff – like a cherry on top of a sundae, perched a stocky brown-haired boy with a striped sweater and a sullen expression. A handheld video game (or was it an iPad?) beeped and whistled in his hands.

 

"Good afternoon, Drew," the headmaster rumbled. "This is your new roommate, Dorian Rivers. Dorian, this is Drew Mabry. He's going to show you around Youngblood and help you get settled in."

 

Yes, Dorian thought, I can tell he's eager for the job. "Hullo," he said. Drew glanced up from his video game, smiled tightly, and looked down again. Something on his screen exploded.

 

Mr. Crosby didn't look pleased at Drew's lack of enthusiasm, but, to Dorian's relief, didn't try to force him to sit up and be friendly. "Well, I'm sure you want a moment with your grandmother before she leaves. I'll have someone bring over your class schedule and schoolbooks very shortly. Welcome to Youngblood, Dorian." He shook Dorian's hand and walked out.

 

Mr. Pierce put a hand on his shoulder. "Just remember, Dorian, you can come talk to me anytime."

 

Behind him, Dorian heard Drew snort. He tried not to cringe away from Mr. Pierce's hand, managing a locked-teeth smile and nod. Finally Mr. Pierce left as well.

 

Gram looked over at Dorian's roommate, sighed, and put a hand very briefly to Dorian's cheek. "They don't let you call home for the first two weeks, but as we discussed, you'll be coming home for a visit that second weekend. Mr. Crosby knows what bus to put you on, and Bradley will pick you up from the bus station."

 

Dorian said nothing. Right now he was pretty sure he hated Gram and never wanted to see her again, yet all he wanted to do was grab her around the waist and beg her not to leave him.

 

"By then I hope you'll be able to tell me how much you love your new school." Gram stroked his hair, just once, watching his dark curls flow through her fingers with a peculiar wistful expression, then said, "Goodbye, Dorian," and walked out the door.

 

She was walking away. Back to the car. He might never see her again. He hadn't said goodbye. He tried to shout it, to tell her goodbye, but nothing came out of his throat.

 

For a long minute he stared silently at the door. Then, abruptly exhausted, he crossed over to the bed and lay down, staring up at the ceiling. On his roommate's game screen, something made a weird, wriggly noise like a dying bagpipe, and exploded.

 

***

 

At 5 o'clock, Drew put down his iPad and heaved a heavy sigh. "You're a brilliant conversationalist, you know that?"

 

Dorian said nothing.

 

"Well, they start serving dinner about now." He started putting on his shoes and coat.

 

Dorian debated just staying where he was. He didn't really want to go anywhere with Drew, and he wasn't very hungry. But he wasn't stupid enough to think he would never be hungry; he needed to know where the cafeteria was and how it worked. Of course he did have a map – Mr. Crosby's assistant had brought the class schedule and books, as promised, along with some other informational stuff about the school – but whatever. He might as well go now. All he had to do was stand up and walk after Drew; he'd never taken his shoes or coat off to begin with.

 

Outside, darkness was falling fast, and it was so cold that the inside of Dorian's nose seemed to go crisp. He'd gotten sweaty inside his double-layer of coat, and every drop of it suddenly felt like ice. A fresh layer of gathering frost crunched underfoot as he followed Drew across the quad toward the building Mr. Pierce had said contained the cafeteria. Good to know the man's information was sound. They seemed to be part of a pilgrimage; kids of all ages, alone or in groups, were drifting toward the cafeteria like ants following a trail.

 

"Prince! Yo!" Drew shouted, and a blond boy ahead of them, probably their own age but tall for it, turned around.

 

"Mayberry! What up?" The blond boy high-fived Drew and play-punched his shoulder. "How'd the math test go?"

 

"Don't ask. Least I don't have to study for it anymore."

 

"This the newb? Shrimpy thing, ain't he? Least he won't take up much space."

 

Drew rolled his eyes. "They measured the room exactly in half."

 

"For real? Bummer."

 

"Get this. He had servants to bring in his boxes." Drew's sneer was a work of art, simultaneously communicating contempt, amusement, and sarcastic awe.

 

Dorian snapped, "Well, it's not like my grandmother could help me, she's a bit frail if you didn't notice, and as you've so astutely observed, I'm something of a shrimp."

 

They both stared at him.

 

"Dude," Prince said. "You from England or something?"

 

Dorian blinked. "Sort of."

 

"The girls will be all over that, huh? Rich baby with cool accent." Prince laughed and threw his arm around Drew's shoulder, visibly dropping Dorian from his attention. "Speaking of which, Mayberry, we gotta talk about this thing with the boots, 'cause that ain't gonna fly and I think you know what I'm talking about..."

 

Dorian slowed his steps and let Prince and Drew pull ahead. It wasn't like he couldn't find the way to the cafeteria now. Just follow the other ants.

 

 

 

The cafeteria was a sea of round tables surrounded by chairs, with one wall taken up by a food counter and another by a salad bar, everything done in the school colors of blue and yellow. It was loud and getting louder, and suffocatingly warm after the chill of the outdoors. Dorian took off his outer coat as soon as he stepped inside, but left Dad's jacket on.

 

He tried to get a glimpse of the food counter as he got in the rapidly-growing line to approach it, but couldn't see what was on offer. It took him several minutes to notice a large sign near the entrance.

 

DINNER SCHEDULE

MONDAY - PIZZA

TUESDAY - CHINESE

~~"WILD WEDNESDAY!!!"~~

THURSDAY - PASTA

FRIDAY - VEGETARIAN

 

Vegetarian. 'Wild Wednesday.' This all sounded very ominous. But today was Monday, and the steaming golden pizzas he could now see as he inched through the line looked great and smelled better. 

 

He got his tray, and his drink, and two pieces of pepperoni pizza. Ahead of him a bunch of older boys exchanged dirty jokes and punched each other. Behind him a tiny black girl sniffled while her friend whispered, "He was a crappy boyfriend, you're better off without him. And anyway he'll probably come crawling back in a week." Dorian tried not to make eye contact with anybody.

 

Inevitably, though, the moment of truth arrived; he turned away from the food counter, tray in his hands, and was confronted with the fact that he had no one to sit with. Nor was there any chance of getting a table to himself, the place was way too crazy for that. He could either invade the table of a perfect stranger, or... well, it wasn't like there were guards on the doors.

 

He pushed a door open with his back and found himself in a short hallway containing a bench, a water fountain, and a ficus tree. A door at the end sported a dark window and a sign reading ADMINISTRATION OFFICE. The cafeteria's chaos was muffled here, and it wasn't so chokingly warm. Perfect. He sat on the bench and started eating his pizza.

 

It was probably always going to be this way. He should get used to the idea. He told himself it was better than being at Gram's, where he either ate dinner in the hard chairs of the dining room, sitting through awkward, stilted conversation with Gram, or more often, in the kitchen with whichever servant felt sorry enough for him to sit with him through a plate of leftovers. Alone was better; he didn't have to pretend to be happy.

 

For just a second, he pretended he was back at home – eating pizza in the living room while Dad tried to get the electric fireplace working, Mum laughing and tired from a double shift at the hospital, the tick tock tick tock of Mum's crazy-eyed cat clock with the moving tail...

 

It would never happen again. He would never see any of them again, not even the clock. He hadn't thought to ask Gram to get it from the house. What had happened to it? Did the new owners keep it? Did they keep Dad's lava lamp? Had they found the hidden drawer in the desk?

 

He had been staring at the opposite wall without seeing it for a while now, until it blurred and he scrubbed his napkin furiously across his face. Nothing could be more lame than the shrimpy new kid crying in a corner. He wasn't gonna be that kid.

 

He felt a shock clear down to his toes when his eyes cleared and he realized what he'd been staring at all this time – realized that it wasn't exactly true that he'd never see his parents again.

 

Framed photographs marched down the wall of the corridor, each the same size and shape, each containing a group of students in caps and gowns. He had been staring at the Class of 1994, six years before he was born.

 

Gram's voice in his head – "Both your parents graduated from Youngblood Academy. Class of '94. I probably have your father's diploma somewhere."

 

Dorian set his tray aside and stepped closer to the photograph. There was a plaque underneath, engraved with the name of the school, the year, and the names of the students. There! Right there – Scott Rivers. And next to him, Isobel Corbitt.

 

They looked... they looked like kids. Of course he knew, intellectually, that his parents had once been kids. But to actually see it... They had been, what, seventeen, maybe eighteen, in this picture? Still a lot older than Dorian could imagine being. But kids. They were smiling for the camera, and Dad's arm was around Mum's shoulder, his dark curly hair was all smushed under his graduation cap and the sun glinted off his glasses. Mum's cheeks were all red like they got when she was excited and happy. Her ash-blonde hair was a lot longer than it ever had been in Dorian's memory, flying everywhere in the wind.

 

Dad had started finding gray hairs the year before last, and worried and worried about them 'cause he was only thirty-four for crying out loud, and Mum had laughed and kissed him and called him silverfox.

 

"I hope you're still laughing when I'm solid white by age forty," Dad had grumbled.

 

But he would never be solid white, and he would never be forty.

 

***

 

Long after Dorian finished his pizza, found his way (with some difficulty) back to his dorm room, and took advantage of Drew's absence to unpack some of his things, he found himself thinking about the photograph. How Mum and Dad were gone but their picture was still there. He'd never given a whole lot of thought to photography before, but it was almost like magic, wasn't it? It was just light and chemicals and paper, but it was also a tiny blink of time caught and frozen in place. What else but magic could make a person outlive himself, exist without existing?

 

Gram hadn't packed him any photographs. Well, Gram hadn't really packed, she'd told Bradley and Laura to do it, when Dorian refused to do it himself. He'd hidden in the attic, listening to his iPod and playing both sides of a chess game that was missing two pawns and a bishop, while Bradley and Laura put his clothes and his books, his desk lamp and some of his DVDs, his Rubix cube, his X-Men and Avengers action figures, and ugh yes they had actually packed his teddy bear. Dorian hid it quickly under his bed, stuffed inside one of his uglier sweaters because yes okay he didn't want it to get dirty.

 

It was after eight o'clock before Drew came back to the room; by then Dorian had his clothes in the wardrobe, most everything else stuffed into the desk drawers, the boxes folded down and stacked under the bed. His Beast, Colossus and Iron Man figurines were arranged carefully on top of the desk; Dorian didn't figure Drew could give him much grief over that when he had Star Wars video games strewn across his bed. Sure enough, his roommate's gaze almost bordered on approving as he glanced over the desk on his way in. For a moment Dorian hoped he would say something, but he didn't, which was fine, because what did Dorian care what Drew thought?

 

They sat on their respective beds in silence, Drew playing on his iPad again and Dorian looking over his class schedule. He would be doing "placement evaluation" tomorrow morning, but then he had classes in the afternoon. Had Gram told them he'd been out of school for three months? And didn't remember any of the school stuff from the months before that? Well, maybe it would turn out that he remembered more than he thought. He'd been getting good grades. Maybe once he started actually trying again, it would come back to him.

 

Dorian buried his face in his pillow. He was going to get put in the stupid-kid classes, he'd never catch up and for the whole rest of school he would be in the stupid-kid classes, and no college would ever let him in, and he'd never be a doctor because he was too stupid. And he hated it here and he wanted to go home, go home, go home but other people were living there now and using Mum's clock and Dad's desk and sleeping in his room, his room that he and Dad had painted, with stars on the ceiling and trees on the wall. What if they had painted over his room?

 

Drew was sitting just a few feet away, so Dorian forced his breathing to be slow, forced his eyes to be dry. He was twelve years old, he wasn't some baby to wail and cry when he didn't get what he wanted. He was twelve. After a minute he sat back up, hoping his face wasn't puffy. His pajamas were on the foot of the bed; was it late enough to put them on and go to sleep? He was so tired.

 

"Is there a curfew here or what?" he said, without looking at Drew, his voice startling loud after the long silence.

 

"Lights-out is at ten," Drew said. "Not supposed to leave the building after nine."

 

Dorian pulled out his pocket-watch. It was 9:20 now. Maybe he could stretch out getting-ready-for-bed for forty minutes. Mr. Crosby had pointed out the bathroom on their way in; this side of the bottom floor had four toilets and three shower stalls to share. Dorian picked up his pajamas, toothbrush, towel and soap gel, and set off down the hall.

 

As soon as he stepped inside the bathroom, he decided it belonged at the very top of his Things To Hate About Youngblood Academy list. It was a horror-house of ice-cold tile, creeping grunge, and stinky, sweaty boys. There were three of them in there, shouting and laughing and throwing their socks at each other. They had to be Dorian's own age, this bathroom was only for sixth-graders, but that didn't keep them from being considerably bigger than him. He nearly slipped on wet tile dodging a careless elbow, and ducked into the one empty shower stall to find the drain coated with hair and a bad word scratched across the entire left-hand wall.

 

I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home.

 

 

 

Ten o'clock, and lights-out. Dorian, already curled in a tight ball under his covers, gave no sign of noticing when Drew finally put away his iPad and turned off the lights. He desperately wanted to sleep, but it was shaping up to be another of those nights, with his body too exhausted to move but his brain whizzing around like a hamster in a wheel.

 

To top it off, his stomach was hurting. Not, like, stomachache-hurting. It was hurting like it had hurt in the hospital, weeks and weeks in the hospital, with blood leaking around the stitches when he coughed. It hurt like it had hurt in the car.

 

Jagged edges of wood, dark wet red and moving every time he breathed

Mummy, Mummy

"Don't touch it, baby, just stay still. The firemen are coming to help us. We need to stay still."

Mummy it hurts

"I know, baby, I know. Be still. It'll be all right."

 

He threw the covers off, so suddenly he startled himself, but there was no sound or movement from Drew's bed. Already asleep. Good. 'Cause Dorian needed to see his Mum and Dad and the only way that was going to happen was for him to go see their picture outside the cafeteria.

 

He put on his shoes without socks, then Dad's jacket, then his heavy coat, and tiptoed out the door, down the dark hallway, and out of the dorm building.

 

It was freezing. His legs in their single layer of flannel pajama felt like they might crack, like little trees when the sap inside froze. The breath condensing in front of his face was no feathery stream but a white storm that he could barely navigate through. He held his breath, cheeks and nose stinging, and looked around the quad.

 

Everything was black with white edges of frost, barely recognizable as the Youngblood Academy of daytime. Only a very few windows still glowed, muted behind curtains. The buildings all seemed taller and closer and... and somehow, where they had just been buildings in the sunlight, objects, they now seemed to have personalities. Unhappy ones.

 

Almost, Dorian turned around and went back inside. But back to what? Room 25, Drew Mabry and no sleep. He wanted to see Dad grinning in his goofy hat, and Mum with her hair flying in the wind.

 

He set off across the quad, footsteps crunching in the frost – but wait, no, that was the girls' dorm building. He was looking for the cafeteria. It was... it was that one over there, right? Right.

 

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Well, at least no one could sneak up on him, right? Maybe it was creepy out here alone in the dark, but as long as he knew he actually was alone, he was perfectly safe, right? If he was alone, then there was nobody there to hurt him.

 

He didn't feel alone. He kept feeling like he'd seen something, a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. Something wispy-grey.

 

No. No no no not real not real. Not real last time not real now.

 

He could barely feel his legs. Maybe he should go back. But what if he turned around and saw – no, no, the cafeteria building was closer than the dorm now. He was almost there.

 

He reached the building, and tugged on the door, but it only clanked, barely moving. Locked. Of course it was locked, it was the middle of the night, and anyway the cafeteria was around the back – if he went around the back would the door be open?

 

"I wonder what you're up to?"

 

Dorian spun around with a gasp. There was no one there. He knew he'd heard someone but there was no one there.

 

He stood with his back pressed to the door, the handle digging into his ribs, and couldn't move. Cold burned in his lungs, his legs had gone numb and he couldn't move. Before him, the dark stretch of the quad remained completely empty of life.

 

Go home go home I want to go home.

 

Finally, his muscles creaking with tension and cold, he began moving back across the quad toward the dorm building. His breath seemed loud as an engine's roar, and there was so much empty space all around him, anything could be there, anything could attack him out of the dark. He wanted to run but he forced himself not to run, Mum had taught him years ago that running when you were scared only made you more scared, something about adrenaline and heartrates, fight or flight. Mum knew everything about the human body because she was a doctor.

 

Don't move baby, be still, the firemen are coming to help us

It's bleeding it hurts

You're going to be okay honey

(lying, lying, I should have died)

 

Once, on the way back to the dorm, he thought he saw it again – wispy grey in the corner of his eye. He froze, held his breath, looked straight ahead but focused all his attention on the thing to the side that he could barely see.

 

It was... person-like. A person-like size and shape. Taller than him. Parts of it seemed to be... drapey, fluttery, like skirts or hair.

 

Grey Lady Grey Lady no no not real

 

"Can you see me?"

 

Dorian ran, ran, ran, back to the dorm, footsteps thundering down the dark hallway. He slammed the door, threw himself into bed and pulled the covers over his head, coats and shoes and all, and stayed there, not even trying not to cry, ignoring Drew's groggy irritated questions until the other boy finally shut up and went back to sleep.

 

It took him over an hour to stop shaking. He didn't go to sleep until the window began to brighten with dawn.