”Now what?”
“It’s just through here,” Will said, pointing toward the hole in the air duct.
“There? Come on. You’re joking. I’m going to get my dress dirty. Can’t you just tell me what it is?” He was losing her.
“I promise it’s worth it,” Will said. Lucy pursed her lips and waggled them from side to side, weighing the decision in her mind.
“Is it far?” Lucy asked.
“It’s super close.”
He should just shoot himself now. He had no idea how much farther it was, or how the hell he’d know when he was even there. His big romantic date was going off the rails. Not that Lucy knew this was a date.
Will didn’t wait for her answer. He climbed headfirst into the air duct. He shined his phone ahead. The duct seemed to extend forever and the air inside was hot and dry. It flowed in the direction he crawled, away from the room full of machines.
He could hear Lucy climb into the duct behind him.
“Oh, my God, it’s so hot in here,” she said.
“It’s not that bad,” Will said.
But it was. The farther he crawled, the hotter he got. He hoped she liked sweaty guys. The duct metal was hot, and it hurt the skin on his forearms.
“Will, I’m getting burned. I don’t like this.” He could hear the aggravation in her voice.
“Not much farther.”
With every foot he crawled, Will could feel Lucy slipping away from him. She was probably wishing she had never agreed to come out with him at all. Whatever was at the end of this journey had to be huge. Impossibly huge.
“I want to go back,” she said. Will ignored her.
The end had to be soon. Either that, or Smudge had boned him. Hard. He’d probably hit a dead end, or pop out of a vent in the middle of the trash dump. Smudge was probably holding his stomach, cackling at that very moment at the thought of Will stuck inside this hot metal esophagus, ruining any chance he’d ever had with Lucy.
“Will, are you going to answer me?”
The duct turned again. He saw a faint blue glow ahead.
Finally. He crossed Smudge off his mental To Kill list.
“We’re here,” he said.
“Really?”
It had to be it. He didn’t know what it was, but it had to be.
“Yup.”
Will crawled faster. The blue glow was shining through the black slats of a large vent cover. He scurried up and pressed his face to the slats. The vent cover popped right off and clanged down onto a white-tiled floor below. The sound hung in the air.
“Holy shit,” Will said softly.
It was the pool. Giant, six lanes. The water’s surface was absolutely still. It looked like clear blue glass. He could smell the chlorine. Damn, it smelled so clean. There wasn’t a soul in the room. He knew the pool was under the gym, inside Varsity territory. But he didn’t care. He had to get out of this hot tunnel and into that cool, serene water. He climbed out of the duct.
Lucy popped her head out right after. The bothered scowl on her face reversed at the sight of the pool. She beamed.
Relief drained the tension from Will’s muscles. Now Lucy was finally smiling her full smile.
“The pool!” she said. “Will! You took me to the pool?” Her voice echoed through the tiled room. Will pressed his forefinger to his lips with a smile. He didn’t know if Varsity was lurking. Lucy lowered her voice.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, maybe four?”
“That’s perfect. Hilary doesn’t go for her morning swim until six thirty, and free swim isn’t till after that. So nobody’s going to be down here.”
“Free swim?” Will said, his jaw hanging open. “You guys got to swim every day?”
“Believe me, it takes all the fun out of it when Varsity guys are watching you like sharks trying to cop a feel under water.”
“Lucky bastards.”
“Will!” she laughed.
He laughed too. This was the moment. She was happy, he was happy. He needed to take her head in his hands and kiss her.
But he didn’t. He froze, when right in front of him, Lucy unzipped the back of her dress, and let it fall to the floor.
23
THE TILES FELT COLD AND FRESH UNDER HER bare feet. Lucy stepped out of her dress, which lay puddled around her feet. She walked two steps to the edge of the pool and dove in.
Chilly water caressed every inch of her. She loved being underwater. She spread her arms out and dug through the water. Deeper. The pure silence was almost as refreshing as the water. She closed her eyes, relishing her weightlessness.
She ran her hands down her body and kicked hard.
Deeper still. It was so familiar. Every summer she swam at her family’s lake house. She and her cousins would lie on the wooden raft anchored near the shore and bake in the sun until they couldn’t stand it. They’d jump into the crisp water and swim all the way down, racing to be the first one to touch the silty bottom. Those were some of her favorite memories.
Lucy touched the bottom of the deep end with her fingers.
She curled into a ball and tumbled forward, drifting slowly like an astronaut in deep space. She lingered there a moment.
In her mind she heard her cousins’ laughter. She could taste the sweet, chilly lemonade her father had dropped off from the motorboat. The noon sun made every little thing so vivid back then. She smiled.
This was the best gift Will could have given her.
Her lungs began to burn. She opened her eyes and kicked off the floor. She loved the drag of the water on her body.
She broke the surface and drew in a full, fresh breath. She scanned the room for Will.
He was hopping on one foot as he yanked the last leg of his jeans off. He wore a wrinkled pair of light blue boxers with some goofy pattern on them. There was a rip in the thigh. They were about as ratty and worn out as Lucy’s bra and panties.
“Um, what’s on your boxers?” Lucy said with a grin.
Will looked down and groaned.
“Uh . . . Santa hats. They were from my grandma. If I knew I was going to be locked in here for years, I probably would’ve picked something else.”
Lucy laughed. It was cute. Will looked around the room,
“Pretty great, right?”
“Amazing,” she said. “You win the prize.” He nodded. He held his pants in front of him like he was nervous being nearly naked in front of her. She could tell he was tense by the way he was holding himself.
“Well, get in,” she said. “It feels great.” Will cast his pants aside and cannonballed into the pool.
Will was so sweet to bring her here. It was an endless comfort to know that someone cared for her, wanted to protect her, take her to fun places. That was never her experience when she was around Varsity. They were rude, inconsiderate jerks.
She remembered being in this pool with them, and guys like Brad would give her butt a squeeze under water. She remembered being offended, but at the same time she couldn’t help feeling excited. She never let on, but some of them turned her on, in a purely physical way. She’d seen things as a Pretty One she’d never seen before. She’d stumbled across couples having sex in the showers a few times. Sex had stopped seeming like that thing that adults did. It could be something she could do if she wanted to. And she did want to. There was just no one in Varsity she trusted enough to try it with.
Will still hadn’t surfaced. She wondered if he’d swum past her, all the way to the shallow end. Then hands grabbed her ankles and tugged her down. She got out a yelp just before she went under. Will’s fingers tickled her ribs. Air bubbles rumbled out of her mouth. She kicked and twisted back to the surface. Will’s head was already above water, and he was smiling. She had not expected that, but she didn’t mind.
“Hey!” she said with an exaggerated scowl, and pushed his shoulder.
“Couldn’t resist.”
“Perv.”
“You’re the perv for stripping in front of me,” Will said with a grin.
“Whatever, I know this was all a big trick to get me in my underwear,” Lucy said.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said with tiniest frown. It was so sweet.
She almost believed him.
“Thank you for bringing me here. I’m so glad I came out tonight,” she said.
Will’s face lightened. “Me too.”
“You really raised the bar though. You said you know all these places I don’t know about. What are you going to show me next that beats this?”
“The outside,” he said without flinching. He said it with such certainty that it made Lucy do a double take.
“Yeah, right.”
“You never know.”
Will was so full of surprises. Who knows? Maybe he could pull it off.
“Yeah, but even so, we can’t go out there,” Lucy said. “We might kill someone. We just have to wait until it’s our turn to get out.”
“I bet we could make it to the mountains without getting near any adults. We could get a bunch of gear, hike in, and camp out in the woods.”
“For two and a half years?”
“It’s doable. It’d be better than this hellhole.” Lucy extended her arms, kicked, and floated on her back.
She stared upward. Undulating blue light reflected off the water’s surface and frolicked across the ceiling. Maybe they could hide out at the lake house. No one was there in the winter. Lucy sighed, more relaxed than she’d been in a long time. She moved her hands gently back and forth in the water.
She slowly realized exactly how much of her body was float-ing above the water, exposed to Will. Even though she’d never eaten so sparingly in her life, her body felt fuller than it did a year ago. She could feel his eyes slide across her exposed skin and linger on the places kept hidden. She blushed, and there was no way to hide it. She could sense his desire. The power her body had over guys excited her.
Lucy glanced over at Will and caught him staring. She smiled at him. He looked away. “I’ll be back.” Lucy lifted her head and sank her body back in the water.