Page 80 of Five

I roll my eyes. It’s freshman economics, for fuck’s sake. Not rocket science.

My phone dings in my backpack, which makes uppity girl shoot me another dirty look. I fish it out, turn off my ringer to keep the peace, and read the text.

Tera: I’m leaving school after this. Cliff is coming to pick me up.

Me: WTF?

Tera: Brian is being weird. He’s on me all the time. Like he knows I’m not going through with this pairing thing tomorrow night. I have to go.

Me: WTH is happening?

Tera: You should leave too. It’s not safe.

And then, before I can write anything back, she gets up from her seat and leaves.

I follow her out of the classroom and we’re barely through the doors when I grab her arm and spin her around. “What the hell is going on, Tera?”

“Shhh,” she says, looking nervously around. “They have spies everywhere.” She grabs my sleeve and drags me off down the hallway. But she doesn’t say another word until we get to a stairwell and have a flight of stairs and a closed door behind us.

“This is weird shit, Rory. Don’t you think this is weird?”

I can tell she’s afraid. And I can tell she’s not sure if she should trust me. So I just nod and say, “I do think so. But you can’t leave school, Tera. That’s crazy. We can just go to the administration building and file a complaint. We can leave Palladium House. Right now. Just go get our stuff and move out. We’ll get our own apartment.”

The whole time I’m talking she’s shaking her head. “No. No, this is bigger than you know. Cliff did some digging. I took a picture of that woman at the pledge dinner last weekend. Cliff says he knows her. And she is bad fucking news.”

“How does he know her?”

“He said she’s some rich guy’s daughter from Martha’s Vineyard. He met her in the Hamptons over the summer and she was asking all kinds of questions about where his girlfriend was.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“It is a cult, Rory! I know it sounds crazy, but I’m dead serious. You should not go back to the house. You should call up your parents and tell them you’re going home and if you don’t make it, they should call the police and implicate Frank Fulbright in your disappearance.”

She’s out of control. It’s not that I don’t agree with her, but… “Listen, Tera. I know this is weird, but you have to trust me, OK? I have people who can help us. You need to stay here with me.”

“Are you one of them?” Tera asks, suddenly pulling back from me. “Did they get to you too?”

“What? No! Of course not!”

“I tried to talk to Kallie about it on Sunday, but she just got angry. Told me to shut my mouth and do as I’m told or they’d…”

“They’d what?” I ask.

“They’d hurt me, Rory. I have to get out of here. And you should too.”

And then she’s racing down the stairs. Trying to get away from me. “Tera!” I call after her. But she’s through the door and gone before I can say anything else.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

And then I get nervous and decide it’s a bad idea to follow her out.

I get out my phone, wondering if those texts we just exchanged were safe or not. If they’re not, well, too late now. But I delete them anyway. Either way, that can’t be a bad idea.

I decide to go back into class because Frank is definitely not going to let that little argument go. He’ll be back when class is over and if I don’t come out… well. Who the hell knows what he’d do? He might even have someone watching me in there.

The door creaks as I enter and three dozen people in the back turn to look at me. I slink back to my seat in the last row and pass the time pretending to taking notes. But all I really do is stare at my phone, wishing it would light up with a text from Tera.

It never does.