Chloe stares up at April and Jake, both exuding an air of disaffection that suggests they’d rather be hotboxing Rory’s Beemer right now.
“They know about the Shara thing?”
Rory furrows his brow. “They’re my friends. Of course they know about the Shara thing. Did you not tell your friends about the Shara thing?”
“You’re like,” Jake says from his tree nest like a lightly blazed owl, “taller than I thought you were like, up close.”
“Thanks?” Chloe says, and then she pulls herself up to a low branch and explains Smith’s theory about the clue and the office. “He doesn’t want to help us with this one, though, so it’s just us.”
“Oh.” Rory’s next chord goes unpleasantly flat. He glances up, and Chloe knows he’s looking at Smith, and that Smith is now trying to pretend he was squirrel-watching. “Figures.”
Chloe barrels on. “Can we talk logistics? I’ve spent a lot of time in Wheeler’s office, so I know the layout pretty well.”
“So have I,” Rory points out.
“You—” Right. She forgot she has that in common with Rory. She spares a thought for how much butt warmth they’ve unknowingly shared via Wheeler’s office chair over the years. “Well, I’ve also spent a lot of time at school after hours for rehearsals and club meetings, so I know that—”
“Every door in this school is on a timer and locks automatically at 5 p.m.?” Rory finishes for her. “Yeah, I know.”
“How?”
Rory shrugs. “You ever heard of this thing called loitering?”
“Okay,” Chloe says, “so, then—then you know that there’s no way to get in or out of the building outside of school hours without a key, and there’s no way to get to Wheeler’s office during the day without going through Mrs. Bailey and five other administrators, so basically our options are to get a key or evacuate the entire campus, which seems kind of extreme but I’m not totally against it—”
“Or we could hide somewhere inside C Building until everyone goes home,” Rory suggests simply.
“That would work,” Chloe agrees, “except all the inside doors would still be locked.”
“Wait,” Jake says. “What’s your friend’s name? The one who looks like you but with better vibes?”
“Her vibes are fine, dude,” Rory says. “Don’t be shitty.”
“Thank you,” says Chloe, whose vibes have never been complimented before. “Um, do you mean Georgia?”
“Yeahhh, that girl,” Jake says. “Isn’t she a library aide? I always see her when I’m skipping sixth hour.”
“Yeah, she is,” Chloe says. “Why?”
“Well, then she has a key.”
“To the library office,” Chloe points out. “Not the principal’s office.”
“Right,” Rory says, drumming his fingers on the fretboard of his guitar. “But you work backward from what you have.” He jerks his chin up toward the top of the tree, which brushes up against the side of C Building. “The library office, it’s that window, right?”
Chloe looks up through the branches to the second-story window covered in Easter egg stickers and lined with books. She knows it well; Georgia sometimes lets her sneak in her overdue books to avoid late fees.
“Yeah,” she confirms.
Rory does a contemplative lip bite. “Pretty short jump.”
“Okay,” Chloe says, “so we can get out of the building. But there are still at least three locked doors between that window and Wheeler’s office, unless you can like, walk through walls.”
“What about through the ceiling?” Rory asks.
“Dude,” April says, her jaw dropping so fast, her Tootsie Roll pop plummets to the ground below. “Do you mean—”
Rory smirks. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Without us?”
“There’s no way it could be all four of us,” Rory says. “Way too risky. You guys have to be the support team from the parking lot. Jake?”
“But it’s our dream!”
“What are you talking about?” Chloe demands.
Rory tilts his head back, settling it against the tree so his curls crumple up at his crown and his jawline goes all model-y, his eyes slipping closed like visions of perfectly executed pranks are dancing in his head. He answers, in the wistful voice of someone announcing a long-awaited fantasy: “The air ducts.”