The Hand on the Wall

Her parents, ironically, were absolutely delighted that she continued to have a relationship with that nice boy who turned out to be Senator King’s son. Senator King’s views on David’s relationship with Stevie were not known and not sought out.

Things at school had not been easy or perfect for anyone, but they were definitely pretty good. It turned out school was generally more straightforward when people weren’t getting murdered all the time.

“Okay, so you’re going to explain all of this so you get the money? I guess it would be hard to prove, but they could probably do it, check birth records and get DNA . . .”

“Nah,” Stevie said again.

“Okay, what is this nah thing? You aren’t going to try to prove it?”

“It wasn’t about the money,” she said. “If I even tried to claim it, think of the lawyers and the creeps I’d have to deal with. It would ruin my life.”

“Seriously?” he said. “You’re not going to fight for seventy million dollars?”

“What can I buy for seventy million dollars?”

“Anything. Almost literally anything.”

“The way it is now,” she said, “the money stays here, in the school. Alice’s home. The one her father made. He wanted to make a place where impossible things could happen. Albert Ellingham believed in me. He let me come here, and I’m making sure it stays open. This is for Alice and Iris, and for Albert, for Hayes, and Ellie and Fenton.”

She raised her mug.

“Oh my God,” he said. “What are you, a saint or something?”

“I stole this mug,” she said. “So, no. Besides, if the school closed down, you’d have to go home and finish your book or something. I did it for you. I’m not even telling anyone else. I mean, aside from my friends. Like you.”

“Are you trying to make me have an emotion?” Nate said, his eyes reddening a bit. “Because I’ve spent my whole life learning how to repress and deflect and you’re kind of ruining my thing.”

Anxiety does not ask your permission. Anxiety does not come when expected. It’s very rude. It barges in at the strangest moments, stopping all activity, focusing everything on itself. It sucks the air out of your lungs and scrambles the world. Her vision went spotty around the edges. The ringing in her ears swelled again. Her knees buckled.

“This is the treasure.”

“Treasure?”

“Francis—the one who wrote the diary—she must have been stealing dynamite and stockpiling it.”

“There was a student here who was stealing and stockpiling dynamite? And people bitch about a few squirrels in the library?”

They regarded the pile for a few moments. It was clear what was going to come next, though Stevie did not want to bring it up.

“I’m going to say something you won’t like,” David said.

Stevie said nothing.

“I mean, there is a lot of dynamite here,” he went on. “We don’t need that much. One stick is probably all we would need. Look at this. Blasting caps, wire. Everything but the plunger to set it off. I think all we’d need is an electrical charge. I probably have something in my bag . . .”

“We can’t set off dynamite,” she said.

“Sure we can. Haven’t you ever seen cartoons?”

“We’ll kill ourselves,” she said.

“No we won’t. We probably won’t. A stick or two? That’s nothing.”

“It’s dynamite,” she pointed out. “Old dynamite. It will blow up.”

“Dynamite,” he said, looking up at her, “is a high explosive. It produces a pressure wave. Imagine a sphere—an expanding sphere. That’s the pressure wave. As the sphere expands, the surface area increases by the square of the radius, therefore the pressure drops by the square of the radius. In addition, we have a wall, which means the pressure wave has to go around a corner, which it can do through diffraction, but it will lose energy in the process. I’m saying it won’t be that bad.”

It turned out that being the calm one eased Stevie’s panic. The more anxious David seemed, the more she could talk through it.

“UHHHHHH,” DAVID SAID.

It was as good a summary of the situation as any.

“Oh,” Stevie said.

Again, this about summed it up.

There was a real entombing problem at Ellingham Academy. This was undeniable.

It must have gotten considerably darker outside, because as they approached the entrance there was no patch of light where the hatch was, no dim square of snow sky. As they got closer, the slow and sickening realization entered her bloodstream. She knew it before she saw it for sure.

The hatch had closed above them.

“How long is this supposed to be a secret?” Leo asked. “Forever? Until he gives his entire fortune away trying to find her?”

“I don’t know,” George replied. “I only know this is what’s best for now.”

“And then at some point you’ll say, ‘You’ll never guess what happened! I found your daughter and buried her out back. Happy birthday!’”

“No,” George snapped. “Forever, then. Probably forever. As long as she’s alive in his mind, that part of him is alive.”

“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m here,” she heard herself saying. “What am I doing? No one can help the Ellinghams. They’re gone. No one is ever going to find Alice.”

“They might,” he said. “She could still be alive, right? And
people—things—turn up all the time. Like in a DNA database or something.”

“But finding her wouldn’t help her,” Stevie said. “She was kidnapped in 1936. Nothing I’m doing helps anyone.”

Nate eyed her wearily.

“I think you’re working out your business,” he said. “We all have business. Like, I know I can write because I wrote something one time. But I think I can’t write again because I’m scared. I’m scared that what I write down won’t be as good as what’s in my head. Because I don’t know how I do it, only that it happens. And because I’m lazy. We’ve all got doubts. But you’ve done something huge. You figured out so much of this case. Tell someone.”

Stevie chewed on a nail for a moment.

“What if I’m wrong?” she said.

“So you’re wrong. They’re dead. They can’t get more dead. And you have . . . stuff. You have clues. Show your work to someone.”

“But then it’s over,” she said.

“Well, didn’t you want it to be?”

Stevie had no idea how to answer.