Chapter #37Going Alloway, Part 1 by: Masktrix   Monday. 7.45am. You’re late getting to Niamh’s, and she hops directly into passenger seat from the curb when you pull up. She looks as bored with the mundane Monday routine as ever. You spend most of the trip listening to a bootleg, a taped concert by a local band called Slow Fast Hazel, who you saw play a few weeks ago. The sound quality sucks, but it keeps you occupied until you’re almost at the Lattyville turn off to the ’44, racing along well past the speed limit.
Of course, you’re not Will by now. You’re Mariah Alloway, driving with your best friend, looking forward to a normal week at St X.
This morning brought a very early start for you, taking you out to a large townhouse on Thirtieth Street, opposite the convention center. Such premium property comes with a premium price, but Mariah’s parents, your new mind tells you, are both dentists and can afford it. You flick your tongue across your new teeth, gleaming white and straight as an arrow. It was one of the first things you noticed when you came around as her, panicked and disoriented in your dad’s garage, next to his pristine Mustang. Then it was a matter of putting on your uniform, wrapping yourself up from the chill November air with a thick red overcoat, slipping grandmom’s ring on your finger, and setting your glasses on your nose.
Mariah Alloway. Hair a thick, matted mess of strawberry blonde down just beyond your shoulders. Weight around your waist, arms and thighs from way too many snacks – your parents never let you have candy or soft drinks, and you’ve been making up for it from the vending machines. A large, plain face, with a stubby nose, confident eyebrows and a soft chin that you keep poking. Not exactly popular, definitely not cool, but your sense of humor means you get on with most of your year. Swimmer, pretty terrible soccer player, and a reasonable saxophonist. Classes a bizarre mix of science and maths subjects (which are your passion), film studies and photography (because, it turns out, you suck at your passion and the school wants to coax up your GPA).
All in all, a perfect Trojan horse.
It’s not until the music ends that you decide to replay, almost word for word, a conversation you had side five days ago – except this time from the other side.
“Plans for tonight?” you ask, prodding your glasses further onto your nose and shuffling in your seat as you try to stop the sun glare from the rear-view mirror.
“I would say so,” Niamh replies.
“You’d say so? Sounds like this involves Will, hashtag hearts-for-eyes. Spill.” You're trying to make up for lost time, and slip into the passing lane to weave past a big rig. But the asshole trucker decides to race, and strands you in the wrong lane. Frustrated, you hit the brakes and slip back behind him.
“We were thinking of going to get donuts," Niamh says.
“Again?” you tease. "Oh, must be serious if it involves confectionary twice in a week. Since when do you like donuts so much? Why haven’t I ever been invited for donuts with you? Or any type of cake-based activity, for that matter? I’m telling you here and now, I don’t care what we do as long as it has cake, cats, or, ideally, cake and cats. What I’m saying is… why doesn’t Saratoga Falls have a cat café?”
You both laugh as you pull off the interstate. Time to probe further. You’re Mariah; why wouldn’t she talk to you about her boyfriend?
“Fine, if you’re going to crush my feline donut dreams, at least tell me about Will.”
Niamh blushes. “Will’s…” she flaps her hands wildly. “He’s… I don’t know! You know how sometimes two people get thrown together, and something just sort of happens?”
“Oh yeah. My love life has been a never-ending torrent of serendipity.” You look at her sceptically. Mariah hasn’t had a date in eight months. “C’mon. You two are joined at the hip. Deets.”
“He’s cute, in a squirrelly kind of way. Bit of an oddball. Actually, ‘a bit’ is probably understating it, the boy’s got some unique quirks, I’ll say that. But he’s sweet.”
“Insightful,” you say, trying desperately not to ask what ‘cute in a squirrelly kind of way’ means. “Wouldn’t recommend submitting it in the essay competition, but insightful. He going to be OK with your trip?”
“It’s only for a few days. Besides, we’ve got a little project going. Might be something to take over to Cambridge, actually, so I can ask an expert about it. Haven’t mentioned that to Will yet. Kind of putting it off, actually.”
Your ears prick up. Niamh is holding secrets back from you?!
“What’s the project?" you ask as casually as you can manage. "Is it that game you were working on last week? The one with the super-nerdy manual? I tried Googling it, but couldn’t find any mention.” Which is true – Mariah tried in a fumbling way to research Niamh's grimoire, but got nothing but horoscopes. Your current identity, you are beginning to understand, is nowhere near as smart as her mind tells you she is. In the fourth form, she tried to write out equations on one of the Stables’ windows. Unfortunately, she used permanent marker. Any Mariah thought must be treated with utmost caution.
“Uh,” Niamh says, caught on the backfoot, as though she doesn't know what you're talking about. Then you remember: of course she doesn’t recall that conversation! It was you that Mariah was talking to; she was talking to you, pretending to Niamh, while you had Niamh still trapped under the "Will Prescott" mask.
How surreal! You're replaying Mariah’s memory of a conversation she had with someone who was really you!
But Niamh has come up with a reply: “Yeah. It’s pretty rad. And really obscure. But apparently there’s a retro computing museum in Cambridge.”
You give a heavy sigh. “You get to fly out to England – full school credit – and not only get your photo with Big Ben, you also dork around with some game manual. Meanwhile, I will be stuck at home, working on integral calculus, waiting for a pop-up saying AerisLives777 is online.”
“Is this about Sunday?” Niamh says, rolling her eyes. “I messaged you to say I was busy and wouldn’t be online. And am I supposed to pretend you don’t want to do integral calculus? I have literally seen you work on math problems for fun. Never mind what you’re supposed to be doing, just hackin’ away at a math problem.”
“She makes a fair point,” you concede, before letting Mariah’s cheeky smile burst out, just in case Niamh thought you were being serious.
The sign for the school comes up a few miles later, and then you’re turning through the stone gatehouse. Niamh grows silent.
“You OK?” you ask as you slow for the speed bumps, then pull up in the first available spot. 8.04am. She’ll have to move fast if she's going to get herself into a disguise. A few hundred yards away, in the visitor’s carpark, you can see Will Prescott’s white truck. Once you made the switch, you’d instructed the new Will to drive all the way out here, stay out of sight for half an hour, then drive back to town. He bitched about having to speed to make it to Westside on time, but it’s an important part of the charade. You want Niamh to think you’ve replaced a boarder.
“Just thinking about stuff I’ve got to do today,” Niamh says, sounding distracted. You sit expectantly for a few seconds, but she doesn’t elaborate.
You walk with Niamh into Founders Hall, as she and Mariah usually do. But instead of accompanying her into the chapel you pretend to see someone in the games room and tell her you'll catch up to her in a bit. Play fair, you remind yourself. Give her a chance to make a switch.
But playing fair doesn't mean you can't play it smart.
So after you glimpse Niamh darting back the way you came, you step back into the main hallway in time to watch her dash up the staircase to the upper floors, where the fifth- and sixth-form borders have their dorms. She's looking to catch someone in their room, you think. She'd better hurry; uniformed students are beginning to come down.
You grab a drink from a vending machine and take out Mariah’s iPad. A few taps later, and the school intranet brings up a list of the 80-or-so students in your year. “You using this?” Davina Macklin interrupts you, and with a muttered apology you move down a few steps, to slouch against the wall while balancing coffee and tablet.
Whoever Niamh picks, you figure, she only has 25 minutes to make the switch, and the act of copying will take up most of that time. So, it stands to reason, whoever you see walking around in the next quarter of an hour won't be her. So you start the hunt by crossing Vee Macklin's name off the list.
Half an hour later, most of the sixth form have brushed past you on their way to chapel. And you are down to just 15 possible names.
You haven’t seen any of the prefects pass, which is odd. But it could be they just have duties in the aftermath of the alleged Halloween party.
Otherwise, the missing sixth formers are an odd mix, slicing straight across the school’s strata and social circles: Mathilde Ambard, Michael "Pwntang" Boateng, Alyssa Erikson, Roxanne Hurley, Scott Ricci, Gabriel Santos, Loki Swain, Frances Washington, Kristen Wright-Wallace and Ken Zero.
Five prefects, seven regular boarders, three day students. Niamh has to be one of them.
You move up on the pew as her golem – at least, you think it’s the golem, it’s impossible to be sure – takes a seat next to you.
Where could the real Niamh be? You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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