The Chickadee Girl

A Locked Door

Refusing to allow herself to dwell on Midas's fate, Isa had dropped off to sleep mentally combing through the campus: what might she have missed? Was there a way out that she might have dismissed early on? Ought they to tear apart all the other residence rooms upstairs? Other faculty family homes? Though the prospect made her feel uneasy, these were desperate times.  She traced the contours of Tristan's nose with her fingertip. The boy didn't stir. 

They wouldn't both fit on the bike. She'd tried the road, and the forest. Should she try to steal one of the staff cars after all? Perhaps she might be able to figure out how to drive it, if she tried. It wasn't out of the question.  But windows would need to be broken, and she had no idea how to hot-wire something, if everyone's keys were gone. What had people done before the internet? She'd never been in a position where information wasn't readily available.

But -- for all these musings, and in spite of all of her confident declarations to Tristan -- Isa woke up with a single thought on her mind: today, come Hell or high water, she was going to get into the laundry room. 

Because. Because, because. Every way she looked at it, they seemed to be stuck here on campus, without a prayer of leaving unless they somehow sprouted wings. In her mind, this locked door represented a small, achievable goal in a world of insurmountable obstacles and questions with no answers. In addition, every single dream she'd had that week had revolved around that stupid door - started there or ended there. And the other piece was something she had only realized as she lay in bed two nights before - something that had caused her to sit bolt upright. 

The laundry room was the only locked door that she'd encountered on campus. She'd gained easy access to nearly every other place she'd been  - the office of the headmaster, for God's sake. The computer labs. The Alcott residence. The infirmary. Literally every other door had opened for her, or had appeared not to lock at all, and that didn't actually make much sense, now that she considered it. The school didn't trust the students as far as they could throw them (and she couldn't blame them for that, really). 

During her explorations, she and Tristan had seen absolutely nothing to suggest that the former inhabitants of the campus had been dragged away kicking and screaming: no broken glass, or blood, or hastily abandoned possessions. But if the staff, faculty and students had left of their own accord, why wouldn't they have locked up their homes and offices? What sort of responsible nurse didn't lock the medicine cabinets in the infirmary when she left? 

There was nothing that Isa needed in the laundry room. She had a library of clothes in the closets up and down the hall that she could pull from at will, but she found that she was far past caring about how dirty she was. 

She didn't need to get in there for Tristan's sake, either. When at last she'd finally been able to persuade him to part with his worn-through t-shirt a few days before, she'd ventured into the closet of Emma Chu (the smallest freshman on the floor) and stolen some of her more close-fitting sweats and pyjamas. Despite Alice's slight frame, her clothes still hung off Tristan in a way that was downright comical, and so they'd had to roll up the cuffs on the pants halfway to his knees, and the sleeves to his elbows. Tristan hadn't seemed at all upset by the prospect of wearing girl's clothing - he considered Alice's pale aqua track suit an upgrade, and said so.

No, she wanted into that room for reasons she couldn't articulate, reasons that had nothing to do with escaping, or logic. How was she going to get in? She squared her jaw. She would. With absolutely nothing else within her power to control, this could be a win. And when they inevitably discovered nothing at all behind the door except a washer, dryer and ironing board, at least the unsettling dreams would stop.