Dying for Chocolate

I was so used to that road I could whip around its curves and drink bottled water at the same time. The Perrier was a necessity to help dissipate whatever poison lingered in my system. I knew from reading about Spanish fly that some people became much sicker than others, and it didn’t necessarily depend on the dose. This would explain why Schulz had been sick before me. I shook my head from side to side. My brain felt woozy. I ordered myself to sharpen up. My sensibilities might be the only thing to save Arch.

Luckily, some vestige of mental sharpness kicked in just when the van careened around the last curve and came up on the school entrance. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid smashing into the electrified gate.

I cursed mightily and stepped gingerly out of the van. The gate was armed and the stone wall was too high to scale. I wished every flower behind Elk Park Prep’s deer-proof gate would burn in hell or be eaten by a marauding herd of wild animals.

I stared at the electrified wires. I couldn’t risk touching it: I had heard too many stories of electric shock throwing unsuspecting humans for first-and-ten yardage. But I had to get through. Short of breaking the power circuit. . . But why break it? Why not keep it? I walked back to the van and got the general’s wire cutters and my jumper cables.

I hustled back to the gate and began to attach the jumper cables to the wire. I thought that I would have given a year’s supply of unsalted butter for the presence of a rocket scientist. Ten years’ worth for an electrical engineer.

I clipped the wire and didn’t die. Hallelujah. I cut savagely at the fence, tore out the hole I’d made, and began to run up to the school. I didn’t want them— whoever they were—to hear me coming.

There were no infrared security lights here to detect human approach. Why should there be? They had electricity to keep Bambi out. Still, the shadows of trees cast long, fingered shadows across the road and made my heart pound in my chest. Voices carried through the night air from the pool site. Every fifteen yards up the driveway, short lanterns on poles shed disks of yellow light. Poppies and bluebells waved in the night breeze like fairy-sentries on their mounds. I focused straight ahead and walked fast until I was at the wire fence surrounding the construction area.

Another damn fence.

I knew it was six feet exactly, and that it was required by building code when a pool was under construction. If you wanted to get in easily, you had to go through the gate, now closed and locked. Adele had somehow wea-seled the code out of the construction workers, because I could see Arch. I could hear him splashing and calling to someone who was holding a flashlight and either reading or writing in a notebook next to the gate. But who was it? There was no car in the parking lot. The voice I could hear was female. If Adele was around, she was not visible. I listened and then recognized the voice: Sissy.

Arch had known something was wrong. Why was he playing? Or was he?

On the far side of the pool area behind the newly installed diving board, a small mountain of dirt bordered the concrete deck. The chain-link fence ran behind the dirt pile. On that side, the area behind the fence fell away sharply. I could hide behind that ridge, but what good would it do me? I had to get through the chain-link fence. Arch had signaled he was in trouble. Maybe Sissy had some kind of weapon. I didn’t want to find out by feeling it against my skull.

I scanned the school grounds. The dark silhouette of the old hotel building rose ominously over the parking lots. Here and there in the darkness, floodlights shed tents of light. The tall evergreens that peppered the campus whooshed in the night wind.

I crouched like an Indian and stumbled over to behind the fence. From where I was hidden, I could not see Arch. I gripped the wire cutters and began to clip. Arch must have been over by Sissy. Their voices were somewhat distant. They began to argue. “You . . . you . . .” Arch was saying. I couldn’t make the rest of it out.

Then she said sharply, loudly, the way you do when you want to change the subject, “Forget about it! You have to do this thing with the manacles! Adele doesn’t want another messed-up magic trick in her pool!”

Arch shrieked, “I don’t want to! My mom wouldn’t want me—”

“Shut up, scaredy-cat. Besides, if you don’t do it, Adele’s going to fire your mother! Is that what you want?”

I ran through the soft dirt to where I could see them. Dim light from a distant floodlamp cast long, thin shadows across the concrete deck. Sissy leaned over and appeared to be rummaging in a bag. Her notebook was on the ground, papers askew. Did she have a weapon? I couldn’t tell. Arch had his back to her. He put his hands behind him. Sissy took out a stick and two pieces of rope. My heart stopped.