Plan B

Chapter Thirty-four

Brookie came awake with an awareness that something was out of place.  He couldn't quite pinpoint exactly what that something was, although a part of his brain was whispering to him that he had woken up because of a noise, and that noise hadn't been his alarm clock.

Bizarre, he thought, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with a yawn and patting around with his free hand for his phone.  Normally, he could sleep through a fire alarm.  He was never sure how his alarm clock managed to wake him up, but he had a sneaking suspicion that whatever had awoken him this time was even quieter his alarm clock and the school fire alarm.

He sat up, hand curling around his phone at the same time.  Is Frankie crying again?  For some reason, that quite often woke him.  But no, the other side of the room was silent.  Brookie tapped his phone, wincing in the bright glare of the backlight, and saw that the time was just past two-thirty in the morning.  He groaned loudly.

"Why am I awake at such an ungodly hour?" he muttered to his phone, but he swung his legs out of bed all the same and tucked the handset into the pocket of his zombie hoodie.  Then he realised it was dark and he wouldn't be able to see where he was going, so he took it out again.

It was obvious what was wrong the instant he got to the other side of the room.  Fran's duvet was lying on the floor and the girl was nowhere to be seen.  Bemused, Brookie held his phone up higher and scanned the area around her desk.  Nothing.

Cr*p.  She's sleepwalking again.

It was the fifth time in as many days.  Thankfully, she often didn't leave the room, but the last time she had, Brookie had chased her all the way downstairs and had nearly had to tackle her to stop her from trying to open the front door of the house and setting off the intruder alarm.

With a sigh and growing anxiety, he reached out and tested the tumble lock on the door.  As he had feared, it was open.  She'd gone out into the passage.

Brookie's only solace as he let himself out into the corridor was that it was such an obnoxious hour of night, but it still wasn't much.  Various sixth formers – and, occasionally, people in the younger years too – wandered the passages at night if they were hungry, had stayed up extremely late, or were trying to get work done after procrastinating all week.  There was no guarantee that Fran wouldn't bump into somebody, and considering she never wore her chest compressor at night, that could cause problems.  And the problems would be far worse if the person she bumped into was Carson.  He had to find her before anybody else did.

There wasn't a soul in sight on the corridor.  Cursing internally, Brookie hurried along it as fast as possible and started down the stairs.  He'd never quite been sure how Fran managed to negotiate stairs in her sleep, but it wasn't really an issue right now.

A series of thumps echoed up the stairwell just as he reached the first floor.

That's got to be her.  He increased his pace, leaping down the stairs two at a time—

—And very nearly went flying when his foot caught under a figure curled up on the third step from the bottom.  Fortunately, some part of him had the presence of mind to grab hold of the bannister before he completely lost his balance.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Brookie crouched down and held his phone light over the person's face.  As he had suspected, it was Fran, and somehow, she was still sound asleep after tumbling down the stairs.  She was hugging her arms around her chest, and Brookie couldn't help a small smile of pity at her vulnerable form.  Her brow was pinched with worry, and she barely would have passed for a child of twelve, let alone her actual age.