Secrets Are For Keeping

Chapter Thirty-Three

My eyes flew open.

Sunrise. Grass. Lightening sky. Kain.

Everything rammed into me all at once.

We'd fallen asleep.

We'd actually fallen asleep.

It was morning.

In the distance I could see the sun slowly rising above the horizon, it's light flowing gradually over the world beneath a thick layer of morning fog. The sky directly above me was still a dark bruised color, but it was quickly fading.

Panic took hold of my heart and made it difficult to breathe. It was impossible that somebody hadn't noticed our disappearance by now. They had to have realized two students had gone missing and then also realized that there was an actual shoe in the door that we'd gone out of.

But if they'd found the shoe, shouldn't they have found us?

Unless they hadn't. Hope soared up in me as I leaned up, pressing my hand against the cool brick wall for support, and then was forced to fall back down as I realized Kain's head had ended up resting on my shoulder at some point during the night. His eyes fluttered, and then fell back closed. I felt my heartbeat stumble at the sight. I quickly removed his head from my shoulder and placed it instead on his own, being careful to avoid hurting him. I then stood up, scared to look, but knowing I'd have to.

My eyes found the door and my blood went cold.

The sneaker...

...was gone.

The door was completely sealed, nothing jamming it open so that we could get back inside. If we couldn't get back inside, then it didn't matter if they'd already found us or not, they would figure it out when we didn't show up for breakfast or anything else.

I tried anyway, yanking on the handle, but it didn't budge.

"Looking for this?" came a voice from directly behind me and I whirled around, confused by the unfamiliar voice.

Standing in the quickly dissipating darkness was a blonde haired boy with dark eyes, pale skin, and a gleaming gold set of keys in his right hand that he was now holding up. In the left was my sneaker, hanging from his pointer finger as he swung it back and forth lazily.

I stared at him in complete shock. If this wasn't the most surprising thing that had happened so far during the inspection, I didn't know what was.

I questioned whether I might be hallucinating. It was totally possible. Maybe I'd been drugged during dinner the night before and this entire thing, coming outside, putting the shoe in the doorway, was all just a huge, complex hallucination.

I realized just how much I'd been thinking the world wasn't real in the past week.

"Excuse me?" I asked, not knowing how to properly respond to his statement.

"It's obvious that door's locked, and it's also obvious that this is the key...I saw you tried shoving a shoe in there to keep it open. Stupid idea, it could've easily come out. Lucky I retrieved it," he said with a wink and a careless grin.

A spark of anger began to form deep in my bones. "Who are you?" I asked, barely containing it.

"Someone who'll give you back your shoe and maybe a key, for a price," the boy continued.

"How'd you even get that?"

"The shoe? Oh, I just picked it up. You know, with my hands."

"No, the key."