The Ranking System (BoyxBoy)✔

⚜Chapter 18: Two Boys, One Bottle

A/N: Oct 2nd, 2021

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And thus began my plan. It was 11:00 p.m.—well past our curfew. We weren't allowed outside our dorms unless it was to go to the bathroom, but a guard had to accompany us to make sure we didn't sneak off anywhere, so I couldn't use diarrhea as an excuse. 

I opened my pencil case and took out the bobby pin Ruby gave me earlier. She pretended not to know me, like Vadim, but when I asked her if I could borrow a bobby pin, she surprisingly gave me one, walking away before I could even thank her. It left me both disheartened and enthusiastic, and I slowly realized that I wanted a dog tag to get my friends back rather than a social ranking.   

Friends? Ha, that's the first.

And sadly, it was.

Well, I guess there was Adam, but even when we were little, I never considered him a friend or family. He had always been something else. Someone special. But that was all in the past. 

I glanced at Vadim who was lying on his bed. His eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell, but I knew from the lack of Russian rambling that he was too silent to be asleep.

He didn't flinch when I stood up from my bed. I tiptoed out of the room and closed the door behind me. 

"Down the hall, to the right," I repeated Vadim's earlier instructions under my breath.

It was alarmingly easy to sneak past the guards. I was convinced that the only way to get caught was by walking up to them and slapping them across the face. But even then, I bet some of them wouldn't wake up. The night guards were supposed to actively patrol the halls, but almost all of them were dozing off on their chairs, snoring louder than Vadim on a Friday night.

I blended into the shadows, keeping my footsteps as light as possible. My stealth came from years of sneaking into prohibited areas, starting from the pantry in the orphanage.

I found room 81. I took a few steps back and leaned sideways to peep through the small crack beneath the door. The lights were off. 

I took out the bobby pin from my pocket and tried to remember Juliet's instructions. I was impressed when she picked the locks of my handcuffs the first day we met and asked her— without Christopher's knowledge, of course—if she could teach me how to do it back when I was temporarily living with them. I was scared she'd scold me at first, but she was surprisingly enthusiastic about teaching me the trick. 

Traces of her calm, comforting tone lingered in my mind, and it soothed me even all the way here. I thought of her kind smile and her bright eyes and missed her even more, but I quickly pushed away my fleeting thoughts.

I pulled apart the bobby pin, so that it would be long and flat, and nibbled off the round rubbers at the end with my teeth. I inserted the pin into the lock and pressed my ear close to the doorknob, trying to visualize the pattern of the barrels and pins at each click. 

'CLICK' 'CLICK' 'CLICK'

I fiddled a little longer.

'CLICK' CLICK' CLICK'

A little more....

'CLICK' 'CLACK'

Bingo. 

The doorknob twisted open and I was in. I tried to celebrate as quietly as I could.

The curtains were pulled, blocking the moonlight from entering through the windows. It was almost pitch-dark, but I used my imagination to navigate myself through the room. It should be designed similarly, if not exactly the same as mine and Vadim's room.