Innocence and Fear Chapter 5 part 1
First part of chapter five of my Substack exclusive novel.
Photo by Kyler Nixon on Unsplash
Miette wore her street clothes, and not having worn anything other than her school uniform for so long, she felt like she was breaking some sort of rule. But in reality, it was after hours and students only had to wear uniforms to teacher meetings and classes. Her black combat boots sounded heavy on the wood floors of the school’s main hallway. She had stolen a code that was assigned to no one but held the access a teacher would hold at the school. She reached the door to the stone and wooden deck that was towards the back of the school. She entered the empty code into the glowing keypad next to the door. The buttons were made of soft rubber and felt pleasing to push inwards. The buttons made no sound as she pushed them. That was why she had chosen this door. The rest of the main exits’ keypads made small beeping sounds that might alert the sound-activated cameras nearby. She had slowed her footsteps to keep her boots quiet a few feet before reaching the keypad to help her remain unnoticed.
She knew Jamie and Kelvin would use their codes to exit, but she knew that would draw less attention than Jamie, Kelvin, Fabian, and herself all leaving around the same time than going to the chapel building in the school's rear. She also knew that Jamie had been to the chapel before, even though it had only been to make out with one of the many rich girls from school he was dating. He had still gone there before. She didn’t know if Kelvin had been there previously, but one odd incident they might ignore, and she would tell Kelvin when she talked to him to have a lie ready about why he had gone there. But Fabian and Miette never visited there, except for the initial tour of the grounds, and she knew that their friendship was observed. She felt her skin crawl thinking of the email the still unnamed security chief had sent to one of the security guards who lumbered around the school to watch and see if anything developed between the two of them. After that email, the Stocky guard with the dark hair had appeared, mere footsteps behind them often. It had made meeting and getting any further answers together…irritating.
Her laptop bag swung at her side. She had felt thankful that they had fitted the chapel with DSL connectivity like the rest of the school. There was only so much she could safely document on her machine, and she and Fabian had found keeping everything cached on the server in a hidden location easier to manage and less incriminating. She had wondered how the security team and tech department at the school could be so well-versed, so careful and knowledgeable, yet they had not noticed Fabian or her infiltrations or the hidden files on their own server. Fabian had been worried it was too risky, but she had guessed, correctly, that they wouldn’t look too closely under their noses, and that they were good, but she and Fabian were better. They were termed as ‘blessed’ for a reason. Fabian had done this sort of thing before, and never gotten caught, so she wondered why he was so nervous. But he had explained that they didn’t know how far the whole thing went yet. It could be deeper than they even realized. Miette shuddered as the cool wind blew straight through her, hitting her bones. She was standing on the beautiful terraced viewpoint built into the back of the school. There were several lights outdoors, but the winter night was already an inky blackness. She walked against the wind and felt her body fighting that decision every step of the way. She walked down the grand stone stairs and down onto the lawn, passing the row of decorative fir trees. They looked like shaggy black beasts in the glow of the lights that were growing fainter with every step.
She kept walking until she reached the lovely little stone chapel. The stained glass windows were glowing in the night, but she wasn’t worried. She knew they kept the lights on all night. She had triple-checked the scheduled events and there were to be no meetings or open prayer hours. She was certain no one would come out to the chapel this late. They had been watching for a week and there was never any movement around this time. She felt a little jerk inside herself. But what if someone came to the building? She asked herself. She remembered that she and Fabian had covered that. They would tell them they mistakenly thought there was a bible study meeting that night. There was a study meeting every Monday, but it was a Tuesday. Fabian had told her if this happened, they would have to lie low for a few weeks, just in case. She closed her eyes as she reached the door to the chapel. She prayed a little at that moment. Please let this go to plan. She felt the star of David around her neck at that point.
They had chosen this building for several reasons. One was that you didn’t need a pin to enter it. It was open until ten pm when the help would lock up all the exterior buildings until six am the next day. Also, no one came there any night after seven except Mondays, when there was Bible study. The other reason was that the cameras were newer. They had found the older cameras more difficult to hack into, with less tech for them to override. They had also noticed there was a slight lapse in the cameras between eight pm and ten pm. Somehow the cameras picked up no sound, a minor mistake in the software, Fabian guessed. Fabian had also a week before broken the pathing of the cameras and since then they had pointed at the ceiling for the hours of eight pm to nine pm. No one seemed to notice, though. It was yet another example of the school and its masters being paranoid, and that paranoia undoing them. They had so many cameras and so many microphones that there were too many things to keep track of. They had taken advantage of this several times but were hesitant to become bolder.
The Chapel was warm, and the walls were beige and covered with tapestries and paintings of Jesus and multiple saints. Miette had been to several Christian churches before, especially when her family had returned to France to visit, but she noticed this was, although small, quite beautiful. It was not as grand as those in France, but it was luxe in its own way. She passed through a small room with a fountain and into the main room of worship. There was a plush red carpet that led one down the middle aisle surrounded by pews, like a celebrity walking the red carpet. She looked around and saw several more stained glass windows. Several large chandeliers were hanging from the cathedral ceilings that were made of honey-colored wood that matched the floors. She saw Kelvin sitting in one of the front pews staring up at the largest window on the back wall of the chapel. Miette saw the confessional booths to the side and realized with sickness that someone had bugged them with listening devices. She knew no secrets were sacred at Patton Academy.
The red carpet led to the pulpit and some tables with candles and other religious paraphernalia she couldn’t place. She saw Fabian standing with his back facing her. She could see he was examining something on the table. The only person not present was Jamie, but she knew he was the kind of guy who may not respect timelines if he didn’t feel like it. Fabian and Kelvin must have heard or sensed her coming because they both turned around. Kelvin’s long narrow face smiled at her and he waved. Fabian smiled and she could read it was a genuine smile even from the distance, because she could see his dimples were showing. As she got closer to them, she could see that Fabian had been fiddling with a laptop he had placed on the table.
“Did you see Jamie on your way?” Fabian asked, annoyed.
“No, no one was around.” She said. “You sure all the cameras in my and your paths were down while we came here?” She asked.
“Yes, I saw a few panicked messages from the main security room, but they don’t seem to suspect anything. The cameras are all functioning again except the ones in here.” Fabian said as she approached him. Kelvin got up from the pew. He was wearing his uniform still. It seemed almost too big for him and made him seem even smaller than he was.
“What is going on, you guys?”
“We’ll explain everything when Jamie gets here,” Miette told him.
“And when Jamie doesn’t show?” Fabian said. He took every chance he could to remind her he didn’t agree with her decision to involve Jamie in everything.
“If he isn’t here in ten minutes, we will just start without him,” Miette answered, throwing him a look.
“You guys are worrying me…tell me you just found the keys to the Physics exam tomorrow, and that’s what all this secrecy is about…” Kelvin said. He was trying to act like it was all a big joke, but it was obvious he was concerned. Miette almost felt bad for him. He was about to feel a lot worse after they laid everything out.
Miette and Fabian finished setting up the laptops and connecting to the internet. They bounced around from Fabian’s laptop to the other machines, back to Miette’s, hiding the connection. They did this several times and found it would work for a while longer. Just when they had given up on him, Jamie walked in, blowing on his hands to warm them. He was wearing very expensive-looking clothing, his shirt appeared to be pure white but had a Gucci logo on the breast pocket that shone gold embroidery when he got close enough for Miette to see him better. Fabian exhaled, unhappy that Jamie had shown up.
“So, what’s the big secret? Why are we meeting like a bunch of spies?” His words sounded like he was laughing, but something else in his voice told Miette he might have some idea about the truth of the situation. This made her more nervous. She could feel her fingertips tingling.
“Come in close,” Fabian motioned to both Jamie and Kelvin to come up to the altar where he and Miette were standing in front of their humming laptops.
“I guess we will just come out and say it…” Miette said. She had practiced the words in her head like a song for two days, but now was having trouble conjuring them. Jamie and Kelvin walked up to where she and Fabian were standing and were now staring at her expectantly. Jamie smirked with his thick lips, and his dark skin almost glowed as he stared at her and Fabian expectantly. She marveled at it for a moment. He looked so put together in a way she could never imagine herself being. After a moment, she realized she didn’t know what to say and her mind had gone blank. Thankfully, Fabian took over.
“This school is not what it seems.” He said. “It’s front for something else as well as being a school, well it’s involved in several things they have tried very hard to hide from all of us. The school is a part of the whole picture.”
Stay tuned for Chapter 5 part two in two-ish weeks.
Stay cool,
Aisling