Page 63 of Hateful
I’m too terrified, too confused, too bewildered to be sick right away. I feel like I’m trapped between a nightmare and something worse. Something real.
I’m sure someone saw. Someone, or literally everyone, now knows that I’m a girl, that I’m a fraud, that I’ve been disguised this whole time. I’m about to be expelled. It’s going to go on my record.
No college will admit me now.
Not once all this is said and done.
I double over and, despite my best efforts, heave the near non-existent contents of my stomach onto the track. The laughter grows louder. The girl runner springs out of the way with a loud shriek.
All of last night’s dinner, gone. I keep heaving until there’s nothing left but bile. It gets on my shoes so I kick them off, strip off my jacket, tie the sleeves around my waist to hold up my pants, and run back toward the school.
“Alex!” yells Jasper’s voice. I don’t stop. I keep running. I feel tears streaming down my face and my breath comes in short gasps. I sprint at full speed in socked feet all the way back to the school, where I burst into the empty hallway and collapse against the wall.
I’m fucked.
I’m completely and utterlyfucked.
Chapter Twenty-One
The hallway is blissfully empty,so no one is here to see me as I struggle to put myself together. How long before someone comes to find me?
I don’t have much time.
With a pit in my stomach, I realize Headmistress Robin is my only hope. She wants to get the schools integrated, right? Then I have to make sure that happens—or I’ll be expelled.
I might end up expelled anyway.
No. I’llprobablyend up expelled anyway.
This is hardly the correct outfit for breaking into a locked room. I gently untie my jacket and tug what remains of the sweatpants off my legs. What the hell am I supposed to do with these? I throw them to the floor. They’re someone else’s problem now.
Pretty much the whole school is out at the track. I’m going to have to move quickly, so if that means I have to be pantsless, then so be it. I tie my jacket around my waist again and hurry down the hallway.
Nothing here that somebody hasn’t already seen.
If I’m going to get the headmistress’s help, then I can’t just show up at her office door unprepared. I have to have something to offer.
And I know exactly what that something is.
But how to break into the student records room, anyway? I can’t pick locks. I certainly can’t break down the door—that would be super obvious.
I stop when I get to the hallway leading up to the records room. The dean’s office door is open, so I hesitate a moment before daring a peek around the corner.
He’s not there.
But the key … the key has got to be in here somewhere, right? More likely here than anywhere else.
My heart kicks into overdrive, beating so fast I’m worried I might puke again. Am I really doing this?
I’ve never been in the dean’s office before. I creep across the floor in my dirty socks to his desk. It’s incredibly neat and organized. There’s little trays of papers, multicolored sticky notes, manila folders. I reach for one of the drawers of his desk. Lots of pens and highlighters. I open the next one, and my heart thuds to a stop for one millisecond.
Keys.
There’s a whole ring of them.
Most of them have labels. I reach into it with a trembling hand and flip through them one by one. He has a key to every room in the damn school. Every time I move on to another key, I feel like even more of a thief than I already am. I could do anything with these. Go anywhere.
They sure would have been helpful all the times I needed a place to hide.
