Pause

Chapter 4

I shrank back.

An age-spotted and wrinkled black hand slipped over the bathroom stall door and held it shut.

My heart's quick beats rushed blood to my ears, roaring inside my head. I roared louder. "Help!"

"No. Stop." The person coughed. The door rattled, like the person was leaning against it. "Please, Jasmine, just listen."

The growl had disappeared. A young voice spoke to me with a withered hand holding the door shut. A girl's voice. Questions dripped into my brain and formed a lake behind my throat, choking my next call for help.

The old girl coughed again. "It didn't go as planned yesterday. He was supposed to just talk to you, that idiot."

I shifted my weight to see something, anything, between the crack of the door of my stall and the next one over. Nothing. Just the hand that trapped me inside.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"You'll find out if you help us. And you should help us if you're concerned about your sister. I think she's in trouble."

Her words poked a hole in my lungs. I grasped my necklace and tried to breathe. "Trouble? How?"

"There's something... amiss with her husband, Shane. No one has been able to contact him for months." The index finger of the hand draped over the stall traced figure eights into the door. "It's very unlike him not to call." The way she said it, almost wistful and lost, made me wonder if she wished Shane would call her.

Shane was Vivian's husband, a nice, super-smart guy from what I could tell during their whirlwind relationship.

The rhythmic movement of the figure eights in the door sped up. No, not eights. The infinity symbol.

I shook my head. "But Shane hasn't disappeared. I've seen him on the WindowWall."

The old girl cleared her throat. "Yes, he's still the CEO of Pause and doing the monthly press conferences."

"So, what do you want me to do? Call him?" Because I'd already tried that. His secretaries always claimed he was in meetings. Like, all day apparently.

"No." The figure eights stopped. "You'll pretend you're your sister at the next Pause press conference."

I waited for more, but the girl didn't continue. The second bell rang, signaling I was late, but I barely noticed. "That's it?"

"Once we see what Shane's reaction to you is - you dressed as Vivian, I mean - we might know more about what's happened."

Might know more. Might didn't sound like much, but this plan could be more than what I had now, which was nada. I had to find Vivian, and if pretending to be her would help, then I would. We looked almost identical even though she was four years older, so it shouldn't be too hard.

"You'll tell me everything you know if I say I'll do it?" I asked.

"Are you saying you'll do it?" She sounded surprised.

I tapped the padlock around my neck, one of my only ties to Vivian since she had the same one. "Yes. I'll do it."

"More information will be coming." The wrinkled hand slid up over the door and disappeared. Hurried footsteps faded away.

I banged open the stall door and rushed after her. I'd have that information right now, thank you very much. But she raced past the lip-sticked mirrors at an impossible speed. Strands came loose from her gray bun and fell against the ebony skin on the back of her neck. Her white dress specked with blue flowers flapped behind her. I reached for her elbow.

"Now!" she yelled.

A loud bang erupted behind the bathroom door. She threw it open to a wall of smoke filling the hallway. I glimpsed a flash of bright pink before she disappeared through it - toenail polish through her blue open-toed flats. Neon pink toenail polish.

The smoke rolled in thick waves into the bathroom from the hallway. I couldn't see anything. Someone sounded the fire alarm. A cold shudder ran the length of my body and hooked my feet into the floor. The smoke closed in, triggering my claustrophobia and images of that horrible night long ago. Each quick breath sucked more smoke into my lungs.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move.

A hand reached through the puffs of smoke, grabbed my wrist, and pulled. The person the hand was attached to crouched low, and so did I. The hand led me to the right. Smoke still gripped my lungs and burned, so I tugged up my shirt collar again to breathe easier. The smoke curled upwards, but I could still only see a couple feet in front of me. Gray and black threaded the sleeve of the hand I squeezed. It looked like flannel.

The hand pulled me down the stairs where there was hardly any smoke, and then a red exit sign appeared when we rounded the corner. Relief coursed down my scorched throat. I gasped and sprinted towards the sign.

Footsteps fell behind me, and I realized the hand no longer gripped mine.

As soon as I breathed in the fresh fall air outside, I doubled over with my hands on my knees. A soft wind sighed a false calm over the tops of the trees and between the strands of my hair. The sun's rays stroked warmth into my back. But the coming sirens and the nervous chatter of the clusters of students outside the school cut right through the day's phoniness. It was anything but calm.

I glared at the sun. "You can't fool me."

"I can't?"

Ryan, crumpled on the ground behind me, breathed hard. He clutched his sunglasses instead of wearing them against the sidewalk's brutal glare.

"No, you can't," I said. "How did you know I was still in there?"

He just looked at me and shook his head. His eyes were blue, split with different hues of gold, like Morgan Hills Lake at sunset before Pause had sucked it dry.

"You're crying," he said.

"I don't... cry." But even as I started to say it, a tear trickled down my cheek. I brushed it away and realized my whole face was wet. The memories. The smoke. It was probably enough to start up the nightmares again. Just what I needed on top of everything else. A burning that had nothing to do with smoke inhalation sharpened my voice. "Did you see an old lady run out of the bathroom?"

"I don't make it a habit to see who comes and goes in the girls' bathroom." He smiled, and there was that dimple in his chin again. A backpack sat next to him, and he dragged it closer to him as he sat up. No one carried those anymore since school books were all online, and teachers didn't even let you have backpacks in the classroom in case they carried weapons or drugs. Which meant he went to get it from his locker before the fire smoked him out.

Scratch that. Before he found me and the fire smoked us out. That wouldn't have been so strange, except seniors' lockers lined half of the first floor's hallways. The smoke was on the second.

"Jasmine, you all right?" Elizabeth shouted over the coming sirens from the parking lot.

I waved at her as she ran towards me and spotted my bodyguards on the curb, much older and much more vigilant than everyone else. They were all looking at me like a bunch of Captain Obviouses.

Ryan's gaze slid from them to me and back again. Some kind of understanding widened his eyes. "Curious," he said as he stood. He settled the sunglasses on his face, and the bulges in his backpack shifted from side to side while he walked off.

I stared after him. "Very."