Very Bad Things by Susan McBride Page A

Katie had a sinking feeling she knew where her roommate was going.
    Nerves tingling, she turned on her phone and used it as a flashlight. Ignoring the Do Not Enter sign, she pushed open the door to the machine room and eased her way around the furnace and hot-water tanks.
    She didn’t see Tessa, but she did find the metal grate shoved aside. It was in pretty much the same place as the one Mark had taken her through in the headmaster’s basement. She knew it led into the underground tunnels. Tessa’s dad had been head groundskeeper at Whitney when she was a kid. Had she learned about the tunnels then? Did she use them to escape when things got bad, the same way Mark did?
    Maybe it was stupid—maybe Katie should let Tessa go and head back to bed—but she couldn’t, not after seeing those articles about the fire and seeing Tessa’s face when she’d mentioned her brother. Katie was worried about her.
    So she held out the light from her phone, took a deep breath, and stepped through the opening.
    Like Alice in Wonderland, down the rabbit hole she went.

K atie followed what looked like a firefly bouncing yards ahead as she fumbled her way through the steam tunnels. She touched damp walls and stumbled over loose mortar and stone, trying hard to keep her footing and not fall too far behind.
    “Tessa!” she called out, but the light just kept moving.
    Why was Tessa roaming underground in the dead of night? And why didn’t she wait when Katie hollered? Why had she run? Was she all right?
    Katie breathed in the dank smell of the earth and wished she were anywhere else. She had no idea where she was beneath the campus. When she’d been in the tunnels before, she’d had Mark to guide her. She just hoped that if she didn’t catch Tessa, she could find her way back to the basement of Amelia House alone.
    It wasn’t long before she realized she wasn’t following anyone. She’d lost the flickering penlight completely. The only thing she had to show her the way was the glow of her phone, and it was hardly very bright.
    Katie stood still, hearing nothing but her ragged breaths, a soft scurrying—rats?—and the
drip drip
of water down the crumbling stone.
It’s okay
, she told herself.
You didn’t go far. Just backtrack and you’ll be fine
. Only she hadn’t been paying attention to anything but the darting light. So she didn’t know which way to go when the tunnel abruptly forked.
    Had she come from the left or the right?
    Oh, crap
.
    She swallowed hard. Her heartbeat raced.
    What had possessed her, following Tessa down here? No one knew where she was. If she got lost, who would even think to look for her in the tunnels?
    In a panic, she hit speed dial for Mark, but the call failed. She tried Tessa’s phone and then Bea Lively’s with the same result. And then the screen went from dim to dark. Damn. She hadn’t remembered to charge her battery in days.
    A drop of water plopped onto her face, and she wiped it away.
    She just had to keep walking, right? She’d find a way out sooner or later, wouldn’t she? Or else she’d end up like the lost boy she’d heard about her freshman year. A student had gotten hopelessly lost in the tunnels years and years ago, or so the story went, and his ghost still wandered the maze beneath the school. If you listened hard, some said, you could hear his moans through the vents.
    Katie found it hard to breathe. She felt claustrophobic and trapped.
Come on, keep going
, she told herself, moving faster, but the loose rock beneath her shoes made her slip. With a cry, she went down on hands and knees. The rough ground bit into her palms. Her knees felt scraped through her old sweatpants.
    Her skin stung and her eyes blurred with tears, but she got up, reaching out for the wall to steady herself. Stone and loose mortar crumbled beneath her touch as she stood.
    Though she was breathing hard, she heard loud breaths that weren’t her own. She inhaled a smell that wasn’t musty tunnel. More