Page 9 of Hide and Seek
I need to figure out his habits and routines, and that includes when he goes to bed, so I won’t be moving from my perch until that happens. It’s a good thing I’m a night owl and don’t need a lot of sleep because something tells me Myles is also a night person, and we’re both in for a long one.
2
MYLES
The hairon the back of my neck stands up as a prickle of awareness dances up my spine.
I shiver at the now familiar sensation and look around out of habit. Of course, there’s no one around me, and the few people who are in my general vicinity are ignoring me, the same as usual.
It’s been happening for a week now, ever since I found out the men who’ve been blackmailing me were killed. It’s like my imagination has been running on overdrive and my nervous system can’t tell the difference between walking around the school and being chased by hungry wolves.
No matter what I do, where I go, or how many times I tell myself I’m being paranoid, I can’t shake the feeling that someone is watching me.
Hugging my books to my chest, I quicken my step and hurry down the path toward Boone House.
Most of the people in my dorm hate living in it. They hate how isolated it is, the many rules we have to abide by that no one else does, and how none of the legacies want anything to do with us first gens.
The difference between me and my dormmates is that the things they hate so much are the reasons I’ll be able to spend the next three and a half years here without losing my mind. I like the solitude, and I really like the isolation.
Unlike my dormmates, I don’t give a shit about the legacies or being accepted by them. I don’t want anything to do with them or their rivalries or the shit they get up to on campus. And I especially want nothing to do with any of the four fraternities that rule the school and use the campus as their personal playground while the rest of us are just trying to get a degree and get the fuck out of here in one piece.
The campus is literally divided into four segments, with one frat in each quadrant. It doesn’t matter what else is in the area; the frats have complete control over their surrounding territory and have free rein to do whatever the fuck they want. It’s one of the reasons we call the frats the Four Corners and why I hate being out on campus—you never know when you might get caught up in frat business.
My quadrant is run by the Kings. I have a special hate for them over the other three frats, and not just because I’m stuck in their territory.
The crazy part about the frats is that even the people who go to school here have no idea what they’re actually called. The names we use for them, like the Kings, are nicknames the frats gave themselves after they were established. Their official names are so secret that only the members know what it is.
They’re also incredibly exclusive, admitting only a handful of students each year. And even though they’re called frats, they don’t run like any fraternity I’ve ever heard of.
They’re essentially invite-only, not-so-secret societies that were founded by the most elite families of the first students to attend the school. Their purpose is to not only keep their kids separate from the rest of the students, who they see as inferior,but to give them a training ground where they can do whatever the fuck they want and practice for how things will be for them once they’re unleashed into the real world.
That means things like murder, kidnappings, torture, robbery, and other forms of violence are not just common at school, they’re accepted as long as the perpetrators’ parents or the frat alum can successfully cover it up.
No one else has those privileges, and we just live in their world and try not to get caught up in whatever crap they’re getting up to so we don’t end up as collateral damage.
Or at least that’s my strategy. A lot of students will do anything to be accepted by the frats, and they treat the members like gods among us. If a member wants something, they get it, and everyone will happily fall all over themselves to be the ones to provide it in the hopes of maybe winning favor with them.
The Kingmakers, or Kings as we call them now, was the first frat to be established, and their membership is steeped in old money. These are families who descend from the aristocracy, and their insane wealth goes back not just generations, but centuries. Most can trace their roots to some sort of royalty, and they cling to those connections like it somehow makes them special in today’s world.
The Rebels are the next most powerful of the frats, and the ones that people are the most afraid of. Their membership is a who’s who list of the top businessmen of the last century, and they’ve only been getting richer and more powerful with each subsequent generation. They’re also the frat with the most connections to the black market and organized crime, but because they’re rich and powerful and use politicians like puppets, they’re Teflon, and nothing ever seems to stick to them in either the real world or on campus.
Unlike the Kings, who throw money around to get what they want, the Rebels aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, andeveryone knows that pissing off a Rebel is the best way to have not only your life, but the lives of everyone you know, destroyed.
The Serpents and the Keepers are the last two houses, and while they’re both just as influential and cause their fair share of problems on campus, they’re not on the same level as the Kings and Rebels.
I avoid them and their territory unless I absolutely have to be there, but that’s mostly because I don’t want to deal with them, not because I’m afraid or genuinely worried about my safety like I am with the Kings and Rebels. As long as you don’t directly fuck with them or their members, the Keepers and Serpents tend to leave outsiders alone. Not because they want to protect us or anything altruistic like that, but because they’re isolationists who don’t believe in co-mingling with anyone they consider “others”—and as a first gen, I’m about as “other” as you can get around here.
Luckily I’ve been able to avoid most of the frat drama so far, and I intend to keep it that way until I graduate.
That eerie feeling of being watched doesn’t lessen as I hurry through the courtyard of Boone House and swipe my ID on the sensor at the main door. It isn’t until I’m inside and the door has closed behind me that I’m finally able to relax.
I’ve never been in any of the other dorms on campus, but from what I’ve heard, they’re a million times more opulent and have way better amenities than we do. Just like the other dorms, Boone House is a self-contained living facility designed so the only reason we’d have to leave is to go to class. It has a dining hall, a cleaning staff, a laundry service, communal rooms, study areas, two basic gyms, and my favorite room in the entire building, the library.
Most of the amenities in the communal rooms are things that previous students have left behind, and that includes the library. According to house lore, the attic room was originally an officewhere the student files and archives were held. Once those went digital, the room was co-opted by the residents at the time and converted to a library that the students themselves stocked with books. Future generations kept stocking them, and the library has grown from a few bookcases to filling the entire room top to bottom with books about pretty much every subject out there.
The best part about the library is that it’s one of the least-used rooms in the entire building, and it’s one of the few places outside of my room where I can escape with any sort of privacy.
There are a few students in the main lobby as I walk through it on my way to the back stairs. I don’t bother acknowledging them, and they don’t glance my way.
