There’s
a boy up there, standing on the crystal chandelier! He has slightly
curly blond hair and is wearing a uniform—a navy sweater vest over a
white shirt with khaki pants—but his boots are muddy. He’s stepping on
priceless crystals with cruddy boots? Is he insane?
“Jax! What are you doing up there?” Kayla whispers heatedly.
“I’m cleaning the crystal for Flora,” Jax says and rolls his eyes. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m making
a break for it.”
Kayla applauds. “Yay! This time I know you can do it.”
I
shade my eyes from the light bursting through the stained-glass window
next to the chandelier Jax is perched on. “Busting out? Why?” I ask
Kayla. “I thought you said this place was cool.”
Jax
laughs loudly and looks at me. I feel slightly stunned. I’ve never seen
violet eyes before. “FTRS was fun for a while, but strange things have
started happening and I don’t want to be here when something bad goes
down.”
Strange things? What kind of strange things? Why does Kayla suddenly look pale?
“He’s exaggerating,” Kayla tells me, but she doesn’t sound convincing.
Drip.
Whatever Jax is holding is leaking. Kayla and I move out of the way so
we don’t get wet. “Grease,” Jax explains to me. “It lubes the window.”
He swings the chandelier, and as it nears the window, he uses a fork to
try to pry the window open. “A few more tries and I’ll have it.”
“Then what are you going to do, genius?” I ask. “You’re two stories up.”
Jax’s eyes gleam. “I’ve jumped from higher spots before.”
“It’s
true,” Kayla says to me. “Jax once jumped from the gym to the dining
hall turret. That was three stories up. We call him the Escape Artist.
One time he even managed to break into Azalea and Dahlia’s rooms and
borrowed their keys to the indoor pool so the whole dorm could take a midnight swim.”
“Impressive,” I tell him. “And I thought I was good at tricking obnoxious royals.”
“She stole a dragon’s tooth clip from one this morning,” Kayla fills him in.
“Nice,” Jax says. “Your first pull?”
“No, I’ve been doing it for a while,” I brag.
“Me too,” Jax says. “My father is a farmer. You can only get so far trading vegetables. I needed to kick things up a notch.”
For
some reason, I don’t think any of us are going to make the
transformation Headmistress Flora is looking for. “Why do you want to
break out so bad?”
“I’ve
got places to see, and Enchantasia isn’t one of them.” Jax swings the
chandelier so hard the crystals clang together. The window latch pops
open, and I watch Jax leap from the chandelier to the tiny window ledge.
I’m in awe. Jax looks down at us smugly before pushing open the window.
“Are you sure you two don’t want to join me?”
“There’s no time for us,” Kayla says. “Get out of here. Wait!” Her eyes widen. “You deactivated the alarm on the window, right?”
“There isn’t one,” Jax insists. “If there was, I wouldn’t be able to do this.” But when Jax lifts the window, we hear:
EEEEEE! EEEE! EEEE! Unauthorized exit! Unauthorized exit!
The
shrieking sound is so intense that Kayla and I cover our ears. Within
seconds, Flora is out of her office and running toward us.
Swoosh!
I
feel something brush past me and I whirl around. When I look up at Jax
again, a large, muscular man with a long mane of hair is hanging on to
the window ledge, his furry hands pulling Jax back by his shirt. How did
the man get up there without a ladder?
“Mr. Jax,” the man says in a low growl, “we really must stop meeting like this.”
