Hero Complex (16 page)

She held the book upside down and shook the pages. Nothing fell out. The paper looked normal; there was no secret treasure map to be found if she held the pages by candlelight, was there? That would be hard to believe.

Devon laughed at herself. Was she seriously thinking there was an “X marks the spot” map somewhere in this book?
Give it up, Devon. Reed wasn’t a pirate. He was a sweet old man
.

Devon flipped to the back of the book. At least she should know when he last wrote in it. Maybe that would help.

The last page stuck to the back cover. She shook it, but the paper didn’t budge. She felt along the edges; it seemed to be evenly attached in each corner as if done on purpose rather than a result of age. She could feel the slight bulge of another sheet of paper underneath.

Devon slowly wedged a ruler through the sticky border. She hoped that the entire back cover wasn’t about to fall off.

The last page came unstuck. Folded behind it was another piece of paper. Devon unfolded the sheet and found a blurry drawing of pencil lines smudged together across the page, and from below the pencil markings emerged two crisp handprints.

They all left their handprints in the cement in the bunker that night
.

This must have been a pencil rubbing from one set of those handprints. It was one thing to read Reed’s stories, but these hands, detailed with wrinkles and calloused palms, made Reed’s words more than real. And the bunker, Devon realized—once new and full of purpose from Reed’s perspective—was a place as familiar to her as any on campus.

The Three Trees bunker was the Palace.

T
HERE WAS NO WAY
Devon could sit through English now. She had to know if the handprints were at the Palace. Years of rain, erosion, cigarette burns, and graffiti had all but destroyed the walls and surrounding hillside. But the possibility that hidden in the dirt-encrusted, glass-riddled cement were pairs of handprints from the school’s founders was too much for her to resist. It ultimately drove her to cut class, hurry back to her dorm, and pull on a pair of rain boots.

The rain was lighter in the morning, but the dirt trail was still slippery with mud rivulets running down the hillside. Slipping away in the drizzle had been easier than expected. Everyone had their head down, hurrying to their next classes. Devon gripped the crumbling edge of the bunker and sloshed a foot through the puddle in the middle of the cement floor.

Hutch had died right here.

She pushed the image out of her mind. She squinted, trying to rewind the setting further back to a time when the bunker was still freshly poured cement. She ran her fingers along the wall, feeling the even groove between each block. The handprints would have remained. She didn’t believe they could have faded into a perfectly smooth wall. The bunker hadn’t been used since the end of World War II, so it seemed unlikely that anyone had put the time or effort into repaving, either.

But the handprints weren’t there.

She felt along the outside walls, the curved, shell-shaped top hanging low over the bench and disappearing into the hillside above. How much had the hillside shifted since Reed had stuck his hands in the wet cement?

Frustration gnawed at her. What the hell was she doing here, anyway? Across the mountainside, Devon could see Reed’s grapevines leading the way up to his guesthouse, everything tinged gray in the rain. Bodhi was probably working there right now. If she hurried, she could probably be back on campus by lunchtime before
anyone really knew she was missing. Bodhi would know where to look for the handprints. No matter how upset she was with him for abandoning their mini-relationship, she needed his help. They
were
friends.

Bodhi was clearly confused to see Devon on his doorstep in the middle of a rainy school day. He looked behind her as if expecting to see Raven climbing out of her car. When she didn’t appear, his brow knit. “Uh … you alone?”

“Just me,” Devon said with a shrug. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course.” Bodhi stepped aside, and Devon headed straight for his computer. “Do I want to ask why you’re here? Last I heard, you guys still had classes on Mondays. Not that I pretend to understand what goes on at that school.”

Devon pulled Reed’s diary from her jacket pocket and dropped it onto Bodhi’s desk. “Reed gave me this.”

Bodhi’s eyes widened. The jokiness vanished. He sat and began to flip through the delicate pages, his strong fingers treading lightly.

“It’s his diary from when he and Athena moved to the hill,”
Devon explained. “They were scientists during World War Two. A bunker was built, and they put their handprints in the wall there. I thought it was the Palace, but now I’m not sure …” Her voice trailed off.

Bodhi’s jaw twitched. This was emotional for him in ways she hadn’t counted on.
No wonder he wants to be friends. Why can’t I be a better friend to him?
He looked up, his eyes moist.

Devon unfolded the pencil rubbing of the handprint. “I think we’re supposed to find this. I don’t know why, but it just seems important to trace Reed’s steps. It was actually the last thing he said to me. He repeated it a bunch of times. ‘Follow in our footsteps.’ I figured you might know what to do.”

Bodhi looked between the drawing and the hillside out their window. “Hold on.” His lips made a popping sound, opening and closing as he typed at his computer. “World War Two, you said? Any idea which year?”

“1942. He said the Army built it then.” She stood behind Bodhi, watching in awe as he blew through one screen after another. Up popped the site for the Army Corps of Engineers. “You think the Army will have those records?”

“Blueprints, I’m hoping.” His eyes stayed glued to the screen.

Devon leaned closer. She could smell the coconut now, that faint suntan lotion scent Bodhi always had. “And they just make that stuff available to the public?” she asked.

“Meh. There’s a Freedom of Information Act thing I could fill out, but that takes weeks. Easier just to get in there and get what we need. Here. I think this is it.”

Bodhi pressed
PRINT
and spun in his chair. Feeling light-headed, Devon straightened so he wouldn’t bump into her. Pages of diagrams started spewing out from his printer. Devon’s eyes latched onto one, an overview of the entire bunker, and she grabbed it before it was buried in the growing pile.

“There’re two levels,” she said.

Bodhi reached for the diagram, his hand lightly brushing Devon’s lower back. Her breath caught in her chest for a split second.

But Bodhi didn’t think anything of it, of course. What they were doing necessitated intimacy. It was an accident. Friends could accidentally bump one another. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“You know what this means,” Bodhi said, his eyes slits as they roved the complex array of schematics. “It means that generations of Keaton students either didn’t know about the second level of the bunker, or they kept it a secret.” He glanced up with a smirk. “How many kids do you know at Keaton who can keep a secret?”

Devon almost laughed out loud. She studied the diagram again. The Palace as they knew it was only the top level. Below it there was another lookout point with a small interior space built inside the mountain.

“The room’s only, like, six by eight feet,” Bodhi said, squinting.

“Amazing,” Devon murmured. Her breath came fast. “There’s a room, Bodhi. An effing
room
. I mean, anything could be in there. Army supplies. Reed could have left stuff there. The handprints have to be on that wall!” Devon realized her eyes were so wide, she hadn’t blinked in a minute.
Blink. Breathe. Blink again
.

But Bodhi was just as excited. He nodded vigorously, spurring her on. “I know. If Reed’s diary told you to go there, then there’s definitely something there.”

Devon fell back onto the futon. She pulled her hands through her hair, imagining the possibilities of buried treasure. Or whatever was hidden there. It was treasure of some sort, definitely, because it was important enough to keep hidden from the Keaton School and the Dover family, the branches of the other two trees.

“We have to go,” Bodhi said. “ASAP. Can we go today?”

“No, no, no. We have to be smart about this. Teachers sweep it at least once a day, looking for weed smokers. We get busted down there, everyone will know about the bunker. But it’s too dangerous to go at night.”

“Maybe.”

Bodhi stepped to the nearby closet. The doors slid open, revealing shelf after shelf of equipment: paper, computer cords, and petri dishes.
Classic Bodhi
, Devon thought. Only those he trusted most could see the science geek hidden behind the surfer façade.

“Dammit,” he said.

“What are you looking for?”

“Binoculars. I want to see if we can see it from here.”

“You’re not serious, are you? Between the two of us, I’m rarely the genius. But come here.” She crossed the room to the large windows overlooking Reed’s vineyard. The hill sloped down and curved out of sight into a valley, then reemerged with the Keaton campus on the other side. Devon held up her cell phone camera and zoomed in. “There’s an app for that, dude,” she joked.

Bodhi laughed and shook his head. “Why do I feel old all of a sudden?”

“See?” Devon held up the phone. Bodhi moved behind her to look over her shoulder. She scanned the Keaton hillside, moving the camera along the path she took to the Palace. All of a sudden, she felt Bodhi’s hand on her waist. Devon flinched, but reminded herself that he was probably not aware of what he was doing. It felt absent, hanging there. Didn’t it? She shifted her weight onto her left foot to try to subtly shake his hand off.

Bodhi’s breath was in her ear now. He reached up and pulled a strand of her hair off her neck. Before she knew it, he was kissing her neck.

“Okay, what the hell?” Devon whispered, her voice shaky. She felt her cheeks going hot. She spun and faced him. “I thought you wanted to be friends.”

His cheeks were flushed, too. “I do. I did. I just … did I say that?”

“Yes, you totally said that. You friend-zoned me, and I get it, with everything that’s going on. I was ready to walk away from that
possibility and be your friend. But you can’t get all touchy-feely whenever you want. I don’t know what this is.”

Bodhi stood across from her, his chest heaving. He ran a hand over his dreads. “I wanted to give you space. Or I mean, I guess I needed some space, and I didn’t expect you to wait around. Shit, I messed this all up, didn’t I?”

She shook her head. “No. I did. And I’m doing it now, putting myself first ahead of you. But listen. You and Raven help me so much, do you really think I couldn’t handle being there for you? Even if it meant waiting a little bit?”

Bodhi stepped forward and pulled Devon into a kiss before she could react. Her arms flailed by her sides for a second, but he gripped her closer, tighter, and she allowed her hands to land on his shoulders.

Finally he pulled away and opened his eyes. For the first time, she noticed the small flecks of brown in that sea of turquoise. She smiled, and he sighed.

“Thank you,” he whispered. He kissed her forehead and hugged her against his chest. Devon’s eyelids fluttered closed. She let her chest rise and fall in time with his. There was more to say, more she needed to do, but right now, this was where she was meant to be. It had been worth the wait.

T
HE SECOND
R
AVEN SAW
the handprint rubbing, she wanted in.

Devon had taken a seat in the back of the dining hall during lunch, pulling her hoodie up over her head so as not to draw attention to herself. But before that, just to cover her bets, she went straight to Mr. Kramer and told him that she had been feeling feverish all morning. Yes, for the first time in her Keaton career, she’d accidentally slept through class. Of course he bought the lie; she wasn’t one to make excuses. He let her slide with the understanding that she would catch up on the missed lesson. Good thing she’d always played by the rules ever since she and a certain boy had broken them one night before freshman year …

Hutch
. It all came back to Hutch. But for the first time ever, she knew she could let him go and still treasure his memory.

Now she had business to attend to. At her table with Raven, Devon was careful to cough in case anyone spotted her and doubted her sick claim.

Raven ran her fingers across the aged butcher paper as if it were some magical artifact, as if not believing it was real.

“So Reed just left this in his diary?” she asked.

“Kind of. It was glued to the back cover.”

“Awesome.” Raven held up the sheet to the light. “So the real question is: What’s the big deal with this handprint place? This is more than a memento.”

Devon slid the paper in front of her. “Bodhi found the design plans. There’s a room in the bunker I think we’re meant to find. We just need to figure out the best time to get down there.”

“I’m down for anything,” Raven said.

“I know. You’re fearless.”