Slowly, the fear and shock loosen their vise grip on my chest and I manage to take a deep breath. “For a broken phone and some thread? Besides, my mom wouldn’t like it. If it was a liekkiö, then that’s magic, and anything magical is tietäjä business. The school doesn’t like involving outsiders.”
“Think she’ll believe a swamp fart spoke to you?” He nudges my right foot with his own, offering me a grin.
“She’ll probably tell me Natalie lost her phone and everything’s fine. Have you seen Natalie at all?”
“Nope, sorry.”
“We could go now. If she’s sick, she’ll be in her room. You okay with skipping more class?” I ask, surprising myself. As much as ditching school puts my insides on a spin cycle, thinking about all the awful things that could’ve happened to Natalie is infinitely worse.
“What do you think?” Morgan swings his leg off the chair and offers me a hand up.
I take it before leading him out of the lounge and tiptoeing down the corridor. The coast is clear and we swing past our lockers to get our jackets. I’m shoving my arm through a sleeve when my heart stops.
“Hey! You two!”
Joakim Blomqvist. He starts toward us and I freeze, doing the whole deer in headlights thing. My mouth is dry, palms sweaty. I’m so not used to breaking the rules.
“Come on.” Morgan grabs my hand again and starts running.
My feet follow as I struggle to keep up with his longer strides. The outside air is a slap of cold and a frenzy of sleet, but we don’t slow down, skidding across the courtyard and angling onto the path that’ll take us to Pilvitalo.
“We’re going to be in so much trouble.” I spit the words between ragged breaths.
“Think we could get expelled?” he asks like he’s excited by the idea and not appalled.
Why did I never think to try and get myself expelled? All this time I’ve been wanting to get away from this place. But now’s not the time to solve for hypothetical x where x is the amount of rule-breaking my mom will tolerate before kicking me out.
“I have no idea,” I say.
“Just have to try harder then.” He keeps running.
We slow down once we reach Pilvitalo, both of us needing to catch our breath. It’s not like Joakim could’ve kept up even if he’d tried.
“Ready?” I ask and Morgan nods, more out of breath than I am.
I key in the access code, suddenly aware of how long it’s been since I last visited—since I last had a reason to come to this house at all. Inside, I hesitate.