Blackwood Read Online Free Page B

work. Further updates as I have them. Thank you."
      The crowd around Miranda erupted into conversation as Chief Rawling went back into the building. She couldn't move. Was her dad missing ?
      She didn't even see the microphone until after Blue Doe had thrust it in her face. "You're just a girl," the reporter said, "are you looking for someone? Is someone you love among the lost? What can you tell us?"
      The reporter's tone held a hefty dose of false sympathy. Miranda, reeling, made a mistake. She spoke.
     
    Phillips Rawling scooted along a wide stone ledge halfway up the outer wall of the four-story dorm. He pressed his fingertips into the space between fat red bricks above his head. His arms flexed as he lifted his lanky body, leaving the safety of the ledge. He fit the rubber tips of his all-stars into the wall, then repeated the whole process again – finger hold, then foot hold – making steady progress toward the open window of his room on the second floor.
      He was cutting it close. The sun was already up, so scaling the wall made the most sense, even if it was crazy. This side of the dorm faced the woods, which made being spotted unlikely. And some kids would already be heading down to the lobby for the group hike over to the dining hall for breakfast. He'd be running a bigger risk of being seen walking in the front door and heading the wrong way up the stairs to his floor.
      And Phillips never got caught. Not since he'd come to Jackson, anyway.
      He jumped in the window, landing on the floor with a satisfying thump. He grinned, thinking of the principal's face at the end of the day when he went out to his car to drive home. The supplies for making the bumper sticker had taken a few months to collect. Adhesive, the right sort of paper, the letters to make the message, all ordered online and sent to the nearby house of a teacher who happened to be on sabbatical for a year. Grabbing them from the mailbox wasn't hard, given the power of delivery confirmation. The principal had put a uniforms-even-on-the-weekend policy into place six months before, followed with a ban on "personal decorations" – aka posters – in the dorms, and so the message practically decided itself: I Love Fascism.
      The principal always arrived at least a half-hour before any of the faculty, probably so he could write up the ones who were five minutes late. That meant all Phillips had to do was sneak out and be waiting to smooth the sticker onto his sedan's bumper.
      He was pulling his vintage Clash T-shirt over his head so he could change into his uniform when the knock on the door sounded. A man's voice called, "Phillips Rawling?"
      That was not the voice of one of his charming Neanderthal fellow students. Too old, and he had a sinking feeling he recognised it.
      "One sec," he called back. He should already be dressed, so he let the T-shirt fall and raced to get his standard-issue white button-down over it, leaving the shirt unbuttoned and the tie loose around the neck. He yanked on the jacket that went with it, scrubbed a hand through his chin-length black hair and opened the door.
      Yep, it was the fascism-lover. The principal had a halfmoon hairline and a thin mustache. He'd been trying to figure out Phillips' story since the day his parents dropped him off in Kentucky at semi-reform school and headed back home to Roanoke Island. Phillips had never imagined this guy capable of busting him. What if his parents tried to make him come home?
      Phillips raised his eyebrows, not volunteering anything. He needed to see how bad it was.
      The principal gave a disapproving glance at the T-shirt beneath Phillips' uniform but motioned him down the bland beige hall. "Your father's on the phone for you," he said.
      The kids in the hall were openly curious as Phillips shut the door and followed the principal without speaking. Phillips didn't hang out with anyone here and as far as they knew, he was one of the good