"Well, it was nice to meet you two, but I'm gonna head out."

Ghost stands up, avoiding eye contact with any of us, and walks away smoothly.

"I, er, he-- uh, see you later," I spit and practically fly out of the cafeteria. He's already gone.

"Eyye, Vi!"

There are only two people who call me Vi, Ghost and this kid named Cody. He's only, like, 12 or 13, but he's insanely bright. He puts his smarts to good use, though. He's mapped out almost all of this building's air duct system and now basically lives there.

"You look spooked. What's up?" he jogs up to me, and flashes a toothy smile, showing his single gold tooth.

"I need to get to Ghost quickly," I tell him. That's all I need to say, and he's already dragging me to the nearest air duct. He pulls a long strand of wire with a fishhook connected to the end out of his cargo shorts pockets, and skillfully hooks it in the cover, pulling it down.

"You go up first," the little genius instructs, offering his hands as a step up. I heave myself up into the cramped space, and fall face-first onto the bottom of the rectangular piping. Shimmying around in the tight space is hard, but I'm able to reach my hand out of the duct and help him up, like he asked. This isn't my first time up in the ducts, but I never get used to the claustrophobic sense it gives me. Or Cody's already ridiculous artificial cheese-orange mohawk looking even worse when it gets squished by the lack of space up here.

"What's so funny? I'm helping you out here, and the thanks I get is you stifling a laugh?" Cody mutters as I follow him through the ducts. There are sketched maps posted every ten or so feet with marks I can only assume mean where we are.

"Sorry, it's just--" I start, almost running into him when he abruptly stops.

"I know, I know. Haven't you heard of sarcasm? Anyway, we have to stop here and move to a different duct, or else we'll end up at a thirty foot drop." Cody removes the duct cover, and passes it down to me.

Before I know it, we're both running up a flight of stairs. Nothing special about them except the immense lack of lighting. Of course, Cody being Cody, he has a stash of glow sticks with him at all times, so our path is illuminated by an eerie green light. "So, Vi, I thought you and Ghost were, like, inseparable. What happened?" Cody's squeaky voice laced with some sort of southern accent drowns out the only other sound of our bare feet slapping the concrete stairs.

"I doubt he's mad at me. Ila wouldn't come down for lunch with us. Then, in the middle of lunch, he just got up and left. Probably went to check on her." I don't want to tell him about Eclipse and her friend. Not yet.

"Wait, Ila? Pick up the speed, Lofty, and let's go!"

I roll my eyes. He knows I hate that nickname of his, out of his and Ghost's countless others for me. Instead of fueling his use of those nicknames, I decide to tease him about Ila. "You're obsessed with the poor girl."

"Oops."

"I bet you have fantasies of her," I giggle as we finally find another air duct.

"That's an assumption if I've ever heard one."

"You're not denying it."

"You know, I don't have to help you."

That shuts me up.

We travel the rest of the way back to my hall in near silence-- we grunt at each other more than most people probably do, and our stupid bare feet sound a lot louder than normal.

"We're here. Go."