Chapter 15 ROOM 247
POV: JORDAN
Orientation ended at six fifteen.
Jordan slipped out of the assembly hall with the rest of the crowd, shoulders loose, stride relaxed, face blank in that way she had practiced for years. Just another kid in a blazer, nothing special, nobody worth a second look.
Blackwood had gone on for forty minutes. She remembered maybe ten of it. There was the bit about academic excellence, Thornfield’s legacy, the strict rules, the honor code. What really stuck was the way he stared everyone down, cold and sharp, saying that Thornfield did not accept mediocrity. Excellence, he said, was not a goal. At this school, it was the minimum.
Jordan had thought, I have lived on granola bars in government safe houses for two years. My minimum is not yours. But she made sure none of that showed on her face.
She paid attention to how the other students reacted. The legacy kids didn’t even blink. They had heard speeches like that a thousand times, at home, at fancy schools, at family dinners. It was nothing new to them. The scholarship kids got a little tense, like they were running the math and wondering what they had gotten into. And then there was a third group, the quietest, just watching everything, taking it all in without showing a thing.
She recognized those types right away. They were the ones to keep an eye on.
She crossed the quad, hands shoved in her pockets, sneakers scuffing the perfect path. Around her, people broke into groups, forming and dissolving, everyone calculating who to sit with, who to be seen with, who to avoid on the first night.
James Blake didn’t need to worry about that. James Blake was calm, unbothered, and not looking for anyone’s attention. Jordan kept her pace steady and made her way to West Hall.
The second floor was quieter than the rest. Most of the students here were still at dinner or in the lounges, pretending to settle in. Jordan walked the whole hallway, her eyes flicking over the fire door that didn’t close all the way, the window with the loose latch, the side stairs near her room. It was automatic, like breathing.
She slid her key into the lock for Room 247 and slipped inside, closing the door behind her. The click of the lock was the best sound she’d heard all day.
For a moment, she just stood in the middle of the room. She let the silence fill the space. No need to act, no need to control her voice or keep her face blank. Just her, the fading light through the old window, the sound of her own breathing.
She let out a long breath. Then she dropped onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
The room was exactly how she’d left it that morning. Two beds in Thornfield colors, an antique desk, a tall window framing a view of New England hills that looked too perfect to be real. She’d been so busy all day that she hadn’t really let herself feel that she was finally here.
Here. Room 247. James Blake. Thornfield Academy.
Third name. Third life. Eight months and it still didn’t sound right when she said it.
Footsteps echoed in the hallway. Even, steady, slowing as they passed her door. Jordan froze, holding her breath, listening. The footsteps moved on, and she let her breath out, slow and controlled, then sat up.
Her duffel was where she’d left it that morning. She dragged it onto the bed and unzipped it, going through her things in the same careful order as always. Clothes. Toiletries. The ziplock bag with her documents, always at the bottom, because those were the one thing you could never replace.
At the very bottom, wrapped in her old practice jersey, were her cleats.
She pulled them out and turned them in her hands. Black, size seven. She’d bought them three weeks ago at a sporting goods store two towns away from the last safe house, paying cash, telling the bored teenager at the register that they were for her brother. He hadn’t cared. But she had. She’d sat in the car after, clutching them like they were something precious, something she was afraid to lose.
Because here was the thing about being James Blake at Thornfield Academy.
There were a hundred things wrong with it. A hundred ways it was fake, risky, ready to fall apart. But James Blake could try out for the soccer team.
Back at her old school, Jordan Blake had watched boys with half her talent take the only spots on the team, just because the school didn’t have a girls’ team and the boys’ team didn’t let girls try out. Every time she and her mom argued with the athletic director, they got the same polite, frustrating smile that meant nothing was ever going to change.
She had known she was better than most of them. They knew it, too. Even the coach knew. He had that look, the one people get when they know something is unfair but decide it isn’t their problem.
James Blake didn’t have that problem.
James Blake could walk onto the field tomorrow and play hard, the way she always had. She had played in empty lots, behind motels, wherever she’d been sent. Kicking a ball was the only thing that stayed the same, no matter which name she was using.
She set the cleats down by the bed. Not hidden. Not packed away. Ready.
She reached under her shirt and took out the compass. Antique gold, the face cracked, the needle shaking in her hand before steadying on north. Always north.
She thought about Hayes at registration, the way his eyes had flicked to the chain at her collar, the moment he saw it before looking back at her with a new decision made.
She tucked the compass away again, faster than she meant to.
Her father’s voice drifted through her mind, low and smoky: When you don’t know where to go, you go north and figure it out from there.
Her brother’s voice, she would not let herself hear. Not for more than a second. A second she could handle. Any longer and it hurt too much.
She pushed both voices away, into that mental box where she kept things that could not help her right now.
She picked up the orientation schedule from the desk.
Soccer tryouts. Day two. Four PM.
She looked at the cleats on the floor.
“Okay,” she said quietly, to the empty room, to no one at all.
She said it in James’s voice.
And for the first time, it actually felt right.