The Combination

By Elias Carr

Dante only thinks about football. Miranda's worried about applying to college. Neither one wants to worry about a locker combination too. But they'll have to learn their combos fast—if they want to survive. Dante discovers that an insane architect designed St. Philomena High, and he's made the school into a doomsday machine. If too many kids miss their combinations, no one gets out alive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lerner Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781467729505

Book preview

Raven

1

Miranda Lee woke up sweating. That dream again. The one where everyone laughed and pointed as she tried and tried to get her locker open. In the dream she couldn’t even focus her eyes on the combination written on her schedule. She pulled the covers over her head.

Rise and shine! her mom sang out, coming into her room and snapping up the shades. Big first day of someone’s junior year! The journey to the right college begins today!

When Miranda shuffled out of her room wearing her school uniform, her dad stuck his head out of the bathroom. His face was half covered in shaving cream.

Our little girl is starting a big year! he crowed. Want to know my locker combination from first semester my junior year?

Not really, Miranda muttered.

Scorpion, fish, twins, bull, lion, crab, lion. I took it as lucky sign for my love life that year, he chuckled. Maybe Mrs. Konstantinos will give you a good one, too. Tell Ma I’m almost ready for breakfast.

Miranda sighed and plodded down the hall.

While his mom stared at the TV, Dante Grant cracked a second egg into his protein smoothie. He was the first sophomore in years to make the St. Philomena High varsity football team. He knew he’d made the team because he was fast. He also knew if he wanted any real playing time, he’d have to be fast—and a lot bigger.

As he gagged down the smoothie, the TV caught his eye. It was the local morning show. As usual, it had annoying, way-too-awake hosts chatting in a stupid fake living room. At the moment, though, the camera was slowly panning over the outside of St. Philomena High. The camera paused on the weird gargoyles and carvings on the roof.

The high school is one of Bridgewater’s most significant buildings, said a perky reporter, and this first day of school marks the one hundredth anniversary of the building’s opening. The camera zoomed in on a row of tall, arched windows on the second floor. They were protected by iron bars. Famed architect Ivor Shandor only built two buildings in the United States, one at 55 Central Park West in Manhattan and the other here in Bridgewater. Most of the building materials and fixtures came from local sources. But the unusual locks and lockers Shandor insisted on importing from a factory in his home country of. . . .

Dante chugged down the last of his shake. If he was going to hit the weight room, he had to get moving. First day of classes didn’t matter. He had real work to do.

Bye, Mom, he said as he headed to the door, his backpack over one shoulder.

Bye, his mother replied a moment later. She was still looking at the TV. The reporter was now interviewing a man in glasses and a tweed jacket. He had a British accent and seemed nervous.

Shandor was a genius, of course, but he was also a bit of a madman. For instance, he had very unusual ideas about the end of the world. . . .

2

Black-and-white tile covered the floor of the basement of St. Philomena High, where echoing hallways opened into locker rooms, storage closets, and the weight room. In the center of the basement was the pentagon-shaped boiler room. On each wall was an arched steel door. Instead of a handle, each door had a huge wheel.

Dante had no idea how those wheels-for-door-handles were supposed to work. He’d been in the boiler room, but he’d never had to open the doors.

To call the enormous boiler room creepy was like calling Saw III kinda scary. Leaving a freshman wrapped in athletic tape in the middle of the dark boiler room was a longstanding St. Philomena football tradition. Dante remembered it very clearly from last year.

He was a little proud of how he’d done as the freshman mummy. The seniors had picked him up—wearing only a towel— blindfolded him, wrapped him in tape, and dumped him in the dark boiler room. The last one to leave had yelled Come on, Flash. Let’s see you run out of this. And then he was gone. When the echo faded, only the low hum and rattle of the machines had remained in Dante’s ears.

It only took him a minute or so to wiggle out of the tape and rip off the blindfold. He was still wet from the shower, so that was easy enough. The trick had been finding his way out in the total darkness. The room was full of ancient-looking heating equipment, tools, and random bits of iron he didn’t want to run into nearly naked. Despite what the senior had said, it hadn’t been the time to use his speed.

Reluctantly, Dante had removed his towel and snapped it out in front of himself like a whip, figuring it would keep him from walking into something. He had taken three steps before he felt his towel hit something and catch. He