Chapter 14: Rain on the Roof

The manager locked the Larkin Room at ten.

By eleven, Ben's two bags and his speaker were sitting on the porch of the Alder Street house, under a tarp somebody had thrown over them.

A note was taped to the top bag in Preston's handwriting.

"Dad owns the house. Dad says out by Monday."

Ben read it under the streetlight and folded it in half.

"I could sleep on a friend's floor," he said.

"Do you have a friend?"

"I have a sound board I'm not allowed to touch."

I held up the brass key.

We carried everything up the back stairs of the old dining hall.

The manager had forgotten that door, and it let us into the booth.

It was a narrow room with a window over the stage, a space heater, and a long gray couch Ben said had come from a dentist's office.

Rain started while he was unrolling his sleeping bag.

It was loud on the old roof, a steady hard drumming over our heads.

Every few minutes the wind threw a handful against the window.

"They'll write you up for being here," Ben said.

"Sage knows where I am. She says it's the best thing I've done all semester."

"Sage is a menace."

"Sage is the reason I'm not alone in a parking lot." I sat down on the couch.

"She's at a friend's," I said. "She told me, 'Do not text me until it's good news.'"

He laughed.

He sat down at the other end of the couch, with a careful foot of cushion between us.

I pulled my knees up and watched the rain run down the glass.

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