A snap of a twig caught my attention and I swiveled my head to follow the sound. There wasn't anyone else walking through the sparsely wooded area between the academy and residence with me. Narrowing my eyes, I focused my attention on the semi barren shrub that was wearing shoes, and the same expensive navy slacks that most students wore. 

"Whadaya wan?"

"Napoleon?" I peered down into the face of Leon, who had somehow managed to get himself tangled in the shrub. Instead of his usual aloof smile, he was sneering at me. 

"Let me help you." I offered him my hand, and though he took it, he gave it the most disgusted look. Following a few paces behind him, I was alarmed as he dazedly wandered towards residence. He was off, that was obvious, but he seemed much more in control of himself than the detentionees had. Had he infiltrated detention? Upon entering the residence building, which was eerily quiet, I grabbed his arm and dragged him to Kellen's dorm.

"Nicole!" Jackson was pacing the hallway outside their room and saw me coming; he took one look at Leon and paled. "Shit!" He quickly ushered us into his dorm.

"I found this one laying in a shrub in the woods between the dining hall and quad."

Leon sullenly dropped onto the couch, grumbling at me, though he could barely get his tongue to cooperate. "Stup'd bish. I din wanna co'here. Who tha fuh put you in charsh?" 

My eyes widened at his angry words but lackluster tone that was odd for Leon. Still, Kellen's reaction was a bit overdramatic. "Shitshitshit! This isn't good."

Across the room Jackson was pacing even harder than he had been when I got there.

"Ummm, can someone please explain the melodramatics?"

"I don't know why I didn't see it before," Kellen said to himself more than anyone else.

"He did, clearly!" Jackson gestured anxiously at Leon. It appeared neither of them were going to clue me in, so I folded my arms and leaned against Jackson's door to watch them.

"I wish he said something if he suspected."

"You wouldn't have let him do it," Jackson said quietly.

"Of course not!" Kellen's voice surged edgily as he and Jackson faced off barely more than a foot apart.

"You wouldn't have let anyone do it."

"Of course not!"

"That's why he did it," Jackson sighed in defeat and broke the intense stare down they were having.

"Umm, guys?"

"Drugs! Leon got detention like Jess suggested." Kellen turned to me abruptly and then sat heavily onto the floor. One hand smothered his face in frustration and the other waved absently at the floor beside him; sit. "I can't believe it didn't occur to me!" 

"It didn't occur to anyone, Kellen," I said as I sat. "Or maybe it did and none of us wanted to believe it."

"I just... Leon!" Kellen choked on an almost tearful sound.

Jackson finally sat with us, placing a slightly trembling hand on Kellen's shoulder. "It's not your fault, Kel. I didn't see it either."

I glanced at Leon with unease, he wasn't with us. If he was registering our conversation, he wasn't showing it at all. The annoyingly studious jackass joker wasn't who was sitting on the couch. Instead, I was looking at an edgy brooding zombie that looked like him. It was strange how a simple substance could do that in such little time, and so easily.

It was awful, but it wouldn't be long before Leon sobered up and was back to his normal self. While Kellen and Jackson seemed more worried about Leon, I was thinking about all the others.

"I should have known," I mused; I'd intentionally chosen not to see some of the signs for what they were. "Alan and Jennifer were—"

"God, Cole! This isn't your fault! We talked about what might happen if we sent someone in, and he still did it. The idiot!"

His worry and anger seemed over the top, considering we'd all seen the picture of Kellen under the influence of some substance when his account had been hacked.

"Can I ask one thing?" I asked slowly as an uncomfortable thought about their overreactions entered my mind. They looked at me questioningly. "Why is it so bad that Leon did this?"

Kellen held my gaze for a long moment before he threw a glance backward at Leon and then slumped forward, saying the words I suspected I'd hear. "Leon used to have a drug problem. It wasn't for very long, honestly, but it was long enough. Remember last year when he came back to school in October? Rehab." 

"He was high all the time, and high Leon was a paranoid asshole!" Jackson spat, eyeing the zoned out scowling boy on the couch.

"At first, we didn't see him too often. Then he started hanging out again but he was always accusing us of things, looking for a fight. I thought it was something going on at home. Then I thought maybe it was withdrawal from the crazy meds they'd put him on after his accident at the end of sophomore year. It took a while, but we eventually realized he was high."

"You think he took the drugs willingly today?" Jackson's voice held a tiny tinge of worry. "I mean, there are a couple possibilities here... he went because he figured it wouldn't be so bad if it was him, or he went so he could get some?"

"Jacks! You think he'd-"

"I don't know! He's been under pressure lately and maybe he... got the drugs off someone in detention."

I scoffed. "Kids like Salome's brother and Lark who would never touch the stuff normally, suddenly take drugs because some idiot in detention has them? No! And how would one, or maybe two, people convince the whole group of kids in detention to partake?"

"Peer pressure?"

I rolled my eyes at Jackson, "Right! And if the Hotness Trifecta themselves told me to ingest or inject some drug I'd do it!" I didn't even bother to be embarrassed at the fact that I'd called them that to their faces, I was so annoyed.

Kellen's face looked tired as he let my words sink in, "The alternative is—"

"Terrifying, I know."

"They were drugged..." Jackson finally concluded, "but how?"

-.-

There were no less than twelve absences in English; they accounted for nearly half the class. The replacement didn't even notice, or more likely, he didn't care. No attendance was taken, nor was there mention of detention for the missing students, only an extra careful gaze on the students who were in class.

I kept my head down, working on the assignment that had been scribbled on the board in the replacement's barely legible writing. Students who asked for clarification of the words were handed yellow slips. The rest of the class was too afraid to look up from their papers. Chemistry was even worse. There were only seven of us in attendance; tomorrow there would be only four.

At the end of the day, I trudged across the quad to residence with a heavy feeling of uselessness pressing on my shoulders. All around me, I could tell others felt the same. But I had no time to dwell on it.

"There you are, Love." I startled on entering my room to find Eddie there with Ashley and Jess. I wondered what was going on, and why no one had bothered to clue me in earlier.

"What took you so long, Nic?"Jess sighed.

"Did you check your messages at all?" Ashley asked with an exasperated roll of her eyes. I gestured at my nightstand and the phone that sat upon it.

"Seriously, Nic, you can't afford to be out of the loop these days. Not with everything that's going on!" Jess tossed the phone to me.

I scanned the plethora of messages quickly and threw my bag into the corner, as I kicked off my boots. "So what's the plan? How are we doing this?" I asked as I twisted my hair into a braid and threw it over my shoulder. I jabbed my feet into a pair of shoes that were utterly useless at keeping out the cold, but the soles were flexible and made being sneaky a breeze, not to mention the excellent grip if I needed to climb anything.

Eddie poked an earpiece into his ear and held another out to me. I looked at him questioningly; why was he wearing the earpiece? "I need you to get me into the supply room behind the detention hall--there's a camera back there that I need to physically tap into. Mark was supposed to go with me, but he got detention."

"What?!?"

"Relax!" Jess hissed. "I told him to. He's our man inside. He's also wearing a piece that I had Eddie get to him earlier. We can hear what's going on in there from here."

While I'd been getting through my classes without getting in trouble, the rest of them had been planning a mission to spy on detention. At Kellen's request, of course. Find out what was going on in there; what kind of drug were we dealing with, and how in the world was it being administered? 

Though, I couldn't understand why they'd chosen Mark for detention, or why he needed to go in at all—we'd need to be as covert as possible, and Mark was our best hope of that. 

"Emma will be here soon, but you guys should head out already." Jess pulled me into a hug, her voice quivered as she whispered, "I wish you planned this, Babes."