Free The Limit by Kristen Landon Page A

make that. Heavy footsteps pounded toward the door. I glanced up, wondering where the security cameras were. What kind of punishment would a Top Floor get for doorbell ditching?
    “Who is it?” The voice coming through the door was very deep. This Reginald guy must be old.Sixteen or seventeen, maybe.
    “I . . . uh . . . I’m Matthew Dunston. Um, you know . . . I’m new to the top floor and I thought it would be nice to meet everyone.” Rolling my eyes, I shook my head in disgust at how wimpy and high-pitched my voice had come out.
    “Oh.” Long pause. “Hi.”
    “Hi.”
    Silence. Awkward, eternal silence. Isn’t it a normal reaction for people to open the door when someone rings the bell? I may have been the newest newbie on the top floor, but I was getting the picture pretty darn clearly that Reginald was not your typical “normal” person.
    “Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” I said.
    “No.”
    No?
    “How’s it going, dude?” Coop had sneaked back into the hall. “No Reginald sighting yet, huh?”
    “I’m working on it,” I whispered back to him. “So, Reginald, we . . . uh, were just wondering if you want to see this . . . cool thing Coop has.”
    Coop’s eyes bugged out, and his mouth dropped open, forming the word
What?
    “We’ll think of something,” I whispered.
    “Can’t,” came Reginald’s deep voice.
    “Sure you can,” I said. “We still have a few minutes until lights-out. Just open the door.”
    “Go away now.” A few seconds later the metallic clanking started up again.
    Coop and I kept our ears pressed to the door.
    “Maybe he’s building something,” I said.
    “Right,” Coop deadpanned. “He must have an anvil in there. Do you think he’s making a suit of armor?”
    Three musical dings reverberated throughout the hallway—the five-minutes-until-lights-out warning.
    We headed toward our rooms.
    “No, wait,” I said. “I’ve got it. He’s chipping away at his wall. He’s trying to break out.”
    “Yeah, right.” Coop’s hair flopped around his head as he laughed. “Like he’d want to do that.”
    The door between Coop’s and Isaac’s opened, and Jeffery poked his head into the hall. “I hope you two best buddies had a
great
time. You couldn’t come close to how much fun I had. I’m halfway finished with my LEGO sculpture of an electron microscope. Oh! Another delivery.”
    He bent down and scooped up the two boxes that were sitting on the floor outside his door and disappeared back inside his room.
    “Time’s almost up. Tomorrow, dude.” Coop hustled into his own room.
    I made my way alone to the second to last door. My room.
    I’d only gotten as far as putting on my pajama bottoms before—just as Coop had warned me—all the lights in my room began to fade. I glanced at my watch. Yep. Ten o’clock on the dot.
    Coop was wrong about one thing. Brushing your teeth in the dark isn’t so bad.
    My eyes popped open. The clock on the nightstand told me it was just after one in the morning. The clock was neon-green, instead of red like the one at home. It took me a minute to remember where I was.
    I sprang out of bed. Shoot. I’d let it slip my mind. What time was it again? Too late for a live contact. I’d meant to try to call—if I could ever get a signal—or e-mail my parents and Brennan and Lester before I went to bed. This top floor had a way of distracting you.
    Ouch!
I stubbed my toe on the leg of one of the table chairs as I felt my way to the closet. Overcorrecting to make sure I cleared the rest of the table, I crashed into the sofa.
Okay. Slow down. The end of the sofa is
—I slid my hands across the back of it until it dropped off—
here, so the closet is to my left—forward and at an angle. Nothing else there to trip over, if I remember right.
    I hadn’t remembered I’d dumped my gym shoes outside the closet, and I stumbled over them. Forget groping around in the dark. Coop had to be wrong.There
had
to be a way to get light in