“Cool,” Vaughn said. “Let’s go.”

He turned toward me. “You got everything?”

“I wouldn’t have locked up the van if I didn’t.” I looked over at Earthmover. “We can come back down here, right? The van’s actually kind of a school project itself, so I don’t really want to leave it in here. Ideally I’d want to bring it into wherever you have science labs. If I really had to, I could break it down into pieces and take it through the halls, but I’d rather not.”

Earthmover listened to me, and glanced over at the van. “That’s a science project?”

To be fair to him, the van was still white, and still said Castle Rock Plumbing. With my sister Rachel’s help (she was an art major), I’d learned how to fake rust convincingly, so the doors’ edges had brownish-red rust and flaking paint.

Continue reading Not Exactly Hogwarts: Part 6 →

Even if the architect who designed the place had recognized the impact of the view and designed to make use of it, he or she hadn’t wasted much of it on the access road for service vehicles.

I had to turn right almost immediately, and drive straight in toward the buildings on a road that ran parallel to the wall.

We quickly left any kind of interesting view, passing all the shops, and driving the van into an elevator three times its length.

It started moving downward immediately after the van stopped moving. Continue reading Not Exactly Hogwarts: Part 5 →