Chapter 24 - The Girl in Green

“You really don’t mind if I stay here?” Kenzie asked.

Her voice was rough with exhaustion. She was nestled in Ava’s bed.

“I think I’d mind if you didn’t stay,” I replied. “I really don’t want to be alone.”

“Neither do I.”

Kenzie opened a bottle of prescription pills and took one with a swig of water.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Hydroxyzine, for anxiety,” she said. “Want one? They make you sleepy.”

“Sleep is good.” I stretched out my hand and took a pill from her.

The things Ava had possessed were minimal and stupidly unrelated to who she was—who she had been. Her bed—an industrial metal-frame bed with sheets and comforter that had been bleached into oblivion. The same kind of bed we all slept in. Her clothes, the same plaid and wool uniform pieces we all had.

The things that were authentically hers were hers by circumstance. Her lipstick, dollar store pink. A few books, potboiler paperbacks from the seventies and eighties, with garish covers and garage sale stickers advertising five cents, ten cents, a quarter. I didn’t know whether she enjoyed reading these books or owned them ironically, and now, I would never know.

The most Ava thing about this room was her hiding place, discovered or crafted through single-minded patience and ingenuity.

I’d put the phone back in the hiding place. The phone was the most valuable thing I owned, the thing Ava had died for.

Proof.

We’d turned the phone off, hoping there would be enough power to post the video online if we ever got to a place where there was internet.

The field hockey away game.

I’d smuggle the phone out and post the video online for the whole world to see.

I hated that.

I didn’t want Ava to be remembered this way.

I lay in bed thinking about what seeing that video would do to anyone who had loved Ava. I wished that I could unsee it.

I thought about what it would do to my mother if she learned that I died in the most horrible way imaginable. By watching my death. Online.

But if I posted that video, it would accomplish what Ava had set out to do.

“What about Ava’s family?” I asked in the darkness.

I could tell Kenzie wasn’t asleep by the rhythm of her sniffles. She was still crying. Had cried for a long time.

“She didn’t talk about her family,” she said. “I think Ava was in foster care.”

Somehow, that made it worse.

Ava had been clever and funny and, more than anything, brave.

She deserved better.

* * *

I woke up late the next morning. Kenzie was already downstairs in the dining hall with Star when I got there. I went through the line and grabbed a coffee and a bagel, but by the time I made it back to the table where Star sat with Kenzie, any hunger I’d felt had fled.

Kenzie was talking in a low, serious voice to Star, no doubt telling her about last night.

Star pulled back, looking increasingly horrified. Once, she shook her head as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. I couldn’t blame her.

I took a bite of the bagel, but it was too much work to chew.

Ava was down below somewhere, blood and bones, beginning to rot alone in some darkened tunnel, unless the monster had dragged her away somewhere to keep her alive.

“Burton,” Kenzie coughed behind her hand.

Star put her headphones on.

I forced myself not to turn around. Burton put a hand on the table between Kenzie and me. She squatted down, eye level, uncomfortably close.

“Jess, I need to talk to you about your roommate, Ava,” she said softly. “Was she in your room last night?”

“No,” I said slowly. “I thought maybe she slept in another room.”

It wasn’t a great lie, but I had to say something.

“Did you two have a fight?”

The headmaster said this to me, but she looked over at Kenzie.

Kenzie looked down to her lap. To the casual observer, she might have looked calm, beatific even, but I knew better. She’d cried until she couldn’t cry anymore.

“No,” I said. “Everything was fine.”

I struggled to keep my voice even. The headmaster studied my face. She seemed honestly perplexed.

“Did she say anything to you?” Ms. Burton said. “Did she ever talk about running away?”

“Oh, you mean, like Layla?” I snapped, my mouth three steps ahead of my brain.

I’d made a terrible mistake.

The headmaster’s eyes flashed with recognition. I knew at that moment that Layla was dead, under the school, just like Ava.

The headmaster knew about Layla.

Like Calvin Burton and probably all of the Burtons before her, she knew about the girl in green.

I tried to look away, too late. She read the truth in my eyes.

Ms. Burton straightened. She pulled the edge of her jacket down crisply and smiled tightly.

“Don’t worry, we’ll send a search party out for Ava,” she said slowly.

I watched Ms. Burton turn and walk away, shoulders squared, looking like she was on a mission. I doubted that mission was rounding up volunteers to search for Ava. A wave of dizzy nausea swept over me. My head wasn’t good, even a day after hitting the table.

“She knows,” I said, half under my breath.

“How could she?” Kenzie said. “Unless she went into the tunnel and . . .”

Kenzie choked on the words, on the image of Ava’s lifeless body dragged down the tunnel by the girl in green. More than anything it was the sound that haunted me, that irregular dragging noise—two steps and a pull, two steps and a pull, two steps and a pull . . .

“We’re so fucked,” I blurted out.

* * *

I didn’t see Barlow until English class. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he looked as though he’d gotten even less sleep than I had. Dr. Jacobsen glanced quizzically at Barlow more than once. He gave me a similar look, but trapped and anxious is my default setting. On Barlow, a look of low-key misery was noticeable.

Dr. Jacobsen waylaid Barlow on the way out of class, talking to him in a low, concerned voice. I leaned against the wall in the hallway and waited for Barlow. I couldn’t hear any of Dr. Jacobsen’s hushed words, only Barlow’s repeated denials. He was fine, he said. He just had a bad night’s sleep, he said.

The rush of students in the halls had almost cleared by the time Barlow emerged from the doorway.

“Come on,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it here.” Barlow cast a backward glance toward the doorway of Dr. Jacobsen’s room. I assumed he didn’t trust Dr. Jacobsen. Neither did I. Someone in this school besides Ms. Burton had to know the girl in green was real.

I followed Barlow down the stairs to the abandoned bathroom by the library. By the time we got there, the hall was empty and the next class period had begun. I didn’t care because my next period was lunch. I couldn’t have eaten if I tried.

We stepped into the bathroom and Barlow locked the door. I leaned against the sink and lowered my head.

“Ava is dead,” I said softly.

Barlow nodded.

“I know,” he said. “When we found the phone, I knew.”

I’d expected him to ask me how I knew, and I was glad he didn’t. I didn’t think I could relive the moment of watching Ava’s death.

That terrible dragging sound . . .

“I can’t believe that this monster has been here, under the school, all these years,” he said. “I’d always been told Calvin Burton put up that statue . . .”

I felt a sudden rush of anger. I’d lost the closest thing I’d had to a friend in a while. What did I care about his stupid grandfather?

“Ava’s dead, and you’re thinking about your family legacy?” I snapped. “Calvin Burton fed people to that—thing.”

Barlow took a step back and shook his head.

“No, he put up the statue to protect the town,” Barlow protested. “He wanted to keep us all safe.”

“You think the statue kept the town safe?” I said. “This building kept you safe. As long as the monster had a steady diet of mentally ill people, wayward boys, and teenage runaways, there was no reason for it to go into town for dinner.”

Barlow flinched. “Now you’re talking about my cousin,” he said angrily.

Ms. Burton, his cousin. He’d as much as told me that the headmaster was his personal hero, and now I was calling her a murderer. But I couldn’t stop. He had to know the truth.

“You think she doesn’t know?” I said sharply. “She knows everything that goes on here.”

Barlow reeled back as though I’d struck him.

“I don’t believe you,” he hissed.

Barlow’s eyes went hard as stone. He was so proud of everything Ms. Burton had accomplished with the school, he was willing to believe that she had no idea the girl in green was running loose under the school.

I could have been more diplomatic, but the result would have been the same. This was his world, and his family was everything. He was proud of this place, the architectural marvel his grandfather had built stone by stone—a building that housed a monster. Star had said that Calvin Burton built the service tunnel to bring bodies down to the graveyard below, and maybe that had been true—once. But now it was home to the monster.

I hadn’t really put it all together until I confronted Barlow with the truth.

“I wonder what you’ll say when I ‘disappear’,” I said bitterly.

It had been a mistake to trust Barlow. He was never going to turn against his own family.

I took two steps to the door, unlocked and opened it. I caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror, brutal cheekbones, mouth set in a firm line, arms crossed defiantly. Maybe he did look a little like Calvin Burton after all.

“Jess.”

I turned back.

He inhaled slowly, his shoulders lifting and falling. “I don’t know what’s really going on here,” he said.

Barlow looked miserable, and I realized that none of this had been easy for him to hear. His world was made of monsters. My world was back in Austin, in the sunshine.

“I don’t either,” I said. “I just don’t want to end up like Layla. Or Ava.”

Barlow nodded, his face grim.

“I’ve known Delilah my entire life,” he said slowly. “I can’t believe that she would willingly hurt anyone.”

Delilah. It had to be Burton’s first name. I tried to imagine what I’d feel if the bones of half a dozen victims were found in Michaela’s yard behind the big yellow Victorian.

I wouldn’t believe it either.

“You know a different person than I do,” I said softly.

“I don’t know who’s involved in all of this,” he said. “But I don’t want you to be in danger.”

Barlow reached into his pocket and pulled out his folded hunting knife.

“I think you need this more than I do.”

He held the knife in the palm of his outstretched hand. I stared at it. It was safety, it was danger, it was my dark past, and it was a gift. It was the second time a Burton had offered me a weapon. This one, I took gladly.

“Thanks.”

I grabbed the knife, stuck it down my shirt, and tucked it into my sports bra. I left the room without looking back.

* * *

When I returned to my room after school, all of Ava’s things were gone.

Kimber had gone so far as to clean the smear of pink lipstick Ava had left on the mirror over our shared dresser. I imagined her shoving Ava’s paperbacks and makeup into a black garbage bag. Putting her school clothes through the laundry for the next student Ava’s size who got trapped here.

Ava was really gone. I was alone.