Chapter 26 - The Girl in Green

By the time I made it back to the front door, I was wet. As I arrived at the front door, an ancient police car from the town below pulled up.

Two officers in blue windbreakers, their trooper hats covered in drawstring plastic, got out and ran up the front walk to the main door.

I stayed out of sight behind the high hedge until the officers went in, and then I made a run for it. I hoped that Burton would escort the police back to the scene of the accident, and I could slip back into school without being noticed.

Nothing I could do about my wet hair. But when I made my way up the steps and entered the front door, I noticed that many of the students milling about also had wet hair and wet clothes—the group who had tried to lift the tree. It was easy enough to blend in.

There was a restless, frantic energy in the foyer. Some students in the dining hall had broken up into small groups, talking in low voices, but here in the foyer were people who wanted to do something.

I bounded up the stairs to my room, threw my jacket on the bed, and hunted for a clean towel. My shirt and jeans were soaked. I stripped down to my underwear. I still had Barlow’s knife tucked into my sports bra. The only clean thing I had left was a school-issued plaid skirt that felt a little too short and a white button down I pulled from the closet. It was too tight around the chest and it wouldn’t button so I left it open and tied the ends around my waist.

It was Ava’s shirt, not mine. Kimber had accidentally left it behind.

I was cold and I threw on my wool school sweater.

I ran down the hall, down the stairs, until I reached the landing and froze.

Burton was at the bottom of the stairs, talking to the two officers. One was young, barely older than a student, and the other was middle-aged and red-faced. They listened deferentially. My heart sped like I was on the run, like I’d been caught with a leg halfway over a fence.

I forced myself to take a step down. Then another. My hair was wet, but there were a half dozen other students with wet hair. I needed to walk confidently by Burton like this was just another day at horror high.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and tried to walk past her, but she caught my eye.

“Have you seen Madison?” Burton asked.

My heart flopped and I looked away.

“Not recently,” I said.

I sailed past her toward the dining room. No way she’d checked the surveillance camera in the middle of all this chaos.

She couldn’t have.

A soft hand landed on my arm. I knew before I looked up that it was Kenzie. Her skin was ashy, an odd gray-green color around her mouth. Wet curls plastered against the side of her face. She’d been out back on the field, trying to help. Of course she had.

“How is Elise?” I asked.

“Not good,” she replied. “They managed to get the branch off of her, but her leg was crushed.” Kenzie wrapped her arms around her chest, shaking.

“You need to get out of those wet clothes,” I said. “Come on.”

Kenzie followed me up the stairs. Fortunately, Burton and the troopers were gone.

At the landing to the second floor, Kenzie stopped.

“I saw you,” she said quietly.

I turned to look at Kenzie. Her expression was neither angry nor accusative. She looked exhausted more than anything. Somehow, that made it worse.

“You saw me?” I said.

“I came looking for you. After the tree fell . . .”

Her voice broke.

“I saw Madison head out the front door when she thought no one was watching. When I looked out, I saw you on the road, running.”

I didn’t know what to say.

I felt an ancient, threadbare emotion that had kept me company for so long. Shame. It had stayed with me throughout my time in Gardner-Betts and beyond, the feeling that the Oliver incident was all my fault. That I’d ruined my future and destroyed Mom’s hopes in the process. Feral.

And though shame had reappeared over the years, this was different.

I’d left my phone with that terrible video of Ava’s last moments, the only proof of what was happening, here. I’d bailed on my promise to my dead roommate.

And worse, I’d left Kenzie behind.

This time, my shame felt earned.

“Did Madison leave the door open?” I asked. “Did anyone see?”

Madison was still out there, still running.

“Don’t worry, I closed the door behind her,” Kenzie said. “And I certainly didn’t tell anyone.”

“I don’t want Madison to get caught,” I whispered.

“Neither do I,” she whispered back.

Three girls came up the stairs in rain-soaked sweats and wet hair. One of them, a girl named Kaycee I recognized from field hockey, had scratches on her arms and bark and dirt on her sweatshirt.

“The ambulance came,” Kaycee called out. “They’re taking Elise to the hospital.”

“I’m so glad,” Kenzie said.

I waited until Kaycee and the others had gone through the dorm door before speaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have left.”

Kenzie put an arm around me and gave me a damp squeeze.

“You came back,” she said.

Kenzie, offering me absolution I didn’t feel like I deserved.

* * *

Over the course of the afternoon, the storm worsened.

The lights went out after classes, pitching the world into a deep blue gloom. I was in my room at the time, drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep, dreaming of the tunnels underground. The sound of voices woke me.

Other students were pouring into the hall, alarmed noises mingling with laughter. Someone had a flashlight at the end of the hall, probably one of the security guards.

The dark felt ominous here.

“There are candles in the dining room and the common room,” the security guard said in a loud and officious voice. “I need you all to follow me down the stairs, and make sure you hold the banister on the way down.”

In spite of Elise’s accident earlier, or maybe because of it, there was a wave of nervous, fearful excitement. As we descended the stairs, I was hit with a wave of impending doom. I hadn’t expected to be feeling my way along a darkened corridor again like the halls of the old hospital.

Downstairs, things were better. There were candles set up on every table in the dining room, large emergency flashlights in the common room where someone was singing to the soft strum of a guitar. In the dining hall, teachers were handing out paper cups and something that appeared to be cookies. We didn’t get sweets very often here, so people were digging in. It was probably a master stroke of school management, to keep people from sweet things under the guise of brain health and then release the store of endorphin-laden sweets when everything went to shit. We are all easily distracted by shiny things, tasty sweets, and loud noises. It was just a matter of balancing distractions for ultimate effect.

I thought about Madison. She had to be cold and wet, but at least she was free. The monster wasn’t out there. It was under the school.

I looked around for Barlow, but I didn’t see him. Instead, I found Kenzie. She was at a table in the corner, typing on a laptop, her heart-shaped face bathed in an unearthly glow.

She looked up and smiled as I approached.

“Barlow talked to his mom,” she said. “She’s at the emergency room with Elise. Her leg is pretty messed up, but otherwise she’s okay. They’re going to transfer her to a hospital in Raleigh when the storm lets up.”

“Did you tell Barlow that I left?”

“No,” Kenzie said quickly. “And I’m not going to. You came back. That’s all that matters.”

I sighed. I didn’t know what I would say to Barlow when I saw him next. So much had happened.

“Do you want hot chocolate?” I asked.

Kenzie nodded. “Sure. That would be nice.”

I threaded my way through the room, happy to be able to do something for Kenzie. One of the buffet tables was pushed forward. Usually everything was self-serve, but since they were handing out pure sugar, I guess they wanted to limit us.

Coach Mullins was parked behind an oversized slow cooker thing ladling out hot chocolate. He straightened and nodded when I approached.

“Jess,” he said brightly. “So good to see you made it back.”

Back . . . What did he mean? Did he know? Had he told Burton? A hundred questions ping-ponged through my brain, and my heart sped triple-espresso overtime.

“Um . . .” I searched for something else to say, but Coach Mullins spoke before I could think of anything.

“Do you want hot chocolate?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Can you give me two cups?”

“Marshmallows?” he asked.

“Okay,” I said woodenly. Maybe he thought I’d been in the yard, and I’d made it back from changing.

Coach Mullins took two cups and ducked down below the tables.

“Don’t want anyone making off with the goods,” Coach Mullins said with a goofy laugh. The goods—whatever that meant.

Coach Mullins reappeared from under the table and poured two cups of hot chocolate with a giant ladle.

“Get yourself a cookie,” he said.

I held the cups out to the librarian, who was handing out cookies. She balanced an oatmeal cookie on top of each of the cups.

I returned to the spot where I’d left Kenzie and handed her a cup with a cookie on top—slowly, to keep the cookie from sliding free.

“When it was clear that the storm was going to be bad, Kendra stayed to make cookies for us,” Kenzie said. “Can you believe it?”

“Kendra?” I asked. I had no idea who she was talking about.

“You know, she works in the kitchen. She’s younger, has braids. She’s really nice.”

Kenzie had grown up with every privilege possible and had every reason to glide past anyone holding a cup of something warm, or a towel by her personal pool, or the door without so much as noticing that person was alive. And yet, she knew the names of everybody who worked at the school.

I sipped the hot chocolate. It wasn’t from a mix, and it had marshmallows.

Rustic.

It made me think of all the mocha lattes I’d made at my corporate coffee shop job. I was supposed to artfully drizzle chocolate on top of caramel mocha lattes, only I’d often forget and then have to deal with assholes who came back looking for their drizzle, complaining to the manager. I guess if you are paying seven dollars for a cup of coffee, you want your drizzle.

I wondered if any of those corporate coffee patrons missed me. I’d never been a ray of sunshine at work. I’d never brightened anyone’s day, the way Kenzie did.

I didn’t remember names. If you walked away from me, you ceased to exist the moment you were out of my sight.

And if I walked away?

I sipped the hot chocolate.

Kenzie laid a hand on my arm.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look so sad.”

“I’m fine.”

Even in the near dark, Kenzie could tell. And even in the dark, I couldn’t admit to her that I wasn’t okay. I felt like I was on the edge of something terrible. I sipped my hot chocolate and chomped on the warm cookie.

I leaned against the wall feeling overwhelmed and tired. But not the usual tired. My head hurt. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the world swam. My cup tilted and I set it down on the table before I spilled the rest of my cocoa.

“Do you want to sit down?” Kenzie asked. “Maybe it’s the dark or the cocoa, but I’m starting to feel sleepy.”

Suddenly, Kenzie slid in her chair, empty cup and half-eaten cookie tumbling from her hand. When her head slumped over and hit the table, no one seemed to notice. And it made sense, because there were people sitting on the floors, leaning against walls, or lying down with balled-up sweaters under their heads. Most of them chatting, but some drifting.

Nothing about Kenzie slumped over the table looked out of the ordinary in the candlelight gloom.

Sleepy.

I looked into the bottom of my nearly empty cup.

Sleepy.

Kenzie was smaller than me, and she was on anti-anxiety meds. She’d drunk her cocoa fast and it hit her first. My head swam, and I struggled to keep my eyes open.

Drugged.

I looked around for Star, but she was nowhere to be found.

Barlow.

Barlow would help me. Not here, but maybe he was upstairs.

If I could make it to him before I passed out, maybe I could . . .

I shoved my hand in my pocket looking for my phone. There had to be someone I could call.

No phone.

No help at all.

I staggered toward the dining room door, slammed a shoulder into a nameless body, and made my way through. The staircase was an Everest climb, the top of the stairs and the boys’ dormitory an impossible distance away.

I put my hand on the banister and pulled, willing my feet to make one step and then another.

If I yelled, would someone come? But what if it was the wrong someone?

“Jess, you don’t look well,” a smooth voice called from behind me.

I didn’t turn. I didn’t need to.

That smooth, silky voice could only belong to one person.

Burton.

And I couldn’t turn anyway. I gripped the banister tightly and leaned over it. Burton wrapped an arm around my waist. She was surprisingly strong. I drifted out and my hands released the banister. Though I felt like I’d climbed ten steps, it had only been one.

“Let me get you to the nurse’s office,” Burton said.

“No!” I yelled. “I’m not going.” But I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t know my yell was actually a slobbery murmur, unintelligible.

We rounded the corner of the banister, and a sharp-faced woman with brittle blond hair grabbed me from the other side. The nurse.

“You’re overfeeding it,” the nurse hissed.

Feeding? Did I hear that right?

“It can’t be helped,” Burton replied.

“First Layla, then Ava,” the nurse said. “And what about the other one?”

Ava.

They knew about Ava.

I tried to raise my head.

Tried and failed.

And then I was gone.