Chapter 25 - The Girl in Green

I woke in the morning to wind rattling the panes of glass. I went to the bathroom, down the hall and took a shower. Long overdue.

Back in the room, I stared at myself in the mirror. I prodded at my cheek, much less gently than Barlow had. My cheek was sore, and the bruise had turned an ugly purple and yellow, but it didn’t hurt quite as much as it had.

I dressed, making sure to put on my tight black sports bra, and tucked the knife inside. I glanced ruefully at the lacy black bra I hadn’t worn since I’d gotten here. Between field hockey and hiding contraband, I had no use for pretty things.

I went down to breakfast because there was nothing else to do.

Kenzie sat alone at a table, hugging a cup of coffee. “That looks terrible,” she said, glancing at my eye.

“It feels better than it did yesterday,” I said. “How are you doing?”

Kenzie shrugged. She looked as groggy as I felt, sadness dulled from the anti-anxiety meds.

I went through the line to get a cup of coffee and Elise stood in the line behind me.

The staff had made a huge stack of blueberry buckwheat pancakes for breakfast, a bigger indulgence than usual. Real maple syrup.

“Pancakes?” I said. “That’s unusual.”

“They only break out pancakes when the weather sucks,” Elise said. “Enjoy the carbs while you can.”

I took a big stack of pancakes and a cup of coffee back to the table with Kenzie.

“Pancakes?” she said.

“Have a bite,” I said. “There’s no way I can eat all of this.”

Kenzie reached over, tore off a section of pancake, and nibbled on the edge. I was glad to see her eat even that little amount. I worried about Kenzie. She hadn’t eaten anything but coffee and hydroxyzine since Ava died. When she finished that bite, I put a fork on the edge of the plate and pushed it toward her.

She delicately cut a wedge of pancake with the side of the fork and popped it in her mouth.

“So, what do we do now?” she said.

I reflexively patted my chest searching for the hard end of the knife. It probably looked weird to anyone watching me. I had to stop checking for it, but I couldn’t help it.

“There’s always the away game,” I said.

Kenzie nodded grimly. We were both thinking the same thing. It would be terrible to post Ava’s final moments before her death online. But if we did, it would change everything.

* * *

“We might be in the path of a remanent hurricane,” the history teacher said.

The class erupted in a chaos of noise.

“Is there a storm shelter?” a boy named Colby said anxiously. He had a thick familiar accent, north Texas or southern Oklahoma, an area where tornados are more common.

“Technically, we are the shelter from the storm,” the teacher said. “The town below floods. If it rains enough, we might have to put up guests from the valley.”

“It’s not raining now,” someone said.

“The rain might come later,” she said. “But who knows, the path of the storm might change.”

The wind died down as we took out e-readers. Colby expressed relief, but other people in the class seemed disappointed to miss out on a storm.

I was leaving history on my way to English when a huge gust of wind rattled the tall windows in the stairwell. The girl next to me on the stairs gasped, and the boy behind her laughed.

There was a commotion on the first floor, and the sound of someone screaming echoed through the central foyer.

I turned and headed back to the first floor. Kimber was in the foyer ineffectually waving everyone away. The back door to the gym flew open and a first year named Ryan ran in, panting and frantic.

“There was a big gust of wind and a tree fell!” he yelled. “Someone is trapped underneath!”

Dr. Jacobsen had come out of his room to see what was going on.

“Show me.” Dr. Jacobsen stepped down the stairs quickly. “There’s a lot of us here. Maybe we can move it.”

A group of people followed Ryan and Dr. Jacobsen through the door, out into the yard.

I stood in the side hall and watched as the security guard ran out of the office toward the back door to help.

Which meant that no one was watching the cameras.

And then I saw it.

A chance at escape.

A long-dormant instinct unexpectedly sprang back to life. So buried that I almost didn’t recognize the perfect moment when it finally came, in the midst of the wind and the chaos and the loss of my roommate, when I’d just begun to forget that such a thing was possible. The thing that I’d wanted for so long, had made plans for, plans that had never come to fruition.

And now, here it was.

I walked away from the dining hall, ostensibly back toward the library, but when I moved toward the front door, I checked the dining hall to see if anyone was there. Two girls at a table by the side of the room, lost in conversation.

No one was looking in my direction.

This was perfect.

Everyone else was out back, trying to help whoever was trapped.

I opened the front door quietly and slipped through. I ran toward the hedge by the side of the yard, ducked down low so I wouldn’t be seen from the door if someone was looking.

The wind blew ominously, and dark heavy clouds scuttled closer. The rain that had been absent for the entire morning had finally arrived. It looked like the sky would open up at any moment. The storm must have headed toward us after all.

The wind shifted, bringing with it anxious, loud voices—yells from the back field.

When I hit the main road, I knew I’d be spotted one way or another. There was nothing to do but make a run for it.

I took off at a dead run down the road, pausing momentarily to catch my breath only when I rounded the corner and the school was out of sight. I’d tucked Barlow’s knife inside my sports bra and it slapped against my sternum as I ran.

I heard footsteps behind me, someone running after me. I hoped that whoever had spotted me was the day security guard, a paunchy middle-aged man with impressive bulk. He was intimidating but also looked like he hadn’t run for at least a decade or so.

Whoever was behind me was running fast and closing the gap. A wet, bitter cold slapped the skin of my face but didn’t make it to my limbs.

I turned around to look, even though I knew I shouldn’t. When you stop to look behind, you get caught. Turned into a pillar of salt. Dragged back to hell. It’s the oldest lesson in the world. If you’re being chased by a bear, don’t stop to look at the bear.

But it wasn’t a bear, or the security guard.

It was Madison.

“God, you’re so slow!” she huffed. “You so need to up your cardio.”

Madison, even now, in the middle of an escape, was annoying as hell.

“What are you doing out here?” I gasped.

I looked around. The road hadn’t descended far yet, and we hadn’t reached the part of the mountain where the far side of the road was bounded by a cliff. We were close to a stand of trees on the far side, where we could ditch if we had to.

“Same thing as you,” she said. “Running.”

Madison was wearing gym clothes, a sweatshirt and sweats, school-issued track shoes.

“You came from the field?” I asked. “What happened back there?”

All the noise and the frantic, shell-shocked tones from the back. I couldn’t help but be curious, and for a heart-stopping moment, I thought about Kenzie.

“A big branch broke off of a tree during gym class,” Madison said. “It fell and hit Elise.”

Elise. I’d gotten used to seeing her at practice. Calling me She-Hulk, but in a good-natured way.

“Yeah, it sucks,” Madison said.

She took off at a fast walk down the road and I followed at a slightly slower pace.

“I heard that they were trying to lift the tree off of her,” I said. “Do you think she’s going to be okay?” I thought about going back to help. There were dozens of people around, and my muscles probably wouldn’t make a difference, but it just seemed wrong to leave.

Madison turned to face me, walking backward down the hill.

“No, she’s super fucked up,” Madison said. “And we will be too, if you don’t pick up the pace.”

Elise injured, maybe dead. I liked Elise. She was funny and tough, and she was my teammate.

Madison sped up, loping at what was a slow jog for her, but a pretty serious clip for me.

I jogged alongside Madison, who was pushing me to go faster. Every time I pulled alongside her, she picked up the pace. I understood. We needed to get past the cliff side of the road before the inevitable emergency vehicles started the trip up the mountain. Once we were farther down, the cliff gave way to rolling hills and we could leave the road to hide.

“I’m sorry about Elise,” I panted.

Madison shrugged. It didn’t break her stride. “Nothing I can do about it now.”

Nothing to do about Elise.

There was nothing I could do about any of it. I didn’t have my phone with the video of Ava. All I could do was run. If I got to town, I could reach Mom, and in a few weeks all of this would be just a terrible memory. I could tell people what had happened to Ava, but no one would believe me.

By the time lunch rolled around, it would be crystal clear to Star, Kenzie, and Barlow that I was gone.

Kenzie, alone with her hydroxyzine and her grief. She’d always been so kind to me, even going so far as to defend me from Ava’s blunt assessments of my feral nature. Ava had known I was a runner at heart, but Kenzie believed better of me.

And Barlow—I’d told him that I might be the next victim of the monster. If I disappeared suddenly, he’d most likely think I was dead.

He would blame himself. He might even go looking for me under the school.

My friends were in danger.

I couldn’t stand that.

I slowed my jog and looked back over my shoulder.

I needed to keep moving, needed to save myself, but I couldn’t keep up.

Slower and slower.

Madison stopped and turned around.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Her blond hair was held in a claw clasp, and she released her hair and shook her head as though freeing herself of a terrible itch.

“I have to go back,” I said, shocking myself as much as Madison.

“The fuck?” Madison drew the syllable out. She swirled her hair in a violent twist and clasped it. “We’re out. We have to keep going. C’mon.”

She gestured with her shoulder, like she was trying to get me to wind sprint. I half expected her to tell me to hustle. Show some gumption.

“I can’t.”

Madison stopped moving. She stood in the middle of the road, her head shaking, quivering with anger or pent-up energy from her run. Full disbelief.

“Oh god—don’t you get it? There’s something fucked up going on at the school.”

“I know,” I said.

Madison walked backward down the road, her long legs picking up steam from the increased slope and her urge to run again. I watched her move away, wishing with all my twitchy energy that I was following her.

But I couldn’t.

“Fine,” Madison said. “Just don’t tell them that I—”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone,” I said.

I watched as Madison turned and flew down the side of the mountain. Running as fast as I’d ever seen any girl run.

Part of me thought I was making a terrible mistake in not going with her.

Another part of me knew that I was.

“Good luck!” I yelled after her.

I meant it.

Madison raised the middle finger of her right hand without turning around. She rounded a corner and was gone.

I started back up the road toward the school as icy needles of rain began to fall.