Chapter 27 - The Girl in Green

I woke up in a mostly dark room, strange operating lights giving a spaceship glow. A sharp, clinical smell like rubbing alcohol mixed with a cold, damp earthy smell.

Rubbing alcohol. I’d smelled that before, and recently.

My eyes focused and took in the broken tile, the strange tubes on the wall. I knew where I was, because I’d been here before.

The old hospital.

There was a body on the gurney next to mine. A face poked out from underneath a blanket tucked mummy tight. Blond hair and a serious-as-a-heart-attack look.

It was Madison.

She didn’t make it out.

I closed my eyes and drifted as a wave of nausea hit me.

When I woke up again, my head was still turned toward the body on the gurney. Only Madison wasn’t dead. She was breathing.

I was underneath a heated blanket. The blanket was tucked tightly around my feet and legs as though someone had been seriously worried that I would wake up feeling cold.

The warm blanket was one of those things people do to make themselves feel good about being terrible.

Sure, we drugged you and dragged you beneath the school—but look at this warm blanket! See, we really are nice.

I pulled an arm free and touched the side of my head. Even through the drug haze, I felt the dull ache in my head turn sharp as I touched the lump under my skin. Not much bigger than a grain of rice, it moved slightly beneath my fingers, a hard capsule. A shaved section on the side of my head, the size of a Post-It note.

Surgery.

I was on a gurney in the operating room.

My brain was fuzzy and slow.

This was where Ava and I had found Layla’s hair. I tried to lean over to look and see if that patch of scalp was still there, on the floor, but my head spun.

That was the drugs though, wasn’t it?

Rising panic cut through the fog.

It had to be the drugs.

Was this what Gay-Lynne Sims told herself after the lobotomy?

But she wasn’t Gay-Lynne, she was a monster with sharp, pointy teeth, and we were down here in the old hospital with that . . thing.

Monster. I could barely think straight.

I had to get out of here.

We had to get out of here.

I raised my head as much as the throbbing dizziness allowed and looked around. There were three gurneys, not two. On the third was someone smaller, with a head full of tight curls.

Kenzie?

She wasn’t supposed to be here.

She was too rich, too well known, and too well connected to end up down here.

Ava had told me that the rich kids were different.

Not like me.

Not like Ava.

Not like Madison.

A killer.

I lowered my head. Why did I think of killing? What was that about?

I could maybe kill it, if I had a weapon. Weapon. I needed a weapon.

My head hurt. There were two types of pain, the dull fuzzy ache of whatever drug had been in the cocoa, and a growing throb on the side of my head.

It was hard to sit up, hard to let go of sleep. Easier to just drift.

No. I had to get up.

I forced myself to sit up.

My hand again went to the shaved spot, the hard capsule under the skin, like a cyst I could pop. It moved around. There was a single stitch at the spot, hard and stiff as boar’s bristle. I ran my finger over it.

It seemed like a lifetime ago when I’d run halfway down the mountain. I should have kept going. But then, Madison hadn’t made it out. She was here too.

If I ripped the thing free from the side of my head, would my brain shut down as if I’d hit the off switch on my phone?

Two choices—power down or 911.

Emergency, please.

My phone.

Where was my phone?

I’d left it upstairs in the hiding spot under Ava’s desk. It couldn’t help me.

I lay back down on the gurney as another wave of dizziness and nausea hit me. I closed my eyes and let the kind dark take me.

“Clarg . . . Seegle?” Madison murmured. “Ow!”

I forced my eyes open. Madison was beginning to thrash awake.

I sat up sharply and dropped my feet over the edge of the bed.

Mistake.

My head spun and I closed my eyes so I could pull it all back in.

I remembered Dr. Jacobsen telling me about the doctor who did brain surgery in the back of a van. But I wasn’t in a van.

Whatever. This was different. They’d stuck something in my head.

I didn’t feel any different, but how would I know if something was terribly wrong?

I couldn’t think about that now. My brain was my brain, at least for the moment.

I looked over. Kenzie was just beginning to stir. Madison was struggling to wake herself, the kind of angry, ungainly struggle I wished I’d made. She reminded me of a spider I’d washed down the drain a few months ago. A big spider. It had made its way into the shower for water, no doubt, but it surprised me. When the water hit it, it made a beeline for my foot. I kicked it and then directed the water at it, and it angrily refused to die, finally crawling away and over the edge of the tile at the side of the shower—an awkward, sad tangle of limbs.

And now I was in the dark, in the domain of the spiders.

I was dimly aware that I was still dressed—button-down shirt, my dirty sweater, gym shoes, and the ridiculous skirt I’d put on because my regular pants were wet.

I leaned over and tried to sit up.

“Ehhh . . . ” Madison growled, sounding like Frankenstein’s monster on the slab. She lifted her head and looked over at me.

“If you’d gone with me, I wouldn’t be here,” she said, her voice a growl of annoyance.

Madison finished her sentence and leaned back, eyes shut.

“How does that even make sense?” I asked.

Madison didn’t lift her head. “Two guys in a truck,” she said. “They couldn’t have gotten us both . . .”

Madison dropped back off to half sleep mid-sentence, her breath a slight snoring putter.

“Didn’t you get far enough away from the school?” I asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Madison?”

“They weren’t from school,” she murmured. “From town.”

The town. Ava had suggested that the town was run by relatives of Burton. The other half of the town either worked for her family or owed them.

I reached a foot down to the floor. It was a monumental effort, but at least I knew how to get out of here. Up and through the boiler room.

Someone had brought us all down here, and someone would be back.

Or worse yet, the girl in green would find us here, taking our drug naps.

Easy pickings.

Unless we could make it back to school and pretend nothing had happened.

“Kenzie?” I whispered urgently.

“Arrrrr,” she murmured.

“We’ve got to go,” I said.

“In a minute,” Kenzie murmured.

She went back to sleep. Kenzie was much smaller than either Madison or me, and the drug had probably hit her harder.

“Go where?” Madison asked.

“Kenzie!” I said, feeling frustrated.

“Go where?” Madison repeated.

“Out.”

A wave of nausea hit me, and I waited for it to pass before I spoke again.

“We don’t have much time.”

I tested the floor with my other foot and stood.

“You know a way out?” Madison asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Possibly.”

I thought of the medical incinerator. Barlow and I had closed the door. It wasn’t the way out.

Madison staggered to her feet with less success. She stood and fell heavily back against the gurney. She raised her head from where she was doubled over.

“We should leave her behind,” Madison said.

“Kenzie?” I said. “No!”

I glanced over at Kenzie, who had fallen heavily back to sleep. I thought about pulling her to her feet, standing her up and shaking her awake, but the thought of it was exhausting.

“You know we can’t carry her,” Madison said, as though she’d been reading my thoughts. “We’ve gotta get out of here, before they come back.”

“They? Who else besides Burton? And the nurse.”

I remembered Burton and the nurse dragging me down the hall to the office as I blacked out. But Madison had been on the run, dragged in after two men in a truck went after her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe one of the security guards—I didn’t recognize him.”

Madison might have been ready to go in her mind, but her body didn’t agree. She turned, slumped against her gurney, head down, on a nod from the anesthesia.

You’re overfeeding it.

The nurse had said that to Burton, just before I blacked out.

Meaning the girl in green had already eaten.

The monster had eaten Ava.

Ava, devoured by a monster. I hoped that she had never woken up again, once her head cracked on the floor.

And now Madison was suggesting we leave Kenzie here for that thing. There was no way I was doing that.

“Kenzie?” I called.

A sudden metal creak brought me around sharply, as adrenaline broke through the drug haze. Something between a ladder and an iron staircase descended from the ceiling, like an ancient attic ladder. And now, someone was coming. It was too late to try to run.

There was a hollow pong of steps on the stairs, a creak as someone descended.

I recognized the riding boots as they came down the ladder. Burton. Followed by large gym shoes and sweats.

Coach Mullins.

Of course.

The hot chocolate.

He’d shuffled around under the table, looking for marshmallows, or so he said. Instead, he’d drugged our hot chocolate.

“I don’t think she’s going to answer you, poor dear,” Ms. Burton said.

She stood by Kenzie’s gurney.

Coach Mullins had a nasty-looking stick looped around his arm.

Madison looked up, and then looked at me, accusatory. Everything in her face said we should’ve left Kenzie. But neither one of us had been ready to move. There just hadn’t been enough time, and now we were caught.

“Kenzie?” Ms. Burton leaned over and said her name softly. Almost tenderly. “Wake up, dear.”

Coach Mullins hovered behind Burton, arms folded. I tried to imagine what it would take to launch an attack. He was bigger, stronger, and not drugged.

Still, there were three of us and two of them. I looked to Madison, who faced me, doubled over the gurney. She could barely manage to focus her eyes at this point, but still she got the message. She stood, pushing noisily against the gurney, and stumbled toward Coach Mullins, and I followed.

Coach Mullins raised the stick.

“Coach Mullins, shouldn’t we . . . ?” Madison began, walking toward him.

Coach pushed the stick into her bare arm. There was a crackling sound, and Madison fell back, screaming.

“Ow, what the fuck . . . ?” she said, rubbing her arm.

Cattle prod.

“Why did you do brain surgery on us?” I said. “You can’t just experiment on people without their consent. It’s . . .”

Burton laughed. “Brain surgery?” Burton said. “Does he look like a brain surgeon?”

She glanced at Coach Mullins, who shrugged. He should have been offended, but she was right: no one would mistake him for a brain surgeon.

“But, but, there—what about . . . ?” I touched the side of my head, the painful lump under my skin.

“But, but, but,” Burton said, mocking me. “My, you are the articulate one.”

I felt that primal rage that Burton always inspired in me.

“What did you do to us?” Madison said. “What’s in my head?”

“It’s just a tracking device,” Coach Mullins said.

Madison reached up and touched the side of her head.

“We used to tag our runners in the arm,” Burton said. “But some managed to dislodge the trackers from their arms.”

Runners.

That’s what we were.

They’d seen both Madison and me try to escape. Even though I’d come back, I was still a runner.

“So you’re tracking us?” Madison said.

Why would they track students they stuck under the school? It didn’t make any sense. Why would they want to know where we were unless . . .

“They’re tracking a monster,” I said. “When it kills and eats us, they’ll know.”

Calvin Burton started the hospital to have a ready supply of victims, and Ms. Burton had continued with his mission. If she put trackers on students, she would know that the monster was still under the mountain.

The monster was down here, under the school. They wanted to keep it that way.

“Not quite,” Coach Mullins said. “There are dozens of old mine shafts and caves on the mountain. We send explorers in to find them. We’ve closed at least six entrances and we’re getting close to trapping her under the mountain again.”

Madison shook her head in disbelief. “What’s down there?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a monster,” I said. “They’re feeding it students.”

Coach Mullins flinched at the word feeding.

“You shouldn’t have run, Madison,” he said. “We couldn’t have you telling anyone about Ava. If you’d just stayed put, you’d be fine.”

“Ava?” Madison said. “What about Ava?”

I realized that Madison was only here because we’d run together. The headmaster assumed that I’d told Madison about Ava, but I hadn’t.

“Ava’s dead,” I said. “The monster killed her.”

“That was a regrettable accident,” the headmaster said. She shook her head sadly, as though she’d been fond of Ava, and maybe she had. Layla had been the feral one, the troublemaker—like me.

“But you brought that on Ava, didn’t you, Jess?” Burton said. “She would never have done something so stupid on her own.”

I felt a sharp stab of guilt over Ava’s death, followed by a rage so deep that it cut through the drug-born fuzziness.

“What about Layla?” I shot back. “Was she a ‘regrettable accident’?”

“No one in their right mind would ever miss Layla,” the headmaster said.

She was wrong. Ava had missed Layla. Ava saw the feral in her, just like she’d seen it in me. Kenzie saw the best in people, but Ava had a clear-eyed vision about who I was and where I’d been. She’d liked me anyway. I wished that I’d told Ava about the Oliver incident, about my time in Gardner-Betts and all my fuckups and escape attempts. Ava would have understood. I could see that now.

On my first day at DC, when Ms. Burton put a knife in my hand and dared me to use it. She’d been looking for a replacement for Layla—another feral girl with a knife. A dark and irredeemable girl. The kind of girl no one in their right mind would miss.

Ms. Burton went looking for me.

The headmaster chose me to be the next sacrifice.

I wished that I’d picked up that sharpened letter opener on that first day and plunged it straight through her heart. I thought of the graveyard below. All the forgotten people with a first name and a date only. No one to miss them either.

“I guess your family got tired of feeding mentally ill people to the monster, and you switched to us,” I said.

Troublemakers and runaways. Wayward boys. ADHD kids like me who couldn’t sit still and couldn’t follow rules—couldn’t abide a cage.

Ms. Burton laughed bitterly.

“You think this is easy?” she said. “Everyone blamed my great-grandfather for the monster. They thought he released her from this very mountain. But that wasn’t true. The girl in green has always been here and always will be. Calvin Burton simply made the tough decisions to save this town.” She shook her head and sighed deeply. “Someone always has to make the tough decisions.”

“Before Ms. Burton opened the school, terrible things happened,” Coach Mullins said. “My sister lost her eldest son to the monster. He’d be twenty-eight now.”

I thought of eleven-year-old Barlow, meeting the girl in green on the mountainside a year before the headmaster reopened the school. It had almost killed him. If he’d been alone, it would have.

“You’re kidding me,” Madison spat out. “You’re not really going to throw us to some sort of monster?”

Rage and the cattle prod seemed to have burned off a good deal of the drugs in her system.

Coach Mullins shook his head almost sadly in the dim light. “There are so many caves and old mining tunnels in this mountain, we’d never be able to find them all without your help,” he said. “Once we find all the caves, we’ll trap the monster. And you don’t know, maybe the two of you could . . .”

Burton shot him a look mid-sentence and he shut up.

“You know Jess, I almost hope you make it out,” she said. “There’s something about you, isn’t there?”

Burton fixed an eye on me and smiled. Her look was almost wistful.

“You’re not going to let us go,” I said.

Even if Madison and I escaped, they’d hunt us down. There was no way they’d let us go, with everything we knew.

Coach Mullins looked down to the floor.

Burton inhaled and straightened her jacket. I had the feeling we were being dismissed.

“Kenzie, it’s time to go.”

Kenzie pulled herself to a sitting position, clearly still groggy.

“Go?” she asked.

Burton looped a hand under Kenzie’s arm and pulled her to her feet.

“You don’t belong here,” Burton said. “Let’s go to my office. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea and we’ll forget all about this little . . . incident.”

Burton shot daggers at Coach Mullins and he lowered his head. I knew in that instant that Kenzie was never supposed to land down here with us. He meant to drug me. I guess he assumed I was going to drink both cups of cocoa.

He’d dragged us both down here.

Kenzie was someone who mattered, someone who would be missed. Her family wanted her out of the way, and maybe they’d wanted to teach her a lesson about compliance, but I suspected they still wanted her safe.

But Madison and I were runners. I imagined the conversation Burton would have with my mom.

After Jess escaped, we sent out search parties, but the mountain is dangerous. We may never find her.

No one would ever know what really happened to me.

Except Kenzie.

Burton pulled Kenzie toward the stairs. Kenzie put her first foot on the step, hand gripped tightly on the handrail. She turned her head.

“I’m sorry, Jess,” Kenzie said.

And that hurt more than anything. It was one thing to think that Kenzie was still too dazed to make a sensible decision. But to turn and apologize?

She knew what she was doing.

My phone.

At least she had my phone.

“You are such an idiot, Jess,” Madison said. “You should have kept running. You know that . . .”

“Like running did you any good,” I shot back.

“Shut up, both of you,” Coach Mullins commanded. “There’s a backpack beneath you. We’ve given you enough food and water for you to find your way out.”

I looked down at my feet. There was a gray-green military- style backpack. Inside was a long black flashlight. Madison picked up her flashlight and held it like a club. Coach Mullins held out the cattle prod.

“I don’t want to use this on you again, Madison,” he said.

Madison lowered the flashlight. I turned on my flashlight and looked in the backpack. There were two school water bottles and protein bars. Lots and lots of protein bars. Cherry vanilla.

I kept the flashlight in my hand, closed the backpack, and looped a strap over one shoulder.

“Both shoulders,” Coach Mullins barked. “You’ll want to be able to run with all your gear.”

“Why do you care?” Madison spat out. “You just want to see us dead.”

There was genuine hurt in her voice. I’d been here less than two weeks, but she’d been here for years. She’d been captain of the field hockey team. Maybe she’d been close to Coach Mullins.

“I wish things were different, Madison. If only you hadn’t run.” He lowered his voice and looked around, as if Burton were still there, listening. “But if it helps, Madison, my money is on you. You’re faster than Jess. Whatever you do, run. Leave her behind if you have to.”

“Hey!” I said.

I shuddered and my stomach threatened to hurl too-sweet cookie and hot chocolate. The adrenaline had brought me fully around, but left me headachy and nauseous.

“You should have put more work into cardio,” Coach Mullins said sharply. “You’re going to need it. Now move, both of you.”

I put both arms through the backpack awkwardly. I moved the flashlight to my left hand, smooth and heavy, a serious weapon.

He walked behind us, his cattle prod at the ready.

I’d been here before, in the red tinged gloom of the exit signs, and I knew where we were heading. We made our way past the old nurses’ station and turned the corner into the long hall.

And then there was the smell. Underneath the clean, bitter smell of rubbing alcohol was something else.

A cold breeze brought a dusty mountain smell, a hint of something meaty and slightly rotten.

My heart sank.

I didn’t want to find what was left of Ava.

A soft breeze blew from the tunnel and the rotten stink grew stronger. A rush of animal panic overwhelmed my fear of Coach. I turned to run back, and he held the prod out, reaching toward me.

Coach stopped at the opening to the tunnel.

“Go,” he said. “The only way out is down.”

He looked at Madison as he talked, not at me. I wondered how seriously Madison took his plan to throw me to the monster and keep running.

“Fuck you,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Get going,” he said, gripping the handle of the cattle prod tightly and giving it a symbolic push in the direction of the tunnel.

Madison and I began our silent trek down the steps by the incline, three steps forward, three steps down into the belly of the mountain, the scent of decay growing stronger. The opening up top had vanished from view, obscured by the slope of concrete. We were alone together in the tunnel.