Chapter 35 - The Girl in Green

Madison had been right when she’d said that Kenzie would never end up in the tunnels because she was rich. She just hadn’t known how right she was.

As it turned out, Burton had been pretty upset that Coach Mullins had drugged Kenzie alongside me. He wasn’t the brightest bulb apparently, and now he was under arrest, implicated in the disappearance of multiple students. Dr. Jacobsen had seen to that. It was Dr. Jacobsen who bypassed the local police and called the state police to report several missing children.

The state police arrived quickly, to find Coach Mullins tied up in his office. Which was peculiar, and the police had questions about that.

Dr. Jacobsen confessed to tying up Coach Mullins, which got him in trouble initially. Once Dr. Jacobsen directed the state police to a supply closet in Coach’s office, where they found a supply of knock-out drugs and restraints, the state police drew their own conclusions about Coach Mullins. Wrong conclusions as it turned out, but accurate enough. Supposedly, when asked where he’d hidden the bodies, Coach told them “Under the mountain—but it wasn’t me! It was the monster!”

They imagined that he was speaking metaphorically, and that the monster was the monster inside himself. The police imagined—a lot of things.

Coach Mullins was a monster. Just not that kind.

When the smoke finally cleared, the police found the way into the old hospital. They found the tunnel under the mountain, and the pile of corpses they found sealed Coach Mullins’s fate.

What they didn’t find was the monster.

* * *

Days later, we were all sitting around the small kidney-shaped pool at the tiny motel on the outskirts of town. Kenzie’s family had rented the whole place for students and teachers, until students could be transferred to new schools. Kenzie wryly observed that it was easier for her family to rent an entire motel than to come and get her personally.

The more luxurious Guesthouse had closed down. Burton’s cousin who owned The Guesthouse hotel had fled the county, when it became clear that things had gone terribly wrong at the school.

“How did you know about the stairs in the back of the fireplace?” Barlow asked Star.

Barlow and I were curled up together on a wide chaise, my right side to his left. He had multiple stitches on his right shoulder, scars that were still healing.

We all turned toward Star.

“It was obvious,” Star said. A very Star thing to say.

“Not to me,” Barlow said. “When those stairs came down from the ceiling? I had no idea. I thought we were toast.”

I nestled closer to Barlow. I’d had nightmares about the two of us holding the door closed against the monster. In my nightmares—no stairs. We were simply trapped with no hope of escape. From the look in his eyes, I could tell that moment had haunted him too.

“Jess helped me figure it out,” Star said.

“How?” Barlow said.

“She told me that Ms. Burton said that the fireplace was very old, and no longer worked,” Star said. “But the original building was a Kirkbride sanatorium. Why would anyone build a fireplace in an interior room in a sanatorium? It had to have been added later.”

“That wasn’t much to go on,” Kenzie said. “How could you be sure there wasn’t a fireplace added later?”

“There’s no chimney,” Star said. “It had to be a fake fireplace.”

“Still, to figure out that it was a staircase?” Barlow said.

“When Ava and Jess told me that someone had been in the old hospital, I knew there had to be another way in,” she said. “It only made sense that the headmaster would have access in her office.”

Star made it all seem so simple, but I would have never figured it out in a million years.

Barlow looked down. “I wish I’d known,” he murmured.

“It’s not your fault,” Kenzie said.

“I could have done things differently.”

I knew what Barlow was thinking. If he’d known, he could have stopped Soren from being devoured by that thing. He regretted bringing Soren down into the tunnels with us.

My worst regret was having my body make the decision to stay hidden when the monster came for Madison. It made me realize that there are moments in life where you don’t choose, you simply react. For so long after the Oliver incident, I’d imagined that I was a violent person by nature, but that wasn’t true. I was not the irredeemable person the headmaster thought I was.

I did what I had to, nothing more.

The instinct to survive is stronger than nobility or courage.

I could have stabbed the monster and saved Madison, but I was too afraid. I had to live with that.

“We survived,” Kenzie said.

“I’m here because of the three of you,” I said.

Kenzie had been beyond bold. And more than bold, she’d been smart. Burton had taken her straight from the old hospital to the nurse’s office. At some point the nurse went home, leaving the security guard to watch Kenzie.

The security guard who was her fan.

And then she managed to drug the coach with her hydroxyzine. Bold.

“I still don’t understand how you got him with the hydroxyzine,” I said.

“Ugh!” Kenzie said. “That was the worst.”

Barlow looked down. I knew what he was thinking. Kenzie’s worst was not the worst. We had both seen the worst.

“I went to Coach and demanded an apology,” Kenzie said. “I threatened his job.”

Barlow and I laughed. The idea of Kenzie pulling her heir-to-a-fortune, desk-pounding routine was hilarious. It was so antithetical to who she was. I wish I could have seen it.

“It was so easy. I told him he had to pull my records and change all my grades.”

Kenzie grimaced, but in that grimace was a hint of shame. She’d seen this act before and she knew how to play it. She’d come from her own family of monsters. She wanted no part of that.

“You didn’t,” I said.

“He went scurrying off to get his laptop, and I put it in his coffee. It was so easy. He left his cup right there in front of me.”

The wind picked up, sending skittering clouds across the weak-ass sun.

“Ava would have been proud,” I said.

Kenzie bowed her head.

“She would have been proud of all of us,” she said.

* * *

The crowd of students thinned over the days.

I wasn’t staying at the motel with the rest of them. Mom insisted that I bunk with her and Tree. Once again, I was sleeping on a broken-down couch in the living room. It felt like home.

Mom was hovering, just a little. After all that had happened, I didn’t mind.

Ms. Burton had gaslighted me into thinking that Mom wanted nothing more than to scrape me off her shoes, like I was something she’d stepped in and couldn’t get away from fast enough. The truth was more complicated.

Mom had wanted to give me a chance to make a go of things at DC, but after her meeting with the headmaster, something felt off. And then when she came to say goodbye to me the next morning, Ms. Burton had turned her away.

“She told me it would be easier on you if I didn’t make a big scene,” Mom said. “She told me it was time to respect your autonomy.”

“Autonomy my ass,” Tree said.

“Bad vibes,” Mom said. “I couldn’t leave without knowing you were okay.”

Tree had invited Mom to stay in her spare bedroom. Truth is, I think Tree was a little lonely here.

I’d never been happier for Mom’s urban witch vibe check.

* * *

A few days later, Barlow and I were on a walk through the town. There was very little else to do. Barlow would drop his mom off at work and drive into town. We’d gotten in the habit of meeting for a walk to the diner every morning.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

“I think I’m going back to Austin,” I said.

When Michaela heard from Mom what had happened, she immediately asked us back. She hadn’t rented out the garage yet.

Barlow sighed.

“I guess there’s no reason to stay here,” he said.

As much as I’d come to appreciate everything about the mountains, even the damp cold, it was hard to imagine what I’d do if I stayed. Barlow had said it himself—the local high school wasn’t great. Most people who grew up here tried to get out as soon as possible.

“You could always come with me,” I said.

Even as I said it, I knew it wouldn’t happen. Barlow was tied to this place. I knew that from the moment I met his mom at the tiny regional hospital. Everyone at the hospital knew Barlow. And as much as they fussed over his arm, they were more worried about what he would do now that the fancy prep school had burned down. He was their golden boy, and it wasn’t hard to see why.

They had plans for him. That, I understood.

“Wild idea,” I said quickly. “Forget I said anything.”

Barlow looked at me and smiled.

The pale morning sun cast a golden glow over his murderously beautiful cheekbones and that epic nose. The warmth of his smile faded into something tinged with regret. He grabbed my hand and held it tightly.

“I wish I could,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “Maybe I can come back here sometime.”

He leaned his head against mine. I think we both knew that wouldn’t happen.

Kenzie’s parents ran a tab at the diner where Tree worked. Any hour of the day, you could find a ragtag group of students and teachers eating, talking, drinking coffee. The crotchety owner groused about us meddling kids and poor Miss Delilah, who never harmed a fly, God rest her soul. And now she was missing. Somehow, he knew it was all our fault.

Like everyone in town, the crotchety owner was being well paid by Kenzie’s family to attend to the students—and to keep his mouth shut. He couldn’t quite manage to keep his mouth shut, so he just wandered around low-key grumbling.

When we made it to the diner, Dr. Jacobsen was alone in a booth, drinking coffee.

He saw us and grimaced. He glanced away and then looked back and waved.

“Hey, Dr. Jacobsen,” Barlow said.

“Hey, Barlow. Jess,” he replied.

I went behind the counter and got coffee for both of us. The restaurant owner had given up on controlling anything since he was being well paid to act as the school cafeteria. He let us get our own drinks.

Barlow sat in the booth across from Dr. Jacobsen.

Dr. Jacobsen looked older, his face lined and indifferently shaved. He looked like he hadn’t slept much.

Barlow pulled back the collar of his shirt to reveal the bandage on his shoulder. From behind the counter, I couldn’t hear them, but I had the feeling that Barlow was trying to reassure Dr. Jacobsen that everything was all right.

We all knew that it wasn’t.

I slid into the booth next to Barlow.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do more,” Dr. Jacobsen said. “You must have suffered. I can’t even imagine what . . .”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

Dr. Jacobsen was crying. Like really crying. Unabashedly. I never cried like that around other people.

“I should have known,” he said. “I should have protected you all.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Barlow said.

“We all made mistakes,” I said.

I looked down into my coffee, thinking of Madison.

Dr. Jacobsen sniffed and wiped his eyes with a paper napkin.

He stood, leaving a mostly untouched cup of coffee behind.

“Take care of yourself, both of you,” he said.

That was the last we ever saw of him.