And then their tone changes.
“I still hear things at night,” Lin says softly, as if he were facing the floor when he says it.
“That’s what happens when someone drowns,” Jasper snaps, his voice so high it sounds like it might break, as if his mind were fraying along seams. “They fucking haunt you because they’re pissed.”
Drowned.
Drowned.
Drowned.
Haunt, haunt, haunt.
My heart is now in my nose, and I can barely breathe. I have to tell my lungs to inhale, to exhale, to not make a sound.
Max drowned. In the lake? Broke through the ice? My head throbs and the blood pumping through my veins feels too loud, a crush inside my ears. I should leave, slink down the hall before they hear me, find me, discover me spying.
“Shut up,” Rhett says, and I hold a hand over my mouth, to silence my own breath.
“I can’t sleep,” Lin argues. “I can’t take it.”
More unheard words, and then Suzy’s voice rises above the others, her inflection strange—covert. “Nora says she found Oliver in the woods.”
I feel my eyebrows pinch together—unsure why she’s saying this. Why it matters.
“She said he was there for the last two weeks, hiding or something.”
“What?” one of them says, Rhett maybe.
The music downstairs pauses suddenly, then starts up a second later with a new song. There are shouts from below, someone arguing. A drunken disagreement.
One of the boys on the other side of the wall says something else I can’t make out, and then I hear the shuffle of feet, the lazy tread of three boys and a girl walking toward the door.
I waited too long.
Rhett steps through the doorway, and for a second I think that if I don’t move, maybe they’ll walk right by me, they’ll think I am only a shadow pressed against the wall. Only a ghost. But Rhett jerks and his eyes bore into me.
“What the fuck!” he exclaims.
And in the next second, Jasper is shouldering past Rhett and grabbing my arm. “She fucking heard everything we said.” Across Jasper’s left cheek is a bright-red gash, the place where the tree limb sliced him open at the bonfire.
Rhett squeezes his temples with his hands. “Shit.”
I yank my arm back, but Jasper grabs me again, harder this time. Fingers pinching my skin. “Don’t touch me!” I shout, my body stiffening, resisting, but he’s too strong and he forces me into the room.
Moonlight glints through the window onto a bed neatly made with an embroidered patchwork quilt. The room is cold, as if there were a draft, but the window is closed.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Rhett repeats, pacing across the dark room, his voice like shards of glass, slicing me open each time he speaks.
Suzy stands in the doorway, and I flash my eyes to hers but she won’t look up, her arms crossed over her chest, like a bird with its wings folded in on itself, shielding her eyes from mine.
But Rhett glares at me like I’m an animal caught in a trap—which is exactly what I am. Trapped. I hold my arms at my sides, rigid as a girl who will bite and claw her way out of here if she has to. A girl with teeth to tear away flesh.
“What did you hear, moon girl?” Rhett asks, taking a half step closer to me, his eyes concealed in shadow, as if he’s deciding my fate.
“Nothing,” I say, my voice defiant.
“She’s lying,” Jasper snarls, still holding my arm, his tall frame towering over me. “She heard us talking about Max. She’ll tell the cops when the road clears.”
I squint up at him, a thorn pricking at my temples.
Rhett rakes a hand through his dusty-blond hair, looking for answers in the dark corners of the room. He shakes his head at me and takes a step back, toward the door.
“We can’t trust her,” Jasper adds, his gaze now on Rhett.
My eyes sweep to Suzy again and then to Lin—wearing his big puffy coat with the hood pulled up, even inside—and I wait for one of them to say something, to interject, to tell Jasper to let me go. But neither of them will look my way. They’re afraid of Jasper and Rhett, their eyes sunk to the floor.
“You’re staying in here,” Rhett says, his pupils like black bottomless holes, “until we figure out what to do with you.”
I move toward him, but Jasper still has a hold of my arm. “You can’t lock me in here!” I shout.
Rhett’s shoulders draw back. A cold pallor washed over his face.
“Rhett,” Suzy says finally, stepping farther into the room. “She doesn’t know anything.”
But Rhett turns on her, only a few inches from her face. “Do you want to stay in here too?”
“No,” she answers. “But you can’t do this.”
“Watch me,” he replies.
For a moment, Suzy blinks up at him like she might say something else, like she might shove him in the chest and yell for me to run. But then her gaze falls away, not meekly, but in understanding—she knows there’s nothing she can do. She’s outnumbered. My heart sinks. And when Rhett steps back through the doorway, he grabs her by the hand and pulls her with him.
He’s already made up his mind. And he’s going to leave me in here.
Jasper releases my arm and slips quickly out into the hall with the others, just before Rhett pulls the door shut with a hard thud.
The room dips into darkness.
I run to the door, fumbling for the knob, nails scratching against the grain of the wood. But it’s too late. I pound on the door, I try to yank it open, but the door only bends slightly. They’ve locked it somehow, secured it shut to keep the witch in her cage.
“No!” I shout, pulling again on the knob. But it won’t budge. Shit.
I press my ear to the wood of the door, listening to see if they’re still there. But then I hear the clomping of footsteps moving away, back down the hall.
“Wait!” I scream against the door. “Please!” But there’s only silence.
And the dark of the room.
I turn and lean against the door, pressing my head back. I think of what Mr. Perkins told me, how more miners died at the hands of one another than in the cruel dark of the forest.
It’s the hearts of men we should fear most.
But they can’t keep me in here. Not for long.
The camp counselors will discover the boys have snuck out from their cabins. They will hear the music thudding from across the lake. They will come to investigate. Search the house. They will let me out.
But what if the counselors don’t come? What if Suzy was right and they no longer care what the boys do, no longer care if they sneak away, as long as they’re back in their bunks by sunrise?
If I’m left here, locked inside, how long until they come back to let me out?
“Hey!” I call, feeling desperate again. I pound my fists against the door. Bang. Bang. Bang. Maybe one of the other boys will hear me, come let me out. Though I doubt they can even hear my shouts over the music. Or that they’d even care.
Drowned, I think again.
Max drowned in the lake, sank to the bottomless bottom, maybe froze to death before the water even had time to fill his lungs.
Then where is his body? Where is it hidden?
I’m missing something.
Some great big part of it doesn’t make sense.