“What am I supposed to think, Sera? You came to my shop every day for three weeks. And every time, we talked a little longer, and you sat a little closer.”
“Stop.” My face is going hot.
“Stop what? Stop rehashing the fact that you literally asked me to kiss you, and now I feel like I misinterpreted or—I don’t even know! I feel like I wronged you on that deck.”
“You didn’t! I never, ever felt wronged!”
He throws up his hands, looking twice as big as usual. “Then what the hell was with the silent treatment? What did I do wrong?”
Nothing. My insides are breaking apart. My mother is winning, isn’t she? I push my hands into the center of my chest and beg my ribs to hold true. “Can we just let it go? It was one kiss. One night.”
He moves in until I can see lighter flecks in his irises. “You made it clear that kiss was a really big damn deal for you, that whatever it was between us was worth that deal.”
Shame burns up my throat like acid. “I know that.”
“And the second you walked away, you acted like you didn’t know my name.”
“I did, and I’m sorry.”
“Why? Why did you do it?”
Because after I walked off that porch, I knew. Lucas wasn’t just some guy to hang out with on a Friday night. And all that fluttering in my middle wasn’t just a lethal cocktail of teenage hormones and postwrap high either. It was different. More.
It wasn’t going to end on Sophie’s deck. I knew I could fall for him. Get swept away. Follow my heart until I changed. Until he changed me the way Charlie changed my mother.
How can I explain any of that? Answer: I can’t.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you,” I say instead.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Tell me why.”
My eyes fall to the Dangerous on his arm. Feels about right. “Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid because we kissed?” he asks.
“Afraid because you’re you.”
He steps closer, and my breath catches. Another step and I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull air at all. He lowers his head until I can see the prominent line of his nose, the wide, heavy-lidded set of his eyes.
“You wishing you could undo what happened?” he asks.
My heart double-thumps because I know that look. He wants to kiss me again. Or still. I don’t know which word applies. I only know I want it too. And I can’t.
I step back, foot wobbling over a root, finding harder ground. Another step and I’m turning, trees stretching up around me like walls. I can’t be here anymore. The real world is out there somewhere, with my dad and my senior year and all those little stupid things I worked hard to keep under control. My room is out there, my yellowing quilt and the window air conditioner that smells like a cheap hotel and drips cold water onto my carpet. I want to go home.
Lucas catches me a hundred yards down the stream. I’m already breathless and stiff-legged, and mosquitoes are flitting around my head and neck. But he’s not winded, steady hands clamped on my arms and voice even when he says my name. Of course he’s steady. He takes one step for every three of mine.
“Let me go,” I say.
“It’s dark, Sera,” he says.
“Let go!” I push against his grip with a keening sound that should embarrass me. It doesn’t. Pushing doesn’t work, so I pull hard. I’m free but not for long.
Lucas grabs me again, gently, but I’m lurching like a dog on a chain. He hauls me back against him, and I take a breath. He doesn’t smell great, but he’s so solid and warm and making all the right soft, hushing noises.
“You’re smarter than this,” he says. “Think for just one damn minute here. We don’t have to talk. Just don’t run.”
“I can’t stay here,” I say around a hiccup. “I have to get out of here.”
“You will.”
I swallow hard, eyes jumping from tree to tree.
Lucas’s hands tighten on my arms. “Sera. You will get out of here, OK?”
“You can’t promise me that.” I hiccup over a sob. “You can’t rescue us.”
His smile softens all his sharp places. “Hell, what are you talking about? I’m planning on you rescuing me, Spielberg. Figured you could piggyback me back to town.”
A laugh finds its way through my sob, but I’m still shaky.
“I didn’t mean to make you run,” he says.
“You didn’t.” Which is why I can’t keep ignoring his questions. I don’t want to talk about us any more than I want to talk about the food in that cooler or look at the letters on his arm. But I have to.
I take a slow breath and look at him. “I don’t regret what happened, but it wasn’t supposed to happen. I can’t go to that place, you know? It’s just not something I can do.”
It’s a weird explanation, one that hints at rules he can’t possibly understand and wreckage from my mom he can’t possibly see. I wait for him to sigh, maybe to let go. But he doesn’t. He just accepts it.
Forest sounds stretch between us, and weird, twitchy energy hums beneath my skin like I’m an amplifier. I’m buzzing with too much power, primed to pop at the slightest provocation. Lucas’s hands spread over my shoulder blades, and I go still. The humming slows. I can feel the press of every finger. The heat of his chest.
Something stirs low in my belly, and I think of a dozen afternoons in the shop, his welding mask propped up on his head and his face streaked with sweat and grime. I always sat on the edge of a bench, swinging my legs and watching him work. Feeling as frenetic and confused as the sparks scattering on the concrete floor by his boots.
I feel like those sparks now, but it’s familiar. Almost comforting.
His thumb grazes my spine, and my stomach dips low. He does it again, and my whole world shrinks down to that single touch. The repetition of it crawls under my skin, bringing back all the times I turned the other way when I saw him, hand on my chest, trying to press my pulse back to something normal.
Regret turns bitter on the back of my tongue. Someone is hunting us, someone who thinks I’m a Darling, but I’m not. I haven’t been darling at all.
I’ve been a liar. I’ve been cruel to him. He is better than that, and so am I.
“Lucas.” His name is full of all the things I don’t have words for.
My arms go around his waist, so shaky it’s like I’m ill. His thumb pauses at the change, lifts away. An ache unfurls in the place he touched, spreading out through my middle.
I burrow closer and feel him take a sharp breath. Looking at him like this pushes confidence into me. For the first time since I woke up with this word on my arm, I’m in charge. This decision—this reckless, crazy choice—is all on me.
His hands slide down my back, and I’m pulling at the front of his shirt because I can’t stretch up any further on my toes, and this kiss is not like before. There’s no finesse to either of us this time. It’s too hard and hungry to be sweet, but I don’t want sweet out here. I want the scrape of his scratchy chin and the burn of losing my breath.
Lucas makes that certain sound again, and heat and adrenaline race neck and neck through my veins. Is this still wrong? Do my rules apply out here, with my whole world gone to hell and this thing between us gluing me back together?
He breaks off, sighs my name against my lips. I lean my forehead into his chest and take a breath that smells like moss and woods and dark, rotting things. I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what happens next.
And then I hear the screams.
Chapter 15
It’s Emily, and there’s blood. That’s all I can sort out at first when we stumble back to the fire. My brain flips through images like a slide show in fast-forward. A charred, still-smoking log rolled away from the fire. A hunk of dark hair hanging over Emily’s left eye. A smear of blood on her c
hin. On her hands. But she doesn’t look injured.
Is it Jude’s blood?
My focus widens, and the scene unfolds, making no more sense as a whole than it did in pieces. Jude’s shoulders are tensed, and Mr. Walker is sleeping again, head lolled on one shoulder. Emily is a trembling mess.
The cooler is pushed out, cockeyed from where it was. I can see that there’s a rectangular hole in the soil beneath it. A hole one of us was bound to find.
It was right there, waiting for us. A raw ache in my gut tells me whoever dug that hole was counting on us finding it.
I don’t want to look at what’s inside, the thing that has Jude and Emily so pale. The thing that left blood spatters on Emily’s fingers.
My first glance doesn’t tell me much. The hole is maybe ten inches deep and wet at the bottom. My insides shrivel up. Please don’t let it be a part of Ms. Brighton inside that dirty hole.
I lean closer, spotting the bundles of sticks. I think they’re tied together. Like they’re supposed to be something.
“What is that?” I ask. Sticks and blood? What kind of art and craft from hell is this? Then I see it. They’re arranged and bound into torsos and limbs, little heads and scraps that might be clothing. Like voodoo dolls made from bits of trees.
There are four of them. Three dolls are standing or sitting, and one is sleeping. My eyes catch on a scrap of red fabric on the biggest doll. Red like Lucas’s shirt. There are curling leaves on the head of the doll beside it—poplar leaves, I think. They remind me of Jude’s hair, and I don’t think that’s accidental, especially when I see the black moss and sharply slanted eyes on the doll that’s supposed to be Emily.
These dolls are supposed to be us.
That means the sleeping doll must be Mr. Walker. And I’m…missing? Hidden? I inch forward, my belly a sack of eels and every one of Emily’s hitching sobs making it worse. The doll in the middle has dark hair. There’s a jut of sticks—a pointy chin—dark eyes, and a pool of black liquid underneath it. Ink?
And then it all comes together. That’s not Mr. Walker; it’s me. It’s a me-doll, and it’s lying in a pool of blood.
A wave of vertigo rolls over me. I want to look away, but I can’t.
“Where did you find these?” Lucas asks. “Were they here?”
“The whole time,” Jude says, sounding broken.
My vision’s gone blurry. I can’t focus.
“Sera.” Lucas’s voice is low. He means to be soothing. Because I’m standing here, mouth gaping and eyes wide like a crazy person, and I’m probably scaring the fricking crap out of him. I should say something.
“Why is there blood?” I ask stupidly, and Emily just cries louder.
“Knock it off!” Lucas snaps at her. “You’re not helping.”
Emily doesn’t knock it off, and Lucas is too keyed up to handle it. He stomps forward, and Jude launches to his feet. “Back off!”
“Then calm her the hell down!”
“We’re all freaked,” he says, “so get your little Neanderthal power trip in check, and let her cry if she wants.”
“Neanderthal power trip? What the hell are you talking about?”
Jude’s eyes narrow to slits. “Do you need me to spell the big words?”
“Why is there blood everywhere?” It’s more scream than question, and it shuts everyone up. Even Emily. She’s got tears smeared down her face and snot running over her upper lip, and she’s looking at me.
“Is that supposed to be me?” I already know. I don’t know why I’m playing stupid.
No one will meet my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sera,” Emily says. “I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t do anything to be sorry for, but that’s not the point. I know why she’s sorry. It’s what decent people feel when something bad happens to you. Or when something bad is going to happen.
I force myself to look at the dolls again, to make some sort of sense of this. My doll is definitely not sleeping. The eyes are still open. And there’s a section of hair that’s shiny and stuck together. A head wound. So there it is. In this scene, I’m the dead girl.
Another flare of dizziness hits, so I close my eyes and take a breath. Slow and steady, my chest opens wide, but it does nothing to soothe me.
I’m supposed to be dead. Or I’m going to be dead.
The other dolls look alive. Lucas is standing. Emily and Jude are seated. No one else’s doll is stretched out in a pool of blood. None of the other dolls are bloody at all.
Wait.
No, they do have blood. I lean in a little because even the last bits of purpling sky are going black. Even in the low light, I can see the dark stains at the ends of the other dolls’ arms.
“So I’m dead and someone’s cutting off your hands?” I ask. I sound like someone else, someone who is asking about something that does not matter.
Emily wipes her snotty nose on her sleeve. She still won’t look at me.
“I mean, that’s what the blood is about,” I say. “Whoever he is, whoever left this—they want your fingers or hands or whatever. Like Ms. Brighton. But you lucked out because they only want me dead. The Darling.”
Someone laughs. Is that me? I think it is. The Darling is amused. That makes me laugh again because it’s ridiculous. Every last bit of it.
“Sera, this isn’t going to happen,” Lucas says.
Something hot rolls over me. I push back at it, but it curls around my edges. It will swallow me, this feeling. I’ll snap.
“We won’t let that happen,” Lucas says, misreading my quiet.
“How the hell do you think you’ll be able to stop it?” My volume startles me. “I know you want to help, but how can you? We don’t even know what this is. Is it a psychopath? That dead girl’s ghost? A serial killer? You should worry about yourselves. About your hands.”
“I don’t think the hands are cut off,” Jude says. He’s studying the dolls with a strange expression, eyes narrowed and thumb at his chin, his Deceptive lost in shadows.
Lucas scoffs. “Why’s that? Because your special hands play such beautiful music?”
“They do, but that’s not why. Do those dolls look injured to you?”
I don’t know. I can’t look anymore. My ears are ringing, and I can’t beat back the image of that sticky pool underneath the doll with my hair. My face.
Lucas’s boots crunch as he walks closer. “No. They look like they’re worried about Sera. Because she’s the victim.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to look worried,” Jude says.
Emily sniffs into her arms. “Me either.”
“Holy shit.” Lucas sounds faintly sick. “We’re supposed to look like the killers.”
My face goes numb, but I shake my head. “That’s stupid. There’s no weapon. No motive. The only thing we can see is that I’m dead. Lying in a pool of blood.”
“And that same blood is on our hands,” Jude says. “Think like a director, Sera. Look at the scene. We’re lording over you, looking down at you. Your blood is on our hands.”
My hands ball up. Jude’s right. Whoever put these dolls together didn’t do anything unintentionally. Doll-Jude and Doll-Lucas are looking down on my body. Doll-Emily is watching like it’s a movie. My mind swims with masking tape x’s and a dozen light checks. If this is a scene set, then I’ve been murdered.
All three dolls have my blood on their hands. As if they are my killers.
Chapter 16
An owl calls softly in the distance—deep, hollow hoots that warble into a low trill. It sends goose bumps up on my arms, but I still can’t tear my gaze away from the dolls.
I shake my head because it doesn’t make sense. This makes it look like one of us is responsible for killing me, but what about Ms. Brighton and Madison and Hayley? And what about the words on our arms? If this w
hole stupid thing is some sort of elaborate warning, who the hell would bother?
Why wouldn’t they just save me?
I bite my lip and look at the four people in camp. It doesn’t fit. None of it. They don’t have a reason, and they couldn’t pull this off. Jude was vomiting that first day. Emily was asleep beside me. Lucas was—Lucas just wouldn’t. No way. And Mr. Walker is half dead. Plus, I don’t know who would have access to serious drugs.
Except that Lucas’s mom takes Halcion. And Jude has enough money to buy whatever he wants. And I don’t know anything about Emily.
I push my hands into my hair. None of those facts change anything. Even at a record-breaking level of paranoia, I can’t buy any of them doing this. Period. They’re being framed.
In the weirdest possible way I’ve ever seen.
Lucas and Jude are watching me like I’m an injured animal they desperately want to rescue. My mouth goes dry, and I swallow hard. I’d like to rescue them back. I’d like to rescue all of us, but we need someone who actually has some damn clue how to survive out here.
My shoulders jerk. That’s why Mr. Walker is drugged. Someone who plants food and speakers and writes words on people’s arms…someone who would plan something this elaborate wouldn’t want us to outsmart them. With Mr. Walker’s help, we would.
It makes sense. He doesn’t have a word on his arm or a doll made of sticks. He’s not part of this like us. They’re keeping him drugged because he’s the one person who could get us out of here before that countdown is done and I wind up dead.
Someone brushes my arm, and I jerk, my heart pushing out an extra beat.
“Hey,” Lucas says.
He’s using his soft voice, the one he uses when he’s finishing a piece. I remember bringing him a cup of coffee one morning—since I can barely stand the smell, this should have been a clear sign of how bad I had it—and he offered me a velvet-soft thank you that turned my insides liquid warm. He stayed quiet and gentle until it was done. Ten minutes later, there was a new sheet of steel—a new thing to fold and cut and weld. And Lucas was back to standard volume, his laughs echoing off the high ceiling.