“Mallory. You can’t.”
I leaned forward and felt the words before I said them, needing to believe they’d become true. “I can.” I took her arms and wrapped them around my neck, and I put an arm under her horribly twisted limbs, and another around her back.
And I stood up.
She cried out, and my legs were shaky, and my back was pulling, and my grip was unnatural and awkward. But I stood up. I told myself to start walking. And I did.
“Hey,” she said, her face pressed up against my shoulder. “Remember that time you kicked Danielle’s ass?” Maybe she noticed I was shaking and was trying to distract me. Or maybe she didn’t notice anything at all. I didn’t respond—couldn’t really. I was concentrating on each step. “God, that was so awesome.” I found another slope farther up the ravine that weaved into the side of the hill, a little less steep, like a creek used to run down it, and I took it.
My feet kept slipping on the dirt, and we were getting absolutely nowhere. I tried backing up the slope instead, but I lost traction and we landed together in a heap at the bottom. Colleen was screaming from the pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said. But she was in too much pain to acknowledge me. “And I’m really sorry for this,” I said. I gripped her under the shoulders, and I dragged her behind me, up the ravine.
She screamed the whole way. And it took me a while to realize I was crying with her. But then she went silent and all I could hear was myself. Colleen’s body went limp as I heaved her over the side.
I fell beside her in a panic. She was breathing, but unconscious. Which was probably for the best, since I still had to drag her some more.
We kept going up. It was the only thing I could think to do. I saw a crest up ahead—something above the treeline, and I had to get there. I had to get up there to find a way back out.
When I finally reached the top, I set her down. And I gasped. Because from the top I could see multiple paths snaking down behind me, in front of me, to the side. A thousand ways out.
“You were right, Colleen,” I whispered to myself. Because I realized right then, that boy who wandered off, he probably didn’t die out here. There were a thousand different paths out of the woods—maybe he just chose a different one.
Far away in the distance, I could see light. Past the dark trees, the dark forest, there were signs of life. Towns. Communities. Cities. And closer still, flashes of red lighting up in the sky. Fire trucks maybe. Or ambulances. Police. Either way, I knew it was Monroe.
I gripped Colleen under the shoulders and started moving toward the flashes of red lighting up the sky.
The woods were dark, but the world was light.
Colleen just hung there, so I tried to think of something else. Something to distract myself from each torturous step.
We were so close. I could tell by the way the ground leveled out and the space between trees grew wider. And then the red lights went out. I had taken too long. I panicked again, but I couldn’t stop moving. So I kept heading in that direction, or what I thought was that direction. I would hit something—if not Monroe itself, then at least a road—if we just kept moving.
And then I saw a light in the distance. Just a flash, coming through in split frames. Here and not here. Like the way I used to wake up from a dream.
There. Blink. Closer.
Blink. Closer.
Flashlights.
“I’m here!” I screamed, easing Colleen to the forest floor. “We’re over here!”
The footsteps approaching grew more frantic, and suddenly I worried that it was Krista, or all three of them—Krista, Bree, and Taryn—and I crouched down beside Colleen and held my breath.
Then I heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie. I stood up and waved my arms and said, “We’re here,” and I was nearly blinded by the beam of the flashlight, aimed directly at my face.
So I looked at Colleen, illuminated by light, who was perfectly still. Too still. Too pale. Too much blood. “Colleen,” I cried. “Wake up.”
Chapter 23
Mallory,” Mom called from the kitchen. “Lunch is ready.”
I joined her at the kitchen table, eating grilled cheese and drinking soda. We ate in silence, not really looking at each other. She didn’t start clearing the dishes when she finished, just sat with her hands folded on top of the table. “Are you sure?” she asked.
I put down my sandwich. “I’m sure.”
Dad came into the kitchen and said, “Smells good.” He grabbed his grilled cheese off the pan on the stovetop and backed out of the kitchen. “I’ve got some phone calls to make.”
“He’s happy,” I said.
Truth was, Dad had been smiling for days. Ever since I asked him if he knew anything about what happened to a boy named Jack Danvers.
“Never heard of him,” he’d said at first.
“He was a boy who disappeared in the woods and . . .” I thought of the makeshift cross. “Danvers Jack, maybe?”
His pen froze an inch from the paper he’d been writing on. “What do you know about Danvers Jack?” he’d asked.
“He wandered off during initiation,” I said. “So they say. And they never found his body. Some people say he haunts the woods.” I thought of Reid telling me how he thought he could feel something out there. “They say they can feel him.”
Dad’s face cracked—first down, then up. And then he was laughing. “Haunting the woods, huh? Is that what he’s been up to?” He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and laughed some more.
“Dad?”
“Danvers Jack wandered off, that’s for sure. Couldn’t stand the idea of being trapped anywhere. Of anyone telling him what to do. We’d been marched into this ravine and left there for the night. Tradition, as I’m sure you know.” He grinned at me. I guess he didn’t realize how well I knew that ravine. “Anyway, about an hour in, someone noticed he was missing. Everyone panicked. He didn’t show up back at the dorm or anything, but when we walked into first period, he was sitting at his desk, smiling at us. Became a bit of an urban legend, I guess. Or, like you said, a warning.” He smirked.
“Stay with the group,” I said. And Dad smiled, like we shared a secret. I leaned forward and said, “I didn’t.”
And then he was laughing again. “Of course you didn’t.”
“Maybe in twenty years, someone will name a dorm after me too.”
“Name a dorm after you? Oh, Danvers. Other way around, Mallory. Danvers Jack isn’t his name. He was named after the dorm. We had several Jacks that year. He was the Jack who lived in the Danvers dorm. So when they were trying to find out who went missing, someone said ‘Danvers Jack.’ And it stuck. He was my roommate.” And then he started laughing again.
And then so was I, because all this time Reid didn’t realize he’d been learning about his own father. Didn’t realize how close he’d always been to him. Didn’t realize it was him he felt standing at the edge of the woods. Dad said, “And here I thought he was gone for good.”
Jack Carlson, gone but not forgotten.
“You don’t have to do this,” Mom said. “This isn’t about Dad. Or me.”
“I know.” I picked up our plates and took them to the sink. “It’s for me,” I said. Then I slid on a pair of flip-flops and said, “I’ll be back soon.”