The monster was no longer content to wait in the heart of the forest. It had come to the center of Fairfold in the middle of the day, and Hazel wasn’t sure if it could even be slain.
Whether it had come for Severin, because someone had summoned it, or for a reason beyond Hazel’s comprehension, she had to focus.
She needed to get out of that hallway and she needed to get Molly out, too. Carrying Molly over her shoulders would be possible, but not ideal. Hazel wouldn’t be able to fight and she wouldn’t be able to move fast, either.
“Stay right there,” Hazel said to Molly softly as she got up. She passed the widening crack in the wall, from which tendrils of ivy spilled into the room like snakes, and she went down the hall toward the art room just as two people came barreling around the corner. It was Carter, with a phone in one hand and a hockey stick in the other. Robbie Delmonico was beside him, brandishing a baseball bat. He yelped at the sight of her, stumbling back into a bank of lockers, making them rattle like chains.
Hazel found her hands balled into loose fists. “What the hell?”
“Relax. We were looking for you,” Carter said. He was wearing the rib pad from his football uniform and knee plates. Hazel had never before noticed how much football gear was like armor. With his broad shoulders and excellent jawline, he looked like Sir Morien from the Round Table. “Emergency services people won’t let anyone back into the school. Ben and Jack got stuck out in the parking lot, so they’ve been lecturing me over texts on where you might go.” He gestured vaguely toward the front of the school.
“There’s some kind of thing,” Robbie put in. “We found three freshmen under one of the tables in the cafeteria. They were out cold—or at least I thought they were, but one of them opened her eyes and told me something super creepy—something about bones. Then she passed out again. We carried them to some EMTs through an open window, but figured we’d stay inside until we were sure everyone else got out.”
Hazel nodded. She was forcibly reminded what a good guy Robbie was and why she’d kissed him in the first place, before things had gotten weird. The hardest thing about being wanted was the hardest thing about wanting—wanting badly enough that it gave you a stomachache, wanting in the way that was partly about kissing and partly about swallowing whole, the way a snake gulps down a mouse or the Big Bad Wolf gulps down Red Riding Hood—wanting turned someone you felt like you knew into a stranger. Whether that person was your brother’s best friend or a sleeping prince in a glass prison or a girl who kissed you at a party, the moment you wanted more than just touching your mouth to theirs, they became terrifying and you became terrified. “Dead and gone and bones,” she said.
He lifted his bat higher, eyes widening. “Not you, too!”
Hazel shook her head, sighing. “Molly said that, before she passed out. She was—I don’t know—possessed or something like it.”
“Molly Lipscomb?” Carter looked past Hazel, down the hallway, and stiffened at the sight of Molly’s body. “Did you see the monster? Was it here?”
Hazel shook her head. “We’ve got to move her, though. I’m getting a chair.” She turned to Robbie. “Try to find rope or yarn or something we can tie her with.”
“Yeah, okay.” Robbie nodded, starting toward one of the classrooms.
“Jack says…” Carter seemed to realize he was talking to himself more than them and bit off the thought with the shake of his head. “I’ll stay by Molly. You guys get whatever you think you need.”
Hazel found a swivel chair behind the teacher’s desk in the second classroom she entered and rolled it into the hall, while Robbie managed to discover a spool of heavy bright blue string in one of the closets. Hazel lifted Molly, while Robbie braced the chair so her weight didn’t send it flying suddenly backward. Then Carter helped them tie her in place, as if she were a prisoner about to be interrogated or a fly stuck in a spider’s web. Head lolling to one side, eyes shut, Molly was soon held fast to the chair by layers and layers of crisscrossed string.
Then Hazel went back for a weapon. She found a pair of heavy scissors in the desk and slammed them down until the two pieces came apart and she had made herself twin daggers.
“Jesus, that was loud,” Carter said, hands on the back of Molly’s chair. “Come on.”
They walked down the empty hall together, peering into abandoned classrooms, where jackets were still draped over the backs of chairs and desks still had papers and pens and books lying on them. Whiteboards had been left with math problems half solved, carried ones floating above unadded numerals. A documentary about genetics still played on a projection screen. A few desks in the back of one room were entirely covered in a spreading tide of moss.
The shadows lengthened as they made their way past the gymnasium. Hazel stepped in, her scissors gleaming in the flickering overhead lights. Ivy dripped down from the ceiling, knotting around the cables. Her heart pounded in her chest hard enough that it felt like a fist. Hard enough that her insides felt bruised from it. The gym had never seemed ominous to her before, with its slick, shining floor and the skeletal metal scaffolding of bleachers, but now she was acutely aware of all the places a monster might rest, folded up, looking like nothing more than a pile of mats, long fingers creeping out to grab hold of an ankle.…
“Do you see anything?” Robbie asked from behind her.
Hazel’s muscles tensed. She shook her head, glad not to have otherwise shown how much he’d startled her.
“You don’t have to help us look for stragglers,” Carter said. “Take Molly and head for the front. Your brother is worried about you. My brother is worried about you.”
In the flickering light, the boys seemed different. Robbie looked sallow and a little frantic, the hollowness under his eyes made prominent. Carter looked more like Jack than ever, his face sharpened by shadows. If she tried, she might have been able to pretend he was his brother. For a horrible moment she understood why someone might do what Amanda did. It would be like kissing Severin’s casket. It wouldn’t be real. It couldn’t hurt.
“Why don’t you get out?” she asked him, not particularly nicely, since she didn’t appreciate being condescended to and she didn’t like where her thoughts were going.
“Guilt, mostly. I was the last one to see Amanda—everyone’s saying it and it’s true.”
“What happened?” Hazel asked. They were moving through the literature and history hall, toward the principal’s office and the main doors, passing by the auditorium, where the curtained stage lurked. One of the wheels on Molly’s chair hung up a little, making a small squeal of protest, over and over, as it rolled.
Robbie pushed, flinching over and over at the noise.
There were echoes in some of the rooms, sounds that Hazel couldn’t place. In her mind they became the crawl of the ivy, the slide of a monster’s foot, its nails dragging against a wall. She’d hunted through the woods and knew how magnified noise could become through hyperalertness and adrenaline. She knew how convinced you could be that you’d heard something when it was only your own breathing. And yet she knew how dangerous it was to dismiss your instincts. But at least in the woods she had experience identifying the rustlings and breezes and footfalls. At school, she was lost. Every movement made her teeth grit and the hair along her arms stand.
Carter spoke again, softly, his voice pitched so Robbie might not hear. “We had a fight. Me and Amanda. She said some stuff about Jack that was—ridiculous. Like that he wasn’t even a person. Maybe she was just trying to rile me up, but, well, it worked. I kicked her out of the car, even though she was wearing these huge, dumb heels, and figured she could just walk.
“I got about three blocks before I realized I was being an asshole. Mom would kill me if she found out that I took a girl on a date and then left her someplace, all by herself, with no way home.”
“And?” Hazel asked.
“Amanda wasn’t there when I went back. I didn’t see her again, and her parents won’t let me visit her in the hospital.” He raised his voice slightly. “Hey, Robbie, what about you? How come you’re sticking around, trying to be a hero? Why don’t you get out of here?”
Robbie gave them a lopsided grin. “The one thing I know from movies is never to split up. Besides, you two would be lost without me.”
“True enough,” Carter said amiably, even though that didn’t seem even a little bit true.
“Hey, Hazel, how come you—” Robbie began, but he never got to finish. A scream split the air.
They took off running toward it, the thud of their footfalls pounding against the floor, the shrill squeak of Molly’s chair loud in their ears. The screaming was coming from the girls’ bathroom.
Hazel charged ahead, slamming her shoulder against the door, scissor daggers poised to strike.
Leonie stood near the sinks, water streaming from one of the faucets to puddle on the floor. At the sight of Hazel, she screamed even louder. The room seemed empty, but Hazel’s heart was beating so fast and Leonie seemed so scared that she wasn’t sure. She kicked open the first stall, but there was only the toilet, with three burnt cigarette stubs floating in it. She kicked open the second: empty. She was about to kick open the third when Leonie grabbed her arm.
“What are you doing? Stop!” Leonie said. “You’re freaking me out.”
“I’m freaking you out?” Hazel shouted. “You were the one screaming.”
“The thing—I saw it,” Leonie said. “Jesus—I thought it was safe to go out into the hallway, but then it was there. Oh god, what happened to Molly?”
“Did you get a good look at it?” Carter asked from the doorway. He and Robbie were standing at the threshold, as though, even now, the idea of putting one foot into the girls’ bathroom, with its Pepto-Bismol tile and ancient tampon machine on one wall, was forbidden.
Leonie shook her head. “I saw something. It was horrible—”
“We’re almost to the exit,” Robbie reminded them, shuddering visibly. “Let’s just get out.”
“What if it’s waiting?” Leonie demanded. “It’s somewhere nearby.”
“That’s why we’ve got to go,” Robbie said louder, as if he’d forgotten why they’d been whispering earlier, as if he’d forgotten that they’d stayed inside to get more people out, to be honest.
For a single moment Hazel contemplated walking away from all of them, walking deeper into the school and waiting for the monster there, daggers drawn. She’d imagined fighting it so many times when she was a kid—it was the embodiment of the forest, the embodiment of terror. In her mind, fighting the monster was like the boss battle in a video game. In her mind, if she’d faced it and won, all the other terrors would stop.
Her instincts pushed her toward a fight. Her fingers gripped the scissors more tightly, her blood pumping. She wanted to find the monster and slay it.
“Okay, everyone, shut up!” Carter yelled. “Hazel, what do you think? Should we get out of here or keep looking for more survivors?”
“What are you asking her for?” Robbie demanded.
“Because I know what I think and I know what you think and it doesn’t matter what Molly thinks. And because—” Carter bit off the words and spun. There was a strange sound, as though someone was dragging a dead body through the halls. Abruptly, one of the rods glowing overhead burst into a shower of sparks, and moss began to boil from the sinks. Spots of mold dotted the mirror. Carter pushed Molly’s chair farther into the room, her head lolling to one side, hair over face. Robbie slammed the door closed behind them. Carter slid his hockey stick through the handle and braced to hold the door shut since there was no lock.