Riley opened her mouth but Halloran cut in with a sharp look. Shelby looked away for a half second before hissing, “And by the way? You’re just in time for a freaking pop quiz.”
“Thank you for catching Miss Spencer up, Miss Webber,” Mrs. Halloran said as she came down the aisle, sliding Riley’s test paper onto her desk. Riley swallowed, feeling the butterfly wings start to flutter in her belly.
This is good, she thought. This is normal. I always get butterflies before a test.
Nothing happened at home. Nothing happened. Everything is regular.
Riley poised her pencil over the paper, her eyes skimming over the subject matter. Red Badge of Courage. OK, OK, I totally know this.
For the first time this morning, a smile broke across her lips. She zipped down the page, penciling in answers, glad they weren’t buried in her brain under every question she had about her parents, about Jane. Then she went back to the top of the page and stopped. Top line. Top question: NAME.
The word throbbed on the page. Riley looked around. Every other student was writing, heads bent, pencils scratching.
Because they knew who they were.
The thought sickened—and terrified—her.
“Is there something wrong, Riley?”
Mrs. Halloran’s eyes were on her, but Riley couldn’t force her mouth to move. She shook her head and wrote the words—the name Riley Spencer.
If she wasn’t anybody, she thought, she could be anyone.
But the name swam in front of her eyes. Her blood was pulsing again, this time through her ears and behind her eyes. She raised her hand.
“Mrs. Halloran? Can I be excused? I don’t feel so well.”
Shelby swung her head and grimaced. “You don’t look so good.”
Riley leaned over. “I feel horrible.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what happened?”
Mrs. Halloran strode down the aisle and handed Riley a pink hall pass. “Riley, you can go to the nurse. Shelby, you can get back to work.”
Riley felt dizzy and queasy the second she stood up. She edged her way out of the classroom, trying to remind herself how to walk. She picked up speed as she went down the hallway. When she got to the door of the nurse’s office, she stopped then abruptly turned around.
She pushed through the double doors outside the commons, letting the cool mist of the morning air break over her. She doubled over, huffing huge gulps, hoping that the excess oxygen would clear the gray blur from her head or, at the very least, wake her up.
No such luck.
Riley straightened, her eyes zeroing in on the visitors parking lot where a car was parked dead center. It was a dark blue sedan—nothing special, nothing sinister—and a man was sitting behind the wheel.
Riley’s heart started to thud. The air that she sucked in was zapped from her lungs. She squinted. Was the driver looking at her too?
No.
She was paranoid. The guy was probably someone’s dad, waiting for his kid to come out after being suspended or barfing in the biology lab.
He wasn’t a police officer, a detective, a criminal. He wasn’t one of “them.”
No one knew who she was.
Her pulse throbbed. Except for the man from last night. She shuddered. The man who didn’t exist.
She pressed herself against the doors, relishing the cold of the glass as it seeped through her T-shirt. It grounded her.
“I’m going crazy,” Riley muttered to herself.
She zipped her hoodie up to her neck and cut across the commons. When she heard the rev of a car engine, she forced herself not to look back, not to check if the blue sedan pulled out. She didn’t have a plan other than to move. Walk. Push one foot in front of the other. That was what she was concentrating on when the blue sedan pulled up right beside her.
ELEVEN
The sedan slowed to match Riley’s pace, and Riley’s mind went into hyperdrive. Stop. Run. Turn around.
“Riley Spencer?” The driver of the sedan leaned against his door toward her, his face shadowed by the sunlight breaking through the windshield.
Riley’s heart lodged in her throat. It wasn’t the man from the previous night.
It was Tim.
“I just want to talk to you.”
Riley slowed but sidestepped further away from the car.
“I know who you really are, Jane, and your parents are lying to you. They’re trying to brainwash you. I know because they did it to me.”
Riley’s parents’ words rolled through her head, searing like hot lava.
“They were forcing kids to work. They got caught. My stepdad, Alistair—”
Electricity bolted through Riley, and her head snapped toward Tim.
“Do you remember Alistair Foley, Jane? He blew the whistle. Come on, we need to—”
Tim reached out the window, his clawed fingertips brushing Riley’s arm as she snapped it away.
Immediately, her body took over. Her saliva soured and adrenaline shot through her system. Suddenly, her thighs were burning. Heart thundering. Eyes watering.