But maybe there were other reasons she was feeling a little shaky this morning. She’d met with Dr. Rose, the psychological profiler, late yesterday afternoon. Twice Mackenzie had to sit on her hands to keep them from shaking, and three times she’d caught herself humming a Dvo?ák piece, something she did when she was nervous. Dr. Rose had asked a bunch of benign-sounding questions about Mac’s self-esteem, her involvement with Nolan (which she’d totally downplayed), whether she’d liked Granger’s film studies class, and why she’d felt the need to follow her friends into his house the night he was killed. Mac couldn’t even remember what she’d said, she’d been so nervous.
And then, strangely, Dr. Rose had asked her about the other girls. Ava seemed very tightly wound, the doctor commented—did she seem traumatized about her mother’s death? Same with Caitlin—she lost her brother, that sort of thing had to make her angry, right? And Julie had her troubled homelife, and Parker, well . . . “Sounds like you’re involved with some friends who have some serious baggage,” the doctor had concluded. “And you know, people who have . . . issues, well, they can act out in other ways.”
Mac had stared at her. “You mean by killing people?” she’d asked.
The doctor just blinked. “Of course not,” she said. “Unless that’s what you think.”
Mac didn’t know what to think. Should she suspect the others? In some ways, it made sense: They’d all been right there for that conversation in film studies. And if one of them killed Nolan, of course she would kill Granger to shut him up—and involve the other girls as unwitting accomplices. Caitlin hated Nolan more than any of the rest of them. Or what about Ava? Nolan had started those awful rumors about her, and Granger had hit on her. Maybe she had a secret violent side.
But then Mac shook off the thought. These were her friends. They weren’t killers. Her only hope was that they could get through the interviews without raising more suspicions and questions about their involvement. The last thing she wanted was for Juilliard to find out she was being questioned or for her parents to worry any more than they had to.
Sighing, she got out of the car and started across the parking lot and looked at the other texts on her phone. There was one from Oliver, a simple Are you okay? She winced, not knowing how to respond, and decided not to respond at all.
As she made her way toward her locker, Mac noticed small clusters of kids gathering in the hall. They were whispering to one another, then breaking apart to form new groups and whisper some more. The air was filled with an electric charge. What was going on? Then Mac noticed Alex Cohen at his locker, his head down. Maybe that was the reason for all the murmuring—Alex had been accused of murder and spent this week in prison, and now he was back. Even though Mac believed Alex wasn’t guilty and was glad, for Ava’s sake, that he’d been cleared, she still felt wary of him. He had called the cops on them.
She opened her locker and began sorting through her books. Nyssa Frankel opened her locker a few feet away as she exchanged rapid-fire sentences with Hannah Broughton. “She’s just gone,” Mac heard her whispering. “That’s what her mom told the police.”
Mac’s ears perked up. Who was gone? Julie? Mac knew Nyssa and Julie were friends. What if Julie was overwhelmed from talking to Dr. Rose yesterday and just . . . took off?
Hannah placed her hands on her hips. “Do you think she was kidnapped? I heard her room was, like, totally spotless. Which was really weird—apparently she’s a total slob.”
Mac set her mouth in a line. Julie definitely wasn’t a slob. . . .
Nyssa shut her locker with a loud click. “Do you think she ran away?”
Hanna shook her head firmly. “If Ashley was running away, wouldn’t she have at least taken her phone? You know she can’t live without it.”
Mac’s eyes widened. Ashley?
She turned away from the girls, pulled out her phone, and called up the local news site. Sure enough, the top story was Local Teen Missing from Home. The story explained how Ashley Ferguson’s parents had found her missing when they came home from work. Her car was in the driveway and her phone in her room, charging. They’d waited a few hours, thinking she’d just gone for a run, before finally calling the police around 10 PM.
A creeping sense of horror flooded through Mac until her hair practically stood on end. Ashley had been on the list.
Slamming her locker shut, she turned down the hall and saw Caitlin and Ava talking in a huddle in the corner. Mac broke into their circle. “Okay, what the hell?” she whispered.
“I guess you heard?” Ava asked, her gaze darting back and forth.
Mac nodded. As she brought her hand to her face, she realized her fingers were shaking. “We shouldn’t talk about this here,” she said, looking around the busy hall. “There are so many people—”
“But, you guys,” Caitlin interrupted, her voice shrill. “What’s going on?”
Mac picked at a loose string on her sweatshirt cuff. “We shouldn’t assume the worst,” she said in a low voice. “It could be completely unrelated, okay? Or Ashley could have run away. I mean, we said she’d . . . you know . . . in the shower, right? And that isn’t what happened. She’s just disappeared.”
But as they looked at one another, it seemed clear that wasn’t what anyone thought. Caitlin started to shake. “This is our fault,” she whispered. “We said those names. And now everyone’s dying.”