No.
My stomach shrinks into a fist and squeezes. I want to look away, but I can’t. I want it to be something else—anything else—but it isn’t.
It’s Ms. Brighton’s finger.
Chapter 6
We run and scream, like there’s somewhere to go or someone to hear. Come to think of it, there might be someone. And if there is, we probably don’t want them to hear us.
An image forms in my mind, a stage scene with low lights, all filtered blue. I’m curled in the muted spotlight as something enters, stage left. In real life, I’m still running, but in my mind, I’m frozen in the spotlight, and that something is edging into my ring of light. A long arm reaches for me. Spidery fingers ink a D onto my upturned wrist, then raise a knife to the base of my finger.
My cheek smacks a branch, my eyes tearing as pain flashes through me. I ignore it. Move faster until the fire in my lungs and the pain in my face burn the images away.
Thornbushes scratch at my arms, and something snarls in my hair. I’m off the path. Am I alone? Am I even going the right way? I run harder. Harder.
Stop.
I don’t know if I hear the word or feel it, but I don’t stop. Not even close.
“Sera, stop!”
This time, it clears the fog in my head. Someone’s calling me. My feet stutter-step, and someone grabs me by the arm. I jerk myself loose, stumbling back until my head smacks a tree. My tongue goes slick and coppery. Lights dance in front of my eyes.
“Freeze!” Lucas says. “Just everybody freeze!”
My outsides are stopped, but my insides are running wild. I grip a tree and hold on. If I don’t, I’m not sure I’ll stay still. I look around, spotting the others. Jude, shoulders heaving. Emily, sweaty hair plastered to her temples. Lucas, breathing hard and hair in his eyes.
“What happened?” Emily pants. “Is someone following us? Did you see someone?”
The three of us who are not Emily look at each other.
She doesn’t know.
She didn’t see the finger.
None of us needed the seven-letter word on her wrist to tell us she’s got anxiety issues, so what do we do? What will she do if we tell her what we saw? Sob? Panic? We can’t deal with either of those. We can’t even deal with what we’ve already got.
Lucas takes a slow breath. “I think we ought to get back to the path. We’ll stick together. Talk about it in a bit.”
“Agreed,” Jude says, looking sick again.
“No,” Emily says. “Not until you tell me. You saw something.”
Lucas’s sigh blows any chance at a cover-up.
Emily crosses her arms. Stares us down one by one.
How do you say this? There is no way that feels right, and the boys are looking at their feet. What the hell? Does explaining things default to me because I have ovaries?
Fine. Fine, but where do I start? I exhale hard. There’s no way to pretty this up, so I lift my hand in an awkward gesture and get on with it. “There was a severed finger hanging over the creek. Purple nail polish.”
“It was Ms. Brighton’s finger,” Jude adds in case she didn’t get my reference.
Emily’s brow puckers briefly before it goes glass smooth and pale. She looks at Lucas with a doll’s frown.
“Someone cut Ms. Brighton’s finger off?” she asks like she’s just clarifying a weather report or maybe a homework assignment.
Instead of answering, he looks away. Real master of communication that one.
Emily is completely still, but I can see her nostrils flaring, can hear the way her breath shudders in and out. In and out.
“We can’t stand around here,” Jude says. “We need to run. Right now.”
His words prod at me, clearing the fog of Emily’s shock. “Wait, we can’t!” I point back at the river. “Madison and Hayley could still be over there.”
“Uh, whoever strung up Ms. Brighton’s finger like a pagan sacrifice could also be over there,” Lucas says.
“It was only her finger. She could just be hurt,” I say because I really want to believe it. “Madison and Hayley could be trying to find help for her.”
“The kind of help we can’t give.” Lucas looks around, eyes darting. “We need to save our own asses here. We can send help back for them.”
“They’re not over there,” Emily says. Something cold shapes every word, pulls the end of her sentence into a point. “We would hear them if they were over there.”
“You think they’re dead, right?” Jude asks. “I mean, that’s what we’re all thinking, isn’t it? We’re assuming they’re dead.”
I hope no one answers. Emily looks down. I think she wants us to say no. She wants all three of them to be OK, but she saw the number three in the ground and the abandoned tents. She heard the silence. Emily’s quiet because she knows better. And my stomach sinks because I know better too.
“I think we’re back to my plan of running,” Lucas says.
Jude nods. “I’m in. But it’s three more days on the trail, right? We’ve got zero supplies. We won’t make it.”