Goose bumps bloom on the backs of my arms. “Why are we even out here if there was a murder?”
“It wasn’t a murder!” Mr. Walker goes pale. Or more pale. He’s already looking like death eating a saltine cracker, but I can tell something changes. He drops his voice to a soft mutter. “Look, when bad things happen, people talk. They want someone to blame.”
Emily stiffens. “My dad said no one really knows what happened to her.”
“Yeah, I remember hearing that too. Back when we all thought it was a ghost story.” Jude scowls at Mr. Walker. “Tell me, were our parents aware you planned to have us camping at an old crime scene?”
“I already told you it wasn’t a murder!” Mr. Walker looks at Jude like a glass of curdled milk. Maybe Jude was telling the truth about Mr. Walker avoiding his desk.
“There was a camping trip,” Mr. Walker continues. “Not organized like this. Just four kids who planned a party in the woods. They weren’t prepared, and one of them didn’t make it back. These things happen in the wilderness.”
“And then a bear eats your body,” Lucas says.
“It’s all about preparation.” Mr. Walker says. “Careless people die in the woods all the time.”
“Maybe,” Lucas admits. “But I’m pretty sure they don’t wake up with words on their arms and dollies dressed in their clothes. If you’re wrong and that girl was killed, her killer could still be out here!”
Mr. Walker’s face mottles, and I stiffen. He looks like he wants to hand out detentions. Or worse. Does he really think we’re pushing his authority here? Or that this is some senior live murder-mystery prank gone horribly wrong?
“If I find out this is all someone’s sick idea of a—” He stops abruptly, eyes lolling and breath gone raspy. Emily approaches with quiet detachment, and the rest of us wait. In a moment, he opens his eyes and struggles against the sled. His expression is still surly. “We’ll discuss this more as soon as you help me out of this.”
Lucas tilts his head, and something cold zips through me. He doesn’t untie him right away, and if Jude’s expression is any indicator, he’d just as soon leave him to rot in his own filth. Eventually, it’s Emily who unfastens the ropes.
My heart clenches when Mr. Walker stumbles awkwardly to his feet, but I don’t reach to help him. I stand there like a pillar of stone.
He disappears in a clump of trees and brush, and we can hear him groan. Fumble with his belt buckle. Before I can think too long about that or about what will inevitably follow, I move away, and the rest come with me.
We cluster together by a hemlock, heads bowed and fists clenched. Lucas budges in close to me and takes a slow breath.
“OK, am I the only one who’s suddenly thinking about the fact that it was Mr. Walker who gave us the drugged water first? It was in his pack.”
My stomach sloshes, a boat bumping over a rock at the bottom of a stream. “What are you saying? He’s our teacher.”
“I’m saying I don’t trust him,” Lucas whispers. “I mean, come on. He planned this trip intending to take us to the exact forest where a girl mysteriously died?”
“He was drugged,” I whisper.
“Drugging can be faked,” Lucas says. “He was asleep, not foaming at the mouth. He knows too much about that dead girl.”
Jude nods at him, a strange camaraderie in the look they exchange. His voice is also low when he responds. “I’m with Lucas. That makes two of us.”
“Three,” Emily says. Her eyes are dark smudges in the shadows.
In the distance, Mr. Walker gives a gurgling groan that wrings my insides out. I press my sweat-slick hands together, my pulse going thready. “So, what now? What do we do?”
Jude shuffles closer, whispering even lower. “We watch him like a hawk, and we watch out for each other.”
“But he’s going to try to take charge,” I say. “That’s what teachers do.”
“He’s too sick to take charge,” Emily says. “Whatever else is true, he’s not faking that. He has a fever.”
“Which means he can’t be a part of any of this,” I say, hating how desperate I sound to believe it. “Sick people can’t carry out crazy elaborate plans.”
“Maybe that’s why nothing’s happening right now,” Jude says.
“Maybe he’s not as sick as you think,” Lucas says. “He could be a good actor.”
Emily shakes her head. “No, he’s got a fever. You can’t fake that sort of thing.”
“Can’t fake what sort of thing?”
The hair on the back of my neck rises as I turn, but we all know who’s asking. It’s Mr. Walker. He’s standing maybe twenty feet away, and I have no idea how he finished up and got this close without us hearing him. But I know he must have been moving quietly.
And I know he might have heard more than any of us want.