Ivy looked back. “My car’s in the lot. Is it weird if I leave it there?”
“Didn’t you always used to leave your car here?” Cade asked. “I mean, you’re always making someone else pick your royal ass up, aren’t you? I swear, your car spends more time in the school lot than the bus.”
Ivy settled back in her seat and wrapped her arms around her body. “I guess we can say I made Kinley drive,” she muttered. “And Mattie got a ride home too, since he didn’t want to ride his bike in the rain.” She yanked at a strand of her hair, running the tips of her fingers over the ends.
Kinley’s heart did a quick double beat. How strange that she’d once envied Ivy McWhellen and her entourage. The girl who sat distraught in the backseat was nothing like the beautiful, confident queen Kinley had so admired.
“My uncle has a farm,” Kinley volunteered.
“So what?” Tyler said from the passenger seat. He looked over at her, and all the wit and charm was gone.
Kinley looked at him. “It’s far away from the town. No one lives there since my uncle passed two years ago. It’s a place we can go to . . . figure stuff out.”
“You mean stash the body.” Cade almost sounded bored.
“I mean figure out where to stash it,” Kinley said. “Listen, I saw this TV show, and they used chemicals to destroy the body. Do you think we could do that? Get some Rubbermaid containers—”
“It worked on Breaking Bad,” Mattie murmured, his voice breaking. “Shit, I can’t believe we’re talking about dissolving a body.” He put his heels up on the seat, tucking his knees into his chest.
“If you have a brighter little idea floating around, we’d love to hear it,” Cade snapped. “Shit, Mattie, pull it together.”
Mattie shut his mouth with an audible snap. He huddled closer to Ivy, and she put a hand on his knee. Kinley frowned. She’d keep an eye on Ivy and Mattie. The heroes of the equation, really. She could see them forming an alliance.
She almost smirked. She would never have imagined Ivy McWhellen doing something that would be considered good, but she’d been the only one who actually tried to save Stratford’s life tonight. Even though he’d just told her she was going to fail his class.
The Ivy who Kinley knew—the same Ivy who bleached the tip of her braid white in seventh grade—would have ground a boot heel in the asshole’s face and left him to choke on his own blood.
So who was this new Ivy?
Kinley narrowed her eyes. She didn’t trust her.
The group was silent as they drove, and the lights of the city faded in the distance. They didn’t mention how the washboards of the road and the thick mud rattled the car and sent it pitching left and right and nearly off the road and into the ditch. Kinley knew what they were thinking: if something happened, they all deserved it.
The rare farmhouse passed, and with it an occasional faint light, a reminder that there was life out in the deep country. Mostly, there was darkness. Thunder erupted from the sky, and lightning exposed the farmland: the fences, running along either side of the road, and the cottonwood trees that grew wild in the fields. The rain was carving deep ravines in the narrow dirt road. Normally, Kinley wouldn’t have dared drive on roads so dangerously close to being washed out, but tonight it just meant that there wouldn’t be anyone else to see them.
It was perfect.
And it was horrible.
The group was still silent when they pulled up to the abandoned barn on her uncle’s property. And when they got out of the car. There wasn’t anything to say. Not really. Kinley popped the trunk, and they wrestled the body out. The corpse’s flesh was waxy and slick in the rain, but they didn’t drop him this time.
Inside the barn, Kinley lit a couple of old gas lamps and hung them. The resulting glow was wholly eerie, as if they had faded into another century. The body rested in the corner, facedown. None of them could bear to look at Dr. Stratford.
“Mattie, Cade, and Ivy? Take my car. Drive slowly, and find the chemicals. Don’t search them on your phone, just try to find the right things. Tyler and I will stay here. Stay in contact. If you aren’t back in an hour, we call the cops. Deal?” Kinley tossed them her keys. They landed on the cement floor.
“Whatever,” Cade said. “I’ll drive. Let’s go.” He bent down and picked them up, and they were gone a moment later, leaving Tyler and Kinley alone in the barn.
Tyler
Friday, June 12
The rain stopped outside the barn, and the silence crept in, heavy and thick. In the distance, cows from a neighboring farm mooed balefully in the wet air and a train barreled over tracks, letting out a long, mournful whistle.
And the body of Dr. Stratford lay in the corner, his face buried in musty old straw.
Tyler watched Kinley. She looked almost normal, sitting there on an old hay bale, except that almost half of her hair had escaped from her braid. And she was shaking.