A powerful buzz hit his system. At first, he thought it was from imagining Alex in her torn fishnets, until he realized it must be the energy drink. His bloodstream glowed electric.
Rodrigo unpaused the game. A zombie shot out from the closest cubicle, but he was ready, and he hacked off its emaciated head. He ran through the dilapidated office with his machete aimed high. He was invincible.
An hour later, Rodrigo was asleep.
Somehow, he’d managed to pause the game before he crashed. But he didn’t get up. He fell asleep with his headphones still on, the music still pulsing and thrashing.
The sunlight streamed in through the glass back doors. It was so bright that it was painful. Rodrigo squinted, blocking the assault with his hand, and knocked over a full can of JACKD. The chartreuse liquid spilled across his mother’s immaculate Mexican rug.
“Shit!” Rodrigo uprighted the aluminum can, but the liquid had already stopped beading. It was seeping into the threads. He lurched to his feet, but the headphones cord yanked him back down, and he fumbled to throw off the whole contraption.
His ears rang in the emptiness of the house. Death metal pumped quietly from the headphones on the floor. He didn’t even remember grabbing another energy drink. He only remembered the one that he’d chugged in the kitchen.
A headache ruptured his brain. Was it possible to get a hangover from energy drinks? He turned off the music, and the silence was a cathedral. Rodrigo rubbed his eyeballs through his lids with the palms of his hands. When he opened them, the pinpricks disappeared but . . . something wasn’t right.
He was in his living room. Except he wasn’t. Or was he turned around? Instead of facing the television, his gaming rocker was facing the couch. Rodrigo looked behind himself. The television was sitting on its stand in the middle of the room. Dead center.
There was a pause of incomprehension.
And then his mind snowballed with panic.
All at once, his gaze absorbed the rest of the room. The two chairs that flanked the couch had been switched. The coffee table was blocking the sliding doors. The fiddle-leaf fig had been moved from beside the doors to the opposite wall, and the floor lamp, usually nestled beside the couch, had been placed beside the fiddle-leaf fig.
His rocker was the only piece of furniture in the correct place.
Rodrigo’s heartbeat pounded inside his ears as he tried to piece everything together. Tried to make sense of it.
David. It seemed like the sort of prank he’d pull. He had a weird, unpredictable side that Rodrigo didn’t always like. Or maybe Sofía, his youngest and most irritating sister. The one who’d finally moved into an apartment at the end of summer.
“Sofía?” He rose to his feet. “David? Are you still here?”
The house didn’t answer.
“Ha-ha. Very funny. You got me.”
The house still didn’t answer.
“What the shit,” Rodrigo mumbled as he stepped straight into a puddle. In his shock, he’d forgotten about the spilled drink. He jogged to the kitchen for paper towels, but they weren’t in the holder underneath the high cabinets.
They were sitting on the center of the island.
Rodrigo knew that he should laugh—whoever this was, they’d gotten him again—but he couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe because no one had jumped out to yell gotcha and point their finger.
Had he moved everything last night?
It was possible. Maybe.
He checked all the doors, just in case. They were locked. He jogged a little faster as he checked the windows. The one in the guest bathroom was open. His blood turned cold.
Not Sofía, then. She still had a key.
David? Or Kevin? Rodrigo released a foul stream of expletives, realizing it was probably all his friends, those fucking assholes, getting revenge on him for turning down their stupid animefest. That’s why David had texted him at midnight. They were checking to see if he was still awake. Rodrigo circled the interior of his house, waiting for them to appear. But the rooms were empty.
Rationally, Rodrigo knew that this prank was genius. Breaking into someone’s house in the dead of night to rearrange their furniture while they slept? He wished he’d thought of it. It would have scared the hell out of Sofía.
But the reality of it wasn’t funny. There were no silly notes, no Are you awake? texts, no red-lipsticked warnings on his bathroom mirror. The whole situation felt off.
Instinct told him to call the police, but . . . that was dumb. Wasn’t it? He checked his phone for the hundredth time, and when there weren’t any messages, he sent a text to the whole group. LOL you got me. Who did it?
There was an electronic ding, and Rodrigo spun around, yelling and tripping over his feet as he stumbled backward in fear. A slender figure stood motionless in his kitchen. Their slouched back was facing him, and they were wearing a hoodie with the hood up.
“H-hey.” Rodrigo’s voice came out as a croak.
The figure didn’t move.
Rodrigo hated that he felt so terrified. Whoever this was, he was about to be pissed at them. The person was too skinny to be one of his sisters.
He crept forward. “David? Is that you?”
The figure didn’t move.
“Emily?” She was the smallest in his group of friends. He felt ashamed to think about her hearing the tremor in his speech, but the figure . . . it was so unnaturally still.
What if it wasn’t someone he knew?
His white socks touched the edge of the kitchen floor. His T-shirt was damp with sweat. He reached out to touch the figure’s shoulder—
The killer spun around and lunged. The knife went straight into Rodrigo’s heart and back out, a shuck-shuck that sunk him to his knees, and then the blade stabbed him in the back again and again and again. Rodrigo gasped. And then gurgled.
And then nothing.
The body lay on the floor like a slaughtered calf. Blood pooled beneath it. The white cabinets were sprayed with a gory red, and the thickest drops trickled down the doors like tears. The killer lifted the deflated carcass under its arms and dragged it to the living room. Propped it in the rocker. Sawed off its ears. The ears were stuffed into the headphones, and then the headphones were placed onto the head.
The killer sat on the rug—crisscross applesauce—picked up the abandoned controller, and unpaused the game. There was no hurry.
No one would be home for hours.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Rodrigo Morales changed everything. In the early hours of Monday morning, the students of Osborne High were instructed not to come to school. Classes were canceled until further notice. Students were urged to stay home or, if their parents would be at work, stay in the home of a trusted friend. It wasn’t safe to be alone.
In the wake of this developing tragedy . . .