Before I could process what I was doing, I raised my hand to her cheek. She leaned into my touch as my finger traced her jawline, tilting her face up. Her lips drew so close to mine that every nerve in my skin buzzed in anticipation.
Chapter 23: Tess
Tuesday, September 20th
“WAIT.” I JERKED away from Derrick before his lips could meet mine. “That wasn’t—I didn’t mean—” I backed away from him until my hip bumped into the footboard of his bed. “I wasn’t trying to—”
His gaze flitted toward the drawing, the uncertainty and terror it represented. “I’m an idiot. There’s so much else happening right now. A lot to process. I shouldn’t have—I am so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Don’t apologize.”
But of course, he didn’t stop. Guilt flooded my chest at the panic in his voice as he kept babbling apologies. Everything about this was my fault. He’d spent the first half the night getting screamed at by his mom for something he’d done to help me, then he’d spent the rest of the night putting together the floor puzzle from hell. Everything he’d done in the past few weeks—every lie he’d told, every bit of trouble he’d gotten into, every traumatic encounter with every dismembered corpse, was because I’d dragged him into this.
The least I could have done was kiss him.
That thought, and all the implications that came with it, sent waves of nausea spiraling through me. I drew in a sharp breath, shaking hands scrubbing the tears from my cheeks. I couldn’t kiss Derrick because I felt like I owed him. That was beyond messed up.
Then do it because you want to.
And I did. God, how I did. I loved him. I always had, on some level. He was my favorite person. I’d always been able to count on him. He was thoughtful and caring and smart and everything I could ever ask for.
You take and you take until there’s nothing left. My mother’s voice echoed in my memory.
My mother who needed help, needed someone to count her pills and separate her meds and to be there for her during her frickin’ dying days, but could I be bothered? No. I’d run away as soon as she’d become a burden. You’re a leech, she growled in my mind. A parasite.
She was right. I’d ruin us. I would take and take from Derrick until there was nothing left between us but bitterness and hatred. Or worse, I’d try to balance everything he did for me and it would stop being real. I’d stop being able to tell where my want ended and my sense of obligation began.
“Can we just rewind,” I begged when Derrick wrapped up his apologizing and moved closer to the door, as if to leave. “Just by like, five minutes, and pretend everything isn’t all awkward and weird?” As long as he didn’t say it, as long as he didn’t make us deal with this, we could keep pretending nothing had changed. “You are my best friend, Derrick. And I need a friend right now. Please don’t leave me alone. Not with that.” I pointed toward the picture. “I know it’s not fair to ask . . .”
How could I finish that sentence? Ask him to pretend, to stay, to bury his own feelings for the sake of mine? I’d completely rejected him, and I was sure all he wanted to do was get as far away from me as possible so he could be angry or embarrassed or feel whatever it was he wanted to feel without a witness. But the thought of being left alone with my own thoughts right now, afraid to even pick up a pencil and sketch something, sent waves of panic crashing through me.
“I just—” I struggled to keep my voice composed. “Can you just be my friend, Derrick? Please?”
“Yeah. Of course.” He forced a smile to his face. “Your best friend.” He glanced at the drawing. “You wanna . . . hang out in the living room for a while?”
I nodded gratefully.
“Have you seen the Moon-Moon thing yet?” he asked when I followed him out of the room.
You don’t deserve him, a voice whispered in my mind.
I really didn’t. “Moon-Moon?” I managed to say, fighting back tears.
He had to hear the pain in my voice, but he had the grace to ignore it as he pulled out his phone and swiped his fingers across the screen. “Okay, so you know those memes where you pick your stripper name or your super—”
“Diamond Jugs.”
“I’m gonna ignore the fact that you knew your stripper name right off the top of your head.”
“Shut up.” I forced lightness into my tone and flicked his arm as we both collapsed on the couch. On complete opposite ends of the couch. As far away from each other as possible. Each obviously aware of how close that still left us as we angled ourselves away from each other while trying to make it look like we weren’t doing just that. “And it’s not mine anyway. It’s yours. I stopped using my initials a long time ago because my names are never any good. Yours at least are funny. Look, hang on, I drew—” I bolted to my feet, then hesitated, realizing to get it I’d have to go back into that room. I’d have to face that picture.
What did they do to me? I swayed on my feet, fighting back a whimper of terror. What else didn’t I remember? How did Derrick remember me drawing those pictures when I didn’t? How had I drawn something like that?
Derrick yanked me back to the couch. “Tess, our friendship can survive a lot, but I’m not sure it can handle whatever sketch my stripper name inspired.”
I laughed. Sure, it was half-relief, half-hysteria, but how was it he could always make me laugh?
“Anyway,” he continued, “a while back, there was this one for choosing your werewolf name, and this one guy got the name Moon-Moon . . .”
Chapter 24: Derrick
Tuesday, September 20th
TIME PASSED IN that weird way it does when you get sucked into the internet. Since it was late and we were on edge, everything seemed more hysterical than it should have. My sides hurt from laughing, and more than once, I’d gotten Tess to the point where she did that soundless laugh thing she did when she couldn’t stop giggling long enough to take a breath.
But as the minutes ticked by, her murmured replies came slower, softer. Eventually she fell asleep against my shoulder. I edged away, ready to cede the couch, when she let out a low moan and snuggled closer to me, draping her arm across my chest. I went completely still, trying very, very hard to remind myself this was strictly platonic cuddling and absolutely nothing was going to happen.
She’d made that pretty damn clear tonight.
Sighing, I slid off the couch, retrieved my phone, and returned to my room.
The picture greeted me when I opened the door.
For a moment, I stood in the doorway, frozen and sick. What part of putting together a nightmare of a puzzle that depicted her bound, wearing strange clothes, and surrounded by the entire football team had I interpreted as a come-on? What the hell was wrong with me?
She’d been looking up at me with those beautiful brown eyes, her body pressed against mine so tight, I could feel everything under her thin shirt. My arms had been around her, her lips had parted, and it had just felt . . . right.
“No, it just felt cinematic,” I muttered, feeling disgusted with myself. Those kinds of moments happened all the time in movies. Her, crying, shaking, upset. Him, sweeping her off her feet and making all her problems fade away with a kiss.
I’d been feeling helpless, and kissing her felt like something concrete I could do. Something to make all the messed up, scary stuff go away.
And maybe that kind of movie magic happened when both parties were into it, but Tess knew how I felt about her. She wasn’t stupid. And over the past few months, her every action had all but shouted that she didn’t reciprocate. She was my friend. That was supposed to be enough.
My eyes roved over the picture. The sneers on the football players’ faces. The rope biting into her wrists. She’d needed a friend. The kind of friend she’d been to me when my dad died, when Ainsley died, when my mom had started working more, wh
enever I’d needed Tess. And I’d been so wrapped up in my own fantasies that she’d had to ask me to return the favor.
Never again.
I stepped over the threshold and glared down at the picture. Mom would be home soon, and we couldn’t risk her seeing this. Tess wasn’t ready to answer the questions it would invoke. Swallowing back a wave of nausea, I held out my phone and took a photo of the picture as a whole. Then I zoomed in on each symbol, each tiny detail, and took more pictures.
We need to talk to them. I didn’t think I could be in the same room with the football players without killing them, not after seeing this, but they had the missing pieces. The answers we lacked. They could tell us what this picture meant. What happened that night.
You can’t put Tess through that.
I’d do it without her then. But how? I couldn’t just pop up at their houses, not after what I’d done to Josh. And they weren’t at school much.
I grabbed a roll of tape out of my desk and loosely taped the picture together, layering the tape front and back so it wouldn’t stick to itself when I folded it up and tucked it out of the way.
Tess wouldn’t have to see this thing, or them, ever again if she didn’t want to. I’d find the answers for her. And I’d be there for her. Whatever those answers were.
SUNLIGHT BEAMED in through the windows. I squinted, realizing I’d fallen asleep studying the picture. I peeled myself off the carpet, rubbing at the indentions it had left on my cheek, and yawned.
Sunlight.
I was late for school.
Mom would be home soon.
I bolted to my feet, hastily folding up the drawing and tucking it carefully into a folder then into my book bag before rushing back to the living room.
Tess lay asleep on the couch, completely undisturbed by the light flooding in from the window behind her.
Blinking, I realized she was in the exact same position I’d left her in last night.
“Tess?” I reached down and shook her shoulder.
She didn’t move.
My throat went dry until I realized I could feel her shoulder rising with each shallow breath. “Tess, wake up.” I dropped to my knees beside the couch and shook her again. Heat emanated through the thin fabric of her nightshirt. When I touched her forehead, I confirmed what I already knew. She was burning up. “Tess? Hey, Tess?”
Her eyes fluttered open, but to my surprise, she didn’t draw back. “You’re here,” she murmured, snuggling closer to me. “I’m glad. You’re warm.” Tess shivered. “It’s so cold.”
“Yeah, you are not cold. At all. You feeling okay?”
Her eyes drifted closed.
“Tess?” I sat up. “Hey, Tess?”
She moaned in protest when I shook her again.
“Tess, come on. Are you okay?”
“It’s defective,” she complained, opening her eyes.
“What’s defective?” She wasn’t making any sense.
Her eyes focused on me, and she ran her hands up my arms, a smile playing on the edge of her lips. “You have really nice shoulders.”
“Tess?”
She started, eyes opening fully as she jerked back in surprise until she was against the arm of the couch. Her eyes cleared as she stared at me in alarm. “Derrick?”
She sounded so lost, so disoriented. I swallowed hard as I remembered something scary and vital—something I’d allowed myself to forget while studying that picture. She didn’t remember drawing it. “You said something, just now.” It’s defective. “Do you remember what it was?”
She shook her head, then winced at the motion, her hand moving up to cradle her forehead. “When did I fall asleep?”
“Sometime after watching that kid with a lightsaber. I went back to my room,” I said in response to her unasked question. “Come on.” I offered her my hand. “Let’s grab breakfast.”
“Caffeine . . .” She took my hand, letting me help her up.
“That, too.”
I exhaled in relief when I heard Mom’s car pull into the driveway. We had to tell her that Tess was still losing time. It’s defective. Chills ran up my spine. Mom would know what to do. She’d—
All thoughts of asking Mom for help faded when I saw her face. The kitchen door slammed closed behind her and she took us in without seeming to see either of us.
Tess and I exchanged a long look.
If it was Finn . . . . If he’d jumped off a building like Tess had dreamed . . .
What would that mean?
I could see what it meant to Tess. Her thoughts were written on her face, as plain as day. The fear of what she knew, the dread of what was coming. She couldn’t make this go away by ignoring it. People were dying, and somehow, she was seeing it in her nightmares.
But how is that even possible?
For once, my mind was empty of possibilities as I drew a deep breath, forcing myself to ask the question that could rock the very foundation of how I understood this world.
“Who died?”
Chapter 25: Ryan
Tuesday, September 20th
“WHERE HAVE YOU been?” Aaron yanked Ryan aside the second he walked into school. “Everyone’s been trying to call you.”
Ryan didn’t ask who “everyone” was. The list was getting shorter every day. “Why? What’s going on?”
“Finn’s dead.”
Ryan stumbled in surprise. “That’s—How?”
“He jumped off a fucking building.”
The room reeled around Ryan as his stomach lurched.
“I’m taking you to Josh’s. He hasn’t heard yet, either. The others are waiting.”
Ryan took a step back, trying to keep his thoughts together. Finn’s dead? “We did this.”
“No.” Aaron’s denial came too fast for even him to believe. “He did it to himself, man. It doesn’t have anything to do with what happened that night.”
The team kept saying “what happened that night” like they didn’t know. Ryan remembered enough to hazard a guess, so it was a safe bet they did, too.
“We did this,” Ryan insisted. “And it’s not going to stop until we’re all dead.”
“Ryan, we’ve done that ritual a thousand times. Nothing ever happened before. There’s no reason to think—”
“No reason?” Ryan’s voice rose. “No reason?” People turned to stare at them in the hallway. “By my count, there are twenty-three reasons to think whatever the hell I want. Twenty-six now. We did this. I’m not going to sit around Josh’s living room pretending otherwise. We need to figure out how to stop this. Give me the book.”
Aaron wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Give me the book, Aaron.”
“I burned it.” Aaron clenched his jaw and studied the peeling tile beneath their feet.
“Damn it!” Ryan raked his hands through his hair and tried to think.
Sunlight filled the hall as the exterior door opened. Derrick and Tess stepped into the school. Derrick kept a hand on the small of her back, guiding her through the hallway. They didn’t seem to notice Ryan and Aaron.
“You can’t warn them,” Aaron said after they passed. “You can’t tell anyone. If—”
“After what he did to Josh?” Ryan snapped. “I’m not an idiot. Hernandez would crucify me.”
Aaron’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “We should go.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Ryan.”
“You’re not suffocating?” Ryan demanded. “I can’t sit in a room and watch everyone be sad anymore. It’s—I can’t breathe.”
Aaron let out a long breath. “Yeah, I get that.”
“I need some space. I’ll catch up when I can, okay?”
“Just be careful.”
; Ryan nodded and headed to his homeroom. As soon as the bell rang, Mrs. Minchin pulled him out of class.
“I know about Finn,” Ryan explained before she could repeat the painful news.
She nodded, her eyes sympathetic. “Your parents are concerned about you. If you’d like to go home—”
“I don’t.” Ryan sat in the blue upholstered chair. “Everyone’s at home. My whole family. Cousins, aunts, uncles, both sets of grandparents.” His family always gathered en masse, anytime anything remotely bad happened. Need surgery? The whole lot of them would stand vigil at the hospital the entire stay. When someone died, they straight up moved in.
“You’ve been through something traumatic,” Mrs. Minchin explained, like he’d somehow missed the memo. “They want to be there for you.”
By crowding around in his living room, watching Fox News, and gossiping about every negative thing happening in their community? Cecil Evans had cancer. Jeanette McCleary’s granddaughter got kicked out of her house. Analia D’Ovidio left a bar with the Wright widower, poor man. They were so negative all the time—such professional victims—that it drove Ryan insane. “I just want to be alone for a while. Is that so terrible?”
Mrs. Minchin’s face softened. “Of course not.” She looked like she wanted to add more, maybe even point out he wasn’t exactly alone at school either, but she refrained. Maybe she wasn’t as old as she looked. If there was anywhere you could be completely alone in a crowd, it was in high school. “I’m here if you need to talk.”
He arrived late to first block, but Mr. Spencer didn’t seem to mind. He’d put in a movie and lowered the lights. Like most of the teachers in this school, he wasn’t even pretending to teach anymore. Ryan slipped into his seat and glanced over to find Tess D’Ovidio sleeping.
She hunched over her desk with her head cradled in her arms, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders. Why was she so tired?
Do you have nightmares, too? He wanted to ask. Will they ever stop?
He’d brought the nightmares up with the team a couple of days ago, but Josh shut him down. “No one wants to hear about your lame-ass dreams, Vazquez.”
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