by Kieran Scott
Callie raced through the woods, her lungs on fire, too terrified to look over her shoulder. The thing was gaining on her. She could hear its breath, feel its black claws reaching for her, grazing her sweat-matted hair. The underbrush bit at her ankles, trying to trip her and drag her down. But then she felt an itch on her arm, another on her face. It was an army of spiders. They plucked their way up her legs, dropping from the trees into her hair and down her shirt. And still, the thing gained.
She opened her mouth to scream and the claw came down on her shoulder, sharp nails digging into her soft skin. Callie whipped around to face it, but it wasn’t a thing at all. It was Ted. He wore a battered baseball cap, and in his hand was his hunting knife, blood dripping from the tip.
“Survival of the fittest,” he said calmly.
And then he raised the knife.
Callie awoke with a start, her breath so short her vision went fuzzy. Outside the tent was an orange glow, and Callie heard the pleasant crackling of a fire. She pressed her lips together to stifle a whimper and gripped her sleeping bag.
It was a dream. Just a dream.
Callie unzipped her sleeping bag, trying to cool off. She glanced at Penelope, who was curled up on her side, sleeping stilly for once. When Callie rolled over to see Lissa, she wasn’t there.
The breath caught in Callie’s throat, and then she heard Lissa’s laugh. Callie sat up straight and edged toward the door of the tent. Then came Ted’s low-pitched chuckle. Ever so carefully, Callie unzipped the tent until she could peek through a tiny slit. The fire burned just a few yards away. Lissa sat with Ted, basking in its glow, her head on his shoulder. They looked like a couple that had been coupled forever.
So much for claiming that her relationship with Zach mattered. So much for thinking that Ted was a jerk. So much for her stepping aside so Penelope could have him. So much for friends being more important than guys.
With a sigh, Callie zipped the door closed again and lay back on her sleeping bag, wondering idly if sleep would ever come, and whether, after experiencing that awful nightmare, she even wanted it to.
“Callie! Callie, wake up!”
Callie was aware of a sharp ache in her left shoulder. She pried her eyes open to look at Penelope, who was squeezing her arm.
“What?” Callie groaned, rolling over. Her shoulder radiated pain across her back and she reached up to knead the muscle. She must have slept on it for hours without moving.
“Lissa’s not here,” Penelope whispered.
Callie turned to look at Lissa’s sleeping bag. The front was folded down and rumpled and her backpack had fallen over across it. Had she never come back inside after her midnight rendezvous with Ted?
“What time is it?” Callie asked, still trying to blink the sleep from her eyes.
“Six a.m.,” Penelope replied.
“Omigod, are you kidding?” Callie moaned. “Why did you wake me up?”
“Because!” Penelope sounded exasperated. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know!” Callie whined, sitting up. Somehow she didn’t feel like sharing the cozy scene she’d witnessed the night before. “Maybe she woke up early. Maybe she went out to pee.”
“Or maybe she snuck out in the middle of the night to go be with Ted.”
Bingo.
Callie looked at Penelope. Her hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail and her eyes were bright with suspicion. Her skin had a sweaty sheen to it that made it seem green in the soft light.
“So what if she did?” Callie asked. “Can I go back to sleep now?”
“That doesn’t bother you?” Penelope demanded as Callie lay back down. “After that whole speech she made last night about how we’re more important to her and we shouldn’t let the guys come between us? We practically made a pact.”
Callie took a deep breath and blew it out. “Pen, I know you’ve been friends with Lissa longer than I have, but if there’s one thing I know for sure about her, it’s that she’s going to do whatever she wants to do.”
“Well, I’m gonna go find her.” Penelope reached over to unzip the tent. Callie noticed that Pen already had her hiking boots on and tightly laced. She’d also changed back into the cargo shorts they’d put out to dry the night before. “I’m tired of letting Lissa do whatever Lissa wants to do. She has to start considering other people’s feelings.”
Callie rocked herself up onto her elbows. “Really? You’re going to do this right now?”
“I have to. If I don’t do it now I’m gonna chicken out.” The look she gave Callie at that moment was so vulnerable, so hopeful, that Callie knew she couldn’t just stay there and go back to sleep. She had to have Penelope’s back.
“Okay, fine.”
Callie whipped the sleeping bag off her legs, shoved her toes into her flip-flops, and followed Pen out into the humid morning air. The sun was up, but dim and hazy behind a layer of clouds. Everything seemed still except for one slim, curling line of smoke still snaking up from the center of the pit. On the far side of the clearing, Ted lay dozing in his sleeping bag, alone.
Penelope slowly turned around until she was facing Jeremy’s tent. A crow cawed in a nearby tree.
“You don’t think she’s …”
“No,” Callie said, staring at the square green structure. “No way.”
She walked over to the tent and peeked through the mesh window. Jeremy was splayed across the top of his sleeping bag in red sport shorts and his Innovators Club T-shirt. He was, thank goodness, alone.
“So where is she?” Callie asked, a tiny inkling of fear beginning to work its way up her spine.
“Lissa!” Penelope shouted, startling Callie so much she jumped. “Lissa, where are you?”
Ted sat bolt upright in his sleeping bag, instantly wide-awake.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Lissa’s gone,” Callie told him.
“What do you mean, gone?” Jeremy asked from inside his tent. He sat up and gazed through the window, letting out a huge yawn.
Callie walked around Jeremy’s tent and paused. “Lissa!” she shouted. “If you’re out there, answer us!”
The others began to shout as well, staggering their cries as they fanned out across the clearing.
“Lissa!”
“Lissa, this isn’t funny!”
“Lissa, come on! Where are you?”
Slowly, they walked toward the center of the clearing, meeting around the fire pit. The dying smoke made Callie feel like choking. Her heart was in her throat now. She stared at the rocks around the fire and thought of the dolls, one of them crushed and torn.
“She can’t have just up and left,” Ted said as Jeremy walked up beside him.
Suddenly, the images from Callie’s nightmare came flooding back. The terror of the chase, the composed, calculating look on Ted’s face as he raised the knife for the kill—
“You were up with her in the middle of the night,” Callie said to Ted. “Where is she?”
“Wait, what?” Penelope blurted. “I was right?”
“She went to bed around one o’clock,” Ted replied calmly. “Last I saw of her, she was crawling into the tent.”
“But her sleeping bag doesn’t look slept in,” Callie replied, a suspicious edge to her voice.
Ted lifted his palms, utterly unruffled. “All I can tell you is what I know. She went into the tent at one and I passed out. Next thing I know, you two are shouting for her.”
Callie’s fear seemed to harden inside her chest. “You guys, what if whoever’s been following us took her?”
She waited for Jeremy to tell her she was imagining things. For Ted to laugh it off. They didn’t. The fear tightened its grip.
“Where is she?” Penelope said under her breath.
Suddenly an awful, bloodcurdling scream split the air. Callie jumped and grabbed on to Jeremy without thinking. No one breathed. Then the scream came again, and two large birds took off into the sky.
“It was just a bird, you guys,” T
ed said, exhaling. “Just a bird.”
Callie released her grip on Jeremy and set her jaw. “We have to find her,” she said. “Now.”
“Lissa!” Callie shouted, her voice cracking. Her eyes flooded with tears. “Lissa, please! Where are you?”
“Lissa!” Penelope called out in the distance, her voice almost like a bird’s song. “Liiiisssaaa!”
Callie could make out the top of Penelope’s head as she navigated the wilderness, ducking and sidestepping the branches and spiderwebs. Jeremy was nowhere to be seen, but Callie knew he was about twenty yards beyond Pen. Or at least, he should have been, if he was keeping to Ted’s plan. Mr. Survival Camp had suggested they fan out to cover the most ground, but keep one another in their sights for safety. No one had argued.
Off to Callie’s right, Ted walked slowly and silently like a predator, scanning first the ground, then the space directly in front of him, then the sky, methodical and precise.
If he did know where Lissa was, he was putting on a good show. Callie’s empty stomach twisted painfully. She pressed her hand into the trunk of the nearest tree. She was exhausted and starving and thirsty, her mouth so dry her tongue kept sticking to the insides of her teeth. It wasn’t even six a.m. and already the air was hot enough to have soaked the back of her T-shirt with sweat. But this was nothing. Nothing at all compared to the terror coursing through her veins. Every tree trunk looked the same. Every leaf was a copy of the ten thousand leaves she’d passed in the last five minutes. There were no colors other than green and brown. No sounds aside from the birds twittering in the trees. And Lissa … Lissa was nowhere.
But she had to be somewhere, didn’t she? People didn’t just disappear. How could she have snuck off without anyone hearing? And why? Where would she go?
Something was very wrong. Callie could feel it in her bones. Lissa wouldn’t just bail on them. But part of her wanted to believe that was exactly what Lissa had done. Because if she had, that meant she was okay. It meant she was a jerk, but okay.
“Callie? You all right?” Ted called out.
She rubbed her slick palms against her hips.
Don’t let him see your weakness, she told herself.
“I’m fine!”
“Keep moving, then. You fall too far behind and you’ll get lost, too!”
“Right! Sorry!”
Callie turned and stepped over a dip in the ground. “Lissa!” she shouted.
She looked up at the branches crisscrossing overhead, and the second she did, her foot hit something hard. Her stomach swooped as she fell forward, throwing out her arms. Her wrist jammed against a rock and sent splinters of pain up her arm. She turned over, then froze.
There was a hand. A slim white hand, lying four inches from her toes. A hand with dirt caked under its nails.
Callie screamed so loudly she felt her tonsils vibrate. Her eyes trailed up to the wrist, then the arm. She saw the blue Mission Hills High basketball T-shirt Lissa had gone to bed in the night before. Saw the skin of her neck, red and raw and torn. Saw her hair—her beautiful thick blond hair—tangled and matted with dirt and flung carelessly over her mouth. Callie leaned forward and crawled to her friend, pushing aside a large fern frond, and there were Lissa’s eyes. Blue and staring. Dead.
“Lissa!” Callie screamed at the top of her lungs. “Lissa! No!”
She grabbed Lissa’s shoulders and shook them, but Lissa’s head only lolled around like a rag doll’s. Bile rose up in Callie’s throat and she scuttled back on her hands and heels, then turned over and heaved into the underbrush. She gasped for breath, coughing, sputtering, bracing her hands against the ground.
She’s dead. Lissa’s dead.
Footsteps rustled the growth all around her. Callie had just scrambled to her feet when Ted appeared. He took her by the shoulders, gently but firmly.
“What? What is it? What’s wrong?” Ted asked.
Callie shook her head. There was no air. She was going to pass out if she didn’t get air. Ted had killed Lissa. She was suddenly sure of it. He was the only person out here she didn’t know. The only one who could ever hurt her friend.
“Can you breathe?” Ted asked.
Callie shook her head again. He bent her down so that she folded in half and her face was touching the tall fronds at her feet. Was this where he would take out the knife and skin her alive? When he was done, would he go after her friends?
“Breathe!” he said. “You can do it. Just suck in one good breath.”
Callie closed her eyes and concentrated. Finally her windpipe opened and she gulped in oxygen, coughing and gasping, then coughing again. When she finally got control of herself, she stood up, clinging to Ted’s arm. Horrified with herself, she let him go and staggered away until she hit the side of a tree.
“Lissa.” Callie pointed at the ground, her finger shaking uncontrollably. “Lissa … Lissa … Lissa.”
Ted’s eyes went wide when he saw the body, and he took a halting step back. His hands flew up to cover his mouth. “What happened?”
Callie stared at him. He seemed legitimately shocked. Suddenly she didn’t know which way was up. Had Ted done this? Was he just a good actor?
Or was it the laugher? Was he out there right now, watching them? Deciding which one of them would be next?
Callie’s eyes darted fretfully across the trees, but she saw nothing. Her mind turned over and over and over, trying to make sense of everything, trying to piece out everything she’d seen and heard and suspected, but it was all white noise. Nothing would come into focus.
Lissa was dead. Lissa was dead.
“What do we do?” Callie asked, letting out a sob. “I don’t know what to do.”
Ted fell to his knees at Lissa’s side. He lifted her wrist and checked her pulse, then reached for her neck. His hands were so steady, Callie realized. Like he’d done this before. He leaned in closer before falling back on his haunches. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. The birds in the trees flitted about from branch to branch and sang like nothing was wrong in the world. Ted pushed his hands into his dark hair.
“What did … I mean … how did she … ?” Callie asked.
Ted’s hands fell. “It looks like someone strangled her.”
A horrible, desperate sound escaped Callie’s lips. Some part of her had known this. Had seen it—the marks on Lissa’s neck—but it hadn’t sunk in until Ted spoke the words aloud.
Suddenly, there was a loud cracking noise directly behind Callie. She whirled around, just in time to see a huge, hulking guy charging toward them through the trees. Callie’s heart all but stopped beating.
This is it, she thought. This is how I die.
“Dude. What is going on?” the guy demanded.
Callie blinked a few times, trying to focus her terrified, weightless mind.
“Zach?” she whispered.
It was him. Lissa’s boyfriend. Tall, broad, handsome, sunburnt, baseball cap pulled over his wavy blond hair. He was wearing a blue New York Giants T-shirt that clung to his defined chest and arms. The backpack on his back was army green and bulbous, with a sleeping bag tucked up underneath.
It was Zach, Callie realized, both relieved and furious at once. Zach was the shadow I’ve been seeing in the woods. He’s the one who’s been following us.
“You’re freaking me out, Callie,” Zach said. “Why do you look like you’ve just seen a ghost?”
“You know this guy?” Ted asked, turning to face Callie.
Callie was speechless. If Zach had been following them all this time, did that also mean he was the one who’d left the knife and the baby doll and the other dolls for them to find?
Suddenly, Callie was more terrified than ever.
“It was you,” she said to Zach, breathless, backing up.
“Me what?” Zach asked, his brow creasing.
“You stole that doll from Lissa’s house and ruined it and left it for us to find,” Callie said in a rush. “You’re the one who’
s been stalking us, laughing to creep us out. You’re the one who’s been sneaking around our camp, messing with our heads!” Callie looked behind her and saw Lissa’s limp foot inside its hiking boot. “You killed Lissa!”
Zach laughed. “Good one,” he said jovially, rubbing his hands together. “You almost had me for a second.”
“Why?” Callie screeched, tears filling her eyes. “Because she wouldn’t let you come on this trip? Because you were jealous? What kind of psychopath are you?”
Zach calmly took a step toward Callie and put a big hand on her shoulder. “Callie, dude. Chill. Where’s Lissa? Did she figure out I was here? Is she about to jump out and try to scare me or something?” He shook his head, laughing, ever the jokester. “Man. I knew she’d figure out it was me. What’s she got planned for payback?”
“Zach! This is not a joke!” Callie shouted. “Lissa is dead. She’s right there!”
Trembling, Callie turned and pointed. Zach looked down and the life seemed to drain from his face. He took two shocked steps back and pressed his body against the trunk of a tree, where, ever so slowly, he sank to the ground. It was as if he’d gone boneless.
“Omigod. Omigod. Omigod,” Zach said over and over again. “Lissa. No. I—I thought you were … I thought you were joking. I didn’t … I didn’t do this, Callie. You have to believe me.”
“Why would I believe you?” Callie cried. “You just appeared from thin air! How did you know where we were if you haven’t been following us?”
Zach bent his head into his hands. He sobbed—two short, bleating wails—then looked up with wet eyes. “I have been following you. And yes, I’ve been messing with you,” he said through his tears. “But I was just having a little fun. I wanted to teach her a lesson for leaving me out. I’d never actually hurt her. Oh my God … Lissa … Lissa …”
“Then who did this?” Ted demanded, turning his palms out at his sides.
Zach looked up at him, and his expression hardened. “Maybe you?”
“You don’t even know me,” Ted said.
“Exactly.” Zach hauled himself to his feet, drying his nose with the back of his hand. “Dude comes in outta nowhere, starts flirting with my girl. How do any of us know you’re not some serial killer?”
