Chapter 77

Things seemed to quiet after the mouse incident. Days passed and nothing major happened. Even minor things seemed to stop. Someone once shoved a book off my desk when I turned around, but that was all.

However, Tess's eyes still narrowed whenever she passed me by, accompanied by Irene's razor-sharp smile. Lara, when she acknowledged me at all, did so with that precise, polished coldness that made me feel less like a rival and more like an insect she had decided not to crush only because she did not want to stain her expensive shoe.

Ethan made me promise to tell him if anything happened, and yet not much really had happened. So I said nothing. And I prayed nothing else would happen so I wouldn't have to. I was so tired of being the spark.

Over the next week the last little patches of snow had melted from the school lot, leaving only dirty ridges under the fence and wet patches of gravel where tires had churned the thaw into mud. The air carried its usual smells of damp asphalt, earth, and the cafeteria's disgusting stew drifting out through the vents near the back of the building. It was warm enough that most of the kids had stopped wearing coats I knew they didn't really need, although the wind still carried bite when it came around the corners.

The day itself had been almost completely ordinary. Almost being the important part.

Nell had walked with me before first period and said very little. Ethan had passed me twice in the halls, and both times his gaze touched mine for only a fraction of a second before moving away, so brief that no one could have accused either of us of looking, and yet I treasured each glance like a stolen coin. Lara didn't address me. Tess stayed back. Irene watched, but then again, Irene always watched.

By the time the final bell rang, I had almost convinced myself it was finally over. That whoever was behind all those pranks, if one could call them pranks, was finally satisfied and done. The thought filled me with unexpected relief as I exited the double doors, my bag over one shoulder and my car keys in the other hand.

The air outside felt crisp and wet, but somewhere underneath it carried the shy scents of blooming flowers and young pine. Students spilled around me in little streams, keeping that careful distance. Car doors slammed, engines started, someone laughed near the low wall, the sound too loud and sharp. I kept my head down and moved toward the far row where my car, Dad's car, waited.

It looked almost ordinary sitting there. What wasn't ordinary was the way the students seemed to turn toward it in groups, in waves, bodies stopping, nostrils flaring, their heads snapping over to me and staring for a second, then two, then turning away and walking. Away from the car, away from me.

That's how I knew something had happened. Something bad. They had done something again. And to the car.

I stopped, turning around. No sign of Ethan or Nell. And then I remembered that they had left early that day. Ethan had told me the day before that they would leave early on some pack business but to call him if anything happened. And if I knew they were gone, so did everyone else.

I swallowed and walked to my car because what else could I do.

I was three steps away when I smelled it. At first my mind refused to identify it. It was too thick, too wrong, too obscene. It slid into the air as I reached the driver's side door, and my hand froze around the key.

For one second, everything inside me stopped. Then I opened the door.

The smell came out and hit me almost physically. Images flashed through my mind. The dumpster behind the butchery. A stray cat that had died in the alley behind our building in the summer and lay there bloated for days, spreading its rotten smell.

My stomach lurched. I staggered back, one hand flying to my mouth, my eyes watering so fast the lot blurred around me as I forced the contents of my stomach down. I would not vomit. I would not.

With great difficulty, I forced myself to look.

It lay across the passenger-side floor mat, half shoved under the seat and half spilling out into view. A length of deer leg, or part of one, raw and dark, with hide still clinging in patches and coarse hair matted into blood. The jagged bone stuck out of the torn muscle. One hoof was still attached. It had been wrapped once, maybe in plastic or wax paper, but the wrapping had torn open enough for blood and fluid to leak into the fabric mat beneath it.

For a moment I could only stare. My brain reeled from the sheer intimacy of that thing being placed where I had placed my feet.

A sound came out of me, small and weak, almost a whimper. Someone had opened my car. The passenger lock had never sat quite right after the accident. Someone had carried that thing across the lot, or brought it after Nell and Ethan had left, or waited until I was inside and slipped it there knowing I would find it alone at the end of the day. Someone had touched the handle. The door. The space where I sat every morning. Someone had reached into one of the few places that still felt partly mine and filled it with death.

I realized something then, something that I hadn't realized with the mouse. This wasn't just some terrible prank, but a message.

You're dead meat. Rodent. Prey.

Another surge of nausea rose but I gripped the car roof and forced it down.

My jaw kept trembling. I looked around.

The lot kept moving behind me. No one screamed. No one stopped. A few people still glanced over, almost in pity, but most were already getting into cars, already leaving.

They all knew. If I could smell it, so could they. Much better than me, and from a greater distance.

And everyone chose to ignore it. Just like the mouse.

They probably knew who did all those things. Maybe they had all been part of it. Maybe it was some kind of revenge. Or some kind of sick game. Or both. Not that it mattered. Their non-reaction said enough.

I shut the car door. Too hard. The sound cracked across the lot, and somewhere to my left someone laughed, though I did not know whether it had anything to do with me.

My hands shook so badly I dropped the keys. I bent to pick them up, and the movement made my head swim. And then, for a brief, terrible moment, I was suddenly back in the woods, my body slung over Matt's shoulder, dead branches dragging against my hair while someone talked about nails on the road.

I pressed one hand against the side of the car and forced myself to breathe. You don't get to fall apart , I told myself. Not here. Not in the lot. Not where they can see.

My phone was already in my hand before I remembered deciding to take it out. I opened Ethan's thread and typed badly enough that autocorrect gave up trying to save me.

I need you. It happened again.

The answer came almost immediately. Where?

My fingers hovered. I swallowed hard. Car. School lot. Don't come here.

Three dots appeared. Vanished. Reappeared.

Are you hurt?

No. Not physically.

What happened?

I looked at the door of the car and wanted, absurdly, to sit down on the wet pavement and cry like Hailey. Instead I typed: Someone put something in my car.

This time there was no delay. What something?

I forced myself to type: A rotten deer leg.

This time I didn't see three dots appear for far too long. But when they did, the reply came fast.

Come back to the spring. I'll run there. Can you drive?

I looked at the car. The inside of it. The thing on the passenger floor. My stomach lurched again. I can't with it in there.

A pause. Then: Move it to the dumpster if you can. Don't touch it with bare hands. Then come. I'll meet you there.

I stared at the message until the words stopped swimming. Then I opened the trunk.

Jack, patron saint of grim emergency preparedness, had thankfully stocked the car with everything I needed and more.

No one was close enough now to see clearly. Most of the lot had emptied. A few cars still idled near the front, but the far row had thinned into the kind of emptiness that felt deliberate.

I took the gloves, the plastic bags, and a roll of tape, and did what Ethan had told me to do.

Halfway to the dumpster, I heard two girls talking by the corner of the building. As I approached, they stopped. I didn't even look at them.

The bag hit the dumpster bottom with a soft, obscene thud.

By the time I got back to the car, I was trembling so hard I could barely pull the gloves off. The floor mat was ruined. There was blood along the edge of the passenger seat. The smell remained. It lived in the fabric, in the air vents, in the soft places of the car where things sank in and waited. I wiped it with wet wipes and sanitizer as much as I could.

Nothing fixed it, of course.

I got behind the wheel, lowered the windows all the way down and turned on the engine.

The smell sat beside me like a passenger.