One Was Lost(41)

“We’re responding to everything this asshole does. We find water—we all talk about whether or not to drink it. We hear noise—we chase it.”

“We get food, and we all sit around wondering if we should eat it,” Lucas says, nodding at the cooler with a look of disgust.

I smile. “Exactly. We are feeding into this game like rats in a maze. We need to stop trying to solve his little riddles. We need to remember what he did to Ms. Brighton and Hayley and Madison. He’s going to do that to me. And he’s going to try to pin it on you somehow.”

We all go quiet at the mention of their names. It’s easier when we pretend to forget.

“So, what then?” Emily finally asks.

Jude and Lucas nod, and I straighten my back.

“We change the game,” I say. “Wreck his plan.”

“I’m in,” Jude says. “But how?”

“First, we wake up our teacher. He’s been asleep the whole time, and we haven’t. That’s not an accident. He knows more than us, right? He could get us out of here.”

“She’s right.” There’s an energy in Jude’s expression I’m not sure I’ve ever seen. “Asshole or not, he could get us out of here. He knows all this crap.”

“Yes,” I say. “The drugs have to wear off. We haven’t left him alone, so we know he hasn’t gotten any today. He’s come around a little, right?”

“Some,” Emily agrees. “Here and there.”

“So we keep trying to wake him up.”

Lucas nods. “OK, what else?”

“We eat. We’re all out of energy, and it’s slowing us down too much.”

Emily arches a brow. “How do we know it’s safe?”

“We don’t,” Jude says, arms crossing under his chest.

Lucas’s mouth twitches. “The blood around those dolls tells me it isn’t poison we need to be worried about.”

“But logically, it’s a risk, right?” Emily asks.

“Logic isn’t working out here,” I say. “Believe me, I prefer to have both a method and a plan, but I have to go with my gut here. I don’t think the food will hurt us.”

“You could just be hungry,” Jude says.

“I’m ravenous. But those foods are all my favorites,” I admit. “You could have packed that whole cooler at my house.”

“Since you’re the one who winds up dead, that isn’t comforting,” Jude says. “No offense.”

I wave it off. “It’s fine. It’s a valid point, but I think this is part of the plan. It’s my last meal or whatever or at least that’s his plan.”

“Whose plan?” Emily asks.

“Whoever wrote on us and made these creepy-ass dolls,” Lucas says. Then he bumps his chin at me, and I can see the smile in his eyes, hear the affection in his tone. “The same freak who thinks this walking pistol over here is a Darling.”

“That freak could kill us all instead,” Emily says.

Anger, white-hot and knife-sharp, runs along my skull. I scoop the dolls out and toss them, sending them scattering. “That freak isn’t counting on how hard we’re about to fight back.”





Chapter 17


The food doesn’t kill us, but Mr. Walker’s stench might. I don’t think there’s a bodily function he hasn’t experienced on our sled, and as bad as I feel for him, he smells vile enough to melt my skin right off my face. Emily’s the only one who can get within six feet, and every time she ventures into the hot zone, I wonder a little more about what things are like at her house.

Jude catches me watching and gives me a calculating look. What the hell gives with that? Two days ago, Jude and Emily were virtually strangers—and not overly friendly ones at that. Now they’re so buddy-buddy, he gives me the stink eye for looking at her wrong?

Then again, two days ago, I would have said I’d sooner grow a pair of wings than kiss Lucas. Again.

My lips tingle with the memory. I press them together hard and turn back to the task at hand. Mr. Walker is rousing. Finally. We’ve been chattering at him nonstop, and at first, we didn’t get much—just nonsense noises and head movements, a little kid rolling away from the light in the middle of the night. We all go still when it changes.

He groans out something closer to a word and lifts his head. Then he smacks his lips together, and my shoulders hunch. Is he going to throw up again? God, I hate watching people vomit. His shirt makes me queasy enough.

He jerks his head back a few times like he might, and then his eyes flutter and finally open. He looks at Emily, then Jude, then Lucas. Finally, he looks at me, and his lips stretch into a strained smile. Cue the rising music—we’ve got a live one.

“You all look pretty freaked out.” His laugh splinters like dead wood. “I don’t know what I got in to, but it messed me up plenty. Did we run into bad water?”

I tilt my head. “You could say that.”

“It’s all right,” he says. “I’m alive, so you can stop with the long faces.”

None of us can seem to manage a response to that. Because it’s clear he doesn’t remember the bits we’ve told him. He doesn’t know what’s happened to us.