Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(28)

I pulled cash from my back pocket all the while staring at the razor-thin line branded on my skin. One down. Four more to go.

I paid Wren and thanked her. Outside the darkness was dissipating. The lamplight faded into hues of blue. An idea had been bothering me all night. For me, in the days, there was only darkness. It was an unreachable part of me, what happened during the daytime. I was nocturnal and, for the most part, I relished that fact. But it had its limitations.

“Lena, what if I said I needed your help?” I asked.

She froze on the spot. Crickets chirped along a nearby fence and above, the stars were beginning to blend away. “Anything. You name it,” she said.

I realized there may have been more to my seeking out Lena tonight than celebration. I had a task and, as someone who needed assistance for mundane matters that required regular business hours, it just might be worth having an assistant of sorts.

The one standing in front of me was canine loyal, wide-eyed and eager. Perhaps saving her would serve its purpose after all.

“I need you to track down a room on Corbin College’s campus for me.”





ELEVEN

Cassidy

What do you do when the facts of your life no longer add up?

I woke up with a line on my wrist that wouldn’t go away and no idea how it got there. The only thing I could be certain of was that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been certain of anything.

A coldness nestled into the pores of my bones, as though winter had come to live there.

I kept pulling up my sleeve and staring at the tattoo, trying to imagine myself going into a tattoo parlor, sitting down, stretching out my arm, waiting for a needle to draw ink into the skin. It was nearly impossible and yet there it was. In black and white.

Of course the bigger problem—the much, much bigger problem—was the dead body buried just beyond the lot line of my house. Now that was something I wouldn’t mind being able to forget.

No such luck, of course.

My elbows were planted on a cold-surfaced desk in Mr. Yotsuda’s classroom where I was supposed to be listening to him teach AP calculus. Instead, I’d been staring at the clock above the whiteboard watching seconds tick-tick-tick by.

Yesterday I’d made a promise to myself to start figuring out what the hell was going on with me. Tomorrow, I’d promised. And now tomorrow was today and I’d done exactly nothing to honor that commitment. Because that promise implied me actually doing something. Active. And for the past few weeks I’d been completely rebelling against that notion. I’d decided to give up. Let myself sink into the pit of depression and drown there.

I flattened my cheek into my palm. Ugh, that certainly would be easier.

Uh-uh. No way.

I had to snap out of that train of thought. That sort of thinking was exactly what had gotten me into this mess. At least I thought it was. Honestly, I didn’t have a clue.

Besides, two days ago I quelled a coup on my cheerleading squad. Two days ago I’d been staging my big comeback. Two days ago I decided to grab life by the balls and take charge.

I sat up straighter, mustering my resolve. I had built Cassidy, Homecoming queen, out of two things: smarts and determination. I still had at least one of those. I chewed on my eraser. If I had a complicated math problem how did I approach it?

First, I figured out what variables were missing. Then, I followed the steps to solve for them. Bingo.

I glanced around and saw the students around me furiously scribbling notes from the whiteboard.

“Cassidy? Hello, Cassidy?” Coming out of a daze, I saw Mr. Yotsuda waving at me from the front of the room. I blinked, looked down, noticed that I’d already been shoving my belongings into my book bag. “Cassidy, are you paying attention?”

“Um…,” I faltered. I was out of my seat with my strap slung over one shoulder. I stared at the equation he’d scrawled across the board.

dy/dx = cos(x) y2, where y(π2) = 0

I read the line under my breath. The wheels in my brain turned over. “The answer is y = (3 sin(x) ? 3)1/3.”

“Where are you going?” Mr. Yotsuda said as I turned my back to him. “Class isn’t over.”

“Sorry.” I stepped hastily over a backpack in the aisle. “It is for me.”

“But—but,” he stammered. “That’s correct.”

My mouth quirked into a half smile. Of course it was correct.

Once out of the classroom, I hurried down the hallway, past the school nurse’s office. I noticed it with a twinge of regret, wondering how things might have been different if I’d confided in a nurse or in anyone about Dearborn before there was a dead body to contend with, before the string holding me together was so perilously frayed that all I could do was cling to both ends and pray for dear life.

Nobody would have believed me. Everyone would have thought I deserved it. It would have ruined my reputation at this school. These were the things I’d been telling myself for weeks. But were they true? And could I have been any worse off than I was now?

I kept walking briskly. Nerves crept in with every step. When I reached the library, I was downright jumpy, worried that every move I made was a sign of guilt.

Baby steps, I reminded myself. Figure out what variables were missing, then follow the path to solve for them.

I tugged open the door and landed on the ugly orange carpet of the school library. I spotted Mrs. Petrie behind the front desk. Her hair was a mop of cotton ball frizz atop her head. I approached her and cleared my throat.