Teen Hyde (High School Horror Story #2)(33)

My hands were shaking. My stomach was still spasming. “Uh-huh,” I said. “I’ll be right there. Why don’t you lead them in the first cheer?” I knew she’d take this as a compliment. Honestly, I meant it as one.

“Okay.” I didn’t hear feet shuffling away. “Are you sure you’re all right in there?”

I closed my eyes and felt for the zipper on my gym bag. I pulled it open and started rummaging. My fingers found what they were looking for. I retrieved one of the plastic baggies I’d stashed. It contained only one pill. “Yep, don’t worry,” I said, emptying the drop of Sunshine out into my hand. “I’ll be fine.”





TWELVE

Marcy

I’ve always heard that if you want to bring the hurt, you’ve got to hit them where they live.

Unfortunately for the “them” in question, I happened to take things very literally.

I checked the time on my watch as I slipped through the door to Graves Hall on the tail of a legitimate student with a key card. Lena followed closely after.

I had the urge to sniff the air. Like a bloodhound. I was that close. My skin tingled with it. A step through the door and I had landed on Mick’s former turf. The blood in my veins began coursing, pushing the valves of my heart to work overtime.

Short One. That was what I’d called him, the one who’d watched through the lens of his video camera.

He wouldn’t be watching anymore. He wouldn’t be doing anything. A pleasant warmth rose in my gut at the unintentionally conjured memory.

But the dozens of campus activity flyers plastered to the walls of the dormitory snapped me back. If Short One had watched, that meant someone else could, too. The recollection of the blinking red light taunted me.

A recording. A vestige of the night.

That would never do.

A girl, not much older than me, sat on a rolling chair with her feet propped up on a half-moon desk. She looked up from her copy of Vogue and gave us a distracted smile before returning to the glossy photographs in the magazine.

I moved without hesitating toward one of the hallways on the first floor, searching for a flight of stairs.

“What if someone recognizes us?” Lena’s breath was hot on my neck.

“I thought I told you to be quiet,” I replied through gritted teeth. I lifted my gaze to peer up the stairwell. “And there should be no ‘us.’ I asked for the dorm number; I didn’t ask you to come along.”

As far as I was concerned, an extra body was an extra liability and an extra witness, neither of which were items I’d included on my revenge registry.

My boots pounded the steps. Lena trotted after me. With her purple fishnet stockings under a black moto skirt, not drawing attention seemed too much to hope for. “You need me,” she said. “Besides, it’s only fair considering I did the bulk of the work.”

I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t some kind of game. And that I didn’t need anyone, especially not a high school girl with a hero-worshipping complex. “You can be the lookout. But that’s it.”

I found the stairwell. Room 255. That was the number Lena had gotten when she’d called the school asking how to send a care package to her cool collegiate cousin, Mick Holcolm. At least she was proving useful for something. I wondered if she’d feel as cooperative if she knew that her pretend collegiate cousin Mick was dead.

“So are you going to tell me what we’re doing yet?” The clang of our soles echoed. We turned onto the second landing. The faint scent of marijuana lingered in the cramped stairwell.

“Again with the ‘we,’” I said coldly, and drew a hood over my ears to mask my dark hair. Near the exit a fire alarm blinked red to show that it was ready. Another taunt. This time the charged memory that resulted brought with it more—torn clothes, ugly tears, a girl too weak to stand. The reason I was here.

I scanned the numbers on the doors of Graves Hall’s second-floor dorms. Every step was purposeful. Efficient. Competent.

A girl squeaked down the hall toward us in shower shoes and a towel. My muscles tensed before she veered off into one of the rooms without sparing us a second glance.

Music trickled through a few of the shut doors and I could imagine the students who lived inside. A studious music major listening to classical. A stoner with his Bob Marley.

“What if Mick’s home?” Lena’s head was on a swivel. For someone else, her nervousness might be contagious. For me it was just incomprehensible.

“He won’t be.”

“How do you know?”

I cut my glance sharply over to Lena. “Because I know, okay?”

“But what about a roommate? He could have one of those.”

I stuffed my hands in my pockets and hunched my shoulders, wishing that I was alone. “That’s what you’re here for.”

“I thought you said you didn’t need me.” Her tone held a hint of triumph.

My finger rubbed the dull side of the unfamiliar blade stowed in my pocket. Now that my knife was hidden and buried in the mud, I’d had to snatch a smaller version with a curved, irregular blade that looked like it was used to peel the skin off things. “I don’t. But you’re here and this way’s easier.”

I located Room 255 three doors from the end of the hallway closest to the boys’ showers. It was an unremarkable door with no hint of the person that had lived inside. I knocked three times and waited. I knocked again and pressed my ear to the wood. When no sound came from the other side, I turned the handle and, to my surprise, it twisted easily underneath my grip. “That was simpler than I planned,” I said. Funny how safe these boys felt, how untouchable. But they weren’t safe now and I’d already proven that they weren’t untouchable.