The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(34)

Stevie couldn’t quite finish the thought, so Janelle stepped in.

“Feel any pain?”

“Yeah. Allison is still so raw. It’s never stopped for her. And here I am—I’m at this camp, trying to work it out. Do I have any right to do that?”

Janelle considered this for a moment as the rain strummed its fingers on the roof.

“I think it’s good that you’re wondering that,” she said after a moment. “It means you know where your priorities are. You are also the person who worked out what happened at Ellingham Academy in 1936.”

“Am I?”

“Yeah. You really are.”

“So why do I feel like a fake?”

“Because most people feel like fakes,” Janelle replied. “Impostor syndrome. It’s a thing.”





“Do you ever feel that way?”


Janelle considered this.

“No,” she said. “But what I do is different. I make things. If they work, I can see them work. If they don’t work, I take them apart until they do. I have science on my side. You’re making things you can’t see.”

It was good to have smart friends.

“The only times I feel it are when I think about Vi,” Janelle said. “Not . . . like, not about us. But now that they’re so far away . . . I can’t think sometimes. I only think about them. I think about the next text message, the next chat, the next picture. I should be more serious. I should be thinking about my project for next year, or college, and I am . . . but then I check my phone to see if they texted.”

“Isn’t that normal?” Stevie said.

“I guess. But I don’t want to be normal.”

“You love Vi,” Stevie said.

“Yeah. I do.”

“And Vi loves you.”

“Yeah,” Janelle said with a little sigh. “They do.”

“So I guess you have to ride it out.”

“I . . . I want Vi here. Vietnam is too far. September is too far.”

A silence settled over them, full of rain.

“Can you imagine how much Nate would hate this conversation?” Stevie finally said.

Janelle’s laughter rang out like a bell.





“I’m going to put my headphones in,” she said. “I listen to music to go to sleep.”


She switched out her light, and after a moment, Stevie did the same.

For the first time in months, Stevie felt complete again. She was working a case. She was with her friends. Janelle was breathing gently in her sleep. The fan ticked away like a heartbeat.

For a few moments, her mind swirled with the faces of the victims of the Box in the Woods: Sabrina, Eric, Todd, and Diane. The raven-haired girl. The boy with the blond curls. The guy with the light-brown shag. The redhead with the long, straight hair and all the freckles. They had been here, all those years ago. Slept in this place. Whatever happened to them, the answer was here somewhere. She would find it. She would pin it down. She would . . .

She slipped into sleep with the images still flowing through her mind, blending with the sound of the rain. She stirred only to swipe away some insect that was trying to fly up her nose. The next thing she was aware of was Janelle yelling her name. Stevie blinked awake. It was a moist, almost sweaty dawn. A soft light came in from around the edges of the curtain, and Janelle was standing by the bed, gazing in Stevie’s direction in horror. Stevie pressed herself upright in a second to face her friend, her heart already racing.

“What? Are you okay? What?”

Janelle pointed at the wall above Stevie’s bed. Stevie





craned around, then jumped up when she saw what Janelle was indicating.

About four feet above where Stevie had been sleeping was the word SURPRISE.





July 11, 1978

9:30 p.m.



WHEN THE GATHERING IN THE CENTER OF TOWN DISBANDED, THE adults and the younger children all retired to their homes, to their television sets and bedrooms. To safety. To normality. But in the middle of the town, the teenagers, the ones who had come closest to the beast—they were awake.

They needed their own gathering, one that wasn’t powered by Jell-O salads and burgers and polite talk. The parents of Barlow Corners allowed them to go, but only in groups, and only if they promised not to leave the football field. Because if they did not let them go, they would find another way—they would sneak into the woods to talk. Better to let them go as a group, in the open seclusion of the field, where no one could sneak up on them.

So they gathered, coming from dozens of cars in the parking lot. Some arrived singly, and others in groups. Someone went into the school and switched some of the outside lights on, but these did not penetrate the middle of the field. All around, the dark curtain of the woods penned them in. Everyone knew what had happened—and yet no one knew





what had happened. Just enough information had leaked to make a mess of the facts. As the days wore on, the story had whipped around in ever-wider loops, taking on new and strange qualities with every pass. You could hear all these stories passing from one person to another:

“I heard all their fingers were cut off.”

“There was a message written in blood on a tree.”