The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(78)

“Hey, stupid,” he said. “Let’s never do this again.”





He came closer, standing by the edge of her bed.


“You’re okay,” he said. “They think it’s mostly shock. They weren’t sure if you hit your head, so they’ve been watching you. You had a CAT scan. Do you remember?”

“Vaguely.”

“They think we were messing around and jumped off Point 23,” he said. “They think we’re two assholes. I didn’t explain that we jumped because someone shot at us. I thought about it—because someone shot at us. But we had broken into a house, so . . .”

Stevie nodded wearily.

“I told them to call Carson. Which is why I’m dressed like this. Since he owns the camp, he has access to all the parental consent forms our families had to sign and copies of our insurance information, stuff like that. And he’s irresponsible enough not to call our parents, so we might get out of this night in one piece.”

Stevie felt her eyes well up.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s fine,” he said, looking down. “Whoever follows you to a second location deserves what they get. We called Janelle. She was so determined to get here that I thought she was going to walk, but I convinced her to wait until morning. They’re probably going to admit you, to keep an eye on you. I can go home. David’s going to stay until they take you upstairs.”

“You know I love you, right?” she asked.

“You better.”





It looked like he was going to take her good hand and squeeze it, but then at the last moment, he tapped the back of it in an abbreviated gesture of affection.


David had not gotten a change of clothes. Nobody had thought of him. His shirt was still clammy and damp, and his hair was drier, but not dry. As a gesture, he had been given a sheet to wind around himself, which was odd and also somehow fitting.

She remembered the first time they had kissed—he was sitting on the floor of her room in Minerva House. He was leaning up against the wall in a pair of ancient Yale sweatpants he had taken from his dad. She was explaining the problems with witness testimony using office supplies as props. It had been, in many ways, the defining moment of their relationship before this one, with Stevie in a hospital bed after breaking into a house, and him wound in a sheet, wandering the emergency room.

This was them.

He came up to the side of her bed and leaned down, his elbows on the rail, looking at her. He shifted his gaze from left to right, and from the way he was looking, she knew there had to be something about her face that wasn’t great. She decided not to worry about it.

“What else do you want to do tonight?” he asked quietly. “Wanna steal a car?”

She was too tired to joke. She considered smiling, but whatever it was that was wrong with her face was too sore for that.





“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow night.”


She continued looking up at him, his head haloed by the greenish fluorescent lights.

“Nate didn’t want to say why you guys jumped off a cliff in the middle of the night,” he said. “I know you both well enough to guess there was probably a good reason. Or a reason.”

“You left,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You were gone, before. Your tent . . .”

“Flooded. Completely. I had to move site.”

“I texted . . .”

“My tent flooded,” he said again. “My phone was on the ground. It stopped working until it dried out.”

“I thought you just left,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to leave,” he replied.

The nurse snapped back the curtain and made her way behind David.

“Time to go upstairs,” she said, arranging and tucking the various wires and bits connected to Stevie’s bed.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” he said. “Call me if you need me. It works now.”

She was wheeled to the far side of an empty double room. Once the nurse settled her in, putting all the wires and rails and bits and pieces in place, Stevie was left to rest with the door to her room open. She tried to close her eyes, but there was a flicking light. It was a reflection of something in the hall, bouncing off the whiteboard by the door with her nurse’s name on it. There was a beeping sound that went with it, but it was out of sync.





Flash. Pause. Beep. Flash. Pause. Beep.


Stevie tried not to think about it, to close her eyes and sleep, but even with her eyes closed, the light seeped in under her eyelids.

Flash. Pause. Beep. Flash. Pause. Longer pause. Beep.

This was intolerable. But her head didn’t hurt anymore, and neither did her arm. That’s right—they said something about giving her medicine for the pain.

Still, even through the haze, it was amazing how distracting a flashing light could be. Maybe she would make the light her friend. The light was saying, Go to sleep, Stevie. Night night, Stevie.

No it wasn’t. No flashing light says that. The point of a flashing light is to say, Look at me! Look at me! Something is happening!

What was happening? Nothing. She was in this bed, tired and sleepless, a cast molded neatly to her arm.

Flash. Pause. Beep. Flash. Pause. Pause. Beep. Flash.