Ms. Gray says, “You come here too, then?”
She moves out of the shadow of the woods. I barely have time to slip the note into my pocket. She’s sweating. Her hair is loose and there’s a burr clinging to one shoulder of her tank top.
My arms and legs feel bloated and useless, and I remember once in fifth grade, at rehearsal for Swan Lake, being seized by a sudden dizziness in the studio, a sense that my whole body was floating apart. Madame Laroche caught me just before I fell out of a double pirouette. It turned out later that I had a fever—I was in bed for two weeks with pneumonia.
That’s exactly how I feel now: like my body is betraying me. I want to run but I can’t. I want to scream but I can’t.
I tighten my grip on the shovel as she comes toward me. If anything happens, I’ll swing right into her head, and I’ll run. But even as I think it I know I can’t, that I’d never be able to.
Ms. Gray stops next to me and looks down at the bouquet of flowers, now displaced, at the cross and the churned-up earth. My breath catches in my throat—if she sees that the note is gone, she’ll know I took it, she’ll know I know—but she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t ask me about the shovel, either. She seems hardly to be seeing at all. Her face is strangely closed, like a painted-over door. For a long time, she says nothing.
Then she looks up at me. “I come here, you know, to pay my respects. I was very fond of Summer.”
That horrible coiled feeling in my stomach unwinds just a little. For a minute I even think I must be wrong—Ms. Gray couldn’t possibly have killed Summer. Why would she?
“Me too” is all I say, and she smiles. It’s the saddest smile ever.
“She was a very special girl.” Ms. Gray turns to stare out over the field. There’s another long moment of quiet. “It’s so beautiful here, isn’t it? I’ve always liked it.” Then: “I can understand why it happened here.”
“Why what happened here?” The wind hisses through the grass. I take a breath and decide to risk it. “Lovelorn?”
She doesn’t react to hearing the name. She doesn’t say What’s Lovelorn? or look confused. And when she turns back to face me, I get a feeling like diving deep in winter water, getting the breath punched out of your chest by the cold, a feeling of drowning. Her eyes are like two long holes, like pits filled with nothing but air.
And suddenly I remember turning around that day and seeing Summer holding a long knife, watching me with the strangest look on her face. As if she wanted to tell me something she knew I wouldn’t like.
Run, Mia. I hear Brynn’s voice in my head now, but I can’t move.
“The murder,” Ms. Gray says.
I try to say It was you and Why? and How could you? But as usual, when I need it the most my throat curls up on itself like a fern, leaving the words trapped in the darkness.
And then, for the second time in my life, Brynn saves me: my phone starts ringing. The noise hauls me back into the present—the tinny ringtone climbing over the sound of the wind and the birds. Ms. Gray blinks and takes a step backward, as if a spell has been broken, and all of a sudden she looks normal again. Good old Ms. Gray. The woman who showed us how to do CPR using a waxen-faced dummy.
“My friend.” I press silence on the ringer, but almost immediately Brynn calls again. “She’s waiting for me in the car.”
“Oh” is all Ms. Gray says. For a split second she looks so sad I almost feel sorry for her. But then I remember what she’s done.
“I should go,” I say. My phone lights up for the third time. I start walking, fighting the urge to sprint, acutely aware of the fact that she’s still watching me, feeling as if she has one long finger pressed to the base of my spine, making me feel stiff-backed and clumsy. Before I reach the trees I have the sudden impression of silent footsteps—I picture an arm outstretched, a hand raised to strike—and I whip around, swallowing a shout.
But Ms. Gray hasn’t moved. She’s still standing next to the little wooden cross, still watching me from a distance, face twisted up as if she’s trying to puzzle out the answer to a riddle.
This time I don’t care about how it looks. When I turn around again, I run.
I barely have time to say hello before Brynn is talking in a rush.
“It was Ms. Gray,” she says. “Ms. Gray killed Summer. She must have been—I don’t know—obsessed with her or something. It makes sense she was helping her write Lovelorn. She was the one who said Summer needed a tutor, it would have been easy enough for her to volunteer. . . .”
“I know,” I say, and Brynn inhales sharply. Abby’s driving like a maniac, bumping down Brickhouse Lane, raising galloping shapes of dust, as if we’re in a high-speed chase. Only when we’re back on Hillsborough Road, heading up to town, does she slow down. “I just saw her.”
“You saw Ms. Gray?” Brynn sounds like she’s speaking with a whistle stuck in her throat.
“Yeah. I went back to bury Lovelorn.”
“You—what?”
“Look, we need to talk. In person.” The enormity of it hits me: Ms. Gray, a murderer. Will anyone believe us? What happens now? More police stations, more interviews, more cops looking at us in disbelief. More whispers and gossip. Even the idea of it is exhausting. “Where are you?”
“On my way back from Heath Moore’s house,” she says. “I hoofed it.”
Now it’s my turn to squeak. “You—what?”
“Like you said, we need to talk.” She makes a noise of disgust. “Can’t be at my house, though. My mom’s off work today.”
“Can’t be at mine,” I say. “My house is under siege.”
“Owen,” Brynn says firmly. And still the name makes little sparks light up in my chest. I stamp them down just as quickly. “Owen has to know too. It’s only right. We need to tell him.”
She’s right, of course—even if I have absolutely no desire to see him ever again, not after what he said. Maybe it’s unfair to resent a person for not loving you back. Then again, it’s unfair that feeling doesn’t always flow two ways.
But this is bigger than me. And it’s bigger than losing Owen.
“We’ll pick you up,” I say. I turn to Abby but she starts shaking her head frantically, mouthing no, no, no. She looks completely panicked—eyes rolling like a spooked horse’s, sweat standing out on her forehead—even more panicked than when I first hurtled into the car and told her to move. But I ignore her. “Stay where you are.”