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Aria spread the piece out to its very corners. Off to the left, Ali had drawn a strange symbol she hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a NO PARKING sign, the kind that had a letter P with a big red line through the center. Only, instead of P, Ali had written another initial instead. Aria brought the flag close to her face. At first glance, the letter looked like an I. But as she looked closer, she realized it wasn’t. It was a J.
For…Jason?
Heart hammering, Aria shoved the flag back into her pocket and ran into the woods. The snow had melted, and the ground was slick. Aria sprinted over wet leaves and soggy puddles, splashing mud everywhere. When she came to the bottom of a ravine, her boots went out from under her. She hit the ground with a thwack, landing hard on her hip. The pain was white and hot, and Aria let out a muffled shriek.
A few quiet seconds passed. The only sound she heard was her own breathing. Slowly, she got up, wiped mud off the side of her face, and looked around.
Across the clearing was a familiar, twisted tree. Aria frowned, realizing. This was where they’d found Ian’s body last week—she was sure of it. Something glinted from underneath a patch of logs and dry leaves. Aria carefully walked over to it and crouched down. It was a platinum class ring, half-caked in mud. She pulled her shirtsleeve over her hand and wiped the ring clean. A blue stone glinted. Around the base of the stone were the words Rosewood Day. She shut her eyes, remembering Ian’s body lying among the leaves just one week ago. Her gaze had gone straight to the class ring around his bloated finger. That ring had a blue stone in it too.
She shined the flashlight on the name inscribed on the inside of the band. Ian Thomas. Had this fallen off Ian when he escaped? Had someone pried it off him? She looked again at the pile of wet leaves. The ring had been sitting on top of them, barely hidden. How could the cops not have found it?
A twig snapped. Aria whipped her head up. The noise sounded close. More twigs broke. Leaves crunched. Then a figure slithered through the trees. Aria crouched down. The figure took a few steps and stopped. It was too dark to see who was there. Something made a sloshing noise, like liquid hitting the sides of a container. Aria’s eyes watered, an odd smell filling her nose. It was the odor of a gas station, one of her most-hated smells in the world.
When she saw the figure bend down and heard the liquid glugging out of the container and splattering on the muddy ground, Aria realized what was happening. She stood up fast, a scream frozen in her throat. Slowly, the person reached into his pocket and pulled out an object. Aria heard a flick.
“No,” she whispered.
Time slowed down. The air felt thick and still. Then the forest turned orange. Everything lit up. Aria screamed and sprinted back up the ravine. She careened into trees and stepped in a small ditch, twisting her ankle. For the first few seconds, all she heard was the hideous crackle of the fire building and building, eating everything in its path. But as she rounded a corner, she heard another sound. It was small and pitiful and desperate. A tiny whimper.
Aria stopped. The flames were at the ravine, where she’d been moments ago. To the right was a huddled figure. This person seemed smaller and weaker-looking than the figure that had traipsed through the woods moments before, lighting everything on fire. The person’s leg was caught underneath a heavy tree branch that had fallen, and tiny, fingerlike flames were climbing up the branch, closer and closer to the person’s foot.
“Help!” whoever it was screamed. “Please!”
Aria sprinted up. The person’s face was covered by a huge hood. She assessed the log. It was big and bulky, and she hoped she could move it.
“You’re going to be okay,” she shouted, her face beginning to warm from the flames. Mustering her strength, Aria shoved the log down the hill. It rolled into a pool of gas and exploded. The person shrieked and collapsed against the tree. There was another deafening crack behind them, and Aria turned and screamed. The woods were a wall of orange. The fire was climbing the trees now, felling more branches. In seconds, they would be surrounded.
The person was still pressed against the tree trunk, staring at Aria with a shell-shocked look on his or her sooty face. “Come on,” Aria wailed, starting to run. “We have to get out of here before we’re dead!”
31
RISING FROM THE ASHES
Emily, Spencer, and Hanna sprinted out of the barn, running as fast as they could away from the flames that had erupted around them. The air smelled thickly of smoke and burning trees. Emily’s lungs burned as she ran.
They waded through a bunch of thick shrubs, ignoring the burrs that were affixed to their sweaters, skin, and hair. Then Hanna abruptly stopped and pressed her hands to the top of her head. “Oh my God,” she wailed. “Wilden. I saw him the other day at Home Depot, loading a bunch of drums of something into his car. It was propane.”
Emily felt nauseated and dizzy. She thought of how Jason had stared right at her the other night, after he’d left Jenna’s house. How Wilden had glared at them at the party. They knew.
“Come on,” Spencer urged, pointing through the trees. They could see the outline of Spencer’s windmill ahead. Safety was close.
The wind kicked up, blowing ashes everywhere. Something flat and square fluttered past Emily, coming to a stop at the foot of a small, knobby tree. It was the picture from the Ali shrine, the one of Ali wearing a Von Dutch T-shirt and the four of them surrounding her, laughing. The corners of the photo were charred from the flames, and half of Spencer’s head had been burnt away. Emily gazed into Ali’s joyful, bright blue eyes. Here they were, running through the very woods where she’d died, with quite possibly the same people who had killed her trying to kill them, too.
