Page 7 of We’re All Going to Die Tonight!

Lucas. When I turn and look at him now, my stomach doesn’t just flip. It tumbles, it somersaults, it leaves this physical plane. His brown eyes shine in the rain, fastened on me in a way that makes me lightheaded.

“Slippery, huh?” Lucas says as I get my balance. “I’ve almost fallen like six times.”

The laugh breaks out of me, and he grins in response.

I notice he’s got his tripod in one hand, his mounted iPhone protected by some kind of covering as he continues to film. This is what Lucas does, I’ve learned. He’s constantly filming for his YouTube channel, gathering every scrap of footage possible, forever hunting for that elusive “perfect shot.” It would seem like he’s wasting his time, like there couldn’t possibly be anything worth documenting, but Lucas always finds something. More than that, he’s got a gift for turning the mundane into something special.

Not that I’ve obsessively watched every video on his channel or anything. That’s something anyone could pick up on, I swear.

Lucas matches my step as we continue forward, which makes everything seem just a little lighter, even my heavy backpack.

“This house sounds pretty incredible,” Lucas says. “Emerson said it’s basically identical to the house in North by Northwest.”

“What’s that?” I ask.

Lucas holds his chest like I’ve physically wounded him. “What’s North by Northwest? Mari, where’s your cultural education? It’s only one of the greatest Hitchcock movies—nay, thriller movies—ever made.”

Mari. Lucas is the only one who calls me that. The only one who’s given me a nickname. It makes me bold. His.

“Maybe you’ll have to show me sometime,” I say.

“Hell yeah,” he says, elbowing me in the side. “You name the time and place, and I’m there.”

I shiver. It’s hard to say if it’s because of the cold or him.

“Nearly there, everyone,” Mr. McCullough calls from the front. I look up, seeing that Avery’s fallen back a bit, Javi and Kaitlyn are next to her, and Emerson’s talking to the teachers.

Another shiver, but I know this one isn’t because of Lucas.

“Lucas,” I whisper, pitching my voice so only he can hear me. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

More than a bad feeling, if I’m honest. More like I can see a silent warning flashing at me to turn back now.

I glance at Lucas, waiting for his response. He doesn’t say anything right away, just mulls over my words before looking at me. There’s a quirk to his lips as he speaks.

“Don’t worry, Mari,” he says. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I think— Holy shit.”

He comes to such an abrupt stop that my heart bangs against my chest, instant terror that I was right, I was right—but then I see the grin crack across his face as he lifts his tripod up, and I follow his gaze to what’s ahead.

Holy shit is right.

There’s a spindly wrought iron gate that frames the view of the house—if you can even call it a house. Really, it’s a mansion. It’s a flat rectangle of brick and glass, and I know from Emerson’s bragging that the hill it’s perched on slopes downward all the way to the ocean. The left side of the house is encircled by woods, woods we’ve just emerged from as the rain continues pounding us. But the building. I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks like someone cut it out of a magazine and pasted it in front of us.

“It is the North by Northwest house,” Lucas says, wielding his tripod like a sword to secure his shot.

“Precisely,” Emerson says, appearing beside us. “It’s a near replica. An architectural triumph. A literal work of art. A—”

“We get it,” Javi cuts him off. “Can we hurry up, man? I’m getting soaked.”

Emerson huffs but stalks up to the gate and punches a code into the lockbox hanging from it. He extracts a set of keys and returns to us.

I barely notice him, as I can’t pull my eyes away from the house.

The huge glass windows. The heavy wooden doors.

A flash of lightning makes us all jump.

“Javi’s right,” Ms. Dorman says. “Let’s get moving.”