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1
THE MESSAGE ARRIVESovernight, and by Monday morning it’s all anyone is talking about. People cluster around their phones, as if by reading the text again, comparing the identical messages, they might reveal some new clue about who sent them.
“Hey, Sara! Do you want to play the game?” Tyler Martinez asks, lunging toward me as I walk inside, the first bell ringing. He waggles his eyebrows at me and swings away, laughing at his own joke. I cross my arms over my ribs and lean forward, as if pushing against a current.
Whispers ofLucyare everywhere. Andthe game. People in clots, heads leaned together.
I’ve timed things so that I arrive just before the bell, and the hallway is emptying out as the threat of tardy slips overwhelms the urge to gossip. A few stragglers give me odd looks. Odder thanusual.I bet she sent it, I imagine them whispering.She’sobsessed.
The game. Lucy Gallows. And Wednesday is the anniversary. It doesn’t take a genius. I’d probably blame me, too.
I slide into first period and take my seat, as close to the back corner as I can get.
“Hey. Sara.” Trina sits at the group table in front of mine, and she has to twist around in her seat and lean to talk to me. Her blue eyes are piercing in their exquisite concern, her blonde hair swept up in a casual ponytail that looks more glamorous than anything I’ve managed since the days when she would sit behind me for hours, coercing my mousy hair into french braids and fishtails. “How are you doing?”
“Fine,” I mutter. I can’t look her in the eye. Her expression is too painfully sympathetic. It would be one thing if it was a performance, but it’s genuine. And it’s there every time she looks at me, like she’s worried that I’m going to crumple under the strain of my personal tragedies at any moment.
“I don’t think you did it,” she says, leaning closer. Which means that people are already saying that I did.
“I didn’t.”
She nods slowly. “Don’t let anyone give you crap for it,” she says.
“How do you suggest I stop them?” I ask. She flinches back a little, but she’s spared the need to answer by the second bell, marking the beginning of class. She straightens in her seat. I slouch down as Mr. Vincent launches into his daily preamble, complete with the terrible joke he inflicts on us every day.
“—and he says, ‘Me? I’m a giant heavy metal fan.’” He wrapsup just as the door opens. Anthony Beck steps into the room to the sound of groans, and slaps a hand to his forehead.
“I missed the joke of the day?” he asks in exaggerated despair. He flashes a smile, his dimples deep, his brown eyes bright and half-hidden by his wavy black hair. Back when we were younger, when we were friends, he was skinny as a rail, all elbows and knees, his smile too big for his body. The last year or two he’s started to add muscle, and the nerd who’d tripped over his own feet is co-captain of the lacrosse and soccer teams, an athletic scholarship waiting for him at Northeastern. He got his ear pierced over break, and the silver stud winks.
“I hope you have a good reason for missing out on my effervescent wit,” Mr. Vincent says.
“It took me all morning to text the entire school. My thumbs are cramping like you wouldn’t believe,” Anthony says with a joker’s grin. “Sorry, Mr. V. Won’t happen again.” His gaze roves around the room, and his grin wobbles a moment when he sees me. We’re assigned to the same small group for our current project, which means we’ve been sitting together for the past couple of weeks, but we’ve managed not to exchange more than a dozen words. He’s been responsible for eleven of them.
He slings himself into the chair beside me. It’s much too cramped for his tall frame, and I shrink farther back into the corner, away from him. Mr. Vincent shakes his head.
Anthony sneaks a glance at me. I duck over my notebook, trying to ignore him. It isn’t easy.
Anthony Beck and Trina Jeffries used to be two of my best friends. There were six of us—seven when we let Trina’s littlebrother, Kyle, hang out—a roving gang of miscreants who stuck together from first grade until high school. We even had a stupid group name. The Wildcats. It was the Unicorn Wildcats until fifth grade, a compromise that Trina had worked out when the vote was split down the middle—my sister, Becca, and I on opposite sides of the debate, as usual. I was pulling for the Unicorns, of course. Back then my aesthetic was 70 percent glitter, before the severe color allergy I developed in middle school. Becca, though? She was fierce from the start.
We all linked hands, crossing our arms to grab the person on the opposite side, and shook on it.We are the Unicorn Wildcats. Friends forever and ever. No matter what.
To a bunch of first graders, it felt like an unbreakable bond. Forever felt possible. It felt inevitable. But now Becca is gone, and I haven’t spoken to any of them about more than the Cold War or sine and cosine for almost a year.
Mr. Vincent is starting to outline the day’s agenda when a hand shoots up in the second row. He pauses, rhythm disrupted. The corner of his mouth tightens, but that’s the only sign of irritation. “Vanessa. If you need help with your current project, we can talk during check-in.”
“It’s not about my w-work,” Vanessa says. “It’s about the t-t-text message we all g-got.”
“Yes. I saw that. And obviously, it’s intriguing,” Mr. Vincent says. He settles back against his desk. “But I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the Industrial Revolution.”
“But it’s r-relevant to history. Local history,” Vanessa says, pushing her round glasses up her nose.
From my angle I can only see the curve of her cheek and the back of her head, but like most of the people in the room, I’ve known Vanessa Han since kindergarten, and I can imagine the familiar expression of intense interest she must have fixed on Mr. Vincent. She wears thick-framed glasses and leggings with wild, colorful patterns, a look both bold and self-assuredly nerdy, much like Vanessa herself.
“Local history,” Mr. Vincent echoes. “You mean the reference to Lucy? Meaning Lucy Gallows.” He rubs his chin. “All right. It has nothing to do with nineteenth-century methods of production and their impact on the idea of the nuclear family, but what the hell. All right, who can tell me the story of Lucy Gallows?”
Half a dozen hands go up. He points. Jenny Stewart speaks up first. “Wasn’t she, like, this girl from a hundred years ago? Her brother killed her and buried her body in the woods, and now the woods are haunted.”
Vanessa gives her a withering look. “Th-that’s not—” The next word tangles itself up in her mouth, and she falls silent for a beat before continuing in a firm, steady tone. “That’s not true.”
