Omelet’s safety vest glowed, and Abby reached up to turn on a lamp attached to her ear warmers. The brace on her arm was a bulge beneath her white sweatshirt.
They started off power walking. Abby kept one eye on the windows of her house until she turned the corner. Another early morning runner sprinted down a parallel street, setting off lights and yappy dogs, and Lia sighed. Lia crept after them, keeping close to the shadows between the streetlights.
“Maybe we’ll run a little,” Abby said, and scratched the malamute’s head. “Don’t tell Dr. Kim.”
And they were off, two ghosts racing down the streets toward the park. Lia couldn’t keep up. She wasn’t sporty, and even if she was, her footsteps would have been too loud. She didn’t need to follow Abby closely anyway. She only needed to know which paths Abby took.
She followed the slap-slap of Abby’s tennis shoes against the pavement to the rougher concrete of the park. Spindly trees crackled in the breeze, and Lia ducked into the safety of their trunks to hide, using her phone to see. She added “long path” to her notes about Abby. It was the one that didn’t cross the bridge.
Slap-slap, ah-whoo.
The path wound through the narrow section of woods at the edge of the neighborhood, making the park seem bigger and more forested than it really was. It felt like some backwoods haven miles away from Lincoln.
Slap-slap, ah-whoo.
Lia crunched through the grass at the edge of the cracked concrete. Abby and Omelet began to round the bend, and Lia no longer had to creep so much. Someone was probably following Lia and pissed they couldn’t shoot her since she was too near Abby. During Assassins, few people went out alone, but Lia didn’t mind being alone. She had grown used to the loneliness. Mark was the sort of brother who was more apt to measure the Snickers they were about to split with a ruler than actually do things with Lia, and next year, Gem would be gone. Abby was just another classmate who knew what they wanted and had the means to get it. Lia hated the envy burning in her veins.
Slap-slap, woof.
Lia could barely even hear Abby and Omelet now. She started jogging, one ear tilted out of the wind to listen. Lia should have walked faster—everyone outpaced her eventually.
Omelet barked. Then came a thunk, as if Abby had kicked a rock. A groan, tree limbs bent back too far by the wind. Damp branches splitting underfoot.
Then Abby took off again.
Lia ran after her. Maybe Abby had seen her lurking in the trees. Lia neared a sharp bend in the path, Omelet’s bark growing louder and louder. Lia lengthened her strides, water gun in hand. She sprinted beneath a burned-out streetlight.
And tripped.
She went down hard. Her hands shot out and the water gun skidded across the sidewalk. Her chin smacked into her outstretched arm, teeth biting through her cheek. Gravel tore through the knees of her jeans. Lia groaned and rolled onto her side, eyes squeezing shut. Omelet whoofed and panted. He padded back and forth across the pavement. Lia shook her head.
“Not funny, Abby,” Lia murmured, crawling to get the gun. Everything ached, and her right ankle throbbed. There was a ringing in her ears. “Abby?”
No one answered. Omelet, still pacing across the path in front of her, whined. The path was empty in both directions.
This had to be payback for the bridge, but Lia had never thought Abby was the revenge type.
“Abby?” The skin on Lia’s hands looked like it had gotten the meanest rug burn she’d ever seen. “I don’t think I fractured anything, but we’re definitely even and you’re freaking Omelet out.”
Lia froze. The silence pressed in.
Abby would never leave Omelet like this, even if she were out for vengeance. Lia stumbled to her feet, and Omelet darted to the side of the path. Without the streetlight, Lia could only see his white fur. A dark stain marred his snout and paws.
Lia lurched after him. Abby lay off the path, facedown in the dirt. Her neck was twisted at an awkward angle.
“Abby!” Lia dropped to her knees and turned her over.
Blood soaked Abby’s face, all of her red and warm and still. It thawed the frost on the ground in a halo around her. It darkened the indent where her skull had been cracked open and stuck to Lia’s hands. It dripped down the rock that had broken Abby’s fall. Lia’s fingers fluttered near her jaw, desperate to find a pulse.
Nothing.
In the dark, alone with Abby while the 911 operator barked instructions, Lia saw eyes peering out from the darkness. She saw shadows darting toward her down the path. She saw the bloodstain on Omelet’s fur grow and cover him. She saw everything, none of it real.
The flashing lights from the arriving ambulance didn’t help.
An EMT bundled Lia up in a silvery blanket and sat her on the path far from Abby. The path wasn’t wide enough for cars, so they had all come running through the woods, cutting straight across the park. The sun was only just rising, and all of them were washed in red. Abby’s parents arrived as the EMT finished cleaning her knee. A detective loomed behind them.
They talked to her and she answered, but she had no idea what she said. She had no idea what they said.
No, she hadn’t seen it happen.
No, she hadn’t been running with Abby.
Yes, they were playing that game and she was stalking Abby.
“I was just following a little ways behind, and then I heard…I thought…” Lia sniffed. “I thought she had kicked a rock or stubbed her toe, because I couldn’t hear her running, and then Omelet was howling, and I tripped on something, and then Omelet came over to me, and I knew Abby wouldn’t leave Omelet. She’d never leave Omelet, so I stood up and—”
“You tripped too?” one of the cops asked.
Too? Abby ran everywhere. She couldn’t die from tripping.
Lia nodded, and a detective in a neat suit and wool coat glanced at her over the rim of his glasses.
Lia nodded. “It took me a minute to get up, and Omelet came over.”
Lia’s dad talked to the cops while her mom herded her to the car.
“Abby ran all the time,” Lia said softly, an ache that had nothing to do with her wounds spreading through her.
“She wasn’t supposed to be running,” Lia’s mom said. Her arm was tight around Lia’s shoulders, and her lips were set in a hard, thin line. “You shouldn’t have been out either.”
“Sorry.”
Her mom sighed and hugged Lia to her side. “No, no, it’s fine. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
They passed a crowd of onlookers, old neighbors bundled up in dressing gowns beneath puffy coats and people on the way to work clutching travel mugs in their hands. Nothing worth gossiping about ever happened in Lincoln, but an ambulance and a cop car at dawn must’ve been worth talking about. Lia tucked her face into her mom’s shoulder.