“Dennis kept having murder fantasies,” Erik answers for him. I didn’t realize he was listening. “He was afraid he’d act on them, so he asked his computer teacher to give him the Wylie-Stanton and tested off the charts. He also ran a little dark net site called … what was it called again?”
“Skullsex dot com,” Dennis says flatly.
“How could I forget!” Erik laughs.
“We didn’t have any actual threads on copulating with skulls.” Dennis adjusts his oversized glasses. “Cannibalism, torture, decapitation—” He gives me a gentlemanly nod. “But no skull fetishists. Still, it got the tone across.”
My stomach turns over as everybody else chuckles.
“Dennis is the highest Class A out of all of us,” Erik adds, “despite being a zero.”
“I’m more of a programmer than a killer, per se,” Dennis says modestly. “But of course, everybody here has their own method.”
The rest of the group has gone back to talking amongst themselves. Dennis’s even voice is so low I have to lean in to hear him.
“What methods?” I ask, unsure I even want to know.
“Jada draws victims in and strikes when they least expect it. The twins are hedonistic process killers. Erik is an apex manipulator—”
“He’s a what now?”
“He kills people by getting in their heads. He doesn’t need to touch you, though he’s happy to do it that way too. But most of his victims he broke down psychologically.”
“Right.” I roll my eyes, and Dennis turns from the fire and looks at me.
“I’m perfectly serious,” he says. “And Javier—”
“You telling her all our numbers?” Javier leans in.
“Dennis, please!” Troy interrupts, “I’d prefer to go through my kills myself, in detail.”
“No, thanks,” I shake my head, unable to handle any more, “I don’t want to know.”
The entire circle goes quiet, staring at me. Everyone is bewildered, because obviously, what could be more exciting to a bunch of killers than reliving their crimes! Erik looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. I take a deep breath and try to cover.
“I mean, sorry, I just don’t want to compare report cards, okay? All the posturing and ‘I’m harder than you’ stuff. We’re not fighting for cafeteria tables in Gen Pop.” I try to sound casually tough. The hoarseness helps. So does the idea I’ve decapitated someone, probably. “Like, everybody here already got accepted into murder Harvard or whatever. So can’t we get to know each other as people instead of rap sheets? Can’t we just … hang out?”
Jada lets out an uncertain, mocking giggle, but Javier nods emphatically, and there’s a note of real emotion in his voice as he says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”
“I know I’d appreciate moving the emphasis off our body counts,” Dennis says, and Troy shrugs.
“I can hang out, like bros, like brosefs, just chilling and stuff.” There’s a slight edge in his voice, but he’s smiling.
Erik stares right at me with that awful wolfish smile. Like he’s so onto me.
Then Nobody asks Kurt if he knows any Dolly Parton, and he starts strumming and the atmosphere relaxes.
“Ooooh, we should play truth or dare!” Jada claps her hands delightedly. She’s moved next to Erik. She puts her hand on Erik’s shoulder, but he leans forward to throw little bits of grass into the fire and it slips away.
Troy chimes in:
“Hell yeah! Truth or dare! I dare you to take your top off,” Troy bellows.
“Ew, nasty!” Jada reaches behind Erik to shove Troy, hard. “Kill him, Erik!”
“I thought we were all pretending to be normal, like Signal wanted?” Erik addresses me then: “Truth or dare, Signal?”
I consider the choice, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and distant roll of the lake.
“… Truth.”
“Okay.” Erik’s eyes flit to Javier and then back to me. “Are you in a relationship?”
There’s a flurry of comically dramatic gasps. My adrenaline spikes, but I know exactly what to say.
“If you must know, nobody is my girlfriend.” Emphasis on the small n.
Erik immediately catches it, blurting: “Wait, wait let me rephrase!” But everyone drowns him out clapping and making catcalls. Nobody does a collar pop, and Troy loses it. I look to Javier, but his head is down, he’s stripping bark from a stick.
And now it’s my turn to ask.
I look around the circle, then turn to Javier with the biggest smile I can muster.
“Javier, truth or dare?”
He smiles, a small smile, but it changes his face, makes him go from manly to boyish.
“Dare.”
Now I really have no idea what to say.
“But I’m not taking off my shirt,” he adds.
“I dare you …” I swallow, a little overcome by my new power. “To … sing along with the next song Kurt plays.”
Kurt does a drum roll on his guitar and launches into an opening chord, but when it gets to the point Javier should sing he doesn’t. His shy smile becomes a nervous cringe, and I realize I’ve hit a nerve. Big muscly Javier is afraid of singing in public?! Well … that’s actually kind of adorable.
“Wait, what song is this?” I ask with my best confused expression.
“It’s ‘Redemption Song.’ By Bob Marley.”
“Ah ha! So you do know it! Get singing, then!” I reach out as if to poke him in the arm but draw back before I connect, and just like that, his smile is back.
He clears his throat, waits for Kurt to get through the intro again, and then comes in, clear and soft and on key. One after the other we join in with him, until we’re all singing, except Erik. He just stares at me through the fire, but I don’t care. I’d forgotten how good it feels to sing. Like the opposite of crying.
Chapter Five
On Your Mark
“RISE AND SHINE!” Kate’s voice cuts through my sleep as she snaps on the halogen light right by my face.
“It’s still dark,”
“It’s still morning. How’s the neck?” she asks chummily.
“Awful.” I’m unable to look her in the eye; her friendliness is so galling after yesterday. I instead shimmy down the ladder and start to follow Nobody toward the bathroom, but Jada stops us, pulling jeans over her pajama leggings.
“Don’t bother with the shower,” she mutters, sleep in the corners of her eyes. “Until after the obstacle course.”
* * *
What I can make out in the shivery light of morning doesn’t look fun.
After we hike up to the overgrown soccer field, Dave has us line up with the boys along a fat stripe of white spray paint. Across from us wait three chain-link fences, each about ten feet apart, and a grid of rope staked to the ground that leads up to a super tall sheet of plywood. Like, tall-as-a-house tall, with a square hole punched in it the size of a picture window. And that’s just what I can see from starting line.
“Campers!” Dave’s breath condenses in the freezing air. “Time for our morning obstacle course run! For our newcomers”—his eyes catch mine before he sips from a steel thermos—“we run the obstacle course every day. We run it because it will save your lives. Your activities cannot be linked back to any official channels—”