Civilian clothes are exactly what I need most for tomorrow’s escape. By the time I’ve winnowed out the few items that are warm, dark, and my size, Kate returns with a glowering Jada and Nobody, who has ketchup smears around the mouth hole of her balaclava and clutches an overstuffed clothes bag of her own.
“I thought you could show Nobody and Signal to the girls’ cabin, so they can get changed and wash up before fire circle.” Kate holds out two coarse towels for Jada to carry for us.
“Fine,” Jada sighs, snatching them. “Follow me.”
We follow her down the pale gravel path to the small red cabin set farthest back in the woods, our steps somehow much louder in the dark.
“So much for my days of having a private cabin!” Jada pushes open a rickety screen door that swings shut behind us with a scream, and clicks on a large halogen lantern hanging off a top bunk. A few blinks and it washes the small space with sickly green light, revealing bunk beds in each corner of the square room, each with a camping lantern hung on one bedpost and a laundry bag on the other. Since there’s only three of us, we can all have a top bunk.
The floors and walls are thin wood paneling, and despite an astringent cleanser smell mildew creeps in green waves from the floor to the windows, their torn screens fluttering in the chilly night air.
“Bathroom’s in there.” Jada points to a green door opposite the front one. “But if you were looking forward to a hot shower you can forget it. None of the cabins have heated water.” Jada holds the towels out to me, but when I reach she lets them fall to the ground.
Nobody tenses, waiting for my reaction. I can’t let this slide.
“Are you that scared I’m going to steal your boyfriend?” I look Jada in the eye. “Calm down, he’s not my type.”
Jada sneers. “Just remember. Sluts get cut.” She pivots away and stalks to the door, and as I finally bend down to pick the towels up she shouts: “Enjoy my cabin, skank!” and slams the door so hard it bounces twice against the doorframe.
Nobody finishes making up her bunk without a word to me, then follows Jada out. And then it’s just me, the silence, and a lonely little moth who’s fallen in love with my lantern.
I shrug on a hoodie, wrestle sheets onto my thin mattress, then climb down from my perch and walk straight into Erik.
He’s standing in the middle of the cabin. How long has he been there, staring? How’d he even come in without me hearing the door?!
“I climbed in through the window.” Erik jerks his thumb toward the torn screen, but aside from this motion he’s eerily still. He’s so tall, his shoulders so broad, it’s unsettling to imagine him twisting through the small window while my back was turned. “Kate wanted someone to check in on you, make sure you hadn’t gotten lost. So I volunteered.”
Jada must have loved that.
“Yeah, well, I might actually just go to bed.” I shrug. “I’m pretty exhausted.”
“Are you?”
“Yup.” The hair on my arms is rising. Maybe just from him being so close. I haven’t stood face to face with a guy for this long in … well, maybe never.
Erik has the strikingly handsome features of a teen idol, slightly skewed by a square, heavy jaw. It’s almost indecently muscular, disconcertingly well engineered to tear flesh from bone.
“You don’t have to come hang out. But you should, because they’re not going to stop asking about your number until you tell them.”
“Yeah? And what’s yours?” I say, stepping back toward my bunk bed, though he hasn’t come any closer.
“Ten,” he says. I recoil and dimples appear on either side of a broad smile. “Yours?”
“Eleven,” I say, lifting my chin.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Erik says. “You’re the Girl From Hell, aren’t you?”
The blood drains from my face and his smile goes even wider.
“I thought I recognized you, Signal Deere. I followed your case and I have to say, I went back and forth on you. The evidence was overwhelming. But seeing you in person, it’s obvious.” He pauses for just a moment then says, “You’re innocent.”
This is all I’ve wanted to hear someone say for the last year. But not him, and not here. In a camp full of homicidal Class As, being innocent makes me prey.
But I still can’t bring myself to say I did it.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I bluster.
“Your face is incredible.” He squints at me, drawing closer. “Every thought just bleeds right through.” I don’t know what my face gave away, but I try to wipe it clean now. He just keeps staring, then finally says: “You’re sure you’re a Class A?”
“They didn’t keep me in solitary for fun,” I say through clenched teeth.
He steps closer. If he weren’t a Class A predator, I’d think he was about to kiss me. And that’s when I notice his eye. It’s torn. Or at least, the pupil is, the pupil of his right eye isn’t a circle, it’s an irregular oval, like the slit of a cat’s eye.
“It’s called coloboma,” he snaps, a nanosecond after I’ve noticed it. “It’s a congenital eye defect. Generally, there’s two kinds of people: the ones who look away when they see it and the ones who make it a point to keep looking. You’re a looker.” Erik talks so fast it takes me a moment to catch up to what he’s saying, then he steps back, shoulders bowing a little, and viciously bites at his nails. “You really shouldn’t be here. You want to escape? Go. Right now.”
He nods to the back door, like he wants me to break into a run. He’s trying to scare me. Trying to get me to admit what I really am. I can’t let him.
“Thanks for the pep talk,” I say with all the bravado I can muster. “But you don’t know me and you have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“I know you’re not capable of killing.” His deep voice is so certain, his cat’s eye not blinking as it locks with mine. “And I know you won’t survive this place.”
Hinges behind us shriek: Nobody stands in the doorway, holding a flashlight. She looks from me to Erik, then walks quickly over and throws her long arm around my shoulders.
“Hey, hot stuff,” she says in her creaky voice. “I’ve been waiting on you.” The lips behind the wool ski mask quickly brush my hair, and then she turns and fixes her gaze on Erik. “Everything okay in here?”
“Yeah,” I say gratefully, catching on. “Thanks for checking in, baby.”
Erik’s eyebrows fly up. “I’m sorry … are you two … together?”
“She’s mine.” Nobody’s stance is relaxed, but there’s a quiet challenge in her voice.
“Oh please. No way,” he scoffs. “You’re in a relationship with a girl who’s been in solitary the last year?”
“We wrote a lot of letters,” I answer for her, and take the rough hand on my shoulder, pushing away the memory of it gloved in the bus driver’s blood.
Erik rolls his eyes. “If you say so, sure. Whatever.”
“Jada was wondering what was taking you so long,” Nobody says, but Erik doesn’t respond. He just walks out, letting the door bang shut behind him. We stand together for another moment and then Nobody swiftly withdraws her arm, ducking down to look out the window before turning to announce: “All clear.”