“Thanks,” I exhale.
“Yeah, well, you told Jada he wasn’t your type, so …” She shrugs. “He marked you out as his. When we were under the tree. Jada saw it too.”
It’s the longest speech I’ve heard her make. Her voice is rough, but the unbalanced girl beside me on the bus from this afternoon is way more articulate than I’d assumed. Was that just an act she put on? To freak out Officer Heather?
“But I’ve got the second highest body count, so if you’re with me he’ll back off.” Nobody clears her throat, and there’s a brief embarrassed silence before she says, “To be clear, I have an actual girlfriend. Who I love very much. So nothing is going to happen between you and me.” She takes a beat. “No offense.”
“Cool, no problem.” I nod quickly, hoping I don’t look surprised, but now I’ve got so many new questions. Like, does she kiss her girlfriend through the ski mask? Or does she feel okay taking it off with her? Am I literally the only person in the world who’s never dated before?
A short knock derails my train of thought, Kate’s silhouette visible through the screen.
“Guys, there’s one last thing we have to do tonight.” She comes in and quickly turns to fasten the front door. Nobody and I spin around to see Dave come in from the other direction, through the bathroom door, carrying a black case. He sets it down and fastens the only other way out, then says:
“Put your hands over your head.”
Nobody takes a step back but Dave is faster. He grabs her elbow and spins her into the bunk.
“What are you doing?!” I yell as Kate grips my arm.
Nobody thrashes around, Dave goes red-faced trying to pin her arms behind her back. She’s taller than him but he outweighs and outmaneuvers her, twisting her arms together and knotting her wrists with a cable tie, wrenching it so tight her fingers start to go dark red.
“The more you relax, the less painful it will be,” Kate says. “It’s the last step.”
“Hands,” Dave barks at me. “Now.”
“WHAT’S the last step?! What are you doing?”
Dave yanks my wrists together, ties them, and then uses another cable tie to attach me to the bunk bed post across the room from Nobody. I’m not resisting, but he still slams me into the bunk, cracking my head against the wood frame. There’s a snapping behind me, I twist my head enough to get Kate in my peripheral vision, pulling on thick rubber gloves as Dave hands her a nightmare object of surgical steel and plastic tubing out of the black case.
An injection gun? What are they injecting us with?
Nobody kicks out, she howls, but Dave is too strong. Kate jerks up the back of Nobody’s mask as Dave holds her scarred, twitching shoulders in place, and she sobs uncontrollably. I never imagined she could cry.
“You have to hold still,” Kate is so calm. “It won’t damage you if you hold still.”
“Please,” I plead. “Why don’t you just tell us what this is first?! We have rights, YOU CAN’T JUST—”
Before I finish the sentence, Kate presses the surgical gun to the back of Nobody’s neck and pulls the trigger.
Chapter Four
The Teen Killers Club
Nobody falls in a pile on the floor.
“You’re all right.” Kate’s voice is directly behind me, Dave’s hands wrenching my shoulders, my own voice screaming in my ears:
“Just tell me what it is first! I won’t struggle if I just know! Just tell me what it is!”
“Stop talking.” Dave flattens me against the bunk like he wants to leave bruises. Gloved hands scrape my hair from the back of my neck and a cold circle presses above where my shoulder blades meet, and then comes the unreal sound of metal punching through my skin.
Hot, mindless pain radiates up my neck and through my jaw and all the way down my spine, snowballing larger and larger as it spreads until it’s the only thing that exists. My teeth grind, my jaw locks, my vision blurs, my body bucks, wanting free of itself. And then I go limp, hanging from my wrists, and then I’m somehow face down on the floor, curled up beside Nobody. I try to get up and the floor dips and rolls below me and the green bean casserole comes up, sour with stomach acid.
Kate’s voice breaks through: “Girls? Girls? See this, girls?”
In sharp focus: an oblong chrome pill, right above my face.
“This is what I just injected you with. It’s in your neck right now, along with a mild disinfectant and muscle stimulant to keep your body from rejecting it. It’s a kill switch. There are three ways to set it off.”
I’m going to be sick again. I’m going to be sick.
“We have an electronic perimeter around camp that’s programmed to trigger your kill switch if you’re on the wrong side of it. Think of it as an invisible fence. The fence extends a mile out from the far shore, across the sign road, and up the far side of the east creek. If you cross the fence, your kill switch will go off instantly.
“Once it’s armed, the kill switch has an internal sensor that will self-activate if the blood around it suddenly oxygenates: in other words, if you try to cut it out, it will go off.”
“Also, try not to get stabbed in the neck,” Dave adds.
Kate clears her throat. “Finally, Dave and I have these clickers. They work kind of like remote controls.” She extends her arm, so the pill is hovering well away from her, and nods to Dave.
He holds up his fob and clicks, and the air fills with the smell of melting rubber as whatever chemical is inside the chrome pill releases and starts melting Kate’s gloves.
“Your switch has been placed between several rather crucial arteries,” Kate says, ripping off her gloves as they start dribbling from her fingers. “If we see you threaten another camper, or act out in a harmful way, or you attempt to escape, we will click our remotes, and your kill switch will release this substance into your bloodstream.”
And turn us off. Like we’re a TV.
Kate’s gloves are now a puddle on the floor. “Any questions? Concerns?”
“You can’t just kill us.” My voice comes out broken.
“Believe me, we don’t want to,” Kate says gently. “We are trying to give you as much freedom as we can.”
I should have gotten in the stupid canoe. I should have bolted when Erik jeered at me to run. Now it’s too late.
Kate wipes up the melted latex and, matter-of-factly, my vomit, as Nobody and I lie clammy and shivering on the ground.
“When you two are feeling better you can go ahead and shower up, and go meet the others ’round the fire,” Dave says as they duck out the door. “Congratulations. You’re officially campers now.”
The idea of getting up off the floor is unimaginable. It’s not until several long cold minutes pass that the haze of pain starts narrowing to a small persistent burning at the base of my neck, like a venomous spider bite.
Nobody and I silently pull ourselves to our feet and retreat to the bathroom, showering in opposite end stalls under ice-cold water. I hear her crying, a soft, hoarse sound, and wish I could cry too, but it’s like everything inside me has been wrung out.
We dress in silence and walk side by side through the dark toward the main cabin. There’s a glow around the side porch and the sharp smell of campfire smoke.