He lifted his bat higher, eyes widening. “Not you, too!”

Hazel shook her head, sighing. “Molly said that, before she passed out. She was—I don’t know—possessed or something like it.”

“Molly Lipscomb?” Carter looked past Hazel, down the hallway, and stiffened at the sight of Molly’s body. “Did you see the monster? Was it here?”

Hazel shook her head. “We’ve got to move her, though. I’m getting a chair.” She turned to Robbie. “Try to find rope or yarn or something we can tie her with.”

“Yeah, okay.” Robbie nodded, starting toward one of the classrooms.

“Jack says…” Carter seemed to realize he was talking to himself more than them and bit off the thought with the shake of his head. “I’ll stay by Molly. You guys get whatever you think you need.”

Hazel found a swivel chair behind the teacher’s desk in the second classroom she entered and rolled it into the hall, while Robbie managed to discover a spool of heavy bright blue string in one of the closets. Hazel lifted Molly, while Robbie braced the chair so her weight didn’t send it flying suddenly backward. Then Carter helped them tie her in place, as if she were a prisoner about to be interrogated or a fly stuck in a spider’s web. Head lolling to one side, eyes shut, Molly was soon held fast to the chair by layers and layers of crisscrossed string.

Then Hazel went back for a weapon. She found a pair of heavy scissors in the desk and slammed them down until the two pieces came apart and she had made herself twin daggers.

“Jesus, that was loud,” Carter said, hands on the back of Molly’s chair. “Come on.”

They walked down the empty hall together, peering into abandoned classrooms, where jackets were still draped over the backs of chairs and desks still had papers and pens and books lying on them. Whiteboards had been left with math problems half solved, carried ones floating above unadded numerals. A documentary about genetics still played on a projection screen. A few desks in the back of one room were entirely covered in a spreading tide of moss.

The shadows lengthened as they made their way past the gymnasium. Hazel stepped in, her scissors gleaming in the flickering overhead lights. Ivy dripped down from the ceiling, knotting around the cables. Her heart pounded in her chest hard enough that it felt like a fist. Hard enough that her insides felt bruised from it. The gym had never seemed ominous to her before, with its slick, shining floor and the skeletal metal scaffolding of bleachers, but now she was acutely aware of all the places a monster might rest, folded up, looking like nothing more than a pile of mats, long fingers creeping out to grab hold of an ankle.…

“Do you see anything?” Robbie asked from behind her.

Hazel’s muscles tensed. She shook her head, glad not to have otherwise shown how much he’d startled her.

“You don’t have to help us look for stragglers,” Carter said. “Take Molly and head for the front. Your brother is worried about you. My brother is worried about you.”

In the flickering light, the boys seemed different. Robbie looked sallow and a little frantic, the hollowness under his eyes made prominent. Carter looked more like Jack than ever, his face sharpened by shadows. If she tried, she might have been able to pretend he was his brother. For a horrible moment she understood why someone might do what Amanda did. It would be like kissing Severin’s casket. It wouldn’t be real. It couldn’t hurt.

“Why don’t you get out?” she asked him, not particularly nicely, since she didn’t appreciate being condescended to and she didn’t like where her thoughts were going.

“Guilt, mostly. I was the last one to see Amanda—everyone’s saying it and it’s true.”

“What happened?” Hazel asked. They were moving through the literature and history hall, toward the principal’s office and the main doors, passing by the auditorium, where the curtained stage lurked. One of the wheels on Molly’s chair hung up a little, making a small squeal of protest, over and over, as it rolled.

Robbie pushed, flinching over and over at the noise.

There were echoes in some of the rooms, sounds that Hazel couldn’t place. In her mind they became the crawl of the ivy, the slide of a monster’s foot, its nails dragging against a wall. She’d hunted through the woods and knew how magnified noise could become through hyperalertness and adrenaline. She knew how convinced you could be that you’d heard something when it was only your own breathing. And yet she knew how dangerous it was to dismiss your instincts. But at least in the woods she had experience identifying the rustlings and breezes and footfalls. At school, she was lost. Every movement made her teeth grit and the hair along her arms stand.

Carter spoke again, softly, his voice pitched so Robbie might not hear. “We had a fight. Me and Amanda. She said some stuff about Jack that was—ridiculous. Like that he wasn’t even a person. Maybe she was just trying to rile me up, but, well, it worked. I kicked her out of the car, even though she was wearing these huge, dumb heels, and figured she could just walk.

“I got about three blocks before I realized I was being an asshole. Mom would kill me if she found out that I took a girl on a date and then left her someplace, all by herself, with no way home.”

“And?” Hazel asked.

“Amanda wasn’t there when I went back. I didn’t see her again, and her parents won’t let me visit her in the hospital.” He raised his voice slightly. “Hey, Robbie, what about you? How come you’re sticking around, trying to be a hero? Why don’t you get out of here?”

Robbie gave them a lopsided grin. “The one thing I know from movies is never to split up. Besides, you two would be lost without me.”

“True enough,” Carter said amiably, even though that didn’t seem even a little bit true.

“Hey, Hazel, how come you—” Robbie began, but he never got to finish. A scream split the air.

They took off running toward it, the thud of their footfalls pounding against the floor, the shrill squeak of Molly’s chair loud in their ears. The screaming was coming from the girls’ bathroom.

Hazel charged ahead, slamming her shoulder against the door, scissor daggers poised to strike.

Leonie stood near the sinks, water streaming from one of the faucets to puddle on the floor. At the sight of Hazel, she screamed even louder. The room seemed empty, but Hazel’s heart was beating so fast and Leonie seemed so scared that she wasn’t sure. She kicked open the first stall, but there was only the toilet, with three burnt cigarette stubs floating in it. She kicked open the second: empty. She was about to kick open the third when Leonie grabbed her arm.

“What are you doing? Stop!” Leonie said. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I’m freaking you out?” Hazel shouted. “You were the one screaming.”

“The thing—I saw it,” Leonie said. “Jesus—I thought it was safe to go out into the hallway, but then it was there. Oh god, what happened to Molly?”

“Did you get a good look at it?” Carter asked from the doorway. He and Robbie were standing at the threshold, as though, even now, the idea of putting one foot into the girls’ bathroom, with its Pepto-Bismol tile and ancient tampon machine on one wall, was forbidden.