“Right,” she says. “Okay.” Her voice is wobbly, full of things she doesn’t need to say. I can only imagine how she’s feeling right now.
And maybe that’s why I find myself speaking, offering something I never intendedto offer. “If you want,” I say, “we can look around. Just check and make sure we didn’t miss them. Maybe they hid in the trees.”
I sincerely doubt this is the case, but I know what it’s like to have regrets; even though she pushes my buttons, I don’t want Juniper to leave here with any lingeringwhat ifs.
When she doesn’t answer, I stand up, smoothing my suit coat absently. “Do you want to do that?”
“Yeah,” she says finally. “Let’s—” Her voice cracks, and she tries again. “Let’s look in the trees for a second. Just to make sure we didn’t miss them.”
I think she knows as well as I do that it wouldn’t make sense for someone to be lingering out of sight in the trees; still, I follow her around the statue and then back to the tree line. I hold my phone up higher so that we can see.
We do not go gently into that good night. We crash through the underbrush, and we may as well just announce our presence with a foghorn. But despite my light, the darkness still hides plenty for us to trip over, and we do—especially since Juniper is in heels.
We’ve been walking (read: stumbling) for about one minute when something appears in my line of sight. I can’t quite tell what it is, but I can certainly tell what itisn’t:undergrowth or a plant of any kind.
“What’s…” Juniper begins, but her voice trails off into silence as we start walking faster, approaching the strangely shaped lump on the forest floor. I lower my light a bit. That looks—it looks—like?—
“A person,” Juniper whispers, sounding stricken. “That’s a girl.”
I hurry to get closer, crouching over the figure and using my light to inspect the scene.
Juniper is right. It’s a girl.
And she’s dead.
She has to be. There’s too much blood—it’s matted in her hair, thick and glistening grotesquely in the light of my flashlight. Her skin is ashen, half of her forehead and much of her face obscured by the creeping red blood stain. Despite the blood, though, I can tell that she’s young. That, combined with the formal dress she’s wearing, tells me one thing: she’s a student.
Or rather, shewasa student.?*
My mind whirls at the implications of this sight. What happened here? Is this?—
But a little whimper from next to me reminds me that I’m not alone, and I turn just in time to see Juniper crouched down, hand extended, her fingers hovering under the girl’s nose.
Searching for breath.
“Don’t look,” I say without thinking. It’s the first thing that pops into my head: that Juniper should not see this. No one should see this. I turn off my phone light and shove the whole thing into my pocket.
It’s too late, though—I hear the guttural sound of retching, followed by a sickening splatter that makes me wince. I don’t blame her for vomiting; my stomach is turning too. When the splattering noise stops, I reach into my chest pocket and pull out the handkerchief, passing it blindly in Juniper’s direction. It takes a second of feeling around in the dark before my hand finds her shoulder; I tap gently.
“Here,” I say. “Wipe your mouth.”
I had assumed that without the light of my phone we wouldn’t be able to see the body, but Iwas mistaken; the moon is too bright, and if anything, the faint illumination makes it worse. I can see, but not well; shadows become monsters and men, tree branches turn to greedy, grasping hands. The wind through the leaves plays tricks on my mind, carrying whispers of death and the faint scent of decay.
“Aiden,” Juniper says. I’ve never heard her sound like this, her voice unnaturally high-pitched and shaky. “That’s a dead body.”
I swallow, the chill in the air settling over me. “Yes.”
“Like,deaddead. Unalive. She’s unalive. She’s not breathing. She’s too young—Aiden, she’s too young—” Her voice rises higher and higher with every word that spills out of her mouth, and I can feel her practically vibrating with panic from next to me. “And what about us?” she says.
I jump when her hands find my arm, clamping around my elbow in a viselike grip. She shuffles closer to me; I can just make out the shimmer of her dress in the pale moonlight.
“Who did this?” she says. “Are they going to kill us? I’m too young to die?—”
“Juniper,” I say firmly.
She continues babbling like a madwoman. “And that girl was too young to die?—”
“Juniper,” I say again.
