He snatched his hand away like she’d cut him.
“When school went back this year,” Dove said slowly, “Thomas was arrested for murdering his parents.”
Andrew stared at her.
“He didn’t come back to Wickwood after that. It’s horrible. It’s… hard to accept. So I guess you didn’t accept it. In your head, he’s still here.” She wiped her eyes quickly. “I didn’t think you were struggling this much, or I would have told Dad about it.”
“You’re lying.” The words hardly left his lips.
“I know things are tough for you—”
“YOU’RE LYING.” He whirled on her, and there was so much pain and fury and hysteria spilling from him that it felt like it would burst from his chest and tear open a hole in the world. “He’s been in class with me, and he fights monsters with me, and—and Lana! Ask Lana. He argues with Lana all the time.”
The pity in Dove’s eyes landed like a lash against his cheek. “Lana doesn’t talk to you. She’s never been your friend.”
“She started talking to me this year. She…” He trailed off.“What about Chloe? She rooms with you and Lana. She’s… my friend.”
“I don’t know who that is and, um, Andrew, you don’t have friends.”
Andrew wanted to rip out a thousand trees and hurl them into the stars. “You’re messing with me and—and stop it! Juststop.” He jerked back when she reached for him. “Don’t youdare touch me.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you here. Please let me take you back up to the school and we’ll calm you down and call Dad and—”
“This is not all in my head.”
“Andrew.”
“It’s real. It’s all real and you’relying—”
“Stop yelling at me!” Dove grabbed him by the shoulders, getting in his face before he could twist away. “God, Andrew. I am trying to help you. You. Need. Help.”
Across the forest, a low wail rose and then suddenly splintered into a bloodcurdling scream.
Then there was the thuddingwhackof a hatchet.
The scream cut off.
Andrew’s pulse leaped. Relief exploded in his veins, and he grinned at her, wild and unsteady and completely terrifying, but he couldn’t stop. “Did you hear that? Did you? Monsters. Thomas is killing them.”
Dove cupped his face with cold fingers, and she looked close to tears as she searched his eyes. “I want you to know, whatever happens, I love you and I’m going to get you help.”
It sounded like goodbye. It sounded like giving up on him.
“You don’t… hear it?” he whispered.
Tears slipped down her cheeks as she shook her head. “It’s going to be okay.”
But it wasn’t.
He was falling.
He was tipping toward nowhere with nothing to hold on to. Inside his chest, the forest grew, vicious and alive and hungry, and it filled him right up to the top of his throat.
He could feel the way this was the end, how he soon would not be able to hold it in.
He turned away and started to walk, slow at first, ignoring Dove as she called helplessly after him. Then, without even thinking, he started to move fast, faster, nothing in his head but rose petals unfurling and the soft lisp of rustling leaves. Then he was flat-out running.
The forest swept past him, black and endless, as he tore along the path so fast he felt like he was flying. Dove tried to come after him, but she couldn’t keep up on the uneven ground. He knew this forest intimately, wholly. He would not fall.
