There followed a beat. Sound winnowed out, slipping sideways. Turning strange. Deep within Delaney’s head, the ringing began. Timorous as birdsong, sharp as a whistle, enduring as a hum.
“Whatever’s trying to get inside Adya’s head,” Mackenzie said, sounding as though she were speaking underwater, “it has a pretty intense motto.”
The ringing between Delaney’s ears reached a pinnacle that shuddered her eyes in their sockets. She pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled slowly, regretting this excursion more and more by the minute.
“I’m going to look around,” she said, already heading deeper into the empty building. Mackenzie called after her, but she’d moved quickly out of earshot, passing beneath an alcove framed in spindlework and into the vaulted nave of the innermost space.
Here, the waning light fell through the frets in thin spills of merlot, washing the whole of the room in red. A row of tin cans lined the floor, each stuffed full of writing utensils. Nearby, an overturned milk crate housed a swear jar on which someone had written the wordfubar. The glass was packed full of loose change. The walls were covered in writing, and as she drew closer, she saw that they were names. She opened the flashlight on her phone and scanned the list, running her fingers over the graffitied roster until she reached a few names she recognized.
Eric Hayeswas scrawled in permanent marker, theEsubstantially larger than the rest. Next to his name was a number. Nearby, someone named Julian Guzman had scribbled his name and a corresponding number in chicken scratch. Underneath sat a name she knew, the handwriting infuriatingly uniform.
Colton Price.
She traced the letters, dragging her fingertip over the neat slash of thel, the meticulous dot of thei, the careful loop of the zero beside it. Strange, that she’d spent weeks spinning out in his orbit only to keep colliding with him now in the oddest of ways. After how unsociable he’d been each morning, his sudden proposition to help her with coursework felt a little bit like whiplash, dizzying and uncertain. And yet, her grades were tanking. Her scholarship was at risk. On a campus full of extraordinary students, she was quickly cementing herself as someone entirely ordinary. Someone just a handful of C-minuses away from dropping out of school.
She wasn’t in a position to refuse his offer.
She reached down by her feet and drew a permanent marker out of a dented tin can. The light from her phone cast the list in a silvery pall. On a whim, she added her name alongside Colton’s. When she leaned in to blow on the still-wet ink, her eyes caught on a name directly beneath.
Nate Schiller, penned in a flourishing script that was more art than autograph.
“That’s me,” said a voice from directly behind her.
She yelped, dropping both her phone and the marker. She found the speaker splayed against a tired salmon love seat, his arms slung over bent knees. Pale, messy curls pushed out from beneath a hood, and from here she could see the white tangle of earbuds disappearing into his sweatshirt.
Plucking at a snag in the cushion, he said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just—that’s my name you’re looking at. I thought it’d be funny to write it that way. My mom made me take a calligraphy course one year. She thought it might help with my shit handwriting.” Stuffing pooled on the floor where he flicked it, and he added, “It didn’t, though. Help.”
Delaney pried her hand off her heart. “You’re Nate?”
“Unfortunately,” he said, his grin self-deprecating.
“I’m Lane.”
“I know.” Then, rushing, “I’m not a creep. I heard you and your friends talking.”
“You’re not a creep,” she echoed, “and yet you’re sitting here in the dark alone. Sorry, but that’s the definition of creepy.”
He sat up and stretched, scratching at the crown of his head through his hood. “In fairness,” he said, speaking through a yawn, “it wasn’t dark when I got here. And I said ‘Hey’ when you first walked in, but I don’t think you heard me.”
“Oh.” She scuffed the toe of her boot against the floor. “Yeah, probably not. I don’t have the best hearing.”
He waved her off, prying his earbuds loose. “What are you doing adding your name to the dead pool?”
Faltering, she glanced back at the wall of names. “Thewhat?”
“The dead pool,” he said again, enunciating. “That’s what the numbers are for. They’re bets. Everyone up on that wall has either died or is going to die.”
Unease flared in her chest. She gaped at him, unsure how to read his tone. Spotlit particles danced in the broad, silvery beacon of her flashlight.
“Kidding,” Nate said when she didn’t speak. “Kind of. We did place bets. Plus, Julian Guzman’s up there, and he’s dead. It’s all over the local news in Illinois. Allegedly, he was killed in a collision.Allegedly.And there’s others missing.”
“Sorry,” Delaney said, not following, “who else is missing?”
“Ryan Peretti,” he said, and jabbed a finger toward the wall of names. “He was a rising senior, but he didn’t reenroll this semester. And then there’s Greg Kostopoulos. He and I have physics together, but he hasn’t been in class all week. Someone said he has the flu.”
“But you don’t think so.” Delaney scooped up her phone and shut off the light, leaving them in the purpling haze of sunset.
“I don’t.”
