“Of course,” he nods. “The medical examiner always has to come and sign the death certificate. You know that.”

I do. But somehow, staring at the familiar and dead face of my gym teacher causes the things I know to fly right out of my head.

I nod back.

“Are you hungry?” I ask him, wanting an excuse to leave this room. “I can make you a sandwich.”

My dad glances up at me again, and smiles. “I could eat,” he answers. “I’ll come down to the kitchen in a minute.”

I slip from the prep room and close the door behind me in relief, leaning against it for a second with my eyes closed as I try to un-see Mr. Elliott’s blank face. The last time I’d seen it, it’d been red and taut as he yelled at us during gym. Seeing it so empty and devoid of life is just flat-out jarring.

“You okay?”

My mother is concerned about me still. Always. I nod, because I don’t want to worry her. She’s always worried about me, it seems.

“Yeah. It’s just…he was nice to me.”

That night, after dinner, I have ear-buds in while I do Chemistry homework, but I still hear my parents bickering in the next room.

“I don’t like it,” my mother says. “We’re surrounded by too much death here. It’s not good for her.”

“She needs to prepare for it,” my father says, and his words make me pause, my fingers icy as they hold my pencil.

“Perhaps,” my mother answers, and she sounds so sad. “But not yet. She doesn’t need to face it yet.”

There is silence and I wonder if my father is comforting her, as I so often see him doing. He holds her close and murmurs into her red hair, and his voice is low. It always works.

In a minute, though, they continue.

“As much as I hate it, I think we should spend more time at Whitley. The atmosphere is quiet there. It’s good for Calla’s mind.” My mom is quiet, her voice thin.

My father doesn’t like the idea, I can tell. “And you’ll have to spend more time with Richard? Laura, please. The reason we came here was to get away. We have to participate, but we don’t have to be with them every day of our lives.”

Participate in what? I don’t even realize I’d whispered out loud, until I receive an answer.

“I know,” a voice says, and my head snaps up.

In the corner of my room, a boy stands, his hood pulled up and shadows covering his face. He’s tall, he’s slender, he’s familiar.

I don’t feel afraid, although I probably should.

“Who are you?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” I answer firmly, and I think he smiles. I can barely make out the curve of a lip.

“It doesn’t matter because I know what they’re talking about, and you don’t.”

“I’ve seen you before,” I say slowly. “But where?”

He doesn’t answer and instead shakes his head.

“Your teacher,” he says, and his words are soft and enunciated. “You can change it.”

“Change what?”

“It,” the boy says impatiently. “You can change it. If you try.”

“I’m crazy, aren’t I?” I whisper, and I’m surprised when he shakes he hooded head.

“No, they just want you to think so.”

This perplexes me, and I want to ask more, but I blink and he’s gone and of course I’m crazy.

I fall asleep thinking about the boy and his dark shadowy face and Mr. Elliott.

I dream about Mr. Elliott, and how he was simply dead and it was so startling.

The surprise of it was the worst part, the shock when I saw him broken on the rocks. But even more surprising is how in my dream, he drags himself off of the rocks, and his legs is crumpled, but he still pulls himself on his elbows, and then he blows his whistle and shouts for everyone to line up on the basketball court.

I’m frozen, because he was dead and then he wasn’t.

I’m unsettled enough to not go back to sleep for the rest of the night.

I’m still unsettled by it when I get ready for school in the morning, and I’m expecting the school to still be somber, to be in mourning, but they’re not.

That annoys me. It’s like the world should acknowledge that someone important died, but it doesn’t. It just keeps chugging on like normal.

I dread going to gym class because…just because. It will be weird, it will be creepy, it will unsettle me.

But I never guess how much.

Because when I dress out and line up on the base-line with everyone else, Mr. Elliott limps from his office on crutches to stand in front of us, his whistle around his neck and his blue-striped socks pulled to his knees.

Then behind him, the hooded boy is in the corner, and he whispers, and I hear his whisper as clearly as if he’s right in my ear, even though he’s across the room.

“I told you.”

That’s when I break down.

I can’t help it. I hyperventilate, and then I fall onto my hands and knees, and I can’t breathe, and they have to call the nurse.

The other girls snicker and laugh and stare at me, and it doesn’t matter because I have bigger problems than them.

I’m insane, and getting crazier by the day.

My mom picks me up, and I try to tell her that I’d had a dream that Mr. Elliott was dead, but she doesn’t believe me. She makes a call, and my medicine is changed, and the pills taste worse than before.

Finn holds my hand because he’ll never leave me, and I know that, and I’m grateful. I’m also grateful that I’m the one afflicted with whatever this is.

My brother is too kind, too good, too sweet.

I’m the one who deserves it.

I kill gym teachers in my mind.

I’m clearly a monster.

Then I dream them back to life, so I’m clearly crazy.

Chapter Nine

I drink the tea.

I have to. My mother makes me, because I’m so upset. Every day I grow more upset, because every day, I feel more unstable.

One night, my parents are on the lawn beneath my window, long after they think I fell asleep and I peer at them through my open window. My mom tells dad that we’re going to Whitley. I want to run down and argue, because I want to stay here, but at the same time, Dare is at Whitley. I’m not disappointed when my father finally caves in.

“Fine. But use care, Laura. You know I can’t come with you. Not yet.”

“I will,” my mom says tiredly. “Richard won’t touch me again. Not anymore. They got what they wanted.”

“You know it was necessary,” my father says, and he sounds just as tired.

“I’m so tired of what is necessary,” my mother snaps, and her voice is so venomous that it takes me aback. “I have free will. We all do. That’s why we’re here.”

“Free will is an illusion,” my father answers and his words his words his words are so dark.

“I hate to say that I’m starting to think you’re right,” mom replies. “My mother always gets what she wants. She and Sabine…”

Sabine?

I’m clouded by confusion, and I’m paying so much attention to them that I don’t pay attention to what I’m doing, and my hand slips from the window, and my head thumps the sill.

My dad’s head snaps up, quicker than lightning, and for a minute for just a minute for just a minute, his eyes flash black in the moonlight.

I gasp, and I shirk away, because my dad is supposed to have blue eyes, blue like Finn’s.

But for a long second right now, they gleam and glimmer black, like a pool, like onyx, like the demons that I’ve been seeing for my whole life.

They’re as black as sin.

I scream and I faint, and when I come to, I’m back in my bed, and the hooded boy is next to me. He holds my hand and his fingers are pale.

“There’s a ring,” he tells me. “And if you give it to me, your brother will always be safe.”