Violet, Saturday, 3:45 PM

I've only been at Ericson's Boarding School for a month and I can already see why most of these kids couldn't care less. When I first got here, part of me thought I oughta give it a shot, a real one. Mostly because I didn't like that nauseating feeling I got seeing my mom smile when I promised I would. All of a sudden what started off as a lie became the truth, sort of. This place couldn't have been cheap, and although I told her what happened with Grandma didn't really bother me, I could tell she was worried. So I was really gonna try.

Only to find out that the only people who cared less than the kids, were the adults. Sophie explained why a week after I met her.

"The gist of it's that from here, you either sink deeper into the system or you get out. Most of the kids still here by the beginning of their second year, are sinking."

"How long have you been here?" I asked. I don't know why; it was kind of stupid in hindsight.

She smiled without really smiling. "Three."

Right now I was in Mr. Benson's office for my counseling hour. We had two counselors. The other guy, Dr. Tinsley, had a reputation with the other kids. They call him 'Chester the molester' because the girls he counseled said he always made weird comments. Sophie even told me to count myself lucky I didn't have him. She had Tinsley and almost never went to her counseling hour.

Benson's office wasn't tiny, but it felt like it because there were a million little knick knacks on his desk, and shelves of thick dusty psych books, and dozens of family pictures—I didn't understand why the guy had so many pictures of the same four people, over and over. There was also a big red armchair in front of his desk. That was where I was sitting.

"So," said Mr. Benson. That's how he began all of our sessions. Clipboard in hand, ballpoint pen tapping against the side. "How've you been today, Violet?"

"Okay."

"What did we say about one word answers? You have to get used to describing your feelings in full so you can connect with them." He shifted forward in his chair. "What were you doing before you came here?"

I shrugged. "I was with my friend."

He made a noise. The guy had noises for everything. I'd heard this one enough times to know it meant I was doing something wrong.

"I was talking with my friend," I said.

"About?"

I frowned a little. See I knew he was supposed to help me get better and all, and that required at least some truthfulness, but I wondered if it also meant he had to be as prying as he was. How was this relevant? "About… school, I guess."

He tilted his head back a slight bit. "I sense you're not being entirely honest."

I just looked at my lap.

Benson sighed. "Alright. It's okay if you're not comfortable saying just yet. We'll work up to it. But for now, how would you say being with your friend made you feel?"

Well, Sophie was a cool person, so it made me wonder why she talked to me. I never could have approached her on my own; she was the one who sat down next to me one day and said hello. I thought she was weird for it. Usually people pick up on my lack of a vibe and stay away. But Sophie was almost dense in how she kept finding me and talking to me like we were long lost pals. Eventually, I just rolled with it. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that.

"Good," I said, "I like talking to her. It's fun."

He nodded and made another noise. This one either meant 'go on' or 'good job'; I'm not sure which. I defaulted to the second to be safe. Must have guessed right because he moved on to my grades on my transcript—a string of unremarkable Bs and Cs—and then to some of the grounding exercises from our last session.

I could always tell when things were coming to an end because he started trying to talk about Grandma. In our first session he was super direct about it, more direct than I've ever heard any adult be. Mom called it 'the [pause] incident' in almost the exact same way every time. The policeman who came by that night talked to me about 'your granny's accident' like I was three, or stupid. But Benson didn't talk around it, or make it sound like she fell in the bath or something. Tell me how you felt the night you witnessed your grandmother's suicide. He actually gained some of my respect that day, enough to make up for what my confidence in this school had taken away.

But in the moment, I just sort of shut down and couldn't talk anymore. He kept trying with questions, until I think he recognized that he'd lost me and ended the session. After that he tried to be sneakier about how he brought up Grandma ("Would you say this feeling resembles in some shape or form the one you felt that night at your grandmother's?"), and that got him about as far as before. I wasn't trying to be this difficult on purpose. It's just that the question was impossible to answer. I didn't feel anything that night.

"I guess we'll wrap things up for today." Benson leaned back and his chair squeaked. "By the way, have you considered my offer to join the music club?"

Ugh. He'd started this thing the year before I came and had been obnoxiously pushing it on me ever since he found out I used to do church choir. So far I think he only had one or two kids. And besides, what he didn't know about my time in church choir is that I hated every minute of it. No thank you.

"Maybe," I said, in a way I hoped meant 'never'.

"You should. Music is a great way to reconnect with the world, and by extension, yourself."

"I will," I said and hopped out of the big red armchair in a hurry to get to the door, but Benson made a noise that made me turn around. He tapped the end of his pen against the side of a tin with a piece of paper that said 'candy' taped on.

I nodded and took one. Unlike most kids my age I didn't really like sweet stuff, but I could just give it to Sophie.

From there I thought I'd go meet her in the common room, but when I got to the door I noticed she was with that girl, the one with the reddish-brown hair and the blue eyes and the jean jacket with a ton of pins—Brody. And some other kid I didn't recognize. I didn't like being around Sophie when she was with her other friends; it reminded me that I'm just sort of the outsider she adopted. Everyone in our grade seemed to know everyone. It was weird being the odd man out.

I backed out and bumped into someone. "Sorry," they muttered and left so fast that it took me a while to realize it was the loud guy with dreads Brody was friends with. He left something on the floor. A water bottle, weirdly enough. I figured he'd come back if he really wanted it, so I left it there and went to my room.

It wasn't actually 'my' room because I shared it with three other girls, but it was the closest I got to the kind of privacy I had at Grandma's house, especially during the day. The door was open when I got to it though, and for a moment I was afraid Ruby and Veronica were in there and arguing like they always did when they were in each other's airspace.

But no. When I got to the door it wasn't Ruby and Veronica, it was Veronica and… some guy. He was going through her stuff, tossing shirts and skirts and what not onto the floor. "Where is he?" he was yelling, "I know you have him. Didn't I tell you not to touch my stuff?"

"I. Don't. Have. It." Veronica yelled back. She was stamping her foot on the floor like a toddler having a tantrum, and with every stamp, her wavy hair flew all over the place.

"Liar!" He whirled around and shoved her. Veronica stumbled against Ruby's bunk but kept standing. "Tell me where my Michelangelo is!"

"I'm not lying. If I had it you'd have found it already, idiot."

He bared his teeth, but he didn't shove her again. I guess he realized this. "I know you have him," he said again, but it lacked bite.

Then he turned to leave, and that was when he noticed me. He only paused for a second before storming out of the room, but that was enough time to notice the shine of tears in his eyes.

I went inside. Veronica was picking her clothes off the floor and muttering angrily to herself. "What?" She snapped at me as I tried to pass her.

"Nothing," I said, "just trying to get to my bunk."

She let me go with a huff. I climbed the ladder and pulled myself onto the mattress. Only then did I notice Erin crammed in a corner at the top of the other bunk. Her eyes only briefly met mine before they went right back to staring at her hands, like always.

I sat there, wondering what to do now. I could either wait for Veronica and Erin to leave, however long that'd take, or I could try going somewhere else. Maybe Brody had left Sophie alone already.

"Can you believe him?" Veronica said in her nasally sounding voice. I could sense it, like a storm coming. She was about to try and trap me (well, us, but Erin always tried her best to convince us she wasn't here so why include her) into a conversation. Veronica didn't actually have conversations like normal people though, where one person talks and another person talks and another person talks. To her, a conversation is when one person talks and talks and talks, and then pauses every now and then for other people to make noises of agreement.

Like right now. She was looking at me, waiting for my noise. I made one and she made one back—I dunno, this is just how she communicates. "He's so annoying. I hate him, I hate him, I hate him, I hate him! "

This might've been dumb, but I asked, "who is he anyway?" I was genuinely curious.

"My no-good, dumb, smelly brother."

"Oh." It was really weird that in all the time Veronica spent talking she never mentioned having a brother here.

She bent back down to her open suit case. "He's in fifth grade too. But you probably don't know he exists because he never talks to anyone. All he likes to do is sit alone and talk to himself. Talk to himself! Like a crazy person!"

Pause. I frowned and reluctantly made a noise.

Veronica came close to the edge of our bunk. She covered her mouth, like she was about to tell a secret. "He even used to do it when we went out in public. We'd be at the market and he'd be mumbling to himself. Everyone in our town thought he was so creepy. I didn't like being near him when we were in school 'cause the other kids would say he was putting curses on people.

"One time, our mom told him she was going to take him to a psych ward if he didn't stop. A psych ward's a place they put lunatics, by the way. She said I was gonna watch him, so I could tell her if he was doing it secretly. He stopped around other people, but I was sure he was still doing it on his own, so I decided to catch him and I finally did—in his room. But when I told him I was gonna tell Mom, he started crying! Can you believe that? He was a big kid and a boy, and he started crying."

She looked at me, but I didn't want to do this anymore. Her face slowly folded into a frown and for a second I thought she'd turn on me, but she went back to her suitcase. "I didn't tell on him. There's no way a baby like him would make it in a psych ward. Plus, it was so embarrassing."

That must have been the end of her story because there was nothing but the sounds of clothes folding in the room after that. My stomach twisted a weird way thinking about that story, and the tears in her brother's eyes when he was leaving.

"Aha!" Veronica said. I peeked over the side of the bunk.

She zipped up her suitcase, stood up and turned, and I saw her holding a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure. A Michelangelo. She climbed into her bed, and I had to listen to her play with it for the rest of the time I was in the dorm. I never liked Veronica, but now I think I was starting to hate her.

I counted to twenty, decided Brody must have left by now, and hopped out of my bed. When Veronica asked where I was going, I said dinner since I hadn't eaten.

I opened the door into the hallway. There were big windows on the wall facing our dorm door, so I could see the sun was setting. I turned to run to the common room and saw Ruby.

She froze. Like she didn't recognize me.

"Hey," I said, to be nice.

"Hi, Violet," she said back. I had never heard her so… lifeless. Usually Ruby put fire into whatever she did, whether it was being super polite, or super angry. But right now she just seemed… blah.

She walked past me and into the dorm. I decided to keep going too. But I dunno, maybe whatever she had was contagious, because I sure didn't feel like hurrying anymore.

Louis, Saturday, 11:35 PM

I couldn't sleep.

Ms. Martin sent us away when the sun started setting. She said this would stress us out too much, and we needed to go back and be normal with the other kids. But I don't know how she expected us to do that. The trucker kept getting violent randomly; Graham actually got scratched badly by him. Ruby told me he was probably having seizures. Then Ms. Martin injected him with something and he stopped, but now he just lay there and stared at the ceiling and his mouth kept twitching open. Sometimes foam would drip down his cheek, but he never wiped it off; Ms. Martin always had to do it for him.

Ericson came back and sort of grimaced when he saw Graham in the infirmary. Then he turned to the trucker's bed and stared at him for a really long time. He called a meeting, and Ruby and I watched them squeeze into Ms. Martin's tiny office and close the door, lock it even. I could hear their hushed voices, but not what they were saying. All the secrecy, the uneasiness, the mystery—what was happening? What didn't they want us to know? What didn't they know?

I looked at the trucker limp on the bed. Was he going to-

The door to the office opened and the teachers stepped out. Ericson walked straight out the door like it was just business as usual. Graham went to stand next to the trucker again. He had his hand over his mouth, staring solemnly. Ms. Martin shooed us after that, and we made it as far as the dorms before splitting up. We didn't talk. We didn't want to talk.

When I got to my dorm, there was only Big Tommy in there, and I gave him the excuse I was tired and lay down in my bed. But I didn't sleep, of course, I just faced the wall and listened to Marlon and Trey come in, talk about kickball, play checkers with Big Tommy, and then eventually go to sleep. Now it was who-knows-how-late into the night, and I was still up.

I sat up in my bunk. Marlon was above me, snoring like an old man, and the other two were still in their beds too. All three of them slept like they were dead, especially on Saturdays, because Saturdays were for staying up as late as possible.

I got out of bed. My shoes were still beside the bunk so I slipped them on. I just had to know if he was okay. I had to see that he was dead, if he was dead, for real.

Slowly I crept to the door, but then stepped on the checkers board and slipped and fell on all the pieces littering the floor. Damn it, why didn't we ever pick these up before going to sleep.

Like I said though, the guys were dead to the world at night. I picked myself up and made it to the door.

I've snuck around the school at night before. After Mitch waxed poetic about a box of syrup packets stored in the cafeteria, the really sweet kind, Marlon and I planned out a heist. We ended up getting busted by Baker and had detention for the rest of the school year. But it was worth it. Scooching down the hall, shushing each other for being too loud, and generally having too much fun being Super Secret Agents to be actually stealthy.

Ericson's was a completely different place now. It was so dark I couldn't see more than a few feet in front of me. There were shrill insects screaming outside, and every little creak felt like Baker just around the corner. I kept wanting to turn back, shaking away the impulse, and then wanting to turn back again until I was too far from my room to wuss out. So I kept going till I reached the stairs. I knew the ones that squeaked from the ones that didn't, but there were still a few misses, and I would go still and listen over my pounding heart for the sound of teachers.

Painfully, I made it outside the dorms. The wind was persistent on the way to the infirmary, moaning like an ancient beast reawakened. When I opened the infirmary door, it seized hold of it and slammed it against the wall. I panicked and thought about running into the bushes or something, but no one came and I just went back inside because well that was stupid.

Ms. Martin slept in this building instead of with the other teachers, so maybe she was still up. But the windows of the infirmary were dark when I got to them, so she must have gone to sleep after all. That was good, wasn't it? It must have meant his life wasn't in danger. Or that there was nothing even she could do.

I got to the edge of the door. Somehow it was taking a lot of effort to just push it open. I wanted to know if he was okay, right? Or did I? I don't know. It felt like my stomach was trying to eat itself.

Compromise, we'll look through the window. I stopped crouching and peered through the glass.

He was standing.

He was standing, right there, standing with his back to the door! What the hell, Ms. Martin actually did it!

"Holy shit, man!" I barged into the room. "You're alive!"

The trucker turned to look at me. It was seeing his eyes that told me I had made a huge mistake. His eyes, that had been brown when I last looked at them. But now they were an unnaturally bright yellow ring around his pupils. Like headlights in the dark, staring me down.

He lunged for me.

With a scream I scrambled back outside. I always knew he was big, but it didn't dawn on me how big until he was standing upright, linebacker shoulders blocking off the front entrance. I took off the other way. "Ms. Martin!" I screamed. But she was on the other side of the trucker. There was no way she would hear me. And even if she did, she'd have to get through him. You know, three-heads-taller-than-her him.

I turned down the hall. Moonlight poured in through the windows, and the trucker's shadow stretched across the floor. But as I ran faster, it sank past my feet, then disappeared. That's when I realized—he was super slow.

The hall I was running down was lined with doors. I tried them one-by-one. Locked, locked, locked! But then I got lucky and found an open one. Diving inside, I closed it. My fingers could barely stop shaking enough to turn the lock. It clicked, then the only sound I could hear was the blood roaring through my ears, and in the distance, a struggling, rasping moan.

My senses came back to me. It was safe in here, sure, but would I just have to stay here until morning? And Ms. Martin—she doesn't know he's loose. Unless he'd already gotten her...

What even happened to him? I thought for sure he was dead. And why was he coming after me? What did he want from me? I've never been anything but nice to him.

I paced the room. Everything was wrong, everything was so fucking wrong, I was going to DIE here, he'd find a way in, he'd kill Ms. Martin first, and I was just going to let her die!

The moaning grew louder. I froze. Didn't dare hide, even though I was standing where anyone looking into the door's window from the hall could see. I didn't want to make a sound. Feet shuffled, boot buckles clinked, leather squeaked. Step by slow step. I stopped breathing, just in case that was too loud.

Then, the moaning stopped.

A bang echoed through the wall to my right. The sound passed through me like a shiver.

A second one.

A third one.

Metal pinged noisily and the moaning resumed. Feet shuffled, buckles clinked, leather squeaked. But it was muffled this time. Was he in the other room? And if he was, could I get past him? Slip out, run like hell, and find Ms. Martin? Could it work?

I snuck up to the door. My hand still shook on the lock and the sweat on my palm made the knob slimy and hard to turn. But I got it open. The lock clicking, knob turning, door hinges all sounded like thunder in the silence.

I eased my head out into the hallway and caught a monstrous figure emerging from the next room's doorway. A spike of horror shot through me, and I slammed the door, snapped the lock shut.

I scrambled around, looking for something, anything to use as a weapon. A stool—there. My arms screamed lifting it, but all of me would be screaming if he got in.

I turned to the door, ready. But there was nothing. The stool sagged in my grasp. Did he not see me?

Something crashed against the door and I dropped the stool on my foot. I let out all the words my dad would've frozen my credit card for, staggering back.

Another crash and the door rattled on its hinges. I was in so much pain I barely realized what was happening though.

Another crash. Massaging my foot, I looked up. Something was moving outside the window.

Then it hit me: I saw him come out of the door next to mine. But it was locked when I came down the hall. Only this one was open. And there had been all that banging…

He could break down the doors.

I forgot all about my foot. The stool lay down on its side next to me. An out-of-nowhere weakness crippled my arms though, and no matter how hard I pulled I couldn't pick it up.

Another crash against the door, and I noticed something was off with the lock. The metal slanted at an angle, screws bending and deforming.

I jammed myself against the wall. Another crash, the lock busted, and the door swung open. All of him was black against the darkness, except his headlight-yellow eyes, staring straight into mine.

Like his slowness before had just been saving energy, he lurched towards me. I tried to get past him, and he turned and fell but managed to wrap a hand around my leg, bringing me down too. His grip was iron, crushing my ankle with his fist, and when he pulled I couldn't pull away, and he pulled my leg towards his face and his jaw fell open to reveal a row of teeth like white tombstones.

His nose was smashed and bleeding. I kicked and kicked at it with my other leg but I couldn't break free and I was screaming. I was grabbing uselessly at the wood floor and screaming. I was screaming so hard I couldn't hear anything, but I could feel blood and spit drip coolly onto my skin and I could feel my throat rip itself apart to scream louder and I could feel the muscles in my leg growing slower and weaker. Most of all, I could see his jaws start to close around my other leg.

Something yanked me back. That was enough—the trucker's grip came loose and my knees skidded hotly against the ground. Ms. Martin walked past me, a metal water bottle in hand. The trucker rose and he launched himself at her. She smacked him in the face with the bottle and it meant something. He crashed onto the floor, but then she was on top of him and she kept hitting him and hitting him and hitting him and hitting him.

My breath was gone. There was a dark puddle spreading on the floor around Ms. Martin and the trucker, but she wouldn't stop hitting him. The metallic ring of the canister mixed with sickening crunches.

Finally, she stepped back. The bottle fell from her hand and clanged against the floor. Ms. Martin was breathing heavily, but slowly. She swallowed between breaths, and turned to look at me.

She ran to me and gathered me in her arms and squeezed almost as tightly as the trucker had when he had his hand around my ankle. She inhaled deeply. Her chin was digging into my dreads. I was too numb to hug back. It was almost like I didn't know how.

Ms. Martin soon pulled back. "He didn't bite you, did he?"

I shook my head.

She sniffed and wiped at my face. It was only then I realized I was crying. Or had been crying, I wasn't doing it now, though my nose was running. Her fingers trailed slime down my cheeks that smelled sharply of copper.

She led me into the infirmary, away from the trucker's body, and got me a juice box while she went into her office and called the headmaster. Only the light from the office was on, so I sat in the dark and sipped the cold juice. She locked the infirmary door, but I couldn't stop staring at it and staring at the windows, like I expected the trucker's shadowy bulk to come lumbering down the hallway, bright yellow eyes turning to look through the glass.

Sometime later, Ms. Martin came out of the office. She stood just beside the door with her hands clasped and her eyes closed. I realized she was praying. Not long after she finished, there was what sounded like a brigade in the hall, then a banging on the door; it made me flinch.

Ms. Martin went to open it. My heart shot into my throat, but it was only Ericson, Coach, Graham and Charlie.

"Where is he? Where is he? " Ericson demanded. He was holding a baseball bat; they all were.

"It's dead."

"How do you know for sure? We thought he was dead before."

"You can check if you want."

He looked at Ms. Martin, then at the other teachers, then forced his way back out into the hallway. Charlie followed him.

"Are both of you okay?" Coach asked.

Ms. Martin nodded and rubbed at her arms.

Ericson soon came back. He was less frantic now, clearing his throat all important-like. "This is an extraordinarily messy situation." He felt his beard. "Charles," he said. Charlie jerked. "Wake every staff member on the premises, every single one, and tell them to come here. We need to talk about this."

Graham scoffed.

Charlie ducked out the infirmary at a run. Ericson pinched his nose, then rounded on me. "And you."

I hung my head, the juice box sitting abandoned beside me on the bed.

"You are going back to bed. You will wake up tomorrow with your peers, and you will carry on as usual, and you will never mention anything about that man, or this night. Do I make myself clear?"

I shrank into myself. "Yessir."

Those small and shrewd eyes pierced into me.

"Go."

I ran out of the infirmary.