Birdie is dressed in Daniel’s clothes. His cargos, Henley, and the flannel shirt she said was his dad’s. Her hair is tucked into a black beanie with the bangs sticking out and brushed sideways. From a distance, I’d believe she was Daniel Dobbs.
“Why are you wearing Daniel’s clothes?” Ansel asks.
“I’d be interested in hearing that answer myself.” Annalise’s voice rings from the trees before she inserts herself into the mix. Lurking. Ever the observant one.
My eyes flick to Ansel, but he looks equally startled to see his sister.
“They were at AMVETS,” Birdie squawks. “So I’d be interested in hearing how they got there in the first place.”
“You really are hell-bent on digging your own graves, aren’t you?” Annalise says.
“I’ll dig one for you while I’m at it,” Birdie snaps. “But first, I want to know why people are walking in and out of your bunker. Is Daniel in there? He told me he’d be back by end of day today, the latest.” Birdie does a double take when she catches Ansel shaking his head in our peripheries.
“He told you?” Annalise’s voice drips with derision. “When?”
Ansel drops his head, and my pulse clicks into a fast metronomic beat for him. He brought Daniel to our house against orders.
Don’t snitch, Birdie. Don’t snitch, Birdie. Don’t snitch, Birdie.
“He left me a note.”
Ansel shifts his eyes to mine, and a sense of relief passes between us. I’ve got to hand it to Birdie. She didn’t even blink. When it comes to covering her ass, my middle has the grace of an award-winning actress.
“A note, huh?” Annalise bends on one knee to fix the cuff of her pants, or maybe her sock. It’s hard to tell. “What else did this note tell you? Did it say where he went? Because he wasn’t at the bug-out location.”
“If I knew where he was do you think I’d be here instead of there?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out.” Annalise is holding something in her open hand. Something she took out of her sock or shoe.
“Annalise, don’t!” Ansel jumps in front of me and Birdie, arms wide, and the gust of a flowery breeze wafts across our faces.
* * *
I lift my head off my pillow and find Blue and Birdie sitting side by side on the bottom bunk, waiting for me to wake up. I don’t remember going to bed or leaving the woods or anything past Annalise showing up after we found Birdie being dragged away from The Burrow by Ansel. I fight the throbbing in my head and swing my legs to the floor. A clump of dirt drops off my filthy clothes and lands next to my boots. I think it’s safe to assume we got back late since I’m still so tired I can’t put all the scenes from last night in order. My lower back aches like it belongs to someone who’s sixty instead of sixteen. I press the heel of my hand against my forehead to alleviate the thumping in my skull.
“She did something to you,” Blue says.
“Who did? What time is it?”
My sisters are dressed for school. I don’t understand why they didn’t wake me.
“Annalise. She blew something in your faces and told all three of you to follow her to their truck. And you did. I could only follow you until she loaded you up and drove away. I tried to stay awake. I waited hours for you to get home, but I dozed off.”
“I don’t remember getting into Annalise’s truck.”
Birdie raises both eyebrows. “Maybe you’ll believe me now.”
It takes me a minute to register what she means. “What exactly did you see, Blue?”
“Annalise was being her normal aggressive self, but then she bent down to get something, and when she stood up, she blew it into your faces. A powder of some kind.”
“Was it dirt?” My brain is still stuck on the soil I gave Mr. Whitlock.
“No. Not dirt. It flew like baby powder. What’s the last thing you remember?”
I close my eyes and bring myself back to the woods. “Ansel. He jumped in front of Birdie and me and yelled don’t.”
“I still think Daniel is in that bunker,” Birdie says. “But something else is going on over there.”
“There’s a biohazard sign on the door. They could be using that bunker to mix chemicals for perimeter deterrents, but that wouldn’t be secret. Whatever happened feels specific to Annalise.”
“And Ansel,” Birdie says. “I remember the exact same thing as you. Then nothing. My clothes are just as dirty, and look—” She lifts her boyfriend’s flannel shirt off the floor and examines every seam. “White powder. Inside the pocket.”
I examine the arctic-white dust. It could be any number of substances that might make a person conk out. Crushed sleeping pills, Rohypnol, even antihistamines in large enough doses. I take off my hoodie and search every centimeter of it for the same powder. I find it inside the pointiest part of the hood and look at my sisters, at Birdie specifically. “But why?”
“You tell me. You’re the nonbeliever.”
I deserve the flippant response. I didn’t believe her when she claimed she couldn’t remember what happened with the flash-bang grenades. Annalise was there, too, and Birdie said … Holy crap, Birdie said Annalise grabbed her chin and blew on her face. But what if she was blowing something in her face?
If I didn’t know for sure something was up with Annalise’s behavior, I know it now.
“You were acting out of character when we were hunting, too,” Blue says.
“I know. You said that. You guys have a different recollection of me shooting the rattlesnake and bringing it to Dieter, but I didn’t lose track of everything that happened. Not like this.”
“Should we tell Mother?” Blue asks.
“No,” Birdie and I answer together. But for different reasons.
“Mother said she wanted us to keep the peace. I’ll bring our clothes to Mr. Whitlock and ask what he thinks of the powder without giving away too much. Until then, keep your distance from Annalise.”
JIC
JUST IN CASE
I DIDN’T TELL my sisters to steer clear of Ansel, but he’s back to avoiding me at every turn. To be fair, he’s a sorry sight, as zombified as I am. And judging by the looks I’ve received in the hallways today, I’d say I resemble the level of weird everybody’s been waiting to see crawl to the surface. It was just a matter of time. I’m projecting their thoughts, but I do feel like I crawled my way out of a grave. Birdie and I took a nap in our station wagon during lunch and fell asleep so hard Blue had to splash water on our faces to rouse us.
Normally, I wouldn’t take kindly to waterboarding, but I needed to be alert to talk to Mr. Whitlock. The one person who I should, by all accounts, avoid. Not only based on his prepper status, but the way he’s inserted himself in the peripheries of everything going on with the Burrowers and Nesters. It’s normal for most preppers to use discretion when dealing with someone outside of a group. Which is exactly how Mr. Whitlock went from being my favorite teacher, to someone I had to wonder if I could trust, to the best person to ask about the residue on our clothes. Trust, unlike chemistry, is not an exact science.
Brian Sharazi and Shawna take seats at the same lab table as me. I give them a tentative smile and look over my shoulder. “Where’s Rémy?”
“Suspended,” Brian says. “And benched.”
In an instant I know how Birdie felt when she looked at Daniel and asked, Because of me? “Did they say how long?”
“Three days. Anybody with a working brain in their noggin knows there’s no way Rémy made a flash-bang grenade out of a soda can. Never mind being stupid enough to keep it in his locker. Obviously, it was a plant. I just hope it wasn’t somebody on our team.” Brian shakes his head, lips quirked disapprovingly. “Rémy’s mom came in threatening to lawyer up, or hire a private investigator, and Principal Weaver backed off his original plan to suspend him for eleven days.”
“It pays to have a squeaky-clean school record,” Shawna says.
Her eyes do a spontaneous dance over me on her use of squeaky a
nd clean. I get it. I look less than my best, which is a stretch for acceptance at this school on a good mirror day. “I know I’m a mess,” I tell her. “I had a rough night.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“I went over to Rémy’s last night and he looked worse than Honey. He told me one of the SWAT officers tried to come at him in a racial profiling way and his mom went off.” Brian uses an open hand next to his mouth to emphasize the last two words.
“Good for her,” Shawna says. “I hope her supersmart librarian vocabulary brought his prejudice straight to the surface.”
“So, he’ll be back tomorrow?” I ask.
Brian shrugs. “I think so.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“Yes. I almost forgot.” Brian leans down into his backpack. I hold my breath, waiting for him to return to a seated position and deliver me the middle finger sent from Rémy. Instead, he flips me a folded piece of notebook paper, taped shut on two sides. “He said to give you this.”
“What is this, elementary school?” Shawna says. “I take that back, even those kids have cellphones. Hasn’t he heard of text messaging? Snapchat? Did his mom revoke all his privileges?”
“Would yours?” Brian asks.
“Of course, but surely he’s smart enough to use the old I-need-the-internet-for-homework excuse?”
“It’s not him. It’s me,” I tell them. “I don’t have my own phone. He does have my email address.”
Shawna’s eyes go cupcake round. “Okay. I don’t mean to be judgy, but I don’t understand that, like, at all.”
“I have a cellphone, but I share it with my sisters.”
“Oh. He probably didn’t want them snooping in on what he needs to say. The note is a quicker delivery method than an email you might not even check, because who does?” She winds her coppery ponytail around her fingers several times, creating a spiral she lets swing and hit her shoulders. Sometimes, I enjoy watching Shawna translate an opinion she’s already voiced. If I weren’t tired as a dying dog, I might even laugh.
“What’s it say?” Brian asks.
“He taped it closed,” Shawna says.
“I know. But considering the circumstances…”
“This is why you’re single,” Shawna tells him. “You don’t get subtlety.”
“Well, so are you. Unless you don’t want to be.” Brian waggles his eyebrows.
“No, thanks. Maybe. I don’t know,” Shawna says, backsliding on her whole point.
I ignore the rest of their standard-issue mating ritual to focus on the incomplete square with the bottom line missing Rémy drew on the outside of the folded note. The letter H in Pigpen cipher. I slice through the Scotch tape with the tip of a sharp pencil and find the whole note written that way.
“That explains everything,” Brian says, spying.
“What do you mean? Can you read this?”
“No. But if you can, I know why everyone thinks you’re weird. Plus it explains why Rémy—who tends to run away from the pack—can’t stop talking about you. That wasn’t a metaphor for how he is on the soccer field. When we’re playing, he doesn’t run in the opposite direction of the ball or anything,” he clarifies.
“Don’t stop there,” Shawna says. “Please keep rambling. Honey and I would love to hear more of your Sharazi-wisdom.”
“Okay. So my man Rémy obviously thinks Honey is a space alien. He loves all that government conspiracy–slash-cover-up stuff. So he wrote her a note in alien hieroglyphics. It’s a test, see? If Honey can read that … Bam! Space alien status confirmed.”
“Oh, that’s kind of cute. Like on Roswell. Except Honey and her sisters would be the aliens instead of the superhot boys.”
I stare at Shawna like she’s the being from outer space, since I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“I own the box set,” she says as a form of explanation.
My eyes flick to Mr. Whitlock to see if he was reading lips when Brian said government conspiracy–slash-cover-up. He shrugs in a way that’s borderline amused while suggesting I run with Brian’s line of thinking.
“You got me, Brian. That’s my big secret. I was sent here to study the strange ways of earthling teenagers. My time on planet Earth is running out. Soon, I’ll have to take my observations back to my home planet to prepare for the interrogation. That’s why I’m so tired. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to breathe this inferior air.”
“Well, you can’t beam up or leave or whatever you nerds do until we complete the new prelab,” Shawna says. She turns her head and covertly pops the corner of a chocolate chip blondie between her pink-frosted lips. She pushes the baggie of treats to me. “Have some of this. Maybe our Earth sugar will revive you long enough to decode Rémy’s alien love letter later.”
I grin and take a blondie, hiding it on my lap away from Mr. Whitlock’s prying eyes.
Ever since I explained why I crawled through the air shaft, Shawna and Brian have treated me like I’m one of them. I don’t usually trust people who fit into the high school social scene, and I know I promised myself I wouldn’t make friends at this school, but Rémy changed all that when he wouldn’t take my continuous brush-offs for an answer. I fold up Rémy’s note and put it in my front pocket. I don’t need to wait to decode it. I already read the whole thing. It said:
I’ll be back Wednesday. I have a bunch of photos to show you regarding turkey sandwiches for lunch.
I take that to mean the photos he took in the woods when he spied Annalise slinking up behind me.
When the class ends, Mr. Whitlock stations himself by the door and ushers students out, claiming he’s got papers to grade. I’m pretty sure the real reason he’s trying to empty the room is because he knows we have some unfinished business around what happened to Rémy and cracking the case of the moldy garden soil.
I stand in front of his desk, gathering some courage while I wait for the last few students to leave. I ignore the sidelong glances and think about Mother saying she didn’t know I had an added interest in chemistry. I didn’t then, but I suppose I do now.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” Whitlock says. “Behind locked classroom doors in ten-minute spurts. Other students and faculty might wrongly assume I lean toward favoritism.”
“Did someone say that?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Good. Maybe we won’t have to meet behind closed doors anymore if you found something off about the soil I brought you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s garden variety. No mold. Nothing unusual.” He takes a seat at his desk.
The soil was a stab in the dark, but the powder … I bite the inside of my cheek. “I have something else. I can’t tell you much about it because I’m not sure if my, um, hypotheses are correct, but—” I reach into my EDC for the Ziploc bags holding our clothes. “I found some white powder on these. They’re Birdie’s and mine. I don’t know what it is or how it got there. Could you … Would you mind looking at this, too?”
Mr. Whitlock holds out his hand and I pass him the bags. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t voice my concern over the things you keep bringing me.”
“I understand, but you said there was nothing wrong with the dirt, so maybe this is the same. Flour, baking soda, some kind of white powdery mildew.”
“Lye. Arsenic. Anthrax, or anything else that would prompt you to bring it to me.”
“I doubt it’s arsenic or anthrax,” I tell him.
“So do I, considering you look a little dead on your feet but relatively healthy. Can you at least tell me what the circumstances were around your discovery?”
“I’d rather not say, if you don’t mind, until I know what it is.”
“Fair enough. I asked you to trust me. The least I can do is offer you the same until we know something.” He puts the Ziploc bags in a desk drawer. “Can we talk about what happened with Rémy Lamar yesterday? Off the record.”
I knew that was c
oming. I shrug one shoulder and pick at the corner of a stack of papers on his desk. “What about him?”
“My warning about not getting him wrapped up in your group’s dynamics didn’t stick. We both know Rémy isn’t to blame for producing flash-bang grenades, which means he was a scapegoat for someone else.”
It’s getting harder for me to keep what I know a secret when I keep asking for favors. “I can’t talk about that.”
“You don’t have to. I’m an observant person. It wasn’t hard for me to figure out who else might be part of your doomsday coalition, besides Daniel Dobbs. If I’m not mistaken, the Ackermans fit the profile.”
“Maybe you should ask them about it.”
He lets out an amused snort. “I get the impression the Ackerman twins would sooner have their fingernails ripped out with pliers than speak to anyone about their family’s initiatives.”
“I can’t help you, either. I met up with Ansel in the treehouse to ask, but he didn’t know much. It could have been any number of people.”
“The same treehouse you told Rémy didn’t exist?”
Shit. He got me. I said too much. I stay poker-faced, waiting for him to fill the silence with his own conclusion.
“I took a stroll in those woods myself yesterday,” he says. “Following the same map I gave Rémy. Do you know where it led me?”
“Not the treehouse.”
“Correct. Not the treehouse, but to a bunch of houses on a section of land that isn’t part of any Elkwood residential maps. I did some exploring and found another path through the woods that brought me to the edge of a clearing, or should I say, proving ground. Several men were doing some shooting. Nothing too out of the ordinary if it weren’t for the type of weapons they were using. Any idea who lives on that property?”
“Nope. We live on Overcast Road.”
“Along with Daniel Dobbs, the Ackermans, and some former students who graduated in the last few years.”
“Is that unusual? It’s a small town. Lots of students that go to school here live on the same streets.”
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