Tree shrugged as several other girls gathered in the hallway inside the front door.
“I didn’t feel like walking across campus in last night’s going-out clothes.”
She waited for a second as everyone took this in, and then Danielle busted out laughing.
“Holy shit!” she yelled, then charged up the stairs, wrapping Tree in a giant bear hug. Turning to face the girls downstairs, she raised Tree’s hand just like she’d done at the party the other night.
“Don’t mess with a Kappa bitch!”
Tree smiled and looked at Danielle, who leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Girl, you’re my hero.”
Tree kissed her cheek and marched up to her room to find some sweats. Danielle wasn’t a killer. Maybe she would hire a hit man, but even that seemed like a stretch. Danielle was like Vegas—she had a particular bent toward things that really weren’t that shocking. Just like Vegas was the place where good Christian folk went to get “sinful” but saw topless dancers you could find anywhere, so, too, Danielle was as basic and as harmless as they came. Sure, her tongue was a razor and she could slice up your self-esteem if you let her, but cold-blooded murder? The girl just didn’t have it in her.
That night, with all the suspects crossed off her list, Tree decided to see if she could just outsmart the killer without knowing who it was.
She grabbed a baseball bat that had been left in the hall closet and set out to the party tracing the exact route she’d taken that first night. She found a big tree to hide behind near the mouth of the bridge where the music box was playing and waited until she saw a large shadow darting toward her in the moonlight.
Tree sneaked up behind the killer from the opposite side of the bridge and swung the bat with every ounce of strength she could muster.
The body hit the ground with a thud, and Tree turned it over so she could pull off the mask and settle this once and for all.
Only there was no mask.
Just Becky.
Having to suffer through Danielle’s house meeting food-shaming of Becky over and over again was one of Tree’s least favorite parts of this endless day. And now, Tree had knocked her out cold.
Why was Becky darting around like that?
Tree dropped the baseball bat and got on her hands and knees. On the ground, scattered around Becky’s body, were a dozen doughnuts and a crumpled pink bakery box. Girl was sneaking in sweets while everyone else was out of the house.
The remorse that coursed through Tree was overpowering. She started smacking lightly at Becky’s face, begging her to wake up, and calling her name. She checked Becky’s pulse to make sure she was still alive and that she was breathing. Then Tree pulled her phone out of her pocket to call 9-1-1, reaching around to find the bat so she could explain to the police.
But the bat was gone. Tree never saw it again.
The killer hit her with it from behind.
The blow knocked her so hard she seemed to fly high into the air, and the ground disappeared beneath her. As Tree fell back to earth, she saw Carter’s bedroom far below her and dropped directly into his bed, her head landing gently on his pillow.
17
Tree opened her eyes and winced. The trombone. The bell. Carter’s butt sticking out from under the desk.
Here we go again.
She sat up slowly, rubbing the side of her head, most recently bashed in by her own bat. Carter turned around.
“Oh, hey. You’re up! I wasn’t—”
“Your plan totally sucks.” Tree stood up and grabbed her pants.
“What?” Carter asked.
Lately, this was where the explanation began. She’d get his attention by telling him where stuff was in his room, or what his roommate, Ryan Phan with the bleached-blond hair, was going to yell when he burst through the door.
But today, she was tired and sore, and standing up required no small effort. Tree felt like she’d been run over by a truck, repeatedly. As she pulled on her clothes, Carter gave his typical opening speech.
“Don’t know if you remember my name or not. You were…pretty wasted last night, but, uh…I’m Carter.”
A sharp pain hit her right in the stomach and Tree gasped, planting her hand on the dresser to steady herself.
“You okay?” Carter asked.
Tree bent down to get her shoes off the floor. “Never better.”
She took a deep breath and started shuffling toward the door, but the pain shot through her again, and she stopped to grab at her stomach.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Carter asked.
“Fine.”
Tree reached the door just as Ryan burst in shouting about her fine vagine. She saw him freeze and begin to apologize, but something was happening, and she couldn’t understand his words. Then his face went fuzzy like the sounds that were coming out of his mouth.
As her legs buckled, Tree pitched forward into Ryan’s arms, and everything went dark.
* * *
—
For the first time in what felt like years, Tree woke up someplace other than Carter’s dorm room. A thick silence filled the air around her, punctuated only by the shrill and steady sound of:
Beep…beep…beep…beep…
Her vision was blurry, but across the room, a door opened, and a shadowy figure walked in. As he drew closer, Tree could see the mask of the Bayfield Baby covering his face. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come out. Outstretched arms reached toward her, and then her vision focused on a face.
No deranged baby mask.
Only Carter.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Easy there.”
Tree felt Carter’s gentle touch on her shoulder. She looked around the room, saw the heart monitor beeping next to her, suddenly aware of her surroundings.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You collapsed this morning.”
“What day is it?”
“Monday,” Carter said.
Tree got more specific. “What’s the date?”
“It’s the…” He thought for a second. “It’s the eighteenth.”
Tree closed her eyes with a sigh. Goddamn it.
“We’ve been trying to get in contact with your parents,” Carter said. “But for some reason—”
Carter stopped short as the hospital was plunged into a blackout.
Right on time, Tree thought. Nine thirty-two p.m., anyone?
A second later, the lights flashed back on, and she saw Gregory had stepped into the room behind Carter.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Carter jumped as if he’d been electrocuted. “Jeez!”
“It’s okay,” Tree told Gregory. “He’s a friend.”
Tree saw Gregory narrow his eyes at Carter. Was that suspicion? The thought seemed ludicrous, but she’d been around enough guys to know how petty they could be. Gregory was jealous.
She watched Gregory’s smug air as he announced that Carter had to leave. “Sorry. Visiting hours are over.”
Carter nodded. “Got it.”
He turned to go, and Tree was sorry he was leaving.
“Thanks, Carter.”
Carter stopped in the doorway and turned around as the biggest smile spread across his face. Tree realized that he was pleased because she knew his name. He had barely introduced himself before she’d fainted that morning. He had no idea that they’d spent hours together for the past seven days. She knew far more about him than just his name.
“Feel better,” he said. Then he disappeared out of the room.
“When am I going to get out of here?” Tree asked Gregory, who was leafing through a medical file.
“I’m having a hard time pulling your medical records.”
“Why?”
Gregory flipped open
an iPad and sat down in a chair next to Tree’s bed.
“We just got these back from the imaging,” he explained. He pointed at several different lines around her lungs on the images. “These are signs of major trauma. Given the severity of the scar tissue and the size of the lesions…” His voice trailed off for a moment, and Tree waited. “This is going to sound crazy, but you should be dead.”
Tree felt the panic rise inside her. The beeps of her heart monitor got faster. She sat up and began pulling at her IV. Gregory was immediately on his feet.
“Hey, hey, hey. What are you doing?”
“I need to get out of here.” Tree was not asking permission.
“No way.” Gregory was adamant. “You need to stay here for observation.”
Tree started to panic. “If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to die.”
“Tree, listen to me. You are absolutely safe here.” Gregory shushed her as if she were a baby and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Tree licked her lips.
“I’m really thirsty,” she told him. “Could you get me a soda?”
“Sure.”
He leaned over and planted a light kiss on her forehead. Tree smiled at him as he made his way to the door.
The minute he was gone, so was she.
* * *
—
Tree rounded the nurses’ station on the fourth floor without making a sound. The nurse, Deena, was working a night shift by herself, so there was no one to listen to her complaints. Instead, she lost herself in a book and only half turned around when Tree sneaked by on tiptoe.
As Tree reached the door of Gregory’s office, she glanced down the hall. The police officer wasn’t there. Wherever he’d gone, it couldn’t be far. A steaming cup of coffee was sitting on the floor right next to his chair.
Tree pushed open the door of Gregory’s office, closing it gingerly behind her. Once she was inside, she went straight to the old leather-bound cigar box where Gregory always dropped his keys.
It was empty, and Tree whispered a curse. Moving around to the back of the desk, she pulled open the middle drawer but found nothing. She tried again, yanking at the side drawer.
Bingo.
Gregory’s keys were sitting in an upper tray. As Tree grabbed them, she looked down and saw something else. Pushing back the upper tray, she pulled something out of the lower compartment in the drawer.
A Bayfield Baby mask.
Tree instantly dropped the mask and slid the drawer closed. Her eyes filled with tears as the horror of the situation swept over her. At one point, she’d actually considered developing feelings for Gregory, and he was the one trying to kill her?
As quietly as possible, Tree poked her head out the door of Gregory’s office to make sure that the coast was clear. Cautiously, she headed down the corridor toward the stairwell that led to the parking deck. She’d walked this way a hundred times in the past two years, but something about tonight made it terrifying. Perhaps it was dying and dying and dying this past week or just that someone kept killing her. She pushed past a swinging door in a darkened back hallway. She could see the light from the stairwell to the parking deck up ahead. Tree quickened her steps, and just as she did, Gregory opened the door to the stairwell and stepped into the hall.
Tree froze.
Gregory approached her slowly as if she were a rabid dog who might attack.
“Tree? Tree. It’s okay. It’s just me.”
She was about to scream. She wanted to yell at the top of her lungs, Why did you kill me?
Before she could, the masked killer appeared behind Gregory. The frozen grin, still and menacing over the raised blade.
Tree pointed behind him, but she couldn’t even shout his name.
His perfect blue eyes went wide as the blade disappeared in his back. Then they closed forever as he crumpled into a lifeless heap on the linoleum.
Tree screamed as the killer ripped the knife from Gregory’s back. She was already running and could sense the killer chasing after her. He gained at every turn until that ghoulish mask with a menacing smile was floating just behind her. She cut a sharp corner around an empty nurses’ station, and the knife flashed just past her, the killer tumbling with it into a whiteboard covered in medical orders.
At the next corner, Tree rolled a gurney into his path. It wasn’t much, but it tripped him up before he could shove it out of the way. It bought her a few precious seconds as she reached the door of the fire escape and raced down the stairs.
Tree’s lungs and abdomen were on fire. Her head pounded. Above her, the killer had entered the stairwell now and was flying down the stairs. Tree gave every last ounce of strength she had and finally reached the ground floor. She raced into the parking deck and immediately hit the button on Gregory’s key fob.
The telltale boop-boop sounded one row past the stairwell door in the far corner. She raced down the ramp to that row and pressed herself against the back of a support pillar as the killer burst through the stairway door behind her.
All was quiet as the killer started creeping across the garage. She waited for as long as she dared before peeking around the column. She saw the baby mask, half a level up. Without making a sound, she bolted from her hiding spot, staying low behind the parked cars, peering through their windshields at the killer. Finally, she was close enough that she had to punch the fob button once more, or risk passing Gregory’s car and never escaping this psycho.
The boop-boop brought the killer racing down the ramp to her level. Tree had one chance, and this was it.
She sprinted from behind an SUV for the silver Mercedes in the corner. The killer was on the other side of the same row and running full tilt, trying to beat her to the car. Tree wasn’t going to make it, but as she rounded the front of the car and dove for the driver’s-side door, the baby mask dropped out of sight. The killer had slipped and fallen in a puddle of oil behind the car. That was all Tree needed to leap into the car, slam the door closed, and lock it.
Immediately, the killer was up again, hammering the handle of his knife in the driver’s-side window. Tree fumbled the key into the ignition, battling to turn the car on. Just as the engine growled to life, one final blow from the knife shattered the window.
Safety glass shards pebbled her face and body as she reached for the gearshift. The killer grabbed her by the neck, and as she pulled the car into reverse, Tree screamed and slammed on the gas.
The smell of burning rubber filled the garage as Gregory’s Mercedes hurtled backward into another parked car. Tree threw the car in drive and stomped on the pedal as hard as she could. The car shot forward, and Tree raced down the ramps, sending the killer diving out of her way.
As she floored it out of the parking exit and onto the open road, Tree watched the rearview mirror. She was certain at any moment that the killer would come roaring up behind her.
But no one followed.
Tree felt a sense of euphoria whip through her unlike any happiness she’d known before. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she hurtled farther and farther away from the danger. This was the thrill of survival. It was the ecstasy of staring certain death in the face and finding an escape.
“I did it.” She whispered the words aloud at first. They grew louder each time. “I did it! I did it!” She whooped at the top of her lungs, a long loud, “Waaahoooo! Catch me now, bitch!”
Tree slammed her foot down as hard as she could on the gas pedal and sped away into the night.
18
Tree’s celebration lasted until the flashing lights appeared in her rearview mirror. As she eased Gregory’s car onto the shoulder of the road, there was only one thing to say:
“Shit.”
The cop sauntered up to her shattered window, and she flashed a smile. The name tag on his uniform re
ad SANTORA.
“I know I was speeding, Officer.” Tree thought that perhaps if she were cooperative, he’d let her off with a warning and she could keep driving into a new tomorrow.
“Turn the engine off, please.”
Tree complied with a meek, “Yes, sir.”
“License and registration.”
Tree felt her stomach sink. This was not going to end well.
“I don’t have them,” she said.
“Pardon?”
Tree decided that if she were ever going to throw herself upon the mercy of anyone, it might as well be now.
“Someone is trying to kill me again!”
She blurted out the words and watched them have a less-than-ideal effect on Officer Santora.
He frowned and repeated the last word she’d said as a question. “Again?”
“Yes! I mean, no!” Tree reached for the explanation that would make the most sense. “He’s tried before, but this time I got away; I didn’t have time to grab my clothes, and my driver’s license was in my pocket.”
Santora grabbed the flashlight off his belt and shined it in Tree’s face. She squinted back, unsure what was happening.
“Ma’am, are you under the influence of alcohol or any other controlled substance?”
“No! That is what I’m trying to—” Tree stopped short as an idea took shape. “If I am,” she asked, “will you arrest me and lock me in a jail cell?”
Santora nodded. “That’s usually how it works.”
“I’m drunk!”
Tree almost shouted the words. The plan was genius. He could take her back to the station, and she’d be safer than she’d ever been. If she could just make it to midnight alive, she might see tomorrow. At least, that was Carter’s theory. And he was smart.
Officer Santora eyed her a little suspiciously. She could tell he wasn’t used to people confessing. “You are?”
Tree nodded and leaned in as if they were partners in a conspiracy. “Wasted! And I’m high. Pills, weed, you name it, I’m on it!”
Happy Death Day & Happy Death Day 2U Page 9