“I hope I’m not behind her in the cafeteria,” one of the girls said when I rushed past the sinks, and I groaned again, then went back to wash my hands for no reason at all. By the time my hands were dry, I had ninety seconds to be in my chair. I shoved open the bathroom door and ran for my math class, then slid into my seat just as the bell started ringing.
On the bright side, being almost late to school meant that neither the reporters nor the other students had time to mob me with questions. But that didn’t stop my classmates from staring at me as a man I’d never seen before started calling roll.
“Hey. I didn’t think you were gonna make it,” my best friend, Emma Marshall, whispered from her desk next to mine.
“Me, neither.” During my convalescence, she’d come to hang out on the afternoons when she didn’t have to work and I didn’t have to train, and seeing her never failed to make me smile, even when I had to feign interest in school gossip, which had never felt less relevant to my life. She didn’t pass on the rumors about me, thank goodness. “I got a surprise visit from Madeline this morning.”
Em’s eyes widened. “But it’s your first day back.”
“Also my first day on the job, evidently.”
“Kaylee Cavanaugh?” the new math teacher called, and thirty-one heads swiveled my way, thirty-one sets of eyes watching me.
“Here,” I said, like I was used to being stared at by the entire class. Before, I’d felt invisible. Now I really could be invisible—if there weren’t so many people already watching me. So far, my afterlife seemed made of that kind of bitter irony.
“Kaylee, welcome back,” the man at the front of the class said. “According to school policy, you have just over a month to complete your makeup work. Please let me know if you need any help at all with the math portion.”
I nodded. I’d already finished my makeup work, but I couldn’t admit that. Most stab victims aren’t concerned with school work during their recovery. I wasn’t, either, but without the need for sleep, I’d had hours and hours to kill when neither Tod nor training had kept me busy. During those endless solitary hours, it sometimes felt like homework was the only thing connecting me to the world I was no longer truly a part of.
The new math teacher—Mr. Cumberland—went back to the roll book and Em leaned closer to whisper. “I can’t believe they even bothered filling that faculty position again. They might as well rename the class Defense Against the Dark Arts. I mean, seriously, who would answer an ad for this job?”
I shrugged, studying Mr. Cumberland. “Is he…?”
“Criminally dull? Yes. But so far I’ve seen no sign that he intends to feed from the student body in any way. So? What was the job this morning?”
Normally, no one paid any attention to Em and me whispering in class, but with my unfortunate morbid-celebrity status, I could practically feel the ears all around me perk up, hoping for some juicy bit of gossip about what had happened the night Mr. Beck died. So I concentrated really hard on Emma, to make sure she was the only one who could hear me.
“Rogue reaper,” I said, and when no one reacted, I knew I’d done it right; hopefully anyone else who saw my lips move would think I’d whispered too softly to be heard. “Thane’s back,” I added, and Em’s eyes widened even farther in fear and surprise. But before I could elaborate, Mr. Cumberland started class.
When the bell rang fifty minutes later, only a couple of people headed for the door. Everyone else waited, slowly loading books into their bags or digging through purses, not-quite-surreptitiously watching me. When Em and I headed for the door, suddenly everyone else was ready to go, too.
“Today’s gonna suck,” I whispered.
As if the crowd of gawkers falling into step behind us wasn’t enough, Mr. Cumberland chose that moment to ask Emma to stay after class for a minute. Math had never been her best subject.
She glanced at me apologetically, then veered toward his desk. I started to wait for her, but soon realized I wouldn’t be waiting alone. When the second-period students began wandering into the classroom, adding their stares and whispers to the collective, I pushed my way into the hall against the flow of traffic and race-walked toward my locker.
But escape was futile.
Chelsea Simms, reporter for the student newspaper, was the first to take the plunge, falling into step with me as I rounded the corner into the front hall. “Hey, Kaylee, we’re so glad you’re back.”
“Thanks.” I walked faster, but she matched my speed.
“So, I heard you died. Like, your heart stopped on the operating table.”
“Only for a few minutes.” I had to concentrate on remaining corporeal, because my desire to disappear had never been so strong.
“But the news said you were dead. For real. They showed a body bag on a gurney.”
Chills traveled down my arms in consecutive waves. Knowing I’d died and hearing about it were two completely different things.
A familiar hazel-eyed gaze met mine from across the hall, and my steps slowed as I passed Nash and Sabine, desperately wishing I could join them. That we could talk, or bicker, or just stand in uncomfortable silence, thinking of everything that had gone wrong between the three of us. Anything to avoid the stares and questions from relative strangers. To escape the crowd following me, a teen-paparazzi mob that felt more like a morbid funeral procession, a month too late.
But Nash and Sabine only watched as the parade of crazy marched by. I wanted to stop and talk, but I had no idea where to begin. I hadn’t seen Nash since the day I came back from the dead, and “I’m so sorry I dumped you and framed you for my murder” seemed like a really bad way to start a conversation. Or rekindle a friendship. Or ask for forgiveness.
Either way, Em had said the gossip mob only laid off Nash when everyone heard I was coming back to school, and I couldn’t suck him back into such a brutal spotlight. Not after what I’d already put him through.
“Kaylee?” Chelsea said, staring at me from inches away, and I was horrified to realize she’d pulled out a pencil and a notepad, and was now taking notes. “The body bag?”
“That was stock footage and a clerical error.” I finally spotted my own locker through the sea of heads. “I don’t know what else to tell you. The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated,” I said, misquoting Mark Twain. But though she seemed to believe me—after all, I was walking evidence of my own survival—the questions didn’t stop.
“Did you see a bright light? Did your life flash before your eyes?”
“If so, it must have been the shortest, most boring recap in history,” my cousin Sophie said from her locker. But for once, her insult lacked real bite, which was just as well, because no one seemed to notice she’d spoken.
The crowd parted in front of me as I headed for my locker, several doors down from Sophie’s, but before I could enter the combination, a girl from my French class stepped into my private space, leaning with one shoulder on the locker next to mine. I could tell from the bold combination of curiosity and determination in her eyes that someone had finally found the courage to ask what they all really wanted to know.
“Is it true that Mr. Beck died in your bed?”
On my bed. He’d died on my bed, not in it. But I knew better than to answer.
I’d known this moment was coming, but knowing you’re about to be dunked headfirst into ice-cold water is never enough to prepare you for the shock. And with that one question from the masses, the floodgates opened on all queries personal and inappropriate, and I could only stand there, wishing it all away as voice after voice shouted at me, dissecting my personal trauma and baring my wounds for the world.