Chapter 12

The camp is quiet now, everyone off to bed. My eyelids are heavy, but my heart keeps thumping to the rhythm of the crickets. Jacey's sleeping bag crinkles, and she whispers, "Have you told anyone?"

For a second, I think she knows, and my panic spikes. I haven't told a soul about what I did to my sister. Not after how horribly wrong things turned out.

Piper was so stressed over schoolwork that she finally caved and let me grade Mr. Davis's tests. I sat with red pen in hand, trying to do my best impersonation of Piper's handwriting. Sixty-two for Gary Burgess, who probably should've studied harder. Seventy-five for Dana Casillas, which sounded about right. I picked up the next test—mine—and a nervous flutter ran through my stomach.

I was nearly done. I just had to grade this one and—I lifted the rest of the stack—five more, then figure out a way to make a few hundred bucks.

I started to drop the tests back into the manila folder when a slip of paper snagged my eye. Something attached to the back inside cover. A number.

No, a password .

Piper's password for logging scores into Mr. Davis's grading program.

An idea danced its way into my head. Light steps that quickened.

How much would Gary Burgess pay to have that sixty-two bumped up to a seventy-five? And Lacy Santana… She was shooting for the Ivies. Was an eighty really going to cut it?

A ninety would look a lot better.

I tried to knock the idea down, but it got up again. It kept dancing, twirling, flinging itself around my head.

"The real reason you're on this trip," Jacey says now. "Have you told anyone else?" My muscles relax.

An owl hoots in the distance, and I tug my sleeping bag higher. "Just Alexandra. I sort of had to tell her after I accosted her over the phone thing."

"Well, what's your plan?"

"Guess I don't have one. I was going to take Piper's pack with the threat written in it to the police. But then it disappeared."

"What about Piper's phone? You said you have the calls from Alex on there. Maybe the cops can figure out who it is."

A frenzied jolt hits me. "No," I say too fast.

There's a shush from somewhere in the camp—probably Mr. Davis. "Some phone calls won't cut it," I whisper. "The cops will laugh in our faces. Piper fell from Suicide Point . We need something more concrete."

And something that doesn't involve the cops digging through Piper's phone. It won't be just my parents shunning me if what I did to my own sister that day comes to light.

It'll be Grayling High.

It'll be Mount Liberty College.

It'll be Grant.

"Did you hear that?" Jacey whispers suddenly, swatting my feet.

"Hear what?" I mumble, picking a stowaway pine needle out of my sleeping bag.

"Something is right outside our tent."

I listen, and sure enough, I hear a scratching sound. It's close. "Probably just a man-eating grizzly," I whisper, burying myself in the sleeping bag.

"It's not a grizzly," she hisses. "It's a person, and they're listening to everything we say."

"Not really worth verifying, though, is it? If it is a man-eating grizzly, you'll never get the chance to say anything ever again. Because of the missing head and all." A new sound makes its way in, like air blowing hard and fast against the side of the tent. The next joke dies on my tongue.

Jacey sucks in a breath and sits upright. Before I can find my flashlight to figure out what's going on, she's unzipping the tent. "Jacey—"

But she disappears into the dark.

There's a scuffle. My body goes rigid with fear. I breathe. In and out. Listen.

Nothing. My heartbeat pounds in my eardrums as I shimmy out of the bag. Finding the flashlight, I duck through the opening.

"Savannah." The voice pierces through the night, through my chest. I jump and shine the light toward the sound.

Jacey comes into view behind the tent, her pale face hazy in the wash of light. Her hand is raised, index finger pointed at the tent.

I guide my flashlight in the direction of her gaze until its glow illuminates the nylon…and the words that are now written there.

My hand shakes. Panic screeches inside my head, shattering my eardrums.

White paint. Letters splintered like tree bark. The same writing I found in Piper's pack.

But the message is new.

Leave it alone.