Chapter Twenty-Five Willa

Chapter Twenty-Five

Willa

Now: Saturday, 6:55 p.m.

Without the harsh glow of Eden's phone screen, the room plunges into darkness, but that house is imprinted upon my eyeballs. I've been trying to forget that house for three years, and now there it is on some stalker's fake Instagram profile. Or was.

Liam turns on the flashlight.

"Okay, okay, so whoever was sending Eden threatening DMs goes to our school, and for some reason they also had a picture of Swaghouse on their feed," I recap, mostly to talk myself through it. After finding Declan, then Eden, it's like I can't concentrate on anything. I pinch the pressure points by my temples. I have a headache that won't go away.

"Or works at our school," warns Wyatt. "Guys…if Silva never left, she could actually be hiding here. Big fancy places like this sometimes have a caretaker's cabin on the property."

"Absolutely not," Liam begins. "That's ridic—"

"No, think about it," Piper interrupts. "It's been bothering me that this house has a cat living here. Who takes care of it when people aren't renting the place? Plus, someone left those Welcome boxes. A caretaker's cabin would make sense."

"Are you suggesting we go out in…that?" Camille swings her arm wide in the direction of outside, though down here a thin line of snow-packed windows over the bed is the only hint at what waits beyond our cabin doors.

"We have to check to be sure," Piper says.

"Sure of what?" Camille snaps at her, even though it was Wyatt pushing the theory. "You truly think Silva is hiding in the cold, waiting to kill us? Maybe you're the killer, and you want to strand us so we get hypothermia."

Piper rolls her eyes. "Oh please. That's stupid."

"This whole thing is—" Camille cuts herself off, unable to even finish what we are all thinking.

Absurd? Terrifying? Downright unfathomable?

"Cam…" Delaney reaches out to her friend.

"Look, I find the Silva theory…compelling, but we're in the middle of a blizzard !"

I abandon the couch, leaving the others to debate the details of our horrible reality.

I drift to Silva's bed instead. Eden's clothes are still there, crumpled in a pile. Without thinking, I pick up her sweater and fold it. I'm methodical, snatching up each item of clothing and bringing it to order. It's the closest thing I can manage to a memorial, a laying to rest.

But as I fold one pant leg over the other, my eyes catch on a dark rectangular object marring the white bedspread. Contraband previously hidden beneath Eden's clothes.

"Guys?" I pick up the object, inspecting it in the shadowed light.

The group doesn't break stride from whatever they're arguing about now.

"GUYS," I repeat, louder. I hold up the purple leatherette volume. "Did Eden keep a diary?"

"No," Delaney snorts. "How pathetically analog."

"Hey, I've kept a diary since I was eight," Camille says, wounded. "It's therapeutic."

Piper groks the implication first. "It must be Silva's," she asserts.

I return to the couch. Liam helpfully shines light onto the pages as I flip through them. There are years of entries in careful scrawl interspersed with bullet-pointed lists and doodles.

"Eden must've been reading it," Delaney says. Even with Liam between us, I feel her itching to grab the journal from my hands.

"Wait, stop." Wyatt leans hard against my shoulder. Any part of him touching me makes my skin crawl, but I swallow down my disgust. He continues. "Go back a page. I saw my name."

I do, my eyes scanning the neat, tight print. Silva has excellent penmanship. The page in question appears to be Silva's notes for early decision and early action college-application recommendations. Each name is underlined, with notes next to it and an admissions update in red pen at the end. Our names jump out immediately.

DELANEY MOSS: Most rigorous course load. 4 on AP Bio exam. ASB president. Drama club. Great actress. Father died abroad; essay covers bettering global health outcomes in underserved nations. Yale Global Health BA-BS MPH program. Accepted Ea.

LIAM PARKER-YANG: Most rigorous course load. 5 on AP Bio exam; AP Chem pending. ASB secretary. Eagle Scout. Premed. Lacrosse. Always helping younger students. Spent formative years in Singapore and Sydney. Yale Global Health BA-BS MPH program. They want to go together? Nauseatingly cute. Accepted Ea

WILLA HAWLEY: Yale too? FFs. Most rigorous course load. Rough freshman year with strong recovery trend. Shifted focus from STEM to humanities sophomore year; dropped peer tutoring for Model UN. ASB treasurer. English major. Deferred

WYATT RIEMER: Moderately rigorous course load, but not most rigorous. 3 in AP Psych and Gov. Twitch streamer. Wrote his Princeton supplement on "respectful dialogue about difficult issues." Stunningly obtuse take on consent I couldn't talk him out of. Rejected

"I see why she wrote you a less-than-glowing recommendation," Liam says to Wyatt. My stomach lurches, and the leatherette turns slimy in my hands.

"That is a mischaracterization of my essay," Wyatt sniffs. His faux-lawyer mode is something I'm all too familiar with.

I ignore him and flip forward in the journal, looking for anything else of interest. Interspersed between notes are proper diary entries, dated at the top with free-flowing thoughts in a much messier scrawl. I start to read to the group.

December 22, 2023

The board called me today. Wyatt Riemer's father has lodged an official complaint against me. Because they insist he was a shoo-in for Princeton, and it was my recommendation that sank his application. How did they even read what I wrote? I'll have to put in a call to Bradley and get to the bottom of this. Unbelievable violation of my privacy. Riemer waived his right to see my recommendation, dammit.

Has it not occurred to anyone that maybe it was Wyatt's own essay that got him rejected? Just thinking about it, I want to take another scalding-hot shower.

"See! I told you," Wyatt grinds out. "That bitch is out to get me."

We do not dignify his ranting with a response, though he may not be wrong. Something like dread prickles the back of my neck. I flip a few pages ahead to another entry.

December 28, 2023

Some days I regret signing the NDA Warner Prep requires. This notebook is my only outlet, and even then I'm scared to be fully honest. All I can say is the backstabbing, the lying, the cheating…what's wrong with them?

And they never listen! I tell them, over and over, don't leave your applications to the last minute. The holidays are brutal. It'll sneak up on you. I need a minimum of six weeks' notice to write a recommendation. Now I've got Piper Giambruno emailing me every three days following up—like Jesus Christ why did you wait until Thanksgiving to ask me for your recommendation? And she hasn't sent me her essays or résumé yet, so I have nothing to go off of. What am I even supposed to say about a girl who hasn't been here for the last three years?

"Shit, Piper, what did you do?" Camille hisses. Piper recoils.

"Nothing," she protests. "My mom says following up every forty-eight to seventy-two hours is business standard…."

"Well, your pushiness might be getting us all killed right now," Camille argues.

"I'm sure it's more than that," Delaney says.

Dread settles in the pit of my stomach. Could Silva know what I did? My grip goes slack, and Delaney sees her opportunity.

She snatches the journal away and holds it up. "This is pretty damning. As much as I want to believe Declan and Eden were an accident, Silva seems pretty unhinged. Listen to this. It's the last entry, from what I can tell." She begins to read again.

January 3, 2024

I still can't believe it worked. Never underestimate Barb's laziness. I barely had to volunteer and our worthless administrator was all over letting me take over excursion logistics. It's all set up. Now that it's here, though, I'm nervous. I have to trust that the house is ready, that I'll be able to get their devices without issue, that everything is timed perfectly. I hope I can go through with it. I have to remind myself that these kids deserve it.

Delaney stops there, mouth set in a grim line.

"I knew there was a reason we ended up on this trip from hell." Wyatt pumps a fist, but the sense of triumph quickly fades. We all soak it in. Our guidance counselor, an adult we thought we could trust, brought us here for some nefarious purpose.

"Why us? What did we do to her?" Camille whines.

Delaney snaps the journal shut and jumps to her feet. "Nothing. She's just a jealous cow. God, I can't believe this is really happening." At the panic in her voice, Liam launches to comfort her. She buries her head in his chest and heaves a great big sigh. Leave it to Delaney to milk this situation for all it's worth.

"It's going to be okay," Liam says, pulling her into a hug. My blood runs cold.

Wyatt bounces on the balls of his feet, swings his arms back and forth like a prizefighter revving up. "So, what? We're going to die because some psycho counselor bitch is holding stupid grudges? Fuck that. Let's find her before she can get another one of us."

"Hold on, hold on," I pipe up, attempting to defuse the tension. "She doesn't say the plan is to kill us. Just to teach us a lesson," I reason. I think back to this morning. "Silva seemed genuinely shell-shocked when Declan died. It didn't feel like acting. We may be jumping to conclusions. This isn't a teen slasher. Our teacher isn't trying to pick us off one by one."

"If that's true, then we need to prove it," Piper says. "Search the whole house, and the grounds. If Silva's hiding, we'll findher."

Delaney steps forward. "All of us. Including you. You can't use your injury as an excuse to sit out. We don't leave each other's sides. Like you said."

"I wouldn't dream of anything else." Piper smiles sweetly. "I'm more than capable."

"Let's go upstairs," I break in, playing peacemaker once more. "Put on some warm clothes and find more flashlights. It wasn't snowing that hard a bit ago. We'll either find Silva or reassure ourselves that she's not here and we're fine. Declan and Eden died by accident. And then we'll wait for rescue, okay?"

"Sounds good to me," Piper says evenly, eyes locked on Delaney. Del nods, accepting the truce.

Good. We will not implode right now. We forge forward, into the storm, and we pray it doesn't get worse.