After her first class, Katie waited for Tessa outside the administration building. She knew Tessa had a Wednesday-morning session with Dr. Capello, and Tessa rarely missed classes or mandatory counseling. Her scholarship depended on it.

Katie hadn’t seen her since the night before. Tessa still wasn’t in bed at four a.m. when Katie got back from the greenhouse with Mark. She hadn’t returned to their room by the time Katie had to dress and leave. Where had Tessa gone and what was going on with her? Why was her best friend keeping secrets?

When Katie saw Tessa’s pale hair glinting in the sunlight, she waved her down. “We need to talk,” she said.

“What’s with the sour face?” Tessa asked. She had her thumbs looped in the straps of her backpack. “You look like you OD’d on toxic waste.”

“No more games, Tessa,” Katie said, too tired for verbal sparring. “Just tell me where you went, okay?”

“What do you mean, where I went?” Tessa replied. “I was getting grilled by the school shrink, like every Wednesday. She had me trapped in her office for an hour. Now you’re in my face, too? Jeez.” She shook her head and started walking.

“That’s not what I meant.” Katie hurried to keep up. “Where’d you go last night? I woke up from one of my freaky dreams, and you were standing by my bed.” Katie had glimpsed Tessa’s pale skin and pale hair. Who else could it have been? “Then you ran out of the room, and I found a rose petal on the floor—”

“What?” Tessa stopped walking and gave her a funny look. “That’s bananas.”

“Have you been watching me at night, Tessa?” Katie asked, because she couldn’t help wondering. “Are you trying to psych me out or something?”

“You think I’m the ghost from your dream? You’re joking, right?”

But Katie was dead serious. “You’re hiding something.”

“And you must be on something,” Tessa shot back, “because you’re totally imagining things. I couldn’t sleep, so I went down to the basement to watch TV again. That’s all.”

“You were in the basement?”

“There was a Real World marathon, so I tuned in until I fell asleep,” Tessa said, so easily that Katie might have believed her.

Except she knew it was a lie.

Katie stared at her friend, her heart aching. There was no question in her mind that Tessa was covering something up.

“What’s with the third degree?” Tessa turned aside as a group of students brushed past. “You weren’t in bed when I came back upstairs. So maybe I should ask where you were, and please, don’t tell me you snuck out with Mark again.”

“I wouldn’t have run into him if I hadn’t been looking for you, and thank God I did or I’d still be stuck in the tunnels,” Katie said without thinking.

Tessa turned red. “You did see him, Katie! What’s wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you? You’re avoiding my question,” Katie said. “Where’d you go, Tessa?”

Why did they always go in circles? Why wasn’t Tessa coming clean? Why was her friend turning this around on her? Katie was getting such weird vibes she didn’t know what to do. She opened her mouth to say, “Just tell me what you were doing in the steam tunnels and why you ran away from me,” when a scream stopped her cold.

“They found her!” someone yelled from farther up the sidewalk. Suddenly, she heard the dogs, howling so loudly the air practically vibrated around them.

Had the search dogs tracked Rose?

Katie glanced ahead, squinting, and grabbed Tessa’s arm. “Oh, my God,” she said, and her stomach did a nervous flutter. “Let’s go.” She flung her book bag over her shoulder and started running, following a crowd of people.

Katie felt like a wildebeest merging in with a migrating herd as she raced across campus. Elbows, feet, and book bags swung this way and that, bumping into her as the herd cut through neatly trimmed lawns between the stone buildings, then rushed down the gently sloping hill toward the creek.

“Hey, wait up!” she heard Tessa call from behind her, but she didn’t slow down.

Her breath came hard and fast as she ran toward the greenhouse and the maintenance shed. Then the forward motion of the students slowed and ground to a halt.

“Excuse me, sorry,” Katie said, pushing her way through until she found the cause: the campus police were setting up sawhorse barricades on the near side of the creek so no one could cross.

“Stay back, please, stay back,” they kept saying, doing their best to keep the students a safe distance from the woods.

“Is it true, they found the missing girl?” a girl asked the campus cops.

The cops looked at each other but didn’t answer.

Katie strained to see what was going on not more than thirty yards away. The braying of the dogs went on, rattling her eardrums. She watched one of them, a reddish-colored bloodhound, pulling hard against the leash held by a police officer.

“Bring the shovels!” a deep voice bellowed from the woods.

“They must’ve found something,” the girl beside Katie murmured, “or else why would they be digging?”

Katie’s book bag felt heavy, the strap biting into her shoulder. Then someone jostled her from behind, and her bag slid down her arm to the ground. She reached for it, and when she stood, she saw Mark, edging into a spot beside her.

“Hey,” she said, staring up at him.

He had a nasty bruise on his forehead. She didn’t need to ask what had happened. She’d gone to hockey practice before first period; sitting high in the stands, her gaze was on Mark as he skated. He’d seemed off during warm-ups, out of his usual rhythm and out of sync with the rest of his teammates. Then he’d gone after Steve Getty again, and Katie had found it too ugly to watch.

She’d left the rink as fast as she could.

I would never hurt you, Mark had texted her soon after.

You are hurting yourself, she typed back. Don’t let him get to you.

If Mark wanted to convince everyone that he was innocent, he had to stop lashing out at Steve. It just made him look angry and unpredictable and capable of anything.

“What are you doing here?” Katie asked when Mark didn’t say anything. It wasn’t wise for him to be hanging around the woods where the dogs were searching, when the police thought he was the last one to see Rose alive.

“I have to know if it’s her,” he said, and snatched Katie’s bag from the ground.

Without another word, he headed through the crowd of students, away from the barricades, and toward a thick copse of trees in the opposite direction.

“Mark, don’t,” Katie said, following him. She heard Tessa call her name. But she didn’t turn around.

“C’mon, stop,” she said, but he kept on walking. If he didn’t have her book bag, she would have let him go. But instead she hurried after him as he pushed his way through overgrown bushes that scratched Katie’s hands and face. The crowded trees with their thick green canopies shut out the sun. Katie sidestepped tangled roots, twigs, and pine cones. She tripped and caught herself on a tree dark with sap. Her palm came away sticky.

“Please, stop,” she said again, but he just kept going.

He followed some path that Katie couldn’t see until she heard the dogs again and voices, and she realized what they’d done. They’d gone the long way around and come up behind the cops.

Mark paused and turned, putting a finger to his lips. He set her bag down quietly and took her hand. They crept forward and crouched behind a messy tangle of wild honeysuckle. Mark parted the branches enough that they could see the dozen police officers and campus security loosely circling a spot where men with shovels were attacking the earth.

No one spoke for what seemed an eternity. There was just the scuffling of the dogs, the labored breath of those digging, and the spades hitting dirt.

Brush and stones had been cleared from the spot. The dug-up dirt looked different, lighter and softer, like freshly ground coffee.

Mark didn’t move. He didn’t look at her. His gaze was fixed dead ahead. He was so still Katie wondered if he was holding his breath. She wasn’t sure how much time elapsed before one noisy clunk rang out, and then another, as shovels struck stone.

“Careful now,” a man called out, and Katie recognized the detective who’d questioned her at Amelia House. “Let’s get those rocks out by hand.”

The men tossed their shovels aside and dropped to their knees, drawing out flattened stones from the creek, setting them aside with gloved hands.

“Must’ve laid them over her so the critters wouldn’t get her,” one of the cops said loudly enough for them to hear.

Critters? Ugh.

Katie looked at Mark. He still held her hand, and his skin felt ice-cold.

“Okay, let’s take it slow,” the detective said. “Anything that’s not dirt or twigs, I want bagged. And make sure we get photographs every step of the way.”

Katie caught a glimpse of white against the earth.

“Is it her?” she whispered. “Is that Rose?”

But Mark didn’t answer.

She bit her lip, waiting, as endless minutes ticked past.

“Use the brushes now and sift the dirt nice and easy. Let’s not miss a hair,” the detective said, and then he disappeared from Katie’s view as one of the officers shifted position, blocking her line of sight with his shoulders.

“I can’t see,” Mark said under his breath

But Katie didn’t want to see, not really. If it was Rose, what would she look like? Pale and waxen like Mr. Ogden? Probably worse, if she’d been in the ground since she’d gone missing over a week ago. Was her skull full of maggots, wiggling in and out of her eye sockets?

Katie tasted bile and swallowed hard.

Mark moved to the left and peeked through the branches. He sighed, looking grim, and Katie knew he could see again.

She didn’t want to look. So she stared at her shoes. Her black flats were wet and caked with mud. They were as good as ruined.

“Aw, hell,” Mark said, and Katie had to peek.

She settled in beside Mark and gazed through the thick honeysuckle. Now there was no one in the way, nothing to obstruct the view. What Katie saw poking out of the shallow grave was a face—or what was left of one—discolored and gray. It looked like a Halloween mask, not a person. The men kept brushing away bits of earth that covered the corpse like a blanket until something around its throat glinted in the dappled light: a gold chain with a charm.

Katie’s breath caught. Was that the St. Sebastian medal she’d given Mark?

One of the cops held up the chain so another could bag it, and Katie saw enough to feel sure that’s what it was. Mark hadn’t just lost the medallion the night of the party; somehow it had ended up with Rose Tatum. Had she stolen it from him? Had he given it to her? Could he really not know where it had gone?

“Mark?” she said, so quietly she wasn’t sure he heard. And then he looked at her with such wide eyes that she knew he’d seen it, too.

“I swear—” he started to say, and Katie shook her head. She didn’t want to hear another denial. She couldn’t stomach it.

What had happened two weekends ago on that Saturday night that Rose went missing? Who had killed her and buried her across the creek in the woods? What if Mark wasn’t telling the truth? What if he could remember and the rest was a lie told to cover up the bad things he’d done?

Don’t go there, she told herself. But it was too late. She’d already gone.

Katie closed her eyes. She drew away from Mark, dizzy and nauseated.

Rose Tatum had finally turned up.

And she was very, very dead.