Cade watched Mattie from his car.
The kid couldn’t handle it. Cade couldn’t help but think of him that way—a kid. Young. He was pacing, back and forth, up and back. His backpack bounced on his shoulders, and sweat beaded his forehead.
There weren’t too many people there. This was the first class since . . . since that night.
And only five of them knew that Stratford wasn’t going to show up. Their tests would remain ungraded. Their class would cease to continue as it was.
The students who had arrived were casting looks at Mattie. Cade groaned and pushed open the door of his Mercedes. “Dude,” he called to Mattie as he crossed the pavement. He needed to get to Mattie before someone else stopped to ask what the hell was wrong with him. Cade wasn’t sure what Mattie might say.
Mattie stopped pacing for a second, his eyes moving frantically around the parking lot as Cade neared. “Cade,” he said, and his voice was tight, like he was on the verge of tears.
Cade patted his back. “Calm down, man. It’s okay. Everything is fine. But you need to man up and walk inside with me. Sit next to me. We’ll figure this out.”
Mattie nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”
For about a half second, Cade understood as he walked into the room next to Mattie. He wanted to freak out too. They all did, probably, except maybe Kinley. She was cold. Colder than he was, probably.
And then, he started thinking. His mind had started working again, after that night of being blank and scared. He felt like himself again. Almost.
Cade surveyed the classroom. The others were already here. The other three, at least. Kinley was sitting in the second row, her notebook and three colored pens laid neatly in front of her. She was a tough one.
Tyler was in the back again, as a slacker should be. He was in his trademark pose: ass scooted forward to the front of the chair, pen in his mouth, and a cap that he shouldn’t have been wearing inside the school pushed down over his eyes.
And then there was Ivy. She looked . . . well, she looked a little rough around the edges, like maybe she’d done a couple too many shots the night before, but in that hot-girl way: her hair was perfectly coiffed, and her outfit hugged her curves in a way that said Look at me.
Cade knew how scared they all were.
But Mattie—Mattie was the only one showing it.
Mattie was the weak link.
Cade watched him from the corner of his eye. “Sit next to me,” he said. He was going to have to watch him. Make sure he didn’t go too crazy.
It was one thing to get a little stressed about test results. It was another thing to show something was really wrong. But Mattie was verging on a full-on breakdown, and Cade had to stop it.
This class wasn’t going to be easy.
Cade glanced around the room.
Someone had been in to clean. Probably the janitor. The board had been wiped. The room had the sweet-sour smell of the recently mopped. And the tests, which had been left in a messy pile on Stratford’s desk, had been straightened up very neatly.
There was nothing to show that Cade—with the help of his friends—had killed a man there.
Nothing to show that their professor had died on the floor a few days earlier.
Cade’s throat suddenly went strange and numb. He cleared it and coughed.
Mattie shot him a look, alarm in his eyes. “Are you okay?” he asked. Mattie was kind. Easy to manipulate.
It would be his downfall.
“I need water, I think.” His voice came out hoarse. Cade stood up, but Kip waved him down.
“Don’t do it, man,” Kip hissed. “Stratford’s gonna be in any second. Do you really want to be in the hallway?”
Cade paused. If Stratford were really going to show up, would he risk it?
No.
No, he wouldn’t.
Cade sunk back into his chair and reached for his book. “Hey, man.” Kip leaned over again. “What happened after class? Did Stratford flunk you?”
Cade shifted, and he felt a strange warmth in his stomach. He hadn’t been prepared to talk to people about what had happened after class. “Uh, I don’t know. He was a dick about it. He said I’d figure it out when I got the test back and then he just left.”
Kip whistled. “Cold, dude. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t catch him. I saw him in the teachers lot after I ran into you guys, but I just let him go. I froze. Dude is scary.”
Cade frowned, and Mattie’s head snapped toward Kip. Kip thought he’d seen their dead teacher in the lot? His stomach clenched. How long had Kip stayed after they’d told him Stratford had left, exactly? Had Kip seen something he shouldn’t have? Or did he actually believe he’d seen Stratford walking across the lot? If Kip actually believed what he was saying, then he was their best alibi yet.
Or was Kip just messing with his head? Cade narrowed his eyes. If Kip had stuck around, maybe he had seen Cade and his little group too.
“Stratford was in a bad mood,” Cade muttered.
Kip leaned back in his seat, a pencil flipping quickly between his fingers. “He’s always in a bad mood. How do you think he’s going to be today?”
Cade sighed. He could see Mattie still watching him. “I don’t know. How is he always?”
“A tool.”
“Then I’m going to go with tool.” Cade turned away from Kip. He was tired of talking. He glanced at the clock.
Stratford was officially late.
Five minutes late.
“What’s the rule?” Tyler asked. “Teacher isn’t in after ten minutes, we all get to leave? Scot-free?”
A couple of the students glanced nervously around the room, as if Stratford was going to pop out from under his desk or emerge dramatically from the supply closet.
He didn’t.
Another minute ticked by.
No one spoke. Cade could feel the others watching him. He could feel their eyes.
Mattie was sweating beside him. Cade shot him a look.
“What, dude? I think I screwed up the test, okay?” Mattie asked. “I blanked.”
Cade nodded. At least Mattie was playing off his nervousness as test-related. He wasn’t totally stupid.
“Me too,” confessed a mousy-haired girl who sat near the front. “I don’t know how I’m going to pass this class.” She paused. “Where is he, anyway?”
Cade stared up at the clock.
“Maybe he’s dead,” a freckled kid in the back joked. “Maybe we don’t even have to worry about the test.” He laughed, awkwardly. “Best-case scenario, huh?”
Kinley whipped around, her long braid wrapping around her. “That’s not funny.”
“Whoa,” the freckled kid said, holding his hands up. “It was a joke. Calm down, narc. Don’t go tell the principal, okay?”
Tyler bristled. He blew his breath out noisily, and then caught Cade’s eye. He looked left and right, making sure no one was paying him any attention, and lobbed a crumpled ball of notebook paper onto Cade’s desk.
He had good aim. Probably from years of passing dirty notes in elementary school. No one wrote notes anymore.
Cade quietly smoothed out the ball of paper.
Tell them.
He glowered at the paper, then the meaning hit him. Someone needed to tell the office Stratford hadn’t shown up.
Cade glanced at the clock.
Their professor was twenty-five minutes late now.
Twenty-five minutes.
He chanced a look at Mattie. Poor kid. He might not even make it through class.
He stood up, and cleared his hoarse throat again. “I’m going to tell the office Stratford didn’t show. Maybe they’ll let us leave.”
Kip scoffed, deep in his throat. “If Stratford walks in while you’re there, it’s your funeral.”
Funeral.
Cade hated Kip’s choice of words. He made a show of hesitating. He sat back down at his desk, and then stood up again.
The mousy-haired girl stood up and walked to the desk. She picked up the stack of tests, casting looks at the door.
She turned back the class, scowling, tests clutched in her hand. “He hasn’t even graded them,” she muttered. “We’re all waiting to see what happened, and he hasn’t touched them. Except Kayla’s—oh, Kayla. Don’t look, okay?” She slammed the tests on the desk and turned back to her seat.
“I’m not sticking around if he’s not coming,” Cade announced. He couldn’t stay in the classroom any longer anyway. He couldn’t take another second staring at Mattie, wondering if he was going to erupt. He shrugged on his backpack, left the room, and walked down the hall toward the office.
The evening receptionist, a black-haired girl with thick wire-framed glasses, looked up at him as she swung her purse over her shoulder.
“On your way out?” he asked. He wrapped his hands around the straps of his backpack and rolled up to his toes, then back to his heels.
Be cool, he told himself. Calm.
“Um, yeah. I don’t stay until your class gets out. I was just cleaning up a little.” She motioned at her desk, which was still covered in stacks of paper. A full mug of pencils sat to the left of her chair, which she pushed in carefully—a universal signal for I’m leaving right now.
“Uh, I just wanted to come by to say that Stratford never showed. We’ve been waiting for a half hour.”
“That’s weird. He lives two minutes from here. He’s never late. He just walks over.”
“Well, he’s late today. What should we do?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not even the real receptionist. Maybe everyone should just go home.”
“And if Stratford shows up after?”
“Your funeral.” She grinned at him.
There was that word again. He forced himself to smile back. He hated that word. “Funeral.” Would anyone show up to Stratford’s? Did anyone even care that he was gone? He couldn’t imagine Stratford had a family.
“Maybe I’ll go back for a little bit just in case,” Cade said.
“Cool. Have a good night, okay?” She smiled at him. “Fingers crossed that your professor doesn’t show up. You look like you could use a night off.”
Cade felt self-conscious. Was he wearing his stress so obviously? Like Mattie?
The receptionist winked at him. And then she was gone.
For some weird reason, she reminded Cade of his sister.