With the mimic dead, the world is quiet. Devin notices herself again in details—the dampness of the soil at her fingertips, the chill of the wind over her quickly numbing nose, the feeling of Sheridan kneeling at her side, waving a hand over her face. Quietly, they gather up what they can and huddle back into the cabin, but they don’t sleep. Devin sits on her bed, sweaty sheets stuck to her thighs.
She doesn’t think about Sheridan finding her in this bed with a knife and she doesn’t think about what happened after.
They silently wait for dawn, and even if the sun does nothing to stop the mimics, there’s comfort in it all the same. It’s easier to breathe when she can see the corners of the room, the wall of trees ahead of them, the green valley below the cliff. When the last bits of night finally ebb, Aidan speaks.
“Remember I told you about my friend Landon?”
Devin sits up, and across the cabin, Sheridan does the same. Aidan’s eyes are trained on his knees. His knuckles are clenched and white. He looks older than he did when they first arrived in these woods, Devin thinks. At the same time, he looks the youngest she’s ever seen him.
Finally, he manages, “The mimic looked like him. It was pretending to be him.”
Devin’s eyes widen.
She looks at Aidan, but all she sees is Mr. Atwood again, hands clasped behind his back, taking a step toward her. She sees him in the halls of a gray house, the buckled floorboards creaking under his big feet. Miles from the city, miles from neighbors, tall grass rustling at her bedroom window. She closes her eyes so hard her head aches.
If Aidan notices, he doesn’t say anything.
“It knew all about me and Landon. Stuff I didn’t tell anybody here. Even the coaches.”
“Like what?” Sheridan asks.
There’s an edge to her voice, too. The sound of it rakes over Devin’s skin. She’s just as scared as the rest of them. The mimics have claws that sink deeper than regular impersonation. Somehow, they have memories at their disposal. They have deep-seated fears at their fingertips. The mimics are plucking things from their heads.
“Landon was my best friend,” Aidan says finally. “I didn’t have a lot of friends before high school. I think he asked for help on his homework? I didn’t think he’d wanna be friends for real because we’re so … different. He’s a junior and I’m a freshman. He played sports and had this amazing girlfriend. I’d never really hung out with anyone but my mom. He started inviting me to all these parties at his house. I think he actually liked me being there. Then his friends started hanging out with me.”
There’s a dreamy look on Aidan’s face when he talks. Even under the bruises and scrapes from last night, he glows. All over again, Devin’s chest feels tight. It’s not fair that he’s here. It’s not fair that he’s young and that he’s hopeful and that he’s here.
“You know that feeling when you’ve got a friend, but you know it’s a mistake? Like, you know if they knew about you for real, they’d leave. I wanted to be the person they saw so bad.” Aidan swallows and looks down at his hands. “I told Ethan I used to take my mom’s pills sometimes when I had a lot of homework to do. A few months ago, I started taking them before I hung out with my friends, too. It made me feel … focused. Like I was really there.”
Devin pictures him holding his backpack straps too tight, just like he did on their first hike, watching everyone else at his school float easily through their days. He closes his eyes and rubs his nose. The cool wind up the mountain comes through the window, ruffling his hair. It occurs to Devin that, if this story is recent, he really is younger than the rest of them. Her stomach turns.
“My mom found out and took me to the doctor. He said the Adderall was probably hurting me. My mom said I couldn’t take any more. And, like, I did try not taking them, but it was so … it was like all the worst parts of me started coming out again. I was being so weird with my friends. I didn’t want them to stop liking me.”
“You went back?” Sheridan asks.
Devin expects an edge to her voice, some degree of malice like usual. But there’s no edge. Her lips press together in a knowing frown.
Aidan nods, but he doesn’t look up.
“I did,” he says. “I thought it was working, but then this one day at school … I don’t know what happened. I must’ve timed it wrong, or my mom changed her prescription. I took some before lunch and it was like my brain shut down. I was literally talking to Landon when it happened. I kind of remember, but most of it’s blurry. They told my mom it was a seizure. I never had one before.”
“They’re the worst,” Sheridan offers.
“You’ve had one?”
She shakes her head. “My sister had them. Since she was little, she’d get them every once in a while. I always thought she was gonna die.”
“Yeah,” Aidan says, and surprisingly, he laughs a little. “It turns out too much Adderall can do that to you, too. Which is how everyone found out what I was doing. And I … my mom kept me home for a few weeks and I thought she was gonna let me go back to school, but then I ended up here. I didn’t get to talk to Landon and the others. I wanted to explain. I don’t even know if they know what happened or if they just think I’m a druggie freak.”
“Hey,” Devin snaps.
It’s almost involuntary. She doesn’t look at Sheridan, but she feels her tense.
Aidan blinks and, too late, it dawns on him. He looks at Sheridan and adjusts his glasses. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s cool,” Sheridan says with a shrug. “I am a druggie. And a freak.”
“No, I shouldn’t have said that.” Aidan sits up straight. Now, instead of looking at his boots, he focuses on Sheridan. “I’m sorry. About all of it. I should’ve believed you.”
“Well,” Sheridan says. “I’m not very reliable.”
“Thank you both,” Aidan says.
“Sorry it took so long,” Devin says, scratching a burn on her forearm. “We almost didn’t hear it.”
“I’m surprised you did,” Aidan says. “Weren’t you sleeping?”
Devin meets Sheridan’s gaze and her stomach turns.
“Yeah,” Devin says. “Sheridan woke me up.”
“Oh.” Aidan frowns. “I’m double sorry.”
“You can buy me dinner or something when we get out of here,” Sheridan says, and she’s so much better at acting casual than Devin. “To make up for it.”
“I’ll buy you a million.” Aidan laughs.
He climbs out of bed and starts assembling their gear for the hike back. Devin eyes Sheridan and her throat is tight. She waits for something to click into place, some definitive verdict on how she feels. She waits for something that would explain why, the moment Sheridan’s mouth crashed into Devin’s, she was pulled under. It doesn’t make sense, and the longer she stares, the more confusing it gets. She should help Aidan. She should do whatever it takes to get out of this forest as soon as possible.
But she stays still. She waits for Sheridan to look up.
Finally, Sheridan meets her eyes. The slow tilt of sunlight through the window spots her cheeks. The purple in her hair is fading fast now, closer to silver than lavender. Her light eyes take on the sherbet glow of sunrise and, pathetically, Devin has to look away first.
She’s never been a good pretender.
Devin nods at Sheridan, then motions to the cabin door. She makes her way outside with Sheridan at her heels and sits on a severed log out of earshot of the cabin door.
Sheridan wordlessly sits next to her. She’s an inch too far away to be friendly, and an inch too close to be keeping her distance. She swallows, then mutters, “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“The mimic? Or the other thing?”
Sheridan wipes her nose. “The other thing.”
“Yeah,” Devin says. She clears her throat because she is not going to sound timid. “Yeah. I’d rather not.”
“Same.”
“Good.”
They sit in silence, the frigid air growing even colder. Devin curls her toes in her socks, gritting her teeth. The cold light gives the outline of the cabin a dreamy yellow glow. There’s something uncomfortable between them now, worse than it was before. Devin feels cautious, like she might around door handles after working up a static charge. The idea of touching Sheridan feels like life or death. She’d just gotten used to being friendly, then to being unfriendly, and now the rules have changed again.
“It pretended to be your sister again.”
“Yeah,” Sheridan says. “It asked if I was cold.”
“What does that mean?”
“This might be nothing, but…” Sheridan looks down at her knuckles, apparently chewing on what she means to say before she spits it out. “I think it means these mimics don’t know anything about the people they’re pretending to be. They don’t have their memories. A little bit after Theda died, things got really bad for me. I wrote her this letter and never showed anyone.”
Devin nods.
“I told her I didn’t want to be here without her. I said I was gonna … join her.”
“Oh.”
“I told her it was too cold here.”
Devin blinks.
Brushing right past the horror of that, Sheridan says, “Theda wasn’t here anymore when I wrote that. If the mimic was really her somehow, or if it was accessing her real memories, it wouldn’t have said that. They’re just becoming the versions of these people in our memories. They’re doing what it takes to break us.”
Devin swallows. She should tell Sheridan about Mr. Atwood, should explain it all. She should tell someone, but it’s like the words are stuck in her throat. Before she can force it out, though, Sheridan touches her knee. She looks hard into Devin’s face.
“I don’t know who it was for you, but it wasn’t real.”
“You, uh…” Devin starts, but with Sheridan’s hand on her knee and Mr. Atwood’s eyes burned into her mind, speaking feels like she’s wading through molasses. “You thought I was one of them. Last night. Do you still…?”
Sheridan shakes her head.
“I saw you out there,” Sheridan says. “Unless you’re a way better actor than I thought, I’m pretty sure you weren’t on that thing’s side.”
“Why do they do it, though?” Devin asks. “What’s the point?”
Sheridan shrugs. “I don’t know if there’s a reason. Josiah keeps wondering about the same thing in his journal. But we know more about them now. A lot more. We know fire kills them fast. We know things get quiet when they’re close. I don’t think they can fully surprise us anymore.”
Aidan opens the front door of the cabin, all three backpacks slung over his shoulder. He drops them at the top of the stairs and lets out an exasperated breath, doubling over. “I packed all the food I could fit. I also found a knife on the floor?”
Devin meets Sheridan’s stare. The sun catches the knife in Aidan’s hand and it’s absolutely the same one Sheridan threatened her with. She stands, walking to the cliff’s edge to look out at the valley. Somewhere out there, Ollie and Hannah are trekking along, waiting for them. As horrifying as last night was, they’re coming back with a victory. Backpacks full of food, a dead mimic in their wake, and more information than they had before. She tries not to let the dread form cobwebs in her chest. They won here.
She turns back to Sheridan.
“I have an idea,” Devin says. “A way to prove I’m not one of them.”
She pulls the lighter from her pocket. Aidan locks eyes on it and seems to understand. Devin holds her hand above the lighter, palm facing down, and she clicks. A small flame sparks and Devin can just feel the heat of it on her skin. She lowers her palm slowly until the flame barely touches her skin, then pulls away. No skin burning like paper, no instant flames.
“That’s proof, right?” she asks.
“Good enough for me,” Aidan says. He reaches for the lighter and does the same, holding the flame under his palm just long enough to show it doesn’t catch. “That’s two for two.”
Sheridan takes the lighter last, turning it over in her palm. Reluctantly, she clicks the flame on and holds it to her hand. She winces, but her skin doesn’t catch.
Devin exhales.
“Wow,” Aidan says with a mischievous grin. “So you guys just act like this normally.”
“That’s enough,” Devin says, shoving Aidan’s shoulder. “Let’s get moving before the other two starve.”
Devin grabs her and Sheridan’s backpacks from the stairs and groans. Hers is much heavier than Sheridan’s. But she touches the skin of her bicep, tracing the corded muscle there. She’s stronger than she was when they entered these woods. Despite everything, she feels a flicker of pride at that. She swings her backpack over her shoulder and hands Sheridan the lighter pack. Sheridan takes it, but her eyes don’t leave Devin, drinking her in for a moment that lasts too long.
“When we did the test,” Sheridan says, quickly veering back to safe ground. “Were you nervous?”
Devin rights herself. “No.”
Sheridan smiles.
“If you really want to prove you’re on our side, though, get that map out.” Devin peers out at the valley before them. The mimic’s shadow still darkens the corners of her mind, but when she looks at Sheridan, a little of it burns away. Despite herself, she smiles, too. “We’re getting out of these woods.”