MOLLY GRABBED THE ENVELOPE and ripped it open, yanking the page free and unfolding it with anxious fingers.
There was no need, this time, to send her eyes on a What’s Wrong With This Picture search. It was right there in front of her.
Her own photo, enlarged, covered most of the page. A new photo … taken … the night before. Taken as she emerged from the woods after her race up the river path. Her hair, dampened with perspiration, clung to her forehead, her face was scratched, and her mouth …
She didn’t have a mouth.
The mouth was gone, ripped out of the page just as Stacey’s legs and Phoebe’s hands had been removed.
Molly sank down upon the bed.
She hadn’t seen any flash of light when she came off that path. Hidden … whoever had taken the photo must have been hidden.
Had Kayla left this page here, doing Norman’s bidding? And the other pages, had she delivered those, too, pretending they’d come in Molly’s mail?
Don’t be here when Kayla gets back, a voice inside her warned. Get out of this room now!
Molly jumped up, stuffed her clothes in the canvas bag and the picture into her raincoat pocket, and ran from the room.
She trembled all the way to Goldwin Hall. Her mouth gone … what did that mean? A warning that she should keep her mouth shut about the Others? Or did it mean something worse?
She finally calmed down by reminding herself that Phoebe still had her hands. Nothing terrible had happened to Phoebe.
She should have carefully examined those faces around the fire in the park last night, so that she would know who belonged to Norman’s group, which people on campus she should be wary of. She had no idea who had joined since she left. Well, Kayla, of course. But who else? Who was following her, watching her, leaving messages in her room?
She couldn’t go to the administration. There was no law on campus barring groups from forming. But there were laws against harassment, and that was what Norman and Kayla were doing to her. But she couldn’t prove it. They were too clever.
At the office, Hank was disappointed when she failed to react to his news that the issue was on its way to the printer.
She was too emotionally drained to react. She tried, agreeing weakly that they’d “made it” against terrific odds. But Hank could tell that her mind was elsewhere.
He was right. Her mind was on the fact that Norman didn’t have access to the Odyssey office. He had said a “friend” had given him her manuscript. That friend had to be someone on the staff.
Someone in this office, Molly thought bleakly, gave Norman that copy of my manuscript and then stole the computer disks. Someone Hank likes and trusts did it. And I don’t want to tell him that.
“Since we can take it easy for a day or two,” he said a bit stiffly, “I was going to ask you to a movie tonight. But I guess you’re a little preoccupied.” Then he must have remembered that she’d run from the dining hall because of Norman, and he added quickly, “Oh, I get it. That guy Oakes is still giving you a hard time. Why don’t you let me talk to him, Molly? See if I can get through?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, no, I can’t go to a movie. Phoebe’s practicing in the old rehearsal hall on campus. That big, tall, skinny building behind the infirmary? She says the acoustics are better there, and it’s private. But I don’t like the idea of her being over there alone, so I’m going there from here.” She thought for a minute and then added, “Want to come? Everyone else can come, too. We’ll make it a party,” she said recklessly, not at all sure that Phoebe would welcome company when she was rehearsing.
But then, Phoebe had no idea she needed to be surrounded by a bunch of people.
The more she thought about Phoebe alone in the old music building, the more uneasy Molly became.
“Listen, can we go now?” she asked Hank. “I mean, if the issue’s gone to the printer, there isn’t anything crying out to be done, is there? Let’s get everyone together and surprise Phoebe, okay? Now!”
The rest of the staff thought that surprising Phoebe was a brilliant idea. Tony, especially, was perfectly happy to be on his way to see Phoebe. Phoebe had talked about him a little at lunch, and Molly had gathered that Phoebe wouldn’t be at all unhappy to be surprised by Tony.
They were on their way out when Dana said suddenly, “Wait a sec! If we’re going to party, I’m bringing Tony’s camera.” She ran to a desk, rummaged around in a bottom drawer, and pulled out a camera.
A Polaroid camera.
“That’s yours?” Molly asked Tony when Dana returned, camera in hand.
“Yeah. What’s the matter with you? You’re so white, your lips are practically blue. Haven’t you ever seen a camera before?”
Could this be the camera that was responsible for all those nasty photos?
Tony had access to this office. To Molly’s manuscript. But then … so did Dana. And she wasn’t exactly a fan of Molly’s or the article that had given Molly the writing job Dana wanted.
“Someone’s been taking my picture without my permission,” Molly said through stiff lips.
“Yeah? Well, it wasn’t me,” Tony said. “I haven’t used this camera in weeks. Come on, I thought you were in a big hurry.”
Molly swallowed her suspicion and led the way to the old music building. The building was used mainly for storage since the new music complex had opened on campus. Phoebe had discovered it by accident, and been granted permission to use one of the third floor rooms as a rehearsal hall. She had no competition for the space. No one else was eager to spend any time in the old, musty, dark building.
Walking along the dark, dreary third floor hall, with its peeling wallpaper, dripping, exposed pipes, and old, dim fluorescent lights overhead, increased Molly’s anxiety.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Dana complained. Tommie nodded agreement. “It’s worse than Nightmare Hall,” she said. “I’ll bet there are rats.” A scurrying sound inside the wall seemed to confirm her opinion, and they all hurried their steps.
Phoebe, sitting on a piano bench in the middle of the room, surrounded by paint cans and ladders and tools and buckets, seemed delighted to see them, giving no sign that she was annoyed by the interruption. “What a great idea! I was ready for a break, anyway. Did you bring snacks? I’m starving.”
They hadn’t, but Ken, Hank, and Donovan offered to run across the road to Burgers Etc. and pick up eats. Tony offered to “stay behind and protect the ladies,” grinning even as he said it because they all knew he was just too lazy to make the trip.
While they were gone, Phoebe took the others on a tour of the building. “History in the making,” she said cheerfully as they picked their way up stairs and hallways cluttered with debris and smelling of mold.
“I can’t believe you practice here,” Dana grumbled, her eyes on a thick spider web in a corner above her head. “You must really be dedicated. Or crazy.”
By the time they returned to the rehearsal room, their food had arrived. They sat on the floor to eat, although Dana complained that rats had probably used the very same floor as a highway during the night.
When they had eaten, Phoebe climbed to her feet, wiped her hands and mouth with a napkin, and moved gracefully to the piano bench. “I shall now play for you,” she said in an affected voice. “After that excellent repast you provided, it’s the least I can do.” And she sat down and began playing a wild rendition of “Shout.”
Molly burst out laughing. She had expected Schubert.
“Let’s dance!” Tommie cried, jumping to her feet. “Ken?”
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing up at the peeling ceiling. “You sure this old building can take it?”
“This building is solid as a rock!” Phoebe cried, her fingers flying across the keys. “They don’t make them like this anymore.”
“Good thing,” Dana muttered, but then she turned to Donovan and said, “C’mon, we can’t waste this music, right?”
Hank grinned at Molly. “We’re not going to just sit here, are we?”
Phoebe’s head bobbed in time to the beat as her fingers flew across the keys. The room shook as the dancers pounded and stomped and matched their steps to the music.
The walls shook.
The floors shook.
The ceiling vibrated.
The speed and wildness of Phoebe’s fingers on the keys made them all laugh, adding another sound to the decibel level in the room.
Above their heads, the old fluorescent fixture in the ceiling trembled.
Dadadada, dadadada, dadadadada, Shout!
The building shook.
Molly threw her head back and laughed.
And saw. Above them, directly over the piano … the light …
It came loose one end at a time. The end away from Phoebe came loose first, slowly, dangling from the ceiling like the tail end of a kite.
“Phoebe,” Molly said, her voice low and dull, as the others danced wildly around her, their feet pounding, on the hardwood floor.
Then the other end of the fluorescent light swung loose from its mooring. And the glass fixture descended.
Toward the piano beneath it.
Toward Phoebe, so lost in the music, shoulders hunched over the keys, head down.
It seemed to Molly at first that the long, white light was falling slowly, so slowly, drifting down from the ceiling like a parachute.
No … that was wrong … it was falling swiftly, so fast, so fast … no time, no time to stop Phoebe, to grab her, to yank her out of the falling fixture’s path.
Molly opened her mouth to scream.
The music pounded onward, thundering, shaking the walls and the floor and the ceiling …
Molly screamed and threw herself at the piano bench, knocking Phoebe sideways, to the floor, at almost the exact second that the long fluorescent bulb crashed into the top of the piano and exploded.