A few peo­ple nod­ded. I could hard­ly breathe. This was it. A few more mo­ments and we'd be safe.

“Go!”

Ev­ery­one ducked and ran. Josh clutched my hand and a few

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peo­ple laughed as we crossed the last few yards of open space be­tween the tree line and the west wall of Day­ton House, one of the girls' dorms. Once there, we all gath­ered against the cold, wet brick, gasp­ing for air and count­ing our bless­ings. The mist was not so heavy here among the cam­pus build­ings. I was about to break away from Josh and head for Billings, when I looked around at my friends and re­al­ized that all of their faces were flash­ing red, then blue, then red, then blue.

“What is that?” some­one said.

“Hang on.”

Josh dis­en­tan­gled his hand from mine and crept to the cor­ner of the build­ing. At first he sim­ply peeked his head around, but then his shoul­ders slumped and he stepped right out in­to the open.

“Oh, my God,” he said.

All the air whooshed out of me. “What?”

Not even the fear of be­ing caught could have stopped us from sat­is­fy­ing our cu­rios­ity. We all moved care­ful­ly to the cor­ner and gath­ered around Josh. What I saw made me want to sink to my knees and turn and run all at once.

Po­lice cars. Ev­ery­where. On the grass be­tween the dorms. In the quad. Ev­ery stu­dent in school was out­side their dorms in var­ious stages of dress, whis­per­ing and look­ing around as cops in uni­forms cir­cled among them, talk­ing in low tones or shout­ing or­ders.

“We are so dead,” some­one be­hind me said.

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I had to agree. Clear­ly ev­ery po­lice of­fi­cer with­in a hun­dred- mile ra­dius had been called to the scene. And why not? Thir­ty stu­dents miss­ing? Thir­ty of the most pre­cious and over­priv­ileged sons and daugh­ters in the coun­try? Of course the au­thor­ities would re­spond in droves.

“No. It's not for us,” Josh said. “Look at them.”

So I did. And he was right. Some of the stu­dents sat on the bench­es, wide-?eyed and open mouthed. Oth­ers cried. Three girls hugged one an­oth­er over near the back en­trance of Brad­well. Some­where near­by some­one was clear­ly sob­bing.

“What the hell is go­ing on?” Dash said. Let's go.

With that, Dash, Gage, Josh, and Whit­tak­er, along with a few oth­er guys, jogged ahead. The rest of us were root­ed to the spot. There was on­ly one word in my mind.

“Thomas,” I whis­pered.

I whirled around and looked at Noelle. Her skin was as white as the mist swirling all around her. She stared past me, un­blink­ing.

“Do you think it's--”

Pound­ing foot­steps in­ter­rupt­ed my words. A hand fell on my shoul­der. In­stant­ly ev­ery pore in my body filled with dread.

“Reed,” Josh said, his voice harsh and strained. “Reed.”

I turned around slow­ly. I didn't want to look at him. Didn't want to see on his face what I had al­ready heard in his voice. He stood be­fore me, pant­ing. An­guished tears streamed down his face.

“It's Thomas. They found his body,” he said, brac­ing his

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hands over his knees. “Reed, he's . . . Thomas is dead.”

I shut my eyes and squeezed my hands in­to fists, so tight I could feel my nails break­ing through the skin of my palms. I silent­ly begged my heart to keep on beat­ing. I willed my lungs to keep fill­ing with air. I looked down at my hands, at my new ring glit­ter­ing in the flash­ing lights. I tried to con­cen­trate on this. And on­ly this.

I knew if I opened my mouth even the tini­est crack I would start scream­ing. I would just start scream­ing and I would nev­er, ev­er be able to stop.

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