Chapter 6: Score Night

The scores went online three weeks later, on a Friday night at eight.

I knew the date because I had died on it.

The Satterlees' screenshot with my name on it had been with the county attorney for three weeks.

Their lawyer had not called us once, and that worried my mother more than a threat would have.

The school held a results night in the gym, with pizza on folding tables and the principal reading names off a list.

My mother came straight from her shift and stood beside me with her apron still folded in her purse.

My score was the highest in the class.

The principal read it out, and my mother covered her mouth with both hands.

Drew was two rows back.

When I turned around, he was clapping, and he stopped as soon as I saw him.

Keeley was not there, and neither was anyone who had walked out.

Their scores had been voided, and the board had given them a retake in December.

I told myself that was the end of it.

Then I went outside to find my mother's car, and I walked through the school gates.

The flower bed was on my left.

It was the same one, a long box of stacked gray stones with a sharp lip along the top.

I stopped walking.

Keeley came out of the dark beside the hedge.

Behind her were the nine others who had come back in the foil blankets, and Brent stood closest, with a thin pink scar where the stitches had been.

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