Page 5

By lunchtime the novelty of the messages has started to fade, but the whispers still drive me out of the cafeteria to the back steps, where I sit with my packed lunch, staring out over the back lot at the looming trees. A single crow sits in the high branches, riding the swaying of the wind.

The door behind me opens. The bird takes off. I shift to the side so whoever it is can get past, but they stay at the top of the steps. I turn, squinting. Vanessa stands there, her phone gripped in her hand, her backpack dangling off one shoulder. “Th-there you are,” she says.

“Um. Hi,” I say. “Can I help you with something?”

“Maybe,” she says. “Are you going to do it?”

“Do what?” I ask.

“P-play the game,” she says. “The whole thing. The road, and the k-key, and finding a p-p-partner.” Her stutter is pronounced, but she doesn’t fight it like she used to when we were younger, and it has its own relaxed flow to it. She likes to tell people it’s worth the wait to hear what she has to say.

“Why would I?”

“Because of Becca.”

She saysBeccaand not justyour sister, and I think that’s the only reason I don’t leave right away. So few people say her name anymore. Like it’s bad luck. “You don’t really believe that stupidjoke, do you? That Lucy Gallows took my sister?” I’m not even sure ifIbelieve it.

“No. But you must be wondering if the t-texts have anything to do with her. With Becca.”

“Of course,” I snap. Her cheeks go red and she pushes up her glasses, which has the effect of half hiding her face behind her sweater sleeve. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“I d-don’t believe in ghosts,” Vanessa says. “But I like history. And mysteries. I want to know who wrote these. And what it’s supposed to mean. I thought, since you d-did all that research, you might know.”

“Oh.” There’s something wrong with me, since Becca vanished. If anyone so much as hints at what happened, I react like they’re attacking me. Even with my friends. Which is why I don’t have any left. “Here, sit down,” I say, gesturing for Vanessa to join me on the steps. She perches on the top step, a little above me.

“So, Lucy Gallows,” I say. “Real name Lucy Callow. Disappeared on April 19, 1953. Wednesday’s the anniversary. Her brother was arrested for her murder, but since they never found the body, they couldn’t really make a case and he was released. She was fifteen, not twelve, and she was a bridesmaid, not a flower girl, but otherwise the story’s pretty much what they say.”

“And the game is that stupid thing everyone played when we were little kids,” Vanessa says.

“Not exactly,” I say. “You’ve played it?”

“Sure. When I was, l-like, eight,” she says.

“Me too,” I say. With Anthony. Standing at the end of the road into the woods, on either side of the median line.Holdhands. Close your eyes. Take thirteen steps.Supposedly, this summons the specter of Lucy Gallows to walk beside you.

“Did anything happen?” Vanessa asks, leaning forward.

“Of course not.” There are two ways the game “works”: either you’re young and imaginative enough that you conjure the brush of a breeze into the brush of Lucy Gallows’s hand, the skittering of leaves into her footsteps, the creak of trees into her spectral cries—or you have friends sneaking up behind you to mess with you. Similarly, there are two kinds of people who play the game: kids young enough to still believe in magic, and teenagers trying to impress crushes.

“But you said n-not exactly. So what’s different?”

“There’s an older version,” I say. “Or a different one, at least. You’re still supposed to have a partner and take thirteen steps, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Lucy. It’s supposed to summon the road—or it’s how you get down the road, or something. The road has seven gates. If you get through them all, you get—something. Like a wish. That story is older than the Lucy Gallows story—older than Lucy Callow. Some people say she might have known the story, and that’s why she got on the road when it appeared.”

“Some people?” Vanessa asks, eyebrows raised.

“Ms. Evans,” I clarify. The town librarian was the same age as Lucy when she went missing, and she was my best source for all game-related lore. For a while, a seventy-eight-year-old woman was the person I talked to the most.

“I’ve never heard of that part of the g-game,” Vanessa says, pushing up her glasses with the side of her thumb.

“It got dropped at some point, I guess,” I say. “Maybe in the eighties when those kids went missing?”

“I thought that was a rumor,” Vanessa says. “Satanic p-p-panic and stuff. Those kids just ran away.”

“That’s what everyone decided,” I reply, voice flat. Vanessa bites her lip, her eyes dancing away from mine. I guess I’m officially Trauma Girl, with the black clothes and the antisocial reputation to match. I’ve gotten used to that particular reaction, since I refuse to politely pretend Becca never existed.

Vanessa clears her throat. “So you need a partner,” she says. “And a key?”

That’s the part that made my stomach lurch, when I saw the message. Because I’ve never mentioned the keys. I’ve never heard anyone but Becca talk about them. The only place I’ve seen them mentioned, other than that overheard conversation, is her notebook, left behind when she vanished. “The keys open the gates. They have to be your keys. They connect you to the gates—to the road. I think.” Becca’s notes were vague on that front.