Page 50

Moscow, Idaho

I need a phone,” Hunter Chapin says. “Mine isn’t working.”

Hunter Johnson hands him his.

He calls his sister. No answer.

It will emerge that Maizie is showering. And when she comes out and sees a missed call from Hunter Johnson, she doesn’t assume that it’s anything urgent. Why should she?

But then he calls again. Weird.

She answers. “What do you want, Hunter?”

But it isn’t the Hunter she was expecting. It’s her brother, and he sounds strange.

“Maizie, you need to come to Xana’s.”

Maizie thinks this is also weird. “Why?”

“You just need to come.”

Maizie is kind of pissed. “I don’t have a car.”

“Find one.”

Maizie wakes up Reagan, one of her roommates, and asks her to drive her to Xana’s.

But they can get only as far as the bottom of the hilly slope on which 1122 King Road sits. The whole block is cordoned off; police are everywhere.

Maizie gets out and walks toward her brother Hunter and the usual friend group.

They are all crying. Her brother appears to be on the phone.

Maizie thinks her stomach might fall out of her.

“What the hell happened? Someone? Anyone?”

Silence.

Maizie is filled with rage, with good reason. Why are they all just shaking their heads and not speaking?

“Someone tell me. Jesus Christ!” she yells.

Her brother hangs up the phone and approaches her.

“Ethan and Xana didn’t wake up.”

Maizie snorts. “What do you mean, they didn’t wake up?” Did someone drug them? Poison them? It doesn’t make sense.

Maizie still doesn’t think it sounds that bad.

But her friends’ reactions nag at her. Bethany is crying so loudly that it feels like her life depends on it.

Dylan is positively screaming. And shouting something like “I can’t believe someone would do this!

” Maizie has never much liked Dylan. She’s histrionic, in Maizie’s view, and Maizie is irritated by it.

“Shut the fuck up,” Maizie says to Dylan. “It’s really annoying.”

Why do they all want to hug her?

Maizie sits down with them. She sees Ava Wood, a blond APhi who lives in an apartment building next to the house, putting a blanket over Emily’s shoulders. And comforting her.

Jack DuCoeur, who Maizie knows is Kaylee’s ex-boyfriend, is also with them. He seems confused. Dazed. When he says he’s Kaylee’s ex, the cops seem to want to talk to him. They stick him in the cop car, but only for a few minutes.

Maizie hasn’t thought about Kaylee and Maddie, Xana’s roommates. She doesn’t know them, really. She’s focused on Ethan and Xana.

What’s happened to them?

The group just sits there, watching the cops, waiting, hoping for an answer that is better than the one they fear.

Suddenly it’s 1:04 p.m. All their phones ping.

It’s another campus-wide alert.

Much worse than the first.

MOSCOW PD INVESTIGATING A HOMICIDE ON KING RD. NEAR CAMPUS. SUSPECT IS NOT KNOWN AT THIS TIME. STAY AWAY FROM THE AREA AND SHELTER IN PLACE.

Oh my God .

The group collectively bursts into fresh tears.

Maizie is struggling to grasp the reality of the words on the screen.

But Emily loses it. The young cop has come out of the house and she lets him have it: “How dare you send out a Vandal Alert before we know where our friends are!” she screams at him.

The officer replies with a stony calm that he does not feel as he delivers the grim, official, life-changing news.

“All four of your friends are inside the house. And they’re all dead.”