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In movies, it is always clear when the villain slips up with a double entendre.

The music score changes; the camera pans in on their faces.

It is a narrative design, a conspiratorial glance at the audience: here is the signage marking the descent into mayhem and here too, the strategically positioned lighting, placed just so to ensure no one ignores the moment.

But with the headmaster, it was clear the use of those words was deliberate.

She did not speak them in error. This wasn’t Freudian.

This was her telling us that she expected us to look pretty on a plate.

The audacity left me speechless, but not Rowan.

“I’m afraid I taste terrible,” he said, flapping his hands. “Like, absolutely rancid. Between all the smoking and drinking, it’d probably be awful. Just awful. Can I help with the drinks instead?”

“You’re insane,” said Stefania. “I refuse to be part of this.”

The headmaster didn’t even look at her. Instead, she said sweetly, “In that case, I suggest you hang yourself.”

“You mean it,” I said after a drawn-out moment. “You’re actually planning to eat us.”

“I said make yourself look delicious,” trilled the headmaster, twirling a mauve-veined hand at me. “You’re the one coming up with questionable conjecture.”

But the look in her eyes said everything, as did her delicate smile.

Rowan swallowed the rest of his rambling excuses, his jaws clenched so hard I heard the scrape of enamel as they ground together, and Stefania stared at the floor with a furious, indiscriminate hate.

I studied the headmaster, wishing I had a rejoinder that didn’t make me sound petulant.

My only consolation was that the epiphany of this impending cannibal feast had both Rowan and Stefania at least temporarily distracted from the ugly business of our dearly deceased mutual friend.

Her smile deepened. She knew as well as the three of us did that there wouldn’t be opting out of the situation.

“You can’t make us go,” said Rowan.

“Actually,” said the headmistress, voice losing its chirping lilt. She spoke the next words in what I’d come to think of as her real voice: smooth and bored, unsettlingly anodyne save when her amusement knifed through the surface like a fin moving through dark water. “I can.”

Before any of us could object, the world spun and, sudden as anything, we were in the gymnasium.

Each and every one of us were in formal raiment, a mortarboard jauntily set at an angle on each of our heads.

We were as pristine as if we’d spent the day in frenzied ablution: hair shining like it’d been oiled individually, faces beautiful.

We looked like we were waiting backstage for our turn on the catwalk—like sacrifices, or saints waiting for the lions.

The air had an odd crystalline shine to it like it had been greased somehow.

That or I was in the throes of a migraine.

It was hard to be sure. I’d been plopped next to Gracelynn, who was sat between Sullivan and me, with Kevin on my opposite side.

Bracketing us was a pair of twins I’d only seen occasionally but knew by reputation, the two notorious for the ease with which they procured reagents for whoever had the money to pay: they could get anything so long as what you wanted came from something with a pulse.

A few familiar faces were past them to the right: Stefania, Minji, Eoan, and Adam, who slouched almost entirely out of his seat.

“What is going on?” Kevin hissed to me.

“We have to go,” I said in lieu of an answer, standing.

The world stuttered.

I was back on the metal fold-out chair I’d been sitting on, like my muscles had changed their mind midway to rising.

Except I hadn’t felt myself sit back down.

Instead, it was more like the seconds had rewound, had flinched back from my decision like it was a hot stove.

I tried again. This time, I felt it: reality slingshotting backward through linear time, not far enough to leave me discombobulated, but enough to have my ass on the cold, cheap steel.

It hit me then that I was trapped. All my efforts, all those months spent trying to get out, and here I was with no place to go, a bunny with the hounds gathered all around.

The doors of the gymnasium opened, allowing our headmaster entry.

She drifted down the aisle, splitting the crowd of so-called graduates, resplendent in a fawn-colored suit, the majesty of which was spoiled by the fact that her white hair was still in curlers.

A clipboard was tucked in the crook of her left arm.

She checked something off as she passed each student, her smile as it always was: slightly too wide for her face.

When she finally reached our row, she only said, with an effervescent giggle:

“Ah. It’s time for a speech by the valedictorian!”

Sullivan took her hand when she offered it.

I couldn’t help the “No, stop !” that wrestled out of my mouth.

I groped for Sullivan’s arm, the motion entirely reflexive.

He and I, we weren’t close, but some animal instinct roared past all my other sensibilities.

I knew unequivocally that if he went with her, he would be dead.

“Sullivan—”

He unbraided my fingers from his wrist, a suicidal gentleness in his eyes as he said, “It’s okay.” His eyes shifting to Delilah—his light, his lamb, his death. She wouldn’t meet his gaze, stared instead into her palms, more statue than girl.

It definitely wasn’t.