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Whitney Cross is extremely dangerous .

That is information that would have been helpful to know before I let her move into my home.

“Dangerous?” I squeak out.

“I’m sorry, Mr.…”

It takes me a second to recall the fake name I came up with. “Sanders.”

“Mr. Sanders,” she corrects herself. “I don’t want to spread rumors. And it was a long time ago.”

“She has excellent references.” That’s actually true. I personally talked to Whitney’s boss at the diner as well as a friend who said she was a former roommate, and they both raved about her. I have never met a nicer or more responsible person , her boss told me.

“Oh, I’m sure,” the woman says. “Whitney was always very good at getting people to say what she wanted them to say.”

“How do you even remember her? It was so long ago.”

“I could never forget what Whitney did. Believe me.”

“So…um…” I squirm on the sofa. “What exactly did Whitney do? Her background check was clean.”

“Well, it would be,” the woman acknowledges. “Whitney was very good at keeping her nose clean. I can send you the transcript, and you’ll see that her grades are excellent. She was exceptionally smart.”

“But?”

“She was manipulative,” she says in a low voice. “She was one of those girls who were always surrounded by friends, but you could tell none of them were true friends. And if anyone did anything she didn’t like, she made it her business to wreck their lives.”

“Wreck their lives?”

“Well, this is all conjecture, Mr. Sanders.” She suddenly sounds reluctant to say any more. “I don’t want to start spreading rumors about her. Maybe she’s changed.”

On the contrary, this woman seems like she loves spreading rumors. I just have to get her to keep talking.

“This is all confidential,” I reassure her. “But this is an important position, and I need to make sure she is the right candidate.”

“Oh! I see.”

“So if there’s any information I should know, I’d appreciate hearing it. You would be doing me a great service.”

“Yes, I understand.” She lowers her voice even further so that I have to strain to hear her. “Look, there were a lot of stories about things Whitney did when she was younger, but I never witnessed any of it myself. I never saw what she was capable of until there was a mess with her boyfriend during her senior year.”

“Her boyfriend?”

“His name was Jordan Gallo,” she says. “Nice enough kid. Football player. He was dating Whitney for about a year. And then, apparently, he cheated on her with another girl—you know how boys are. It was the usual high school drama you see a million times. They broke up, and Whitney made it her mission in life to destroy him.”

“Oh.” That doesn’t sound so bad. Like she said, it sounds like typical high school drama. I’m surprised this woman would even remember it fifteen years later.

“Mr. Sanders, Jordan Gallo jumped off the roof of the school.”

I freeze. “What?”

“She tormented him,” she whispers into the phone. “I remember seeing him a couple of days before he killed himself, and he looked terrible. Like there was a ghost haunting him.”

“What did she do to torment him?”

“I only heard the rumors. I’m just the school secretary.” Her whisper is barely audible, and I need to press the phone close to my ear. “But right after the breakup, he got busted for cheating when an upcoming exam was found in his backpack, even though he swore he had no idea how it got there. He didn’t get expelled, but he was kicked off the football team. Football was everything to him, and he was banking on a scholarship. Which, of course, didn’t happen.” She pauses, as if caught in the memory. “And then there was the time Jordan opened his locker and found it crawling with insects.” I can almost hear her shudder through the phone.

The story of what happened to Jordan Gallo is different from mine yet eerily familiar.

“But that’s not all,” she adds. “Even though Jordan was acting strangely before his death, his parents insisted that he never would have killed himself.”

“What did they think happened?”

“Apparently, Jordan and Whitney used to go up to the roof together to be alone,” she says. “His parents insisted that she pushed him and made it look like a suicide.”

“That is…” I cough. “Wow. That’s pretty awful. Was she ever charged?”

“They were attempting to get the police to look into it,” she says. “But then Whitney took off. I mean, just flat out left town. Didn’t even bother to finish high school. Even her parents didn’t know where she went—or so they claimed.”

“Oh.”

“I always thought she left the country,” the woman muses. “She seemed like the sort of person who wanted to travel the world. Either way, she had to get out of town because there was too much heat. If she had stayed, there probably would have been charges against her.”

“Well, she’s back in Manhattan now,” I say weakly. “So…”

“Oh gosh, I’ve been talking your ear off, haven’t I?” she sighs. “Listen, I didn’t want to upset you. Those were all rumors, and they happened quite a long time ago.”

Yet she hasn’t changed at all.

“It’s fine,” I manage. “It’s certainly good information to have.”

“Do you still want that transcript, Mr. Sanders?”

“Uh, yes. Yes, that would be great.”

I read off the virtual fax number I own, which forwards to my email account. The very helpful secretary at Telmont High bids me goodbye and good luck, and I wait for the fax to come in with Whitney’s transcript.

After I hang up the phone, my hands won’t stop shaking. I go to the bathroom to splash some water on my face, and when I look in the mirror over the sink…I look like a disaster. My hair is sticking up, there are dark purple circles under my eyes, and I look ten years older than I did a few months ago. Even my teeth don’t look as pearly white as they used to.

I wonder how Whitney’s old boyfriend looked before he plummeted off the roof.

That poor kid, Jordan Gallo. He committed one sin against Whitney Cross, and she made him pay the ultimate price.

And now she’s doing it to me. Except in this case, I don’t understand why.

I dry my face off and wander into the kitchen. I’m itching to have a beer, just to calm my nerves, but I recognize that it is ten in the morning. I don’t want to go down that path. Instead, I pour myself a glass of water from the sink. While I’m filling up my glass, a housefly buzzes in my face. The flies have come back with a vengeance lately, although these are of a larger variety. I wonder if Whitney stashed more of that rotting fruit in my kitchen. I wouldn’t put it past her.

This time, I notice the flies are gathered around the crack of space between the kitchen counter and the refrigerator. The gap is about three inches—just large enough to squeeze in a rotting apple or pear, something along those lines. There’s got to be something in there. I’m sure of it.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and turn on the flashlight. I shine it into the wedge of space, and sure enough, I can just barely make out what looks like a paper bag stuffed into the gap.

Part of me wants to just leave it there. I don’t want to deal with more maggots—not right now. But when I lean close to the space, trying to get a better look, the smell turns my stomach. It smells different and much worse than before.

What the hell is in there?

I crouch down next to the refrigerator. I reach my arm into the gap, trying to grab the paper bag. My arm isn’t quite long enough though. I can’t reach it. I need a few more inches.

I get up and sift through one of the drawers, and I pull out a serving spoon. I return to the refrigerator, and this time, I use the spoon to nudge the bag closer to the opening. After a few notches, I’m able to grab on to the corner of the bag, and I pull it out.

If I had any doubt in my mind that whatever is inside the bag is the cause of the stench and the flies, that doubt has flown out of my head. Even before I look inside, the sweet, putrid odor is overpowering. The insects are fighting to get close to it, whatever it is.

I have to look inside. I have to know what is in this bag. I don’t want to, but I need to see.

Man up, Blake. How bad could it be?

My hands are still shaking. I squint into the depths of the brown paper bag, trying to get a good look without spilling the contents onto the kitchen counter. It looks like there are three small objects, each about three inches long.

What the…

Oh God.

Oh God .

This is much worse than I thought.