Chapter 127

My nightmares are collages of corpses and newspaper clippings. There are faces, both dead and alive, and numbers carved into the bodies of everyone I know.

Singsong taunts rip through my ears like razor blades: “One for sorrow…two for joy…”

Every night, I dream of Mr. Collins, his hands held tightly behind his back, and when I reach for whatever he’s hiding, he disappears. Then he’s looming over me, and the crowd from that day closes in, pushing us closer together until I’m swallowed by the hands I can’t untangle.

I dream of Mr. Humphries and his stolen son, the boy who died before he could be anything, then Lorna Banks’s little boy, broken and pleading for the justice I found too late.

Sometimes, I dream of Bernie, unconscious on her bed at Mayfield Lodge, and then Reg breathes her back to life and she becomes my mom, sitting bolt upright, forcing me awake.

Other times, I’m in a room full of Polaroid pictures, lines of murders hanging on the walls like a sick exhibition.

At the end of every nightmare, I wake up screaming, my sheets soaked in sweat, my room full of shadows that continue the story until I blink them away.

The fear comes first, then the realization, and finally the guilt.

Chapter 128

I’m ignoring calls from Ross and Danny, but Hanna and Emily force their way into my house, past Sara and the other reporters.

The media shout and shove and aim their cameras at the gap in the door, because I’m suddenly newsworthy again. My teacher killed my mother, and that’s a story everyone wants.

“It’s ridiculous out there,” Hanna says.

Emily says, “I kicked one in the shin, just for you.”

She tries a smile, but it quickly falls from her face when she realizes I’m not in the mood.

“It’s not your fault,” Hanna says.

But I can’t even pretend to believe her this time, because it is my fault. I wore the T-shirt, I made the statement, and he responded like only he can.

“It is,” I say. “He did it all for me. I called him pathetic, and he reminded me what he’s capable of.”

“And then you caught him.”

“But he was there all along. I looked him in the eye every fucking day. How stupid am I?”

“You’re not stupid. He tricked everyone.”

“But I always thought I would know the moment I saw him.”

I shake my head until the tears fall hard and fast, and then I’m sobbing so loudly that my two best friends don’t know what to do. I catch them looking at each other, sending silent signals, wondering how to react.