Everybody’s gossiping, not about the principal’s clunker getting stolen from school grounds last night, but about Ivy. The seven-day mark seems to have shaken everyone, the Lucky Number tearing through all those platitudes about runaways, kids hiding out somewhere nearby until they get too cold and hungry, then coming home, tail between their legs, desperate for mac and cheese and a free Wi-Fi connection. Word is, Ivy’s mom in West Virginia still hasn’t seen or heard from her. So that leaves darker explanations. Hitchhiking. Murder. Shallow burial in some interstate drainage ditch. We’ve all seen enough trash TV to know the score, and it’s chilling. Sickening. Thrilling.

“About what?” Bree brings me back to the now, picking her sandwich into pieces as she watches me.

I hesitate when I notice Sage watching me, too, her gaze intent, a faint line between her brows. A silent signal to change tactics? I’m so close to spilling everything in totally the wrong place and time that I can almost taste the words, and I sit back, as if from the edge of a precipice.

Obviously, Sage knows about me and Kincaid. Trace must’ve told her, maybe gave her a heads-up that there was a nuclear detonation due any day now, and she might want to duck and cover. Kincaid isn’t here today—apparently not even hanging out with me can make school tolerable for more than a couple days. I could borrow somebody’s phone during break and text mine, hoping he’d answer, but that would open a can of worms I’m in no way ready to deal with. Besides, I know what he’d say if I told him about what I sensed last night, on the trail. More smoke, more flimflam.

“Have you ever had anything weird happen to you on the trails?” I say to Bree, as if this was where I was going all the time. “The ones behind the Terraces?” My yogurt requires stirring. Vigorous stirring. “Seen any animals or anything?”

“Squirrels.”

“Deer,” Sage puts in. I think I hear relief in her voice.

“You’ve seen deer out there?” Bree says.

“No, but there are some. They come up from the marsh.” Sage surrenders her tray to Trace, who’s still grazing.

I turn my spoon over. “Do deer ever, like . . . attack?”

Trace chokes on another laugh as whispers ripple through the room, making all of us look up in the direction of the double doors that open onto the main hallway.

Landon’s come in, walking through the tables, making heads come together so fast half the school will be sitting down to our next class with subdural hematomas. It’s obvious she’s been crying hard, her face puffy, splotches of red on each cheek, usually a sign that somebody’s just been released from Guidance. She doesn’t have lunch or a backpack with her. Her gaze is fixed unwaveringly on us.