Chapter Seventy. Sarah Lynn
CHAPTER SEVENTY
SARAH LYNN
All the Lone Star girls are hanging out together in the very center of the Events Hall, sitting in a circle, knees pulled up to our chests, around a space heater like it’s a campfire.
We’ve gathered ourselves as far as we can from the windows.
Because of the cold that emanates from them, but also because of Sabrina, who insisted she saw Abel Sherman lurking around like some kind of walking dead.
We’re keeping eyes on each other, going to the bathroom in pairs.
All the girls except Olivia, who is still hidden away in that room. I keep thinking I hear her crying again, like that Poe story we read in American Lit last year, “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Kayden and Billy and Teddy found a deck of cards, but no one knows how to play anything, and it’s not like we can look up the rules on our phones. The internet barely loads, and our parents don’t want us wasting the batteries anyway. In case of emergencies. As if things could get any worse.
So Billy has resorted to performing magic tricks, which has the girls falling all over him in a new way. Hannah should be annoyed, but she’s as distracted as I am.
She nudges me, her hand tugging at the drawstring of the hoodie she’s thrown over her dress. “We have to tell someone,” she whispers.
I nod, but my throat feels tight. My hands are buried in my jacket pockets.
Between my fingers, like a fidget spinner, I turn the SD card over and over in my pocket.
Yesterday, after Olivia told us about the videos her mom had of The Hollow, she gave us the key code to the front door.
Olivia stayed behind at the Amenity Center to keep an eye on her mom, while Hannah and I slipped away, hoods pulled tight, the mist beading on our sleeves.
Inside, the model home was too quiet and reeked of floral air freshener.
We split up, Hannah veering toward the office, while I rummaged through drawers in the kitchen.
Then I spotted the trail cam, just sitting right there on the coffee table, out in the open.
My heartbeat ratcheted up when I yanked the SD card out and shoved it in my pocket. Hannah, I hissed. Let’s go.
I was almost to the front door when my phone buzzed with a text from Olivia: Hide. She’s on her way back.
I bolted up the stairs, into Olivia’s staged bedroom, and dove into the play tent in the corner, zipping myself inside. The vinyl walls smelled faintly of plastic and dust, the little mesh windows no protection at all.
The front door chimed open, and I ducked as low as I could, listening to the footsteps rising up the stairs toward me. One by one, the doors opened, each hinge creak a warning shot. My pulse thudded in my throat.
Then the handle twisted and the door yawned open. I tried not to move, tried not to breathe, as I squinted through the thin plastic wall at the blur of her silhouette in the doorway.
I was sure she could see me—my outline, my heartbeat, the heat of me. The SD card burned in my clenched palm, and all I could picture were the worst clips—me with a joint at my lips, me stumbling drunk at the edge of the water, me pulling Mr. Magnuson into the shadows.
Image is everything.
“Sarah Lynn.” Hannah’s voice yanks me back, like she’s pulling me out of that pink vinyl tent by force. And the way she’s staring at me—she knows exactly where my mind just went.