Lucy felt like she was going to faint. She rested all her weight against the locker.
“Will came too?” she said with barely any breath.
Lucy knew in an instant why David’s face had gone stern. She’d said she had never believed David was dead, but if that was true, she would have never fallen for Will. Suddenly, she was aware of all the awful things David must have thought about her for hooking up with his brother.
“What did Will say—”
“Shh,” David said, and Lucy realized she’d blurted it at full volume.
Lucy heard feet shuffling near the entrance of the hall, but they faded off down the main stairs.
David looked back at Lucy. She loved him. She should have felt wretched about it because she cared so much about Will. Why hadn’t Will even crossed her mind since she’d laid eyes on David? It was because, with Will, things had to be very particular. Stars had to align for her to love him, and even still, she’d always felt a flicker of doubt. With David, there were no special circumstances. If anything, the world fell away. There was no debate, her body made the choice, and her mind shut up.
She couldn’t feel sorry about that. It was what he did to her.
“Where’s Will now?” Lucy asked.
“I don’t know. We got split up. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Is the baby okay?”
Lucy stared at David. Her brain went haywire, trying to make sense of—and then she knew.
“Belinda,” she muttered.
Her old friend had come through, and Lucy had stopped believing in a rescue party the minute Belinda was out of sight. But now they were here, looking for a pregnant girl to save, and she was about to be a disappointment.
“I—”
She couldn’t look David in the eye anymore. She was so ashamed. When she’d given up hope, David had been here risking his life for her. And Will …
“What did you mean, this was all Will?” she asked.
“Will dropped in here after … I told him it was too dangerous.”
“You tried to stop him?”
“Wasn’t exactly my finest moment,” he said. “But I didn’t know the baby was his. He wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of keeping you safe.”
Poor Will.
David put his hand on her shoulder as he continued, “He was right. I was wrong.”
“I lost it,” she said. She had to say it. She couldn’t lie to him.
“Hmm?”
Lucy didn’t want to say the word, and when she forced herself, she started to cry.
“The baby, David. I lost the baby.”
Her insides twisted up. She dealt the locker an angry blow. She saw David take a little step back, away from her. Would he not love her anymore now that he’d seen what she’d become?
She didn’t want him to see her ugliness, but she couldn’t help it. Losing her baby was a wound that would not close. It wouldn’t even scab over. It stayed wet and skinless and raw to the slightest touch. Lucy yearned for the day that it would merely be a scar.
“I’m sorry,” David said.
“Nothing to do about it now,” she said softly.
“You can’t tell Will.”
Lucy looked up.
“But—” she said.
“It’ll destroy him,” he said.
19
THE DANGER MADE WILL FASTER. HE WAS sucking in hard breaths, working twice as hard as his pursuers to drag air through the mask’s filter. There were three Varsity on his tail. The closest was only two yards behind Will. He was screwed, but a little part of him loved this. It was just like old times.
He had to lose these kids and do it now, before he started slowing down. Someone swatted the tail of his sweatshirt. Will pushed himself to max out his speed. His lungs felt like they were turning inside out. The skin on his back was tingling in anticipation of the hand that would grab his arm and drag him to the ground.
Will slammed through a set of all-black double doors into a lightless hall. He waited for the metal slap of the doors hitting the wall again when the Varsity guys ran through. Seconds passed, but still no sound. Will turned back and slowed.
The three jocks were standing in the doorway. They were leaning on each other and on the door frame, catching their breath. Will stopped and fell against the nearest lockers. He tried to laugh at them, but he didn’t have enough wind in him. He pointed at them and shook his finger as if to say nice try. They didn’t react, and Will was slow to realize that they weren’t looking at him. They were looking above him.
Will craned his head up. The ceiling had been trenched. There was a five-foot gap that ran down the middle of the ceiling, the length of the hall. It opened Will’s hall up to the hall above it.
Black legs dangled down from the ledge. Blue hair above it. Will stopped breathing altogether. He looked to the Varsity guys on his level, in the doorway. They shook their heads at each other, turned, and walked away.
Will got ready to run again, but whump, a black figure dropped into the hall from above. Then, two more behind the first, then four, then eight, thudding onto the floor. Will turned on his heels to run the other way. A figure in black dropped down right in front of him. The ceiling lights flickered on a floor above, and the electric blue of the kid’s hair shimmered from the new pale light.
“You look lost,” the Freak said.
“I’m good,” Will muttered.
Will looked beyond the Freak to the double doors where the Varsity guys had just been. If there was ever a time for David to show up out of nowhere again, it would have been now.
The Freaks behind Will grabbed him. The one in front of him sucker punched him in the stomach. Will gasped and a spray of his spit flew up on the inside of his mask.
“Jackal!” they started to yell.
No. Not Bobby. He writhed in the Freaks’ grip. Anybody but him.
Even though Will was scared for his life, that fear was drowned out by an even stronger emotion: raging annoyance. Bobby had to be the most irritating person in all of McKinley. No one could feel bad for themselves as well as Bobby. Self-pity was his religion. He reveled in his own anguish. Always pouting. Always scowling. Always trying to broadcast to the world through his cartoonish evil costumes that he was someone to be feared. And pitied. God forbid that you forgot to pity him. That really drove Bobby up the wall. Obviously he was suffering worse than you, because look at the black makeup around his eyes, look at how he slouched and brooded.