The bleachers began to vibrate with footsteps. Her eyes bent left to see Terry limping up the bleachers.
“Stop,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said and hunched like a whipped puppy. “It’s just, Bobby is here to see you.”
“Didn’t I already tell him to get lost?”
“Yes, you did,” Bobby said from the gym doors. He and a troupe of Freaks entered the gym, all of them shrouded in black. One even wore a black sheet over his head like a medieval executioner. Bobby’s head was black as well, like the burned head of a match. He opened his mouth and his teeth were crimson.
“If you’ve come to ask me to prom again, the answer is still no, I am not picking my prom king until the dance,” Hilary said.
“I’ve come bearing a gift in the hope that you reconsider,” Bobby said with a flowery bow.
“Don’t be a pain in my ass, loser. Get to the point.”
Bobby moved toward the kid with the executioner’s shroud. On closer inspection, Hilary realized the sheet didn’t have eyeholes. Bobby pulled the black sheet off the kid’s head. It was David’s little brother in a gas mask.
“Will. He’s all yours. Your own uninfected. No one else in the school has one,” Bobby said.
“What would I want with an uninfected?”
“Nothing, you should let me go,” Will said. Bobby kicked Will’s knee, and he fell to the floor.
“Well, word is that he didn’t come back alone. David’s back as well. He’s not dead, and he’s in McKinley.”
And just like that, the last puzzle piece finally plunked into place, and Hilary’s vision of her prom was complete. Her old sweetheart from her innocent days, David, would be her beau. It was just so … perfect.
“I’m certain he’d want to come to wherever his little brother is,” Bobby said. “I’ve adored you forever, Hilary. I hope this gift finally proves to you how deep my feelings run.”
Hilary looked Bobby up and down with a judgmental glare that made most boys shrivel. Bobby may have been a sniveling weirdo, but he held her gaze.
“You can walk me in,” Hilary said.
21
WHEN HE SAW THE SCARECROWS, DAVID HAD known. Somewhere ahead was Gonzalo’s old Scrap hideout. Early in the quarantine, Gonzalo had taken up residence in the third-floor senior lounge after most of the seniors had died. He’d cobbled together scarecrows and placed them throughout the hall leading to the lounge, to creep out anybody who was thinking about wandering down this dead end. They’d done the trick. It appeared that no one had set foot in this dusty hall in a long time.
David held Lucy’s hand tight as they wove between the haggard figures. A plumbing pipe armature kept each one upright. The bodies were made out of clothes stuffed with trash, and the stinking sentinels were arranged in a staggered zigzag down the narrow hall. Each had clumps of real, white hair obscuring its featureless face. Once-wet toilet paper, that had dried and wrinkled, covered the floor. The crusty, weaving mini mountain ranges were stained with nauseous colors. Dry yellow puddles. Reddish brown splatters that might have been blood. The paper had been torn up in places by dark grimy footprints. Tufts, clippings, strands, and tangles of white hair were dried into the paper, and they crunched underfoot like winter grass. The place stank, the walls were upholstered in a thick fabric of dust as if there were flypaper underneath. All of it made you wonder what kind of monster would choose to live at the end of this path. And then you’d see gigantic Gonzalo with a fire ax clutched in his paws. And you wouldn’t think past that. You’d turn and run for dear life.
It showed a side of his old friend that David had never had a chance to see. When Gonzalo made a gesture it was always big, but day to day, he’d never been generous with his emotions. This place, however, was entirely his creation. It was a glimpse inside his mind—when he’d been just a kid trapped in school who’d wanted to go home. Even the big guy had been scared at some point and these sculptures had been his protectors and his company. Gonzalo had joined up with David because he’d needed a family, and in the Loners he’d found it, and he’d found love with Sasha. That had been why all the Scraps converged on him that day on the quad, why they’d fled the safety of their own hiding places. They’d wanted a family too. He felt proud to have given them that, and grateful that they’d gotten him out of McKinley alive.
David glanced over at Lucy as they walked down the scarecrow hall. She looked like she’d been spit out of hell in her chopped-up, pale pink hair and her black tattered clothes. Her face had lost its delicate fullness, and her fingertips were as black as talons down to the first knuckles. Her body was lean and firm, like she’d been through boot camp. She walked hunched, eyes searching, every muscle tense, like she was expecting an attack at any time. It broke his heart to think of what she had faced in here alone. The girl he remembered, her feet had barely touched the ground. She used to cling to his arm and let him lead the way in situations like this. She’d been innocent then, and he’d remembered wanting to preserve that. He’d liked protecting her from the dark side of McKinley. How long had she waited for David to come back and make everything right before her innocence had eroded away and she’d become like everyone else in here? It made his eyes water. How much had she suffered, thinking that any minute David would step in and stop it, like he’d always managed to do for her in the past? He felt responsible for all of it.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back,” David said to Lucy. “I should have come sooner.”
They reached the end of the scarecrow army, and Lucy looked at him. Her mouth was open, as if she was struggling for the right answer.
“You’re here now,” she said.
He’d abandoned her, and she was still being polite to him, still treating him like a hero.
“I should’ve never gone fifty feet from the door outside,” David said. “But I ran. I figured if I could get help but … if I’d just stayed, I could’ve found a way to—”
“Don’t say that. It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does,” David said, emotion balling up in his throat. “I can’t make up for the shit you’ve had to go through alone. But I want you to know that I’m sorry I let you down.”