Closing the door behind her, Bex slid to the floor, back up against her bed. Every calming technique the shrink in Raleigh had taught her washed over her. She couldn’t remember if she was supposed to let out deep breaths or hold them, focus on the good times she had with her father or let it all go, lie down and relax, or go for a walk. In the end, all she could do was slip between the cool covers of this strange bed in this strange room and try her best to be who she was now: Bex Andrews, a girl who didn’t have a father.
She tried to sleep, but everything inside her kept tingling and her ears rang with the whirr from the plane’s exhaust system, so she didn’t hear the plaintive buzz from her phone as it flashed a Raleigh area code on her screen before going black.
Four
Bex’s caseworker in Raleigh had told her that she would love Kill Devil Hills, despite the evil-sounding name. She had gushed about it being a tiny beach town where just about everything, including the high school, was on the beach.
But Kill Devil Hills High wasn’t anywhere near the beach.
The student lot wasn’t full of convertibles, the girls weren’t wearing bikini tops, and no one ran through the halls tossing footballs or beach balls or smelling like suntan lotion and sea air. It was just a regular high school.
Bex held her books tightly against her chest and surreptitiously tried to glance down at the school map. After two wrong turns and a near spin through the boys’ bathroom, she pushed open the first door she saw, praying that she was at least in the vicinity of her homeroom.
Every head snapped to look at her when she stepped through the door, and every muscle in her body tightened. She was ready to run until the door slapped shut behind her.
“Bex Andrews?”
Bex blinked, scanning the room. The kids didn’t look mean or menacing—just curious—and for that, Bex was relieved…almost.
“Bex Andrews?”
There were two empty seats in the front row, bookended on either side by girls with glossy ponytails and Kill Devil Hills High School cheerleading uniforms who had immediately lost interest in Bex and started checking their phones.
“Ms. Andrews? Are you Bex Andrews?”
The voice calling her name finally penetrated and Bex spun, her heart thumping against her chest. “Yes. Bex. Me.”
The man at the front of the room smiled warmly and spread his arms. “I’m your homeroom teacher, Mr. Rhodes. You can call me Mr. Rhodes.” He laughed at his own dumb joke. “Welcome to Kill Devil Hills High. Class, say hello.”
Bex stood, hoping the standard-issue school linoleum would open up and swallow her whole while the class muttered a sad hello. Some students still looked at her, but the majority had moved on to other things. She smiled thinly. “Hey.”
Mr. Rhodes, who was short and possibly nine months pregnant, given the strain of his shirt against his belly, rolled his eyes toward the students. “Don’t mind them. Now, Bex, you can take one of the empty seats.”
One of the cheerleaders glanced up from her phone. “That one,” she said, pointing. “This one is Darla’s. She’s just out sick today.”
Bex nodded and wondered if anyone would notice her dragging the empty desk to the back of the classroom or out into the hall, anywhere but smack in the front of the class.
“Actually, Bex, before you sit, why don’t you tell us something about yourself.” Mr. Rhodes smiled as if he hadn’t just asked Bex to splay her soul open to a group of bored teenagers.
“Um,” she said, feeling her skin burn from her calves to the top of her head. “There really isn’t much to tell.”
Except that my dad is a serial killer.
On the run.
He doesn’t know where I am. He doesn’t know that I’m Bex Andrews now because he hasn’t contacted me in ten years.
“I guess I’m just pretty regular.”
“Where did you transfer from?”
Bex didn’t want to announce that she had been homeschooled since the third grade when kids started coughing things like “socio” or “psycho killer” into their hands whenever she passed. She didn’t want this new class to know that she had never been invited to a birthday party. No one wanted to have anything to do with the serial killer’s kid.
“I went to school in Raleigh, North Carolina,” Bex said, her voice sounding weird and tinny in her own ears.
“And you came here why?” Mr. Rhodes coached her.
Bex’s throat was dry but she tried to swallow anyway, coughing into her hand. “My dad got a new job,” she lied.
“And he is…”
Bex wanted to run. Her entire body thrummed with the overwhelming desire to dart for the door and through the hall, out of the school and out of North Carolina. Where she would go, where she would end up, she had no idea. All she knew was that she didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be Bex Andrews, the foster kid. She didn’t want to be anyone.
“He’s a college professor.”
She slid into her chair and busied herself, pretending to look in her backpack before Mr. Rhodes could continue the trial.