You're Next

Prologue

Ravenport High was different when it was empty.

No voices bouncing between the walls. No lockers slamming shut. No shoes squeaking against the polished floors. No teachers shouting after students to slow down, take off their hats, put their phones away.

Just silence.

And the quiet hum of fluorescent lights.

One of them flickered overhead.

Once.

Twice.

Then stayed on.

Footsteps echoed through the second-floor hallway, each one sounding louder than it should have.

There was no reason to hurry.

Nobody was here.

Still, the footsteps stopped at every corner.

Listen.

Wait.

Continue.

The security cameras stared down from the ceiling.

For now, that didn't matter.

A hand slipped into a coat pocket and closed around an envelope.

White.

Unmarked.

Nothing written on the outside.

The flower was harder to hide.

Its dark petals had been wrapped carefully so they wouldn't be damaged, but one had bent anyway. A thumb brushed over it, attempting uselessly to straighten it.

Black flowers weren't particularly easy to find in Ravenport in January.

That hadn't mattered.

It had been requested.

So it had been found.

Another glance down the corridor.

Empty.

Good.

The rows of lockers stretched toward the stairwell.

Blue paint. Silver handles. Scratches from years of students who apparently considered school property an appropriate place to test the durability of keys.

The locker numbers passed one by one.

Stop.

For several seconds, nothing happened.

There was still time to leave.

That thought had appeared more than once.

It had appeared while driving here.

While unlocking the school.

While climbing the stairs.

While walking down this hallway.

It was becoming increasingly useless.

A quiet breath escaped into the empty corridor.

Then the locker opened.

There wasn't much inside.

A dark hoodie hung from one of the hooks. Three textbooks had been shoved onto the bottom shelf without much care. A crumpled worksheet sat underneath them. Someone had stuck a small photograph to the inside of the door.

Two teenagers.

Both smiling.

For a moment, attention lingered on the photograph.