Last to Die

car.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it,” muttered Frost. “Might as well make a whole night of it.” He crawled onto the front seat, his pajama-clad rear end poking out the open door. Who would have guessed he’d go for the candy-cane convict look? As he rifled through the glove compartment, she knelt down and shone her flashlight up into the left rear wheel well. Of course, she saw nothing. She moved to the front of the car, repeated her examination of the left and right wheels, and circled back to the right rear wheel. Dropping to her knees, she aimed the flashlight into the space above the tire.
    What she saw instantly made her freeze.
    Frost called out: “I found something!”
    “So did I.” She crouched, staring into the wheel well as a chill clawed its way up her back. “You’d better come look at this,” she said quietly.
    He climbed out of the car and dropped down beside her. The device was no larger than a cell phone, and affixed to the underside of the wheel well.
    “What the hell is it?” she said.
    “It looks like a GPS tracker.”
    “What did you find inside?”
    He took her by the arm and pulled her a few feet away. Whispered: “It’s under the passenger seat. They didn’t even bother to tape it in place. I’m guessing whoever put it there had to take off in a hurry.” He paused. “That’s why he left the car door unlocked.”
    “It can’t be because he spotted us. He was gone before we even got out here.”
    “You called me on your cell phone,” said Frost. “That had to be the tip-off.”
    She stared at him. “You think our phones are being monitored?”
    “Think about it. There’s a bug under the seat and a GPS tracker in our wheel well. Why wouldn’t they tap our phones?”
    They heard the sound of an engine and turned just in time to see a car suddenly swerve out of the parking lot. They stood barefoot beside their bugged and tracked rental car, wide awake now, and too shaken to return to bed.
    “Parris wasn’t paranoid,” said Frost.
    She thought about burned farmhouses. About massacred families. “They know who we are,” she said.
And where we live
.

THE EVENSONG DINING hall was strangely hushed this morning, students and teachers talking in murmurs over the muted clink of chinaware. Dr. Welliver’s now vacant seat was flanked by Dr. Pasquantonio and Ms. Duplessis, who both scrupulously avoided glancing at the empty chair that their late colleague had occupied only days earlier. Is that what happens when you die? Claire wondered. Does everyone suddenly pretend you never existed?
    “Is it okay if we sit here, Claire?”
    She looked up to see Teddy and Will standing above her with their breakfast trays. This was new and different; now two people wanted to join her. “Whatever,” she said.
    They sat at her table. On Will’s tray was a hearty portion of eggs and sausage. Teddy had only a sad little mound of potatoes and a single slice of dry toast. They couldn’t be more unlike, even down to their meal choices.
    “Is there anything you’re
not
allergic to?” she asked Teddy, pointing to his breakfast.
    “I’m not hungry today.”
    “You’re never hungry.”
    He pushed his glasses higher on his pale nose and pointed to the sausage on her plate. “That contains toxins, you know. Processed meat cooked at high temperatures has carcinogens from heterocyclic amines.”
    “Yum. No wonder it tastes so good.” She popped the last chunk of sausage in her mouth, just to be contrary. When you’d been shot in the head, it gave you a different perspective on dangers as minor as carcinogens.
    Will leaned in close and said softly: “There’s going to be a special meeting, right after breakfast.”
    “What meeting?”
    “The Jackals. They want you to come, too.”
    She focused on Will’s pimply moon face, and a word suddenly sprang into her head:
endomorph
. She’d learned it from their health textbook, a term that was far kinder than what Briana called Will behind his back.
Fatboy. Spotted pig
. Claire and Will had that much in common; so did Teddy. They were the three misfits, the kids who were too weird or fat or nearsighted to ever be invited to the cool kids’ table. So they would make this table their own: the table for outcasts.
    “Will you come?” asked Will.
    “Why do they want me at their stupid meeting?”
    “Because we need to put our heads together and talk about what happened to Dr. Welliver.”
    “I’ve already told everyone what