Last to Die

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 happened,” said Claire. “I told the police. I told Dr Isles. I told—”

“He means what really happened,” said Teddy.

She frowned at him. Teddy, the ectomorph, another word she’d learned from that health book. Ecto as in ectoplasm, pale and wispy as a ghost. “Are you saying I didn’t tell the truth?”

“That’s not at all what he meant,” said Will.

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“We’re just wondering—the Jackals are wondering—”

“Are you talking behind my back? You and the club?”

“We’re trying to understand how it happened.”

“Dr. Welliver jumped off the roof and she went splat on the ground. That’s not so hard to understand.”

“But why did she do it?” said Will.

“Half the time, I can’t even tell you why I do the things I do,” she said, and rose to her feet.

Will reached across the table and grabbed her hand, to stop her from leaving. “Does it make any sense to you, why she’d jump off the roof?”

She stared down at his hand, touching hers. “No,” she admitted.

“That’s why you should come,” he said urgently. “But you can’t talk about it. Julian says it’s only for the Jackals.”

She glanced across the dining hall at the table where glossy-haired Briana sat gossiping with the other cool kids. “Is she going to be there? Is this some kind of practical joke?”

“Claire, it’s me asking you,” said Will. “You know you can trust me.”

She looked at Will, and this time she didn’t focus on his pimples or his pale moon face, but his eyes. Those gentle brown eyes with long lashes. She’d never known Will to do or say anything unkind. He was goofy, sometimes annoying, but never hurtful. Unlike me. She thought of the times she’d pointedly ignored him or rolled her eyes at something he said, or laughed, along with everyone else, about the monster cannonballs he splashed up jumping into the lake. Somewhere, a farmer is missing his hog, the other girls had said, and Claire had not challenged that cruel comment. It shamed her now as she looked into Will’s eyes.

“Where are we meeting?” she asked.

“Bruno will show us the way.”

* * *

THE PATH THAT TOOK them up the hillside behind the school was steep and rocky, a direction that Claire had not yet explored on her midnight rambles. The route was so poorly marked that without Bruno Chinn to lead them, she might have gotten lost among the trees. Like Claire, Bruno was thirteen and yet another misfit, but a relentlessly cheerful one who seemed fated to always be the shortest kid in the group. He scampered like a mountain goat up a boulder and cast an impatient glance at his three lagging classmates.

“Does anyone want to race me to the top?” he offered.

Will halted, his face flushed bright pink, his T-shirt plastered to his doughy torso. “I’m dying here, Bruno. Can’t we rest?”

Bruno waved them forward, a grinning little Napoleon leading his charge up the hill. “Don’t be such a lazybones. You need to get in shape like me!”

“Do you want to kill Bruno?” muttered Claire. “Or should I?”

Will wiped the sweat from his face. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be okay,” he gasped. He certainly didn’t look okay as he plodded ahead, panting and wheezing, his enormous shoes slipping and sliding on moss.

“Where are we going?” Claire called out.

Bruno halted and turned to his three classmates. “Before we go any farther, you all have to promise.”

“Promise what?” said Teddy.

“That you won’t reveal this location. It’s our place, and the last thing we want is that grumpy old Mr. Roman telling us it’s off limits.”

Claire snorted. “You think he doesn’t already know?”

“Just promise. Raise your right hands.”

With a sigh, Claire raised her hand. So did Will and Teddy. “We promise,” they said simultaneously.

“All right, then.” Bruno turned and pushed aside a clump of bushes. “Welcome to the Jackals’ Den.”

Claire was the first to step into the clearing. Seeing stone steps, slippery with moss, she realized this was no natural opening in the trees, but something man-made. Something very old. She mounted the steps to a circular terrace built of weathered granite, and entered a ring of thirteen giant boulders, where her classmates Lester Grimmett and Arthur Toombs now sat. Nearby, in the shadow of trees, was a stone cottage, its roof green with moss, the shutters closed, its secrets locked away.

Teddy moved to the center of the ring and slowly turned to survey the thirteen boulders. “What is this place?” he asked in wonder.

“I tried to look it up in the school library,” said Arthur. “I think Mr. Magnus built this when he built the castle, but I can’t find a reference to it anywhere.”

“How did you find this place?”

“We didn’t. Jack Jackman did, years ago. He claimed it for the Jackals, and it’s been ours ever since. The stone house there, it was all falling down when Jackson first saw it. He and the first Jackals fixed it up, put on the roof and shutters. When it gets cold, we meet in there.”

“Who’d put a house way up here in the middle of the woods?”

“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Like these thirteen boulders. Why thirteen?” Arthur’s voice dropped. “Maybe Mr. Magnus had a cult or something.”

Claire looked down at where clumps of grass had pushed through the cracks between the stones. In time saplings and eventually trees would do their part to camouflage this foundation, to lift and separate and shatter the