Holly Black - The Darkest Part of the Forest

“What were they saying about her?” Hazel asked, dully.

“She’s in a coma. There’s something wrong with her blood. With tonight being a full moon, you both better get home early. Call if you have to be somewhere, okay? I’m going to let your father know, too, in case he decides to drive home sooner than he planned.”

Ben pushed off the counter. With his long legs, it was barely any drop at all to the floor. “We’ll be careful,” he said, answering what Mom hadn’t asked.

Mom poured a glass of greenish liquid from the blender and handed it to Hazel. “Don’t forget to wear your socks inside out, too. Just in case. And put some iron in your pockets. There’s a bucket of old nails in the shed. You can grab one from there.”

Hazel gulped down her breakfast. It was a little gritty, as though the kale hadn’t been quite pulverized enough.

“Okay, Mom.” Ben rolled his eyes. “We know.”

Hazel hadn’t done any of that stuff, but she appreciated Ben acting as if she had. They went out to the car together. On the drive to school, he looked over at her sleepily. “Later today you’re going to tell me all the parts of last night that I don’t know, right?”

Hazel sighed. She should have been grateful he was at least giving her some time to figure out how to answer him, but all she felt was dread.

“Okay,” she said.

Reaching into his pocket, he fished out a necklace with a chip of rowan wood drilled through so that it hung from a chain. “Wear this for me, okay? Mom’s not wrong.”

Rowan wood. Protection from faeries. All the kids in their school had made them in kindergarten, along with four-leaf-clover pins, and most had hung on to the pendants—or made new ones—to wear every May Eve. Hazel stroked her thumb over it, touched that he’d give her a necklace she was sure he’d made more than a decade before. She lifted her hair and hung it around her throat. “Thanks.”

He didn’t say anything else, but he glanced over at her several times, as though he was trying to learn something from her expression, as though he hoped to discover something he hadn’t ever thought to look for before.

School was strange. Hushed and a little deserted, as though more than a few kids had been kept home by parents. People whispering in the halls instead of shouting, standing around in knots of close friends. Hazel noticed that lots of them had charms tied around their wrists or hanging around their throats. Red berries, dried and strung on silver cord. A gold coin. Herbal oils wafted up off their skin, making the hallway smell not unpleasantly like a head shop. When Hazel began to unpack her bag into her locker, a walnut rolled out, bouncing twice on the linoleum floor.

Leaning down to pick it up, she saw that it was tied with rough string.

With shaking fingers, she opened it. Another rolled-up piece of paper was inside. She unfurled that to read a new message in the same scratchy hand: FULL MOON OVERHEAD; BETTER GO STRAIGHT TO BED.

No way. She wasn’t taking orders from some mysterious faerie. Not anymore. Not if she could help it. Crumpling up the note, she tossed it back into her bag.

Leonie sauntered up to Hazel’s locker, smelling of cigarette smoke. She had on a long, ratty flannel shirt over her white T-shirt, with a gold chain around her neck. She’d strung it with a key ring, and—in addition to her house keys—it had half a dozen charms hanging from it. Her dark curly hair was pulled up into two buns on top of her head. They were wet, like she’d put them up right after a shower. “So,” she said. “I guess you heard, right?”

“About Amanda? Yeah.” Hazel nodded.

“Last person to see her was Carter. Everybody’s saying one of the Gordon boys had something to do with what happened.” Leonie shrugged, to show she wasn’t necessarily agreeing, but since she was spreading the rumor, she probably didn’t consider them entirely innocent.

“I thought whatever happened to her was magical.” A shudder went through Hazel, remembering the dirt in Amanda’s mouth and the vines.

“Well, that’s only one of the Gordon boys, then. And that’s the one most people are blaming.”

“Jack had nothing to do with this!” Thinking of the night before made her recall the shock of Severin’s mouth against hers. Just two days after she’d kissed Jack, as though the universe was conspiring to give her everything she’d ever wanted and punishing her at the same time.

When her thoughts returned to Amanda, lying in the ditch, she felt even worse about the kisses.

“Well, it’s all just a rumor,” Leonie said airily. “It’s not like I believe it or anything.”

“Well, it’s crazy . And you shouldn’t be repeating it.”

“This shit is crazy,” Leonie said. “This is not normal Fairfold weird. Not tourist weird. It’s actually fucked-up-and-not-okay weird. Amanda’s family’s always lived here; she’s supposed to be protected. People are freaking out. And I’m repeating the rumor because I thought you’d want to know. I’m not broadcasting it all over school.”

Hazel took a few calming breaths. Snapping at Leonie wasn’t helping anything. “Sorry. It’s just that none of the stuff that goes on in the woods is okay, not the tourist stuff, not any of it. And I don’t see what Amanda’s being unconscious has to do with Jack at all.”

“Well, I think comes from two facts: firstly, Jack’s one of them . And secondly, Amanda broke Jack’s heart, which is tragic because it means that even a supernatural hottie has the same generic taste as every other idiot in this school. I think he liked her even more than he used to like you, and that’s saying something. But it does give him a motive.”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “Me? You must be thinking of someone else. Jack Gordon was never into me.”

Leonie shook her head. “Whatever, the point is, he’s not human and people know it. Remember when he broke Matt’s nose?”

“I guess,” Hazel said, slamming her locker shut. She was having difficulty with the whole staying calm thing. “Matt is supernaturally annoying, if that’s your point.”

The bell rang and they both started down the hallway in the direction of their first-period classes. They had about five minutes before the second bell. Hazel wondered if Jack or Carter knew about the rumors. If they did, she hoped they stayed home from school until all this blew over. Everyone was just scared, that was all, and Jack made a convenient target. No one would ever believe Carter had anything to do with this, not for long. And they’d get over thinking it was Jack, too, just as soon as they thought things through.

At least Hazel hoped they would.

“I was there,” Leonie said. “The fight with Matt got weird. The kind of weird that people remember.”

Matt Yosco was about three years older than Hazel and Leonie, handsome, with jet-black hair and a constant sneer. Matt had been Leonie’s worst habit, worse than cigarettes or weed, worse than any wastrel any of the rest of them had ever dated. He’d been the kind of cruel that insinuated itself into your head, making you doubt yourself, and Hazel had hated him. He was one of the few cute boys in town she’d never even considered kissing. Despite being so awful, when he moved away for college, Leonie had cried for a week straight.

“Weird how?” Hazel asked. They were standing in front of her American History room, but she wasn’t ready to go inside. Her heart was racing. It felt as though Severin’s being released from his casket had been the first domino to fall, but she still didn’t know the pattern its falling produced. And if Severin wasn’t the first domino, then she knew even less.

“Jack didn’t punch Matt.” Leonie glanced to one side, as if she was afraid of being overheard. “Matt was being his usual awful self, then Jack—well, Jack smiled this really weird smile, leaned over, and whispered in his ear. The next thing we knew, Matt was hitting himself. Like, really going to town, slamming his fist into his own face, until his lip was cut and blood was streaming from his nose.”