Megan Abbott - The Fever

Skye was a rumor now, a whiff of smoke drifting.

Now he thought he kind of understood what she meant about energies, the way they can be passed to you, can live in you even when you don’t know it, until it’s revealed to you. She was wrong about Lise. She didn’t have any dark energy, or any powerful energy. Everyone else did, but not Lise.

When he got his phone back, he thought of Skye taking it, slipping it from his backpack as they sat on the loading dock. He wondered how long she’d had it before she gave it to Gabby.

Did she look at it, did she somehow see into him?

It was like his dream, Skye’s thighs locked tight around him as he lay still. And her mouth opened and he could see inside, and…

There was a witchiness to her that was terrifying. And there was something else. Part of him wished he had put his hand on her back that day, on that twisted spine of hers, which she’d offered to him, asked of him.

But those were early-morning, predawn thoughts, out on the ice, dreaming.

The early spring meant everything arrived early: the school grounds bursting with red shoots, the lawns thick with creeping phlox, other things he couldn’t name.

Tom held open the school door open for Deenie, her arms heavy with that monstrous book bag of hers.

The building smelled so different now. They had gone through the entire facility, the dropped ceilings in the basement, every stretch of the HVAC system. Scooped out every hidden cavity, scraped matter from each crease and furrow.

And they found many things.

Deep in the upper and lower corners of the old school they found pipes, fans, dampers, ducts coated with prehistoric sediments, gypsum board and ceiling tiles furred with mold, lead paint over older lead paint. PCBs in the caulk, the fluorescent lighting ballasts, the transformers that powered the school. Radon, mercury, arsenic in the water pipes, on the wood of the track hurdles, in the modular chairs, tables. The only thing they didn’t find, other than, maybe, uranium, was asbestos. Everyone got rid of that a decade ago.

Trace amounts of a dozen or more things, most of which they’d removed over spring break. The rest to be removed over the summer.

None of it, officials pointed out, had anything to do with what happened.

Because even if it isn’t any of these things, it could be , Lara Bishop had said.

We put them at risk just by having them. And the hazards never stop.

But now, everything just smelled like nothing.

You wouldn’t have thought nothing would have a smell.

“It’s time, Dad,” Deenie said, pointing to the old mounted clock, its brass casings stripped of green and newly shining.

“Right,” he said, reaching down to hand her the new scarf, which had drifted to the floor. “Have a good day, D.”

“Okay,” she said, smiling a little, a half smile that was new to him. Wise and wary and not a girl’s smile at all.

And he watched her walk all the way down the corridor, head lowered, hoodie half up her neck.

Each time her sneaker took a swivel on the bright polished floor, he felt his heart lurch.

There were only sixty seconds before the second bell, but everything seemed to slow down.

Shutting her locker, she put her hand on Lise’s door, wondered where she was.

Walking through the halls, she saw all the girls with legs bare now, even though it was still too cold. A few of the boys were even wearing shorts.

She’d worked only one shift with Sean Lurie since everything happened.

He hadn’t looked at her once, just took the order tickets, his nails greased. He was even wearing his cap, first time ever, so she couldn’t see his eyes.

She didn’t want to look at him anyway.

That night, a text came, the same unknown number as before. But this time, he said who he was:

Hey, u, Sean here. Sorry, k? we cool?

We cool, she’d typed back.

Then, somehow, they were never on the schedule again at the same time.

But he didn’t go to Dryden High, so it was like it never even happened. She’d never told anyone other than Lise, and Lise didn’t remember, so maybe it hadn’t happened.

Except she could still feel all of it, but that was okay.

Turning the corner into the east wing, the breezeway unusually warm, the sun pounding on the glass, she saw Brooke Campos, laughing loudly at something a boy had said, her mouth like a shark’s.

All those girls, she wondered what they felt now. No one said anything, really. No one talked about the girls who’d been so sick.

Except for one of them, Kim Court, who’d transferred to Star-of-the-Sea after staying a long, long time in the hospital. Her videos were the only ones still online, and once in a while, the address still stored in her browser, Deenie would start typing and the video would come up, and there was Kim, talking about the man with tornado legs, about Gabby pulling seaweed from her throat, about Deenie being in the hospital, about Deenie being the one.

“Are you ready, Deenie?” It was Jaymie Hurwich, books clasped to her chest. “It’s time.”

And Deenie nodded.

The classroom door was open, and there was Lise, seated at her desk. The same spot she’d been in nearly seven weeks before, her legs tangled beneath her. Her chin tilted, looking out the window.

It was Lise, but it wasn’t.

And Lise smiled at her, sort of. And Deenie sat down, and the bell rang, and everything shuttled back into place.

She’d never thought it would, that the fever would break. But the Lise who returned didn’t seem like the same Lise. There were all these different Lises and none of them was Deenie’s.

Looking out the window too, following Lise’s gaze, Deenie saw the hedges, shorn to the ground.

And she could see through to the other wing, and there was Dad, charcoal sweater and handsome, talking to the French teacher again, showing her something on his phone. Giving her the smallest of smiles, the one her mom used to call the Croc.

All the trees and foliage had been torn away during the investigation, the remediation. Bushes razed, the earth seemingly shaken to its core. You could see everything now, if you wanted.

And though homeroom had begun, Eli was out there, outside, jacket off, on the practice rink, skating.

It was almost like fall, branches strewn across the thawing ice. Prickly globes split, seeds spilling, white petals pulped, spores that split red onto ice.

Each turn, graceful and lithe and hypnotic, she watched as his blades ran over every one.

Dare Me

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Die a Little

The Song Is You

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Bury Me Deep

The End of Everything

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright © 2014 by Megan Abbott

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First Edition: June 2014

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