Don't Look Behind You (Don't Look Series Book 1), Emily Kazmierski [ready to read books TXT] 📗

put me behind. The conviction in her voice when she insisted I at least consider going straight to a four-year school. Sharp pain cuts through my chest and I shove the memories away.

Time to put my game face on.

Reaching up, I pretend to swipe paint along my cheekbones. Face paint was a normal part of my school attire once. School spirit, yay! But now? I barely even wear makeup except for concealer. The scar shows right through it, so why bother?

Hoisting the poster board so I can maneuver without ramming into anything, I march up the steps.

Noah is at the top, kicked back on one of the concrete walls and reading a graphic novel I’m familiar with. “Hey,” he says when he sees me, hopping up and pocketing the book. “Whatcha got there?”

I turn it around so he can see the aesthetic I spent a ton of time on last night in an attempt to keep my mind off everything else. Pops of neon color contrast with dark, shadowy images of gritty urban streets and rain-soaked pavement. It’s a physical representation of the lighting idea I’ve worked up for The Mousetrap, printed out in cerebral color. Hopefully Esau will go for it. Sure, the first five times I tried to show him on my phone he blew me off, but it’ll be much harder to ignore the poster board in my hands. At some point he’s got to see that my ideas are good ones. He has to.

The corridor is buzzing with activity as people arrive for school. Lockers slam and backpack zippers open and close, but the thing that gets my attention is the whispering. Down the hallway, a group of boys are watching a video on their phone. Justin is mopping what looks like a pool of jello salad but which I know from the smell is vomit. I still think he’s a little weird, but maybe that’s because I see the devil everywhere these days.

As Noah and I draw closer to the group of boys, I hear snatches of a reporter’s voice. She’s talking about the homicidal maniac who’s rampaging through our state without a care in the world. He’s slipped through the police perimeter again.

My chest constricts.

“Everyone’s pretty freaked about the Mayday Killer.” Noah says just above a whisper.

“They should be,” I murmur.

“Pardon?”

“I said, it looks that way.”

“Right.” Noah’s dark hair bobs as he nods, his eyes narrowed just slightly. “You gonna carry that all day?”

I shake my head. “I’m gonna run it to the drama room before first period.”

One of the guys in the huddle spots us and gestures to his friends. “Hey Noah,” he calls. “I bet you’re pretty upset by all this, yeah?”

Noah stops, his entire body going stiff. He doesn’t look back at the guys, all of whom are now focused on us. On him. One of them flicks a glance at my scar before returning his attention to the boy beside me.

Noah clears his throat, but his words still come out unsteady. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know, how your brother was murdered, and they never caught the guy? What if it’s the same guy?”

This dude’s words ring in my brain. The man who killed Noah’s brother couldn’t be the Mayday Killer. That was ten years ago. The MO was different. It couldn’t be. Could it?

“Aren’t you scared?” I ask, as much to shut up my brain as to shut up these jerks.

The group of dudes look at me in surprise, a huddle of poser shirts and slack jaws. Finally, after what seems like forever, the guy who started it says, “Sure, I’m scared. Big, bad killer man is on a rampage, and the police haven’t managed to catch him yet.” His liberal use of air quotes tempts me to glare, but I manage to contain it.

“The police are doing everything they can to apprehend him, and they will.” Great, I’m parroting Aunt Karen now.

“Some job they’re doing. He’s killed what, fourteen people by now?”

“Fifteen,” Noah says. He seems to come back to himself, his body unclenching. The pulse in his neck is going at break-neck speed, though. Something about this conversation has him rattled, but what? “Did you know that criminals sometimes stay on the FBI most wanted list for years? It’s harder to catch fugitives than it looks on TV. There’s a lot of work and research that goes into it.”

“Don’t they have witnesses, though?” another guy asks.

“Witnesses are unreliable,” Noah explains. “You could have ten people recount the same event, and they’d each tell you they heard a different number of gunshots. It’s not an exact science. Memory can be faulty, or it can be manipulated.”

A beat too late, I add, “That’s true.”

The warning bell clangs, making me jump. Whatever spell was cast to create the cohesion of students listening to Noah’s conversation with the bro dudes is broken as people scatter, hurrying to reach their classrooms before the tardy bell rings.

With a quick glance at Noah, whose breathing is slowing to normal, I hurry to first period and slide into the desk beside Dariel. At the front of the classroom, the teacher is fiddling with his laptop to get it connected to the projector. So we’ve probably got ten minutes before class will actually start. Everyone else seems to feel the same way, because chatter breaks out all over the classroom. A box of Twizzlers gets passed around, and I take one. I love these.

“Dude, what is that? You got a presentation today or something?” Dariel picks up my poster board and looks over it, head bobbing in approval. “Looks like someone’s getting an A in art class.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Thanks, D, but this isn’t for Art. It’s for Esau.”

His red brows pull together. “You made this for Esau? Wait, is this a confession of love or something?” He flips it over and looks at the back, which is blank. “You forgot to sign it, Meggie.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say, suppressing a smile at