Page 89 of Did You See Evie

Evie repeats my name again, this time her voice high-pitched and full of fear. “Coach Cass!”

Before I have time to turn around, something hard braces my skull, and then Evie and the basement and all of it, the entire world, turns black.

FORTY-FIVE

My eyelids flutter.

Flashes of light make me want to keep my eyes closed, and yet an aching pain in my head urges me to move, do something.

I try to sit up, and when I do, I open my eyes fully. Evie is sitting in front of me, her legs pulled in front of her. She stares at me as though she’s not quite sure what she’s seeing, and once again, I wonder if all of this isn’t some kind of fever dream.

“Evie?” I say, my voice gravelly. “Is it really you?”

She nods, pulling her legs even closer to herself. “I’m so sorry, Coach Cass.”

Hearing her voice sends a jolt of adrenaline through me. She’s real and safe, right here in front of me.

“Why are you sorry? You have nothing to be sorry about,” I say, reaching my hands forward to try and grab her. Something yanks on my arm, holding me in place. That’s when I realize my left wrist is tied to one of the exposed metal poles in the basement by a piece of rope.

Evie raises her leg, showing me she’s also tied to another pole. “I’m sorry that you’re down here, too,” she says. “I could hear your voice in the kitchen. I was making a noise, hoping you’d hear me. I should have known Ms. Terry was dangerous.”

“Don’t apologize,” I say. “I’m happy you did. You have no idea how wonderful it is to see you. We’ve all been so worried.”

“How long has it been since the lock-in?” she asks.

I look around the room. There are several structural beams throughout the empty space and a small closet just behind Evie. Another door leading to a bathroom beside it. No windows or outside doors. She must not have any way of keeping track of time.

“Today is Thursday,” I say. “The lock-in was almost a week ago.”

Evie looks down at herself. “It feels like I’ve been here even longer.”

“How did you get down here? Is Melinda the only one who knows you’re here?”

“She’s the only one who’s been coming to check on me,” she says. “And she’s the one who put me here.”

“Evie, what on earth happened?”

She takes a deep breath. “The night of the lock-in, after you went to sleep, some of the girls decided to sneak out.”

“Which girls?”

“Beatrice, Tara and Amber,” she says, even though I could have guessed. “Earlier that night, they’d told me what they’d been doing. Chatting with boys online and using my name. I guess they thought it was funny, but it just gave me the creeps. They kept showing me messages, making jokes that my boyfriend was coming to school for a visit.”

“You weren’t talking to any of the boys?” I ask, recalling how the girls were taunting her with their phones at the Waffle Shack and in the hallways at school. They’d been targeting her with these online messages before the lock-in was even planned.

“Never. The only internet we have at my house is through a hotspot on my mom’s phone plan. If I’m on social media, it’s when I’m at school, and half of those websites are blocked.”

“The boy they were talking to wasn’t a boy at all. It was a grown man,” I say, not yet wanting to tell her the man is her teacher.

“I tried telling them what they were doing was dangerous,” she says. “You never know who you’re talking to on the internet. And it was even worse because they were using my name. Anyway, they’d told the guy to meet us at the school. They were going to go out there and videotape him or something, try to embarrass him. Or maybe they were just trying to get under my skin.

“After I heard them sneak out, I followed them. I needed to know if they were really meeting someone and what they’d told him about me. They left the school through one of the doors at the back of the building. The one near the computer lab.”

I swallow hard, that damned door having been singed into my memory.

“I followed them outside, and when they saw me, it must have scared them. They ran back in the building, closing the door behind them. I tried to open it and get back inside, but the door was locked. I could hear them running and laughing down the hallway. They were just going to leave me there.”

“I’m so sorry, Evie.”

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