He could have just driven down the road, I realize, suspected something, sat and waited, then rolled back with his lights off and watched through the window for movement in the house. I wasn’t careful enough. All the lights were on in the front room; he could have seen me walking around from a block away.

I hear the front door opening.

“Kippy?” Ralph calls. His voice is cold again—loud and empty. I imagine him below me, turning off lights, tightening his grip on the machete. “Kippy, I know you’re in here, so perhaps you should please stop being such a little bitch, okay? I’m not going to hurt you as long as you’re a nice girl.”

My knees feel weak and I crouch lower in the closet, leaning back against what feels like a bookcase. There’s something tickling my cheek and I use my phone as a flashlight to look around. At first I think it’s some kind of costume—a Halloween beard, or something, with tinsel stuck between the hairs. But then I realize it’s human hair. More than a foot of brown curls tied with a bow and nailed to the bookshelf. Ruth’s hair, I know just by looking at it. I’m pretty sure I can even smell her shampoo, that peppermint-scented stuff she loved. What looks like tinsel is actually her necklace, the one I gave her for her birthday, the other half of our friendship heart. The one I thought she’d thrown away because they didn’t find it on her corpse.

I touch the hair and choke a little bit, scanning the rest of the closet with the light from my phone. I definitely don’t have enough sandwich bags for all this evidence. Ruth’s yearbook picture, photos from her Facebook page printed out in color, her face taped over all the heroines in comic books. I’m pressing End again and again to keep the phone screen lit, choking back sobs. There’s shriveled bits of bloody skin still clinging to her hair. Why didn’t I know he was creepy? Why didn’t I believe her when she said he was a freak?

Downstairs, I hear boxes rustling, the clinking of ceramic pieces being kicked across carpet.

“Kippy!” he roars. I feel a warm wetness streaming down my thighs and realize I’m wetting my pants.

“Shit,” I whisper, skimming tears off my cheeks. I start clicking through the contacts on my phone. Even if I called Dom now, he wouldn’t answer—he never picks up the freaking house line—I remember when hospice called us about Mom at night it was always me who rustled awake for the call. Nine-one-one would probably just put me through to whatever doofus is working at the police station. I stumble upon Sheriff Staake’s private number and press talk, drumming my fingers on my teeth. Pick up, pick up, pick up. The only thing I’ve got left is a man whose main goal in life is to catch me—well, catch me then.

“Who is this?” Staake demands. I can hear TV in the background.

“You’re awake,” I whisper. “Sheriff Staake, please, it’s me, Kippy.”

“Gosh darn it all, Bushman! I thought they’d fixed you up over there, how the hell’d you get a phone?”

“Sheriff, please.” I’m hiccupping softly, trying to stop crying so I can be understood. “I’m trapped in Ralph Johnston’s closet, he’s got all this stuff of Ruth’s. Tons of her hair, even. . . . He’s going to kill me, he’s looking for me.”

“My foot,” Staake says. “What they got you on, some kind of quaaludes? I’m hanging up.”

“Listen to me,” I hiss, and I can feel the tears drying on my face. “I know about Colt and Lisa, I know that’s what you’re mad about. Now you can keep on being mad about that, or you can come and frigging save me. Because if you’re wrong, I’m going to die, and then the whole town is going to hate you for letting two pretty girls with bright futures die.”

He doesn’t answer. The storm outside is getting louder.

“Come and arrest me then! I escaped Cloudy Meadows. I’m at Ralph Johnston’s.”

There’s creaking on the stairs. “He’s coming,” I whisper, and hang up, stuffing the phone in my back pocket. For the first time since Mom died and our pastor said that it was the thing we should do, I pray. Please God let this not happen, and if it does happen let it not be with the machete—

Beep!

Beep!

Beep!

It’s the alarm on my watch. Before I can silence it, footsteps are turning in the hallway, coming closer.

I am brave, I remind myself, remembering Ruth’s entry. One of the last things my best friend in the world ever thought about me was how brave I am.

I reach into my backpack for the bear spray Ralph gave me, and make sure the nozzle’s pointed in the right direction. Then I swing open the closet door.

Ralph is standing six feet away, holding the machete, and as he raises it above his head, I empty the entire contents of the can, covering his face with swirling, orange designs.

“Farggh!” Ralph screams. He grabs his face and staggers back against the bedroom door, dropping the machete. I grab the soap case from my backpack. If Staake isn’t coming, then maybe an exploding mailbox will get someone’s attention. I wince and squeeze the detonator.

Shrapnel hits the windows downstairs, shattering the glass—but you can barely hear it above the thunder outside. I look out the bedroom window and Ralph’s mailbox is opened up like the petals of a flower. Only none of the lights are going on in neighbors’ houses. The storm is too loud. Nobody’s waking up.

Ralph’s sprawled out blocking the bedroom door, still choking like crazy from the bear spray. He’s also in the way of my exit. I yank open one of the windows, knot my backpack straps in front of me, and swing my legs over the ledge. Two stories is a lot higher than I thought, but then I look over my shoulder and see Ralph grimace and rise to his feet, and it doesn’t look so far. He’s opened one of his eyes just a sliver, and it’s his lazy eye, rolling this way and that inside his head. The animal inside me bucks and I pitch myself over the ledge.

There’s a crack that sounds like a tree branch breaking, then pain like a firecracker from my foot to my pelvis, ricocheting up my bones. My leg is splayed out at a funny angle, and as I shift on my butt, I can hear the pieces of my phone crunching in my pocket. Rain slaps my face. I look across the street at my house.

“Dommy!” I yell.

Leaves are whipping through the dark across the grass. I scream his name louder but am drowned out by the weather. I start to drag myself to the edge of the yard, but I have to stop every few minutes because the pain in my leg is making me dizzy. I’m almost to the road when something grabs me by the hair and tugs. Before I can call out, there’s a hand clapped over my mouth, burning my lips with bear-spray residue. I bite the fingers, screaming as hard as I can, but the wind is too loud.

“You ruined my mailbox,” Ralph says into my ear, curling his fingers into my mouth until I gag. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Kippy.” He laughs—a horrible, high-pitched sound—and starts dragging me back inside. I swing around wildly, trying to scream, but hear only croaking noises.

“Davey!” I cry. Then Ralph is tearing wet grass from the lawn and stuffing grass into my mouth, choking me.

“You girls never know when to shut up. Always saying other people’s names when I’m the one right here.” He takes me by the wrists and drags me up the steps, jostling my broken leg. “What were you doing with the bear spray, Kippy, hmm?” He gives me one final yank through the door and I vomit grass onto my sweatshirt. “Those cops were supposed to take it from you.” He makes a tsk noise. “You’re too much like Ruth. She was a liar. She took the stuff I gave her and that’s supposed to mean you like somebody. But then I found her in the dark and all she said was no no no.” He slams the door.

I hear myself choking.

“Davey is dead,” he says softly, petting my hair as I spit up grass and bile onto his carpet. My throat is on fire. I look down at my leg. Shattered bone has pierced through my pajama pants and blood is soaking the fabric. I vomit again. “There are so many things I’ve had to do.” He sighs, kneeling down beside me. “You will be the first real friend I’ve ever killed.” I try to crawl to the door, but he throws me back against the wall. “Your dead soldier boyfriend probably already informed you that it gets easier. How after a while it’s like putting something out of its misery. You remember that deer, don’t you? The one we hit on the highway after Mom and Dad passed?” Anger flashes in his eyes. “And then that horrible, lonely woman—that alcoholic witch—she was a disgrace to this town. Killing her stuck with me, certainly. When I accepted her offer for a beer, she behaved as if she had found a lifelong friend. How immature. I can still see her face when she asked me to stop.” He looks at my leg and gasps, squeezing just below my knee. I scream, sounding like an animal. “Oh Kippy, does it hurt?”

I know that this is not the Ralph I know, and still I nod—yes it hurts, yes it does, please stop— because his voice is so familiar and I think that maybe he will decide I’ve endured enough.

He squeezes harder and I screech.

“Oh Kippy, you really are such a specimen. A Nordic princess,” he says, looking deep into my eyes. He lets go of my leg and takes my chin gently in his hand. “Am I correct in thinking that nobody knows where you are right now?”

I think of Mildred and Marion and begin to cry—and that’s when I hear sirens, somewhere far off in the storm. In one swift moment I both love and hate Sheriff Staake—that sweet and terrible man—because you would never turn on your sirens to come rescue someone from a killer, so he must just be coming to arrest me again.

Ralph doesn’t seem to hear them. His eyes look vacant. “With Ruth it was different,” he says. “With Ruth I had to pretend she was a witch, like in Total Escape Three. And she was, you know. It took me too long to realize how heartless she was. I gave her sweet food and she told me sweet things, and made me believe sweet things. But in the end I made her eat her words.”