Teeth? Pressure and pain colliding in the deeper parts of her before bursting outward like a terrible, darker growth, and then the knowledge there would be no more breath to draw. Lila’s stomach turned over as she stared down at the girl’s eyes, thinking of what she would have seen and felt in her last moments. My mom says there’s no way an animal could do all that, and that it’s definitely a murder. Cops are on the news saying she probs got lost in the woods, and coyotes got to her or something. Lila was tired of feeling like a yeti every time she wanted to wear shorts or a skirt. Shaving was something women did and never above the knee unless she wanted people to think she wasn’t a good girl. She’d begged when she turned thirteen, but her mother refused to budge. If she came out of the bathroom looking like a horror show, her mother would know she’d been shaving-a full year before she was technically allowed, even though every other girl she knew had been shaving since ten or eleven. What happened to her? she typed, and then swiped the blade over her legs again, hoping that this time she’d managed to avoid cutting herself. Invisible as Lila had been before Macie lifted her into something that resembled popularity. She recognized the girl, the plain angles of her face, how she’d hidden behind a veil of hair as she hurried through the hallways of East Pritchard Middle. Lila set the razor down and wiped her hands on the towel hanging from the rack before grabbing her phone to pull up the picture. The cut on her ankle stung as she splashed water over it. Lila glanced at her phone as she balanced one slippery leg on the edge of the tub, her mother’s forbidden razor in her hand.

Macie had sent her a screenshot, and the picture showed a girl only slightly younger than they were-twelve, or a mature eleven-with lank, dark hair and deep-set eyes the color of pond water. There was blood in the water-a dull pink bloom-the morning Lila Sawyer heard about the first missing girl.

Such a pretty smile kristi demeester