Em shook her head and gestured for silence. “It’s true. I heard Principal Goody telling Mr. Wells in the office when I went in for a late slip. One of the custodians came in at six this morning to let a repairman into the cafeteria before breakfast, and he found Mr. Wesner. Right there.” She pointed at the desk again, and every head pivoted, all voices silenced now, except for Emma’s.

“Goody said the custodian called her, and the ambulance was already here by the time she got here at, like, dawn. They took him before any of us got here, but they’re still in the office scrambling for a sub.”

“Damn,” someone said from behind me, and while I watched, the same stunned, vaguely frightened expression seemed to spread from face to face.

“How’d he die?” Brant Williams asked, clutching the back of my chair.

Emma shrugged and glanced at the desk again, and again, all eyes tracked her gaze. “I don’t know. A stroke or something, I’m guessing. He was probably here all night.”

“Ugh. That is so morbid,” Chelsea Simms said, yet never paused in the notes she was taking for the school paper. But I couldn’t help wondering if they’d actually let her run the story. “This whole year has been morbid,” Leah added, eyes round and a little scared, and everyone else nodded.

You have no idea….

Ironically, Mr. Wesner’s stroke, or heart attack, or whatever, was the only normal death our school had experienced so far. Yet it was the one that most creeped people out.

Before anyone could ask any more questions, Mr. Wells, the vice principal, came in and officially announced Mr. Wesner’s unfortunate, unexpected demise, then said that he’d be watching the class until a substitute could be found.

Wells seemed disinclined to dig through Mr. Wesner’s desk for his lesson plan, though, so he gave us a free period. Which meant we were free to spend the period imagining Mr. Wesner slumped over the desk our vice principal obviously didn’t want to sit behind.

“Can you believe this?” Em whispered, scooting her desk closer to mine. “Yesterday he was fine, and today he’s dead. Right here in his own classroom.”

“Weird, huh?” And I couldn’t help wondering why Tod hadn’t told me someone was scheduled to die at my school, just as a courtesy. If I’d been there when it actually happened, I’d have been compelled to sing—or scream—for his soul.

“And sad. Makes me feel bad about not bothering with homework for most of last semester. Do you think he was grading midterms when he died?”

I frowned when I realized she was serious. “Emma, your test did not give him a stroke.”

“I think you underestimate my incomprehension of sign, cosign, and tangent,” she said, obviously trying to lighten the mood. Andfailing miserably. Her eyes narrowed as she watched me. “Everyone else is completely weirded out by this. Why isn’t this freaking you out, Kaylee?”

I could only shrug. “It is. It’s just that…” I lowered my voice and leaned closer to her. “I’ve seen a lot of death in the past few months, and every bit of it has been weird and wrong. After all that, it’s actually kind of good to know that Mr. Wesner died at his own time and that his soul isn’t being tortured for all of eternity. For once, death worked the way it was supposed to, and honestly, that’s kind of a relief.” Even if it did happen at school.

“I guess I can understand that,” Emma said at last. But I had my doubts. “Okay, enough of this. I’m depressing myself.” Emma shook her head, then forced her gaze to meet mine. “So…what were you going to say earlier?”

My news didn’t seem quite as catastrophic as it had before I’d found out my algebra teacher died, but the very thought of Nash and Sabine alone at his house still made my blood boil. “Nash spent most of the night with Sabine.”

“With her? Like, with her, with her?”

I shrugged. “He says they were just talking, but she’s on the prowl, I swear. She actually reminded me that Nash and I broke up. Like that gives her some prior claim or something.”

“Well, yeah, technically. You’re both his exes now, so…” Em hesitated, obviously wanting to say something I wouldn’t want to hear. “Does he seem interested in her again?”

“His mouth says no, but his eyes… His irises churn like the ocean every time I say her name. There’s definitely something still there, but I can’t tell exactly what it is. It’s strong, though. And she was spewing innuendo like some kind of gossip geyser, saying how great it is that Nash’s mom works nights. She’s making up for more than just lost time. Plus…” I felt like an idiot, saying it out loud, but it was the truth. “She’s creepy.”

“What do you mean, creepy?”

I scratched at a name carved into the corner of my desk. “I don’t know. She gives me chills. I think there’s something wrong with her. And Nash knows about it, whatever it is. He told me he’d talk to her. Like, he’d take care of her. I think she’s seriously unstable.”

Em raised both brows at me, and I rolled my eyes. “I know, that sounds hypocritical coming from me.” Usually I was hypersensitive to references to mental instability, because I’d spent a week locked up in the mental health ward a year and a half ago. “I don’t mean she’s crazy. I mean she’s…unbalanced. Dangerous. She’s a criminal, Em.”