Feral Read online

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Advance Reader’s e-proof

  courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers

  This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Dedication

  The mind is its own place, and in it self

  Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

  —John Milton, Paradise Lost

  Contents

  Cover

  Disclaimer

  Title

  Dedication

  Serena

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Serena

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Seven Years Ago

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Serena

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Serena

  In the rugged, underbrush-riddled rural town of Peculiar, Missouri, at the beginning of a January sleet storm, and beneath the dimming orange hues of dusk, a body lay half out of the window that led to the high school basement.

  The body belonged—or really, the body had once belonged—to Serena Sims, a B average junior who loved her best friend, the sound of the rain, writing for the school paper, and her mother’s chocolate mayonnaise cake with homemade icing, a family specialty.

  She’d been a sweet girl with old-fashioned, simple dreams—to stop biting her nails to the quick (for good this time); to be kissed, just once, by a boy who truly loved her; to get out of Peculiar; to get a job as a real journalist at a national paper. But there was nothing simple about her current state. Or maybe, it was the simplest state of all: a past tense. Dead.

  More than an hour after her heart had stopped, she found herself staring at the blue tips of her fingers, the wavy ends of her long brown hair, the dusty top of an old wooden desk, and the fractured tile of the janitors’ office. It was all she could stare at, with her stomach still smashed against the windowsill, her head and arms dangling down toward the basement floor. Outside the building, a pair of hands clutched her hips to keep her from falling back inside, tumbling to a heap on the office floor for the fourth time.

  The hands gripped her tighter, fingers digging deeper into her cold flesh just beneath her school uniform blouse, which was still wet with the frantic sweat that had poured from her in her final moments. She listened to a deep intake of air and a grunt as the hands jerked her farther outside, so that only the section of her body from the armpits up remained inside the high school. The hands lightened as the figure outside paused, trying to work up the strength for another heave, while Serena’s legs lay on the bitterly cold, snowy earth, stretching straight out from the ground-level window. With one more violent tug, the hands yanked the last of her body out, banging her nose against the sill so hard that it broke.

  Serena tried to yelp, but her mouth, purple and swollen, only flopped, like a door with a busted hinge. No warm, copper-flavored blood trickled from a nostril to her lip, even though her nose had just been snapped, as easily as a drinking straw.

  She lay motionless in the freezing rain.

  Seventeen and dead: it was the worst kind of vulnerable. She felt utterly exposed, as though she were standing naked in the center of the school auditorium while the faculty and students filed by her, one at a time, taking a good look at all her flaws: the stretch marks on her sides and the cellulite dimples on her backside that had never gone away, even after she’d lost her fifty extra pounds in middle school.

  The shock of knowing the day would end this way would have given her a full-on asthma attack—the kind that had made her lungs feel like they were packed with concrete—as she’d sat at the breakfast table that morning with her Cheerios. Or had she eaten oatmeal? It seemed so strange, now, not to have paid attention to the details of her next-to-last meal. But the sadness of her overlooked last breakfast was nothing compared to the fear-laden reality that Serena had no way to protect herself, not anymore. An hour and a half ago, she could still fight. Kick and scream. Now, her fight was gone.

  Her killer could do whatever he wanted with her. But Serena hadn’t yet stopped feeling. No—she felt more, now that she was dead. Everything was intense, to the point of being painful. Her ears, only an inch away from the ground, acted like amplifiers, magnifying the sleet-rain mix as it pummeled the earth with the sound of a whole package of BBs spilling out across a linoleum floor. Her skin was as sensitive as a sunburn, and the frozen droplets were sharp—like the pointed tips of manicure scissors stabbing her over and over.

  How would it feel when her killer disposed of her? What if he dismembered her? Surely she would stop experiencing the pain of the world around her—but when? Would she have to endure the whack of an ax? Would she have to listen to the screech of a saw blade whizzing against her bones? Good God—what if he tried to light her on fire? How hot did a fire have to be to cremate a person? Would she have to bear the agony of it, with no ability to even scream?

  First, though, her killer needed rest; dragging her up and out a window had exhausted him. He collapsed on the frozen ground beside her, huffing and coughing and struggling to catch his breath the same way Serena’s classmates all huffed when the lone gym teacher herded them over to the gravel track on the side of the school and tested them on the mile run. His breath shuddered, and Serena was left to only imagine his exhalations coming out in clouds, as her face
was pressed against the ground, her eyes taking in the close-up of a frozen, brown blade of dead grass.

  Serena wondered why he was just sitting there, leaving her body in full view of anyone braving the weather. Sure, school had been closed a full two hours early because of the ice, the principal’s voice insisting over the intercom that all after-school activities be rescheduled, urging everyone to head straight home, no hanging out in the parking lot, no gossiping in the hallway. (Serena, though, had stayed, determined to keep her own after-school appointment.) By now, the school had a long-empty feel to it, like it did over Christmas or summer break. And the gray, cloudy day was slowly leaning toward night, leaving the two of them partially hidden by a darkening sky. And the sprawling old farmlands that butted up against the ancient school meant that the closest home was more than a mile away. But wasn’t he still being awfully brazen, letting her lie there, completely exposed? Most importantly, where was he planning on taking her?

  In the distance, a lonely siren sliced through the evening quiet.

  Her killer gasped as he scrambled to his feet. He grabbed her ankles, and jerked her body with each of his own steps, yanking her across the small field between the back of the school and the nearby woods.

  He grunted as he pulled her, forcing Serena’s jaw open, as wide as its hinges would allow. With the next heave, her teeth ripped at the dead grass like a lawn mower needing its blade sharpened. Her mouth filled with dead bugs and last autumn’s Weed and Feed and decayed animal droppings.

  Her tongue, she found, also felt just as alive as it ever had, and she wished she could gag against the rancid flavors that exploded through her mouth. With the next backward jerk, the tip of her broken nose pinged against the sharp jagged peak of a rock. Where is that rigor mortis, anyway? Serena wondered, unable to cringe against the pain dancing across her face.

  As her killer dragged her body, her open cardigan flopped; her shirt inched up, bunching around her breasts, and her skirt flipped up, making her white panties the only thing that separated her backside from the late January air. Her necklace, which had already been tortured and weakened during the struggle she’d had with her killer, caught on the thick, gnarled remnants of an old tree root.

  She was overwhelmed by the urge to protect the old cameo she’d worn on a short chain to take attention away from the scar on the base of her throat. God, she hated that scar—the spot where doctors had sliced into her in the midst of her worst asthma attack ever—an attack that had shortly followed a hobo spider bite. The poison from the bite and the lack of air and the fear had made her crazed, wild, unlike herself—and she’d fought the doctors so that they’d had no other choice but to intubate her, force some air down her swollen throat.

  Funny to think it, now—a little over three years ago, the ER doctors had all talked about how strong she was. Earlier today, she’d been overtaken as quickly as an utter weakling. How was that possible?

  The chain on her necklace snapped; the gold cameo that had once belonged to her grandmother lay glittering in a smear of dying late afternoon sunlight. But her killer just kept tugging at her ankles, oblivious to the little scrap of a clue he’d left behind.

  Right then, though, Serena didn’t care about clues. She didn’t care about revenge. She cared about the rocks and ice that scraped her face, making her feel like the earth was peeling her. She cared about the way her flesh still felt as though it belonged to her. She cared about her killer’s plans.

  The siren circled closer; her killer tried to increase his pace, succeeding only in losing his grip on her ankles. He growled angrily, then flipped her over, letting her face turn toward the sky. Allowing the needle-sharp rain to hit her eyes, some drops dancing against the whites and bouncing off again. Others stabbed her pupils, her irises, like stickpins on a bulletin board.

  He gripped one arm and one leg and tugged again. His foot caught on the edge of her black Peculiar High cardigan, ripping the pocket. He staggered, swearing under his breath. But he quickly steadied himself, tightened his grip, and grunted as he heaved her another step.

  A new terror grabbed hold of Serena. The woods, she thought, the words like venom in her skull. He’s going to dump me in the woods.

  Overgrown thickets dotted the entirety of Peculiar, Missouri. Undeveloped, unpaved patches, filled with underbrush, stood out behind the town’s only gas station and to the side of the Peculiar cemetery; they lined the highways leading into and out of the city limits. Bigger wooded patches separated individual homes; rather than city-style neighborhoods with cul-de-sacs and swimming pools, Peculiar was filled instead with white two-story farmhouses, separated by the acres that had been passed down among generations. While some residents continued to use sections of their land as grazing fields, most had let old farmland grow wild and unruly.

  The small patch of woods just behind Peculiar High offered the students a haven in which to disappear between classes to smoke. A shortcut, when students were afraid of being beaten by the morning’s first tardy bell. The patch behind the school was a hangout, an escape, a secret-special place for everyone at Peculiar High. Except for Serena.

  Just looking at a dense patch of trees had drawn goose bumps across her skin, ever since she’d gotten lost, barely four years old, in the woods behind her house. She’d spent a cold, lonely night there, her tiny body surrounded by the yellow eyes of the wild creatures she swore peered out at her from the underbrush. She’d thought, then, that she was going to die. That no one would ever find her.

  Fortunately, rescue had come, shortly after daybreak the next morning. But in the years following, Serena had never quite been able to quit feeling like beasts with untamed hunger and claws and fangs were peering out from between the branches, just waiting for her to return. To get close enough to grab.

  At the beginning of eighth grade, Becca, Serena’s brand-shiny-new best friend, lost her bird dog, Jasper. Poor heartbroken Becca had called Jasper’s name as the days bled into weeks, then months, her desperate tones clanging like an unanswered dinner bell against the sky. Early the next spring, Becca’s older brother, Rhine, returned from a hike, Jasper’s collar dangling from his fingers. A skull, Serena remembered. He’d found the skull in the woods behind their own farmhouse. Jasper’d been killed by some wild Missouri creature—a bobcat, maybe. A wolf. Killed and dismembered by the very creatures Serena had sworn she’d seen peering out at her, when she was four, from in between the overgrown branches. And carried off in pieces by other animals.

  Now, Serena predicted, her killer would drag her through the small patch of trees behind the school, across the dirt road, and into the thick, wild woods behind the closest farmhouse. He would dump her there, in a patch of land that had been allowed to grow wild for nearly two generations, and let nature take its course.

  “Come on,” her killer grumbled, tugging on her limbs like an impatient dog owner with a leash.

  The menacing trees arced dangerously, heavy with ice. The same brutal rain that pierced her eyes froze the instant it touched the leafless winter branches, completely encasing the oaks and the maples, turning them into Popsicles.

  Unable to turn away, to shut her eyes, Serena stared at the limbs that loomed above her, slicing shiny black patterns through the late afternoon sky—until the limbs began to crack.

  She listened, horrified, as the cracks grew louder, closer together; a branch sheathed in a thick skin of ice snapped, rattling like a tambourine as it tumbled. It struck another limb on its way down, instantly breaking it free, too. Her killer dropped her leg and arm, and darted out of the way, just as one of the limbs crashed and collapsed against Serena’s chest, smashing her into the ice-coated ground.

  The ice pellets had hurt. Breaking her nose had hurt. But that had been nothing—a mere paper cut—compared to the pain that exploded through her body now. The force with which the limb struck cracked her ribs, nearly split her heart in two, and turned drops of congealed blood into glass-sharp shards that ricocheted through
her veins.

  “Not here,” her killer moaned. “Too close to the shortcut. Someone could still find you here.”

  He tried to push the limb off Serena, his sneakers slipping out from underneath him, his knees thunking against the earth. He whimpered, frantic, his eyes as wide as moons.

  He grabbed Serena’s hand and pulled hard enough to actually dislocate her shoulder, wrench it out of its socket. Had her muscle tissue and skin not still been attached, her arm would have flown off, like a plastic Barbie doll arm. She felt herself wailing inside against the pain—the kind of hurt that would have sent her straight into shock, if her heart had still been beating. He tried again, a look of sheer desperation smeared across his face. But Serena was going nowhere. She was trapped. And the rain was falling harder. The world was getting slicker.

  When her killer angrily threw her hand down, it landed bent at the elbow in a gruesome angle, her palm facing up. The ballpoint letters she’d doodled above her life line in journalism class earlier that morning proclaimed, “CHEATING.”

  He growled and kicked her side. “Dumb bitch,” he howled, clearly cursing her for being stuck, being dead, being leftovers that were too big to get tossed down a garbage disposal, chewed up, and swallowed by the drain.

  A few smaller branches jingled, scraping against the ground as her killer tossed them across her legs. He bent down and turned her face so that it wasn’t staring straight up, right at him, but to the side. It was an odd gesture, Serena caught herself thinking—it almost showed a slice of humanity, of guilt, of remorse. He dragged another fallen limb toward her, tossing it over her head and smashing her cheek into the sharp ice.

  The siren edged out from the distance again, growing louder, ever closer.

  He bolted up and ran away, his footsteps growing distant. He fell twice—two thuds, one heavier than the other. Serena imagined the lighter thud was his knee striking the ground, the heavier whack his hip. She ached to run away, too. But she could only lie beneath the limb, listening to the click of freezing rain dance on bark. Listening to the trees crack, threatening to snap beneath the growing weight of ice.