Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/Macduff is.
Tag Line: A picture-perfect murder...From the Back of the Book: She saw the body...Laurie Wentworth jogged past that corner every morning. As a member of the track team, it was part of her training. But she'd never seen anyone there before - especially not someone stuffing a corpse into the trunk of his car. She had to be silenced...The blanket caught on the trunk latch, slowing him down. She'd seen him as she ran by. he'd have to get rid of her now - she knew too much. Hunted by a psycho...With a brutal killer stalking her, Laurie fights for her life. Will she escape or become the next victim? How many girls will die before the heartless murderer is stopped?
TRIGGER WARNING: There is an abduction in this book. I took great care to omit anything that would potentially trigger my regular readers. However, if you are not one of my regular readers (and first I must ask how the hell you even found this post) please be aware that this is a thing that happens. If it will injure you or steal your joy in any way, please stop reading here.
Note from future me: The blurb on the back of this book is complete trash, y'all. If you're expecting Laurie to be a major character and not just a side note in this plot, you are going to be sorely disappointed. If you're expecting her to actually SEE the bad guy or even actually SEE him putting the corpse in the trunk, you are going to be sorely disappointed. If you are expecting there to be some major tension with Laurie fearing for her life because a psycho is "hunting" her, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Also, this isolated place that she ran by that she's never seen anyone at before??? Yeah. It's a school. HER SCHOOL. So....yeah. I have no idea who wrote this thing but it's garbage. Just so you know....
This book was published in 1993 and
this is my first time reading it. I don't think I've actually read
anything by this author so I'm going in blind. A quick Goodreads
search showed that she writes a LOT of vampire books though. If
there's a bloodsucker in this book, I'm going to rage quit. That's a
promise, y'all.
We begin with a girl named Katie
asking her best friend Nicole what it feels like to have a
“psychic fit” Nicole tells her that it's not exactly a
fit – she just feels cold and then has a vision. They chatter
about how Nicole knew there was going to be a pop quiz in class as
they walk off screen. The Murderer breathes a sigh of relief
that they didn't stumble upon him. I'm guessing this also means that
Nicole is a pretty crap psychic because she didn't know she was
literally feet away from a murderer during this whole scene.
The Murderer is there to move a body
from underneath the staircase in the school to the truck of his car parked nearby.
I'm unclear when this murder happened but I'm guessing it was pretty
recently since a body under the stairs of a school would have been
easily discovered. He manages to carry the blanket-wrapped body out
without being seen and shoves it into his trunk. He hears a footstep
and runs to hide, seeing our protagonist Laurie jogging by. (((Note from future me: Not the protagonist. The back of the book lied to me.))) She glances towards his car but keeps going and he breathes a sigh of
relief. When he gets back to his car, however, he notices that a
sizable portion of the dead girl's skirt is hanging out of his trunk,
billowing in the breeze like a flag. He figures that's what Laurie
was looking at when she ran by. It clearly didn't alarm her in any
way but he knows if a news report mentions what the girl was
last wearing, she might remember seeing the material hanging out of
his trunk and identify his car. So that sets up our story, y'all.
By the way, I used the pronoun 'he'
because the author did. We can reasonably assume our murderer is
male I guess. Also it should be noted that Laurie didn't see him by
the trunk like the back of the book says. So I don't know if that
was a glaring error or we'll find out she saw more than we think she
did. (((Note from future me: She didn't.)))
Odds that the back of the book just
made things up: 75%
We go back to Katie now so maybe
there's more than one protagonist???? She's at play practice with
her boyfriend Steve waiting for the director and the lead
(Millicent) to show up so they can begin. Steve is the male
lead and Katie is a little nervous about him spending so much time
with Millicent. She doesn't know how lucky she was to snag Steve in
the first place and she's sure she's going to lose him. We also meet
a boy named Rage (his real name is Ralph so I can't blame him
for using a nickname) in black leather pants who is bitter about
losing the lead of the play to Steve. So there's all kinds of drama
club drama going on here.
Odds that Millicent is the dead girl:
80%
The director finally shows up and calls
them to begin. Katie points out that Millicent isn't there and he's
furious. He says that death is the only excuse he'll accept for her
missing rehearsal so now I'm pretty sure the odds are 100% that she's
dead. Katie fills in for Millicent and does a good job. At break,
Nicole, who is suddenly there for some reason, asks Katie to call
Millicent's house to check on her because she has a “feeling”.
Katie doesn't want to at first because she and Millicent aren't
exactly friends but she finally bends to peer pressure. Millicent's
parents had no idea their daughter wasn't at practice and don't know
where she could be.
The truck of a car perhaps???
We hop back into the head of The
Murderer. It's 2am and he's driving the body out to the landfill.
He leaves it under a bush at the edge of the property and then puts
the blanket back in his truck. He takes one last picture of her
before he leaves, concluding that “dead girls are ugly”. As he
drives home, he smugly thinks about how easy it was to dispose of her
body. He tells us he'd left her car in the parking lot of the mall
so no one would suspect that her death had occurred at the school.
He figures a vagrant will be blamed and no one will ever connect him
with the death. Except Laurie. But he can get rid of her easily
enough.
We skip to the next day......I
think.....and the discovery of Millicent's body at the dump is the
main topic of conversation. Everyone assumes she ran to the mall
before play rehearsal and was kidnapped from there. Her ex-boyfriend
Wayne was pulled out of class for questioning and he's already
everyone's favorite suspect. We know at least three boys' names by
now so let's just slap some odds up here.
Odds that Wayne is The Murderer: 30%
Odds that Rage is The Murderer: 30%
Odds that Steve is The Murderer: 40%
Steve is my favorite. Don't ask me
why. Just a hunch.
At lunch, Katie and Nicole discuss the
murder. You know, considering her name is on the back of the book
and I assumed she was our protagonist, Laurie hasn't really factored
in much so far. Anyway, apparently Wayne had an alibi so he probably
didn't do it. As they're talking about how Steve doesn't seem very
upset about Millicent being dead (Nicole sagely chalks it up to “boys
are different”), a janitor comes by, creepily smiles at Nicole and
greets her by name and then walks off.
A new suspect has emerged, y'all. He
can take over Wayne's 30%.
Steve rocks up and Nicole is
immediately on edge. Katie realizes that Nicole doesn't like Steve
but she isn't sure why. She thinks it's because Steve doesn't buy
into Nicole's psychic-ness. Me either, buddy. I mean, she was a
couple feet away from The Murderer AND Millicent's dead body and she
didn't even sense it. Katie tries to get Nicole to use her powers to
deduce the murderer and surprise, surprise, all Nicole gets is a
feeling of dread and some whispering voices in her head. Sounds like
bad chili to me.
We spend a pretty pointless chapter
where Katie tells us how scared she is and how none of the parents
want their kids to be out alone after dark until The Murderer is
caught and then we finally take our first hop into Laurie's head.
She's getting ready for an early morning jog. She tells us she jogs
the exact same route every single day so she can compare times and
see improvement but honestly that's just a good way to get killed.
If you do something the exact same way every single day and someone
is watching you, they know where to lay in wait and pounce. When I
was in college, stalking had just become a very hot topic and we had
someone come to the dorms and talk to us about varying our route to
class each day so no one would be able to predict our movements and
wait for us ahead on the path. I feel like Laurie could have used
this information.
As Laurie runs, she thinks about
Millicent and that scrap of fabric she saw hanging outside the trunk
of a car the other day. She's sure it was part of a skirt because
she had looked at a similar skirt in the mall a week or so ago. She
isn't sure if it's connected to Millicent because she doesn't know if
Millicent is the wispy skirt type. She decides to ask Katie in
Algebra because Katie knew Millicent from drama. And I guess that
makes her an expert on Millicent's wardrobe or something. She's
about to cross a street when she recognizes someone and pauses to say
hello even though she hates being interrupted while she jogs. She
doesn't want to be rude. In this case, she should have been rude
because the interrupter turns out to be The Murderer and this is the
one and only time we'll be in Laurie's head. She's not our
protagonist at all because she's victim #2.
Odds that the back of the book just made things up: 100%
As The Murderer is driving Laurie's
corpse to be disposed of, he laments that he can't get a picture of
the flash of fear they all have in their eyes when they know they are
going to die. All he can get is a picture of their dead body and
they are all ugly dead. He thinks about Katie and how much he would
like to see her afraid and panicked. But he has a “masterpiece”
planned. He intends to blow up the auditorium on opening night of
the play. Still, he reassures himself that Katie will be the first
one to die.
So is that why he killed Millicent?
Because Katie was her understudy and he wanted Katie playing the lead
on opening night so he could kill her? Sucks for Millicent. If only
she'd been the understudy instead, she'd probably still be alive.
We hop back into Katie's head, having
only been with Laurie for a page and a half or so. They've just
started Macbeth and most of the class had been hoping to get their
hands on the Cliffs Notes but the other English class started it a
week earlier and snatched up all the copies. When they walk into
class the next day, there's a doll on the teacher's desk with a copy
of the Cliffs Notes on top of its body. There's a knife stabbing
through the booklet into the doll. They assume it's their teacher's
way of saying not to use the Cliffs Notes but it's a really fucked up
way to accomplish this.
Suddenly it's the next day and Katie
and Nicole are on the bus headed to school. Katie is really all bent
up about The Murderer and poor Millicent but Nicole has much more
mundane issues to think about. She's pretty sure her boyfriend Bryan
is cheating on her and about to dump her. Apparently he hasn't
called her all week. Katie reminds her that Bryan said he'd be busy
all week but Nicole isn't pacified by this. She reasons that it
doesn't take much time for a quick call and it must mean he isn't
thinking about her at all.
As Nicole talks about how Bryan
normally goes on and on about how annoying his family is, Katie
realizes that Steve never talks about his family at all. He never
talks about his life before they moved to this town either. She
knows nothing about his old school or old friends. She finds it a
little troubling but decides not to dwell on it. Steve is looking
hella suspicious now, y'all. Which probably means he didn't do it.
Sigh.
They get to school and find out that
Laurie's body was discovered on the golf course. That's the genius
place that The Murderer left her? Everyone is understandably upset
but classes go on as usual. Sometime during the day, Nicole grabs
Katie by the arm and frantically says that Katie is in danger. She's
had a “feeling”. She also tells Katie that she thinks
Steve is dangerous. This makes Katie disregard the warning because
she thinks Nicole just doesn't like Steve and she's trying to get
between him and Katie.
Some of the warning must have wiggled
it's way into Katie's brain, though, because when Steve sits beside
her at lunch she's a little nervous. She doesn't think he's
appropriately upset about the death of the two girls. In fact, he
seems ghoulishly interested in the details about the crime and that
freaks her out. He says he's just interested in things like that and
it's honestly not too bizarre. It's also not too bizarre for him to
not be broken up about the deaths of two people he barely knew. But
we're supposed to find this behavior VERY ALARMING so........oh noes!
I'm alarmed.
As Katie walks to class, she feels like
someone is following her and lo and behold it's the super creepy
janitor. If we knew his name, I've forgotten it. He greets Katie by
name and it freaks her out. She asks how he knew it and he says he
makes a point to learn the pretty girls' names. Well, that's just
fucking creepy. It gets worse when he tells her that he thinks he
knows where she lives. That's a super yikes right there.
Odds that Steve is the bad guy: 40%
Odds that Rage is the bad guy:20%
Odds that Creepy MacCreeperson Janitor
is the bad guy: 40%
The play director refuses to cancel
practice, citing that the show must go on. He does have to move it
to directly after school, though, because none of the parents will
allow their kids to attend night practices anymore. Mike
(generic drama kid) tells everyone that the track team canceled
practice and Steve comments that Creepy MacCreeperson Janitor must be
upset about it because he spends all this time out there watching the
girls run. This is super gross and I hope there are some consequences
at some point if he's not the bad guy because this guy is NOT OKAY.
Nicole defends him which feels super weird to me. I don't like the
way she mentioned how shiny the faucets in the girls' shower room are
because of him. It feels.......icky.
As Katie and Steve are leaving
practice, he goes into some weird super-villain monologue about how
justice is a higher form of law or something. I don't know. It came
off as a little over the top so now he's not feeling as suspicious as
he once was. Too obvious now. Unless we're being faked......
Anyway, they decide to go get a “big cookie” from a rival fast
food restaurant (his dad works for a major one in town) because
Steve's all rebellious against daddy like that. Katie reminds him
that she can't be out late and then gets surprised and suspicious
when he starts driving faster than normal. This one isn't the
brightest crayon in the box.
At Burger Heaven, Steve laments the
fact that they don't know anyone on the police force so they can't
get “closer to the investigation”. He just knows the newspapers
are holding back facts and he's keen to solve these murders himself.
The more into it he gets, the more afraid of him Katie gets.
Apparently she's never heard of the least likely suspect theory in
books like these. She should read more.
The next day a psychologist comes to
the school to talk to anyone who needs it. Katie signs up for some
kind a group session which Rage also attends. Absolutely nothing is
learned from this entire chapter until the very last page. The
psychologist was extremely unhelpful and just said a bunch of generic
things about grief and depression. As Katie and Rage are walking
out, she tries to ask him about Steve's past. Steve and Rage knew
each other when they were little kids or something. Somehow. Rage gets super
uncomfortable, doesn't answer a damn thing and practically runs away
from her.
Days pass and Katie grows increasingly
uneasy about being anywhere alone. It doesn't help that Nicole
continue to batter her with warnings about her premonitions of Katie
being in danger. She's jumpy and grumpy and suspicious of everyone.
One evening she goes out to help her mother get groceries out of the
car and she finds a baby doll hanging by a noose from the rafters of
the garage. It's the same doll her english teacher/play director
used to make his point about Cliffs Notes. The teacher claims he
threw the doll into a trash dumpster at the school the day he used it
but Katie isn't sure she believes him. How she knew it was the exact
same doll is beyond me. I mean, you've all seen baby dolls – the
all look remarkably similar to each other. Unless it still had the
knife and the Cliffs Notes sticking out of it, it would be hard to
prove it was the exact same one but whatevs, Harrell. Katie's dad thinks it
was probably just a stupid prank but he decides to take it to the
police anyway just to be safe. Clearly he doesn't give a damn about
preserving the evidence or anything. His fingerprints are all over
that thing now. He should have called the police and had them take
down the doll instead.
The next day at school, Katie hears
that play practice is canceled because of an emergency staff meeting.
She's dismayed because that means she'll be home alone until her
parents get home from work. She seeks out Nicole but Nicole is going to
the movies with Bryan who was merely writing a very important history
term paper and not cheating on her after all. She tries Steve next
but he just tells her he can't. She presses but he gets upset with
her and refuses to tell her what his mystery plans are.
An entire chapter passes by and all we
learn is that Creepy MacCreeperson Janitor's name is actually Hugo
and that he spent some time as a homeless addict before turning his
life around. We also learn that Rage is a little jealous of
golden-boy Steve and he thinks Katie is pretty but that's about all.
It was kind of a waste of time.
In the next chapter, a girl named Tracy
who works as an office assistant during her study hall or something,
shows Katie Hugo C-Mac-J's closet. It looks like every other
janitor's closet only this one seems to have a cot in it like Hugo
C-Mac-J is living there in the school. Tracy says the secretary
asked her to get a mop for a spill but Tracy couldn't find Hugo
C-Mac-J so she just went to his closet to get the mop herself. When
she saw the cot, she got really spooked. She wants Katie to report
it to the principal because she doesn't want to get on Hugo C-Mac-J's
bad side. Katie isn't sure the presence of a cot really means
anything though, and she refuses to go to the principal about it.
Tracy is pretty convinced that Hugo C-Mac-J is the bad guy and she
tries to convince Katie but Katie – who has suspected Hugo C-Mac-J
this entire time – is now oddly convinced he's just a misunderstood
man.
I'm getting whiplash from this girl.
Tracy asks Katie for a ride to the mall
and all of a sudden we jump into Tracy's head which DOES NOT BODE
WELL AT ALL. We did a random jump into Laurie's head once and you
all know how that turned out. Tracy is going through the mall
constantly looking over her shoulder. She's worried that Hugo
C-Mac-J might have followed her to the mall. Because......reasons.
Tracy is mostly just killing time, not wanting to go home alone so
she wanders in and out of shops. She thinks about getting ice cream
but then catches sight of her reflection in a store window and
decides she needs frozen yogurt instead. The Fro-Yo place is across
the parking lot from the mall and as she crosses it, a car comes out
of nowhere and runs her down.
We hop back into Katie's head and she's
at Flakey's which is the fast food restaurant that Steve's dad owns
or manages or whatever. She's been hanging out there because Steve
is very anti-Flakey's and she knows he won't be there. Bryan and
Nicole come in bursting with news about Tracy's hit and run. No one
knows if she's dead or alive at this point. Katie mentions that she
just dropped Tracy off at the mall and that Tracy was very afraid of
Hugo C-Mac-J. Nicole is instantly pissed off and heatedly defends
Hugo C-Mac-J yet again. Is he her secret brother or secret lover or
what? Nicole says she's getting a migraine and wants to go home to
bed so Bryan takes her.
Katie tries to do her homework but she
can't concentrate. Eventually Rage shows up. Apparently he
eats supper there a lot. Katie pushes and pushes him about Steve's
family until Rage finally breaks. He says that the guy who owns
Flakey's is actually Steve's stepfather. Steve's actual father is in
jail for murdering his wife (not Steve's mom). He makes some weird
comment about maybe it not being his father who actually killed the
woman and then gets all panicky about Steve finding out Rage spilled
some secrets. He take off pretty quickly, leaving Katie alone and
stunned.
Odds Steve is The Murderer (even though
he's super fucking obvious): 40%
Odds that Hugo C-Mac-J is The Murderer
(even though he's super fucking obvious): 40%
Odds that Rage is The Murderer: 20%
If it's either Steve or Hugo C-Mac-J,
we're practically in an effing Justin situation here since Harrell is
making them both super obvious suspects. I'm hoping it's someone
else. I really am.
The rest of the chapter is just Katie
eating dinner with her parents and fretting about Steve maybe being a
Justin. Me too, Katie. Me too. The only noteworthy thing is that
her parents don't plan to go to the play on opening night.
Apparently it makes Katie nervous to have them there and she's
already nervous because she doesn't really know the part that well.
Some understudy she turned out to be.
Saturday morning, Katie gets up early
to go to the library. This was pre-Google days – as hard as that
might be for some of you to imagine – so she has to actually go use
the microfiche machines. It's tedious but she finally finds the
article about the murder. The woman was strangled and pretty much
the only suspect was her husband because they had a very tumultuous
relationship. I get the feeling that maybe the cops had been called
out before because of their arguments so it was well known that they
were having issues. Steve's dad swore that she was strangled while he
was out for a walk but no one believed him.
Nicole comes in as Katie is finishing
up. She's hoping that the library has the Cliff's Notes for Macbeth.
When she sees Katie there, she asks what's going on. Katie spills
the beans about Steve's dad and Nicole just sees that as another nail
in his coffin for her. She warns Katie not to be alone with him
because he's dangerous. When Katie doesn't seem to take that very
seriously, Nicole adds that she had a vision that a black car –
very much like Steve's – was the one to run Tracy down. I'm super
calling bullshit on this vision, beeteedubs.
Oh, and Tracy is alive. She's being
kept sedated because her neck is broken and she can't be allowed to
move until she's put in a brace. At the moment, she's in some big
trauma center in another city.
Saturday night, ignoring all of
Nicole's pseudo-psychic warnings, Katie goes on a date with Steve.
He's completely tone deaf so he suggests going to the mall to eat
dinner and then see a movie. She doesn't want to go to the mall at
all and she wants to be able to actually talk to him so she suggests
pizza instead. When they get there, she starts to ask him questions
about his family. He tries to shut it down, saying his life is
really stressful right now and he doesn't want to talk about it.
When she presses, he angrily tells her to stop nagging him. His
reactions remind me of the textbook abuser reactions and she should
actually take them as the red flag they're intended to be.
Finally he breaks down and tells her
about his dad. He maintains that his dad is innocent, though. He
admits that his dad hit his stepmom and, in fact, she even had a
broken jaw once which Steve says happened when she slipped in the
kitchen (don't they all) but he insists that there's a big difference
between repeatedly punching someone and killing them. Is there? Is there
though? I mean, one often leads to another in these cases. He
pounds the table a few times during his recounting and it actually
starts to scare Katie. She describes it as “violent”
which could just be her projecting considering the topic of
conversation but could also be a red flag. Interpret it as you may.
The pounding actually bothers me WAY less than him excusing his
father for hitting his stepmother because that's just what happens
when people argue with each other. That part bothers me a heckin lot
and it should bother Katie too.
Anyway, distorted views of argument
etiquette aside, Steve says that's why he was so interested in the
current murders. His stepmother was also strangled and he thinks
there might be a connection. I mean, it's possible. I'll give him
that. But his father should definitely be in jail. Even if he
didn't kill his wife, he definitely abused her and that's enough.
On Sunday, Katie tells Nicole
everything she learned. Nicole's theory is that Steve actually
killed his stepmother and his father took the blame for him. She
thinks Steve is killing again because he realized how much he liked
it. Katie is pretty upset with this theory. She tells Nicole that
she's being ridiculous but Nicole advises her to stay far away from
Steve until the murders are solved.
We take a major hop to Wednesday now.
The play kids are being forced to clean the auditorium because Hugo
C-Mac-J has suddenly quit. Katie is super curious why but no one
seems to know, They're all too busy talking about Tracy to care
much. She's regained consciousness and will soon be back at school
with a halo brace. She doesn't remember anything about the accident,
though, which is pretty common with head injuries as severe as hers.
We take another time jump. I think
it's either dress rehearsal night or opening night of the play.
Harrell doesn't do a good job of telling us. Katie is early to the
school. Hers is the only car in the parking lot. She sees Rage
walking towards her and asks him where he parked. He says he parked
out back because he wanted to be able to get out of the parking lot
easier later. It sounds like something I would have done once upon a
time. He asks Katie to come with him around back because he has
something to show her and, for some reason, she assumes it's Hugo
C-Mac-J's closet again. She goes with him and then the section ends
with her feeling hands go around her throat.
I don't know if this is a
gasp-LOLZ-Stine moment or if Rage is really our bad guy. I'm hoping
Rage is really our bad guy because he's not completely a Justin.
We get a few brief chapters of Steve
wondering where Katie is because she hasn't shown up. He doesn't
seem to notice her car in the parking lot so I don't know if Harrell
fucked up or if Rage moved the car. Even odds.
We're back with Katie. She's being
transported to another location and I'm not going to go into details
out of respect for the triggers of my audience. I've got you.
You're safe here. She digs her nails into her palms to make them
bleed and then tries to touch stuff along the way to leave evidence
behind. It's pretty smart actually and I give her credit for
thinking of it. She's taken to the janitor's closet and dumped on
the floor.
Rage goes into his bad guy monologue.
He tells her about how he killed Steve's stepmom on impulse when he
was 11 and how he wishes he could have seen the fear in her eyes before she
died. He keeps asking Katie if she's scared of him because he gets
off on it. He's apparently always been jealous of Steve and wanted
what Steve had so his plan is to kill Katie and frame Steve for it.
I guess. Harrell is actually doing a very poor job of making us
understand Rage's motivation here beyond “oh, I guess he's crazy
then”. The thing with Steve is weak and the way Rage talks about
it is even weaker. It's like an afterthought. Like Harrell suddenly
realized Rage needed a reason to be doing all these things and just
threw something at the wall.
Rage tells Katie that he plans to blow
up the auditorium so that he'll be famous. Except no one will know
it was him so he won't really be famous. Sigh.
We hop into Steve's head. He's frantic
because Katie still isn't there. He searches everywhere he can think
of and asks everyone he comes across if they've seen her. Nicole
says she “senses her presence” nearby but he just thinks she's
being dramatic and stupid. He calls her parents who decide to call
the police. Meanwhile, the jerk of a director is just screaming that
if Steve doesn't get on stage he'll never act in that school again.
Steve basically tells him to fuck right off because Katie is way more
important than acting.
Back with Katie now. She hears ticking
and thinks it's probably the bomb. That's about it for this section.
Now we're in Nicole's head. Literally
she's tying her shoes for about three paragraphs and telling us that
she can feel Katie's terror. I know the author is trying to create
tension here with all these “cuts” but it's really just annoying
and desperate.
Back with Katie. The door to the
closet opens and it's Hugo C-Mac-J. He's surprised to see her there
but before he can do anything about it, Rage knocks him out. Rage
goes on and on about how impressive his bomb is and how everyone will
realize how important he is. Except they won't know it's him.
Especially since he plans to pin it on someone else. Sigh. The
logic is not strong here, y'all. He tells Katie that Hugo C-Mac-J
might make a better patsy than Steve.
Back with Steve. No one is helping him
look for Katie. He runs into Rage and explains what's going on.
Rage tells him to go look by the gym and Rage will look around the
auditorium. Steve obeys. As he's doing it, though, he suddenly
realizes how weird it is for Rage to take the lead in any situation.
He's usually a follower. So Steve heads back toward the auditorium.
Steve goes around the buildings
screaming Katie's name. Eventually he hears some kind of thumping
sound and Hugo C-Mac-J's voice calls out that they're trapped in the
closet. The closet is locked from the inside with a deadbolt and no
one but Hugo C-Mac-J has the key. He tells Steve that he dropped it
when Rage hit him and Steve frantically searches all around the door.
He finally finds it and unlocks the closet.
Katie explains about the bomb and the
three of them leave to warn everyone else. Katie and Hugo C-Mac-J
aren't moving very quickly. Steve finally leaves them in the
parking lot where there are a lot of people still milling about and
he runs into the auditorium.
The play is going on....somehow. I
guess Steve had an understudy but who did they use for Katie? She
WAS the understudy. Anyway, Steve stands in the aisles and tells
everyone to leave because there's a bomb. At first, no one listens
to him. Then a few rows of people start to evacuate. He rushes up
on the stage so he can get the attention of more people. He tells
the director that there's a bomb and the director reluctantly stops
the play and helps evacuate the theater.
Outside, the police are just arriving. I completely forgot that Katie's parents called them after he called to tell them she was missing. They go inside to make sure everyone is out.
We switch to Rage. He's sitting in his
car some distance away looking at all the pictures he's taken of dead
girls. His picture of Millicent is missing and he's afraid he might
have dropped it in the janitor's closet. He can't live without it,
so he goes running back. He's confused when he turns the key in the
lock and the door locks instead of unlocks. He thinks he might have
just turned it the wrong way or something so he turns it again and
the door opens. He's stunned to find it empty but the picture he's
looking for is there. He grabs it up and then the bomb goes off.
We skip ahead a week. Rage is dead and
Steve's father will probably be released from jail. Hopefully he's
learned a lesson about hitting people. The cast is all gathering in
the cafeteria for the cast party even though they never really did
the play. Tracy is there in her halo brace and it turns out she
wasn't a victim of Rage after all. Some 13-year-old joyriding in the
parking lot hit her and then was too terrified to stop. They all
stand around and talk about how Rage flew under the radar and they're
just glad it's all over. And then the book ends. It feels abrupt
but honestly the endings of these books usually do.
I kind of liked this one. It was
pretty well written and the characters weren't super annoying. I
feel like we only had three real suspects the entire time but since
the bad guy was the least obvious of the three, I guess I'll give
that a pass. It would have been nice to have some motivation other
than “crazy” though. I mean Harrell tried to throw something in
there about jealously but it never really landed. It's pure laziness
really. There are a lot of things that motivate people to kill other
people and I wish more authors would use one of those rather than
relying on “crazy” instead.
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