The Girl in the Wall Read Free

the west side of the room. The right side has the oversized fireplace, the one that’s not yet lit. Paintings hang along that wall, one is even an actual Van Gogh, but right now they are just black squares melting into the scenery. The focus is all on Hudson as he strums his guitar lightly and pauses to tune one of the strings.
    By now everyone has a seat and I feel safe sitting. Pariahs need to choose seats with care, something I learned the hard way when I went to the end-of-sophomore-year picnic (my mom acted like she might suffer a spontaneous brain aneurysm if I skipped). That night when we were watching the class movie and people were sneaking off to get beer from a keg AJ Green hid in the woods that morning, I was sitting toward the back when a cup of beer got dumped over my head. Sneaking home with beer-soaked clothes and dripping hair was no easy feat and not something I’d like to repeat.
    “Hey, I’m Hunter Winters,” Hudson says.
    I laugh but no one else does. Hudson glances back at me, as do most of my classmates, and I am mortified that I didn’t just nod coolly at the joke. I stare down at my hands, my cheeks hot.
    “I’m going to start with—” Hudson continues.
    Mr. Barett coughs loudly and Hudson stops.
    “Right, yeah, happy birthday Ariel,” he says, his voice flat. “Sorry I don’t do birthday songs.” As he launches into his break-out song, “Wanting You,” I notice Ariel and Bianca switching seats, their identical blond hair shimmering in the dim light as they resettle. And then I forget Ariel and her followers, that I’m stuck in this terrible place for the entire weekend, and I just sink into the music.
    But just as Hudson begins the chorus, the room goes pitch black, the shades falling silently over the windows as the lights are switched off.
    Hudson’s voice and guitar trail off into an eerie quiet. A girl giggles and for a moment I think it must be some kind of weird joke. It is dark for about thirty seconds and then I hear a sharp popping sound and the lights flare back on.
    I see the body first, a crumpled form by the front of the stage, a growing pool of blood coming from underneath it. It’s Hudson’s bodyguard. In that moment Hudson leaps off the stool and goes to him.
    “Everyone on the floor, now,” someone barks.
    The room is chaos as people dive off their chairs to lie flat on the floor.
    I stretch out on my belly, my heart thumping violently in the compressed space between my chest and the floor. I lift my head the tiniest bit to look around, trying to make sense of this thing that makes no sense. The room is filled with the men I thought were Hudson’s security team, the ones wearing cargo pants and T-shirts, the ones who now have stocking caps pulled low over their faces. The ones who are carrying guns.
    Two of them stride over to where Mr. Barett and Ariel lie prone and pull them up. They expertly fold Mr. Barett and Ariel’s arms behind their backs with one hand while holding guns to their temples with the other. I can’t see their faces, just Ariel’s long hair swishing as she is jerked toward the door of the living room.
    For a moment everyone else is frozen, but then Ella Kim screams and the person holding Mr. Barett flinches. In that millisecond Mr. Barett shakes free and grabs for the gun. I see his fingers wrap around the barrel just as more shots ring out. I instinctively scrunch down squeezing my eyes shut. I expect to hear more screaming but now silence pulsates like a living thing.
    I don’t want to see what has happened, but not knowing is even worse so I slowly raise my head. My classmates are where they were, still plastered to the floor. For a moment I think everything is okay, or at least the same, but then I look toward the front of the room.
    Two more people are lying on the floor, both at odd angles. Each has blood running from a head wound, so fast and thick it’s like a faucet has been turned on. My breath is stuck in my chest and for a