It was pitch black in his room so the sun must have already gone down. Yet it felt like he had just laid down for a minute. He ran his fingers through his hair and sat up on the edge of the bed. Rachel had apparently gone after Marilyn made sure he didn’t have a concussion. She thought he might have a virus, but did a throat swab and took some blood to check out back at the clinic. He was feeling a little better but had been having the strangest dreams and couldn’t seem to quite shake it even now—that he was skulking around the school searching for something. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but it felt terribly important that he find it because there was a ticking clock. He could never find the clock, but it kept ticking, always ticking, like a bomb was going to go off at the end. He had no idea what it meant. Maybe the clock was Kristy. Darrell had been skin and bones, even though he’d only been gone a week. And he’d been in the woods, not at the school. Kristy was younger, and not as tough.
