Free Last to Die by Tess Gerritsen Page A

were still raw, still painful, because it was all her fault. If she hadn’t sneaked out of the house that night, if Bob and Barbara hadn’t been forced to go searching for her, they might still be alive.
    Now they’re dead. And I’m eating a lemon tart
.
    She set down her fork and stared past the other students, who mostly ignored her, just as she ignored them. Once again she focused on the table where Julian sat with Dr. Isles. The lady who sliced dead people. Usually Claire avoided looking at adults, because they made her uneasy and they asked too many questions. Especially Dr. Anna Welliver the school shrink, with whom Claire spent every Wednesday afternoon. Dr. Welliver was nice enough, a big and frizzy-haired grandma type, but she always asked the same questions. Did Claire still have trouble sleeping? What did she remember about her parents? Were the nightmares any better? As if talking about it, thinking about it, would make the nightmares go away.
    And all of us here have nightmares
.
    When she looked around the dining hall at her classmates, Claire saw what a casual observer would probably miss. How Lester Grimmett kept glancing at the door, to assure himself that there was an open escape route. That Arthur Toombs’s arms were rippled with ugly burn scars. That Bruno Chinn frantically shoveled food into his mouth, so that his phantom abductor wouldn’t snatch it away from him. All of us have been marked, she thought, but some of our scars are more apparent than others.
    She touched her own. It was hidden beneath her long blond hair, a ridge of scar tissue that marked the spot where the surgeons had sliced her scalp and sawed open her skull to remove blood and bullet fragments. No one else could see the damage, but she never forgot it was there.
    Lying awake later that night, Claire was still rubbing that scar, and she wondered what her brain looked like beneath it. Did brains have scars as well, like this knotted ridge of skin? One of the doctors—she didn’t remember his name, there’d been so many in that London hospital—told her that children’s brains recovered better than adults’ did, that she was lucky to be only eleven years old when she was shot.
Lucky
was the word he’d actually used, stupid doctor. He’d been mostly right about her recovery. She could walk and talk like everyone else. But her grades now sucked because she had trouble concentrating on anything for more than ten minutes, and she too quickly lost her temper in ways that scared her, ways that left her ashamed. While she didn’t
look
damaged, she knew she was. And that damage was the reason she was now lying wide awake at midnight. As usual.
    There was no point wasting her time in bed.
    She rose and turned on the light. Her three roommates had gone home for the summer, so she had the room to herself and could come and go without anyone ratting her out. In seconds she was dressed and slipping out into the hall.
    That’s when she spotted the nasty note taped to her door:
Dain Bramaged!
    It was the bitch Briana again, she thought. Briana, who whispered
retard
whenever Claire passed by, who’d laughed hysterically in class when Claire tripped over some strategically placed foot. Claire had retaliated by sneaking a handful of slimy earthworms into Briana’s bed. Oh, the shrieks had been worth it!
    Claire yanked the note off the door, went back into her room for a pen, and scrawled:
Better check your sheets
. On her way down the hall, she slapped the note on Briana’s dorm room door and kept walking, past rooms where other classmates slept. On the stairway, her shadow flitted along the wall like a twin spirit spiraling down beside her. She stepped out the front door and walked out into the moonlight.
    The night was strangely warm and the wind smelled like dry grass, as if it had blown in from a great distance, bringing with it the scent of prairies and deserts and places she would never go. She drew in a deep breath and for the