The Follower Kate Doughty (general ebook reader .txt) 📖

two of them leave the protective circle of light around the bonfire and slip into the woods, just out of sight, and then those hands are on her waist, her hips, and Jada is kissing her again and Amber is kissing her back, hard. It feels effortless, weightless. Jada’s hands move from the small of her back to her hair to her hips. Amber cups Jada’s face and pulls herself toward her as Jada’s hand grazes, ever so lightly, across her breast—

Snap.

Amber jerks away. Jada follows her gaze into the forest, confused. The woods are silent. The first thing that pops into Amber’s mind is the follower, the person behind the Alex Grable account. She shakes her head to clear it. Why is she thinking about Alex Grable? Probably because of all the kids talking about her before.

“Who’s there?” Amber calls out.

“What—” Jada starts, but Amber quiets her, listening.

And then, another sound: the unmistakable crunch of footsteps on leaves. Coming closer.

“Not cool to spy on us,” Jada calls, but no one answers. “Miles? Trent? Cut it out!”

Silence. The footsteps stop. Amber shakes herself; she’s just been drinking, she’s just paranoid, it could just be an animal, it could just be—

The firelight behind them catches the bright glint of something twenty yards ahead of her. Something silver. Something metallic. And around it . . . a shade of darkness blacker than the rest of the night. A faint, almost indistinguishable silhouette.

Someone is there. A jolt of fear spikes through Amber. She grabs Jada’s wrist and runs.

Amber sprints back toward the bonfire. They’d gone farther than she’d thought; branches snag her jeans and scrape at her exposed midriff as she darts toward the flickering firelight. When she breaks through the clearing, she runs straight to Rudy. He starts, almost spilling his soda. “Are you okay?” he asks. “What’s up? Did something happen?”

Amber nods, then shakes her head, then opens her mouth and closes it a few times before answering. Her drunk mood has pivoted on a dime, from warm and fuzzy to terrified. Rudy’s eyes comb over her, and Amber becomes all too aware of her smudged lipstick, the twigs in her hair.

“We were . . . in the woods,” Amber finally says. “And someone was watching us.”

“What?”

“Some perv,” Jada cuts in. “Well, I didn’t see him, but—”

“I swear he was there,” Amber says. “I—I saw a shadow, and I heard someone moving around. I really did, Rudy. You have to believe me.”

Cecily joins them. Most of their circle has noticed Amber’s panic by now, but the party goes on in the background, a constant stream of noise.

“Are you all right?”

“Where’s Steve?” Miles asks, scanning the crowd.

Amber looks around and confirms it: Steve is gone. Jada lets out a laugh of relief. “Oh, thank god. That makes so much more sense. I mean, better the creep we know, right?”

“I’m gonna hit him,” Bella mutters. “What a jackass.”

“Think it could have been Steve, Amber?” Cecily asks.

“I—I don’t know,” Amber admits. Slowly, her breathing returns to normal. She begins to flush, realizing too late that she’s become the center of attention. “I’m sorry, I . . .”

“Let’s just all go sit by the fire a bit,” Cecily says, concern etched all over her face. Amber allows her sister and the others to lead her and Jada back toward the logs surrounding the firepit.

Bella gestures to an empty log and Amber takes a seat. She’s happy when Jada sits down next to her.

“Hey, let’s play Never Have I Ever,” Bella says. “Here, I’ll go first: never have I ever made out with an internet celebrity in the woods.”

Everyone laughs at that, and someone starts passing around another bottle. Amber tries to cast off her fear and relax again. It was probably Steve, she reassures herself.

The kids finish the first game of Never Have I Ever and move on to another, stupider game of Truth or Dare. Amber watches her siblings drop more and more of their “social media” personalities as they get comfortable with the crowd, and when Jada slips her hand into Amber’s pocket to pull out her cell phone and exchange numbers, Amber realizes with a jolt that she must be fitting in, too.

Jada hands her the phone back, smiling shyly. “That’s if the whole nighttime stalker thing wasn’t an excuse to run away from me.”

Amber laughs and immediately texts her. “No,” she says. “Absolutely not.”

Before too long, the fire is all but embers, and even the kids with the most lenient parents start heading home to get some sleep. When the triplets finally pull back into their driveway, Amber feels buzzed and happy. The moment of intense fear she felt in the woods seems like a distant memory. Cecily stumbles out of the car, giggling. Above them, the mansion is dark. Somehow, it seems to be leaning over them. For a drunk second Amber is seized by the idea that the structure is unsteady, that it’s going to collapse, that the turret is going to rot away and fall right on the Range Rover.

Then the smallest flicker of movement catches her eye.

Amber starts. There. The turret. For a moment she swears she sees her—Alex Grable—in the window. Amber sways backward; the trees seem to bend. No, she’s drunk and the house is still. No one is standing in the window.

Next to her, Cecily grabs her arm, and Amber knows that she’s not the only one thinking about the ghost girl. Cecily sucks in a breath and shouts up at the house: “I’m not scared of you!” She punctuates the cry with a shriek of laughter. Amber joins in, cackling. She and Cecily lean into each other, drunk and laughing hysterically.

Rudy takes Cecily’s hand and begins to gently steer her toward the front door.

“All right, Cece. We’re getting you inside.”

Cecily giggles.

As Rudy guides his sisters across the lawn, Amber pulls out her phone to make sure that Jada’s number is still in it, half-convinced that she’d imagined her. She smiles. Then, out of habit, she flicks on Instagram.

“Look,” she