All right, it’s Friday, and you know what that means, right? Yup. It’s time for the next (and final) chapters of You’re Next!
These are the final chapters of the story. So instead of giving you a description of what happens, we’ll just say that everything comes to a head, and you just have to read it to find out who has been abducting the girls all this time!
Haven’t read the beginning parts yet? Well, follow these links and get yourself caught up!
Otherwise… Enjoy the ending of the story! Chapters 14 through 17!
CHAPTER 14
Emily’s heart was racing so fast, she thought she was going to be sick. Mr. Dubium had Jordan’s hairclip. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to picture Jordan’s hairclip in her mind again.
Why hadn’t she paid more attention at the time?
Jordan was spoiled. Her mom was always buying her pretty, vintage stuff, and Emily barely glanced at it before dismissing it as another fake accessory that may or may not have been worn by a movie star or a member of the British royal family. But this had been different—it came with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe wearing the exact same piece in her hair.
She opened her eyes again, her breathing shallow and her cheeks on fire.
Maybe she’d imagined it. Why would Mr. Dubium have Jordan’s hairclip? The answer to this was obvious, but it wasn’t something she could allow herself to dwell on, so she told herself it must belong to his girlfriend.
That was it! It only looked like Jordan’s clip because Emily’s life had been taken over by searching for clues to her friend’s whereabouts. It was a coincidence.
She forced herself to take deep breaths, filling her lungs with the smell of books, until her heartrate slowed a little. Imagine if she went running to the police, accusing her Literature teacher of kidnapping five schoolgirls, when his girlfriend was probably at home searching her dresser and yesterday’s clothes for something to pin her hair back with. She’d never be able to face him again.
No, worse. She’d have to quit school altogether because the embarrassment would have been too excruciating.
Picking up her schoolbag, Emily rose. She’d been so certain though.
But now she thought about it, why would his girlfriend’s hairclip be attached to his back pocket in the first place?
What if he had taken the girls, and Jordan had somehow managed to put it there in the hope that someone would see it? It was her plea for help. It was the only signal she could possibly get out.
It was a pretty weak signal though. First, she’s need to know that someone would see the clip, and that person would need to recognize it as hers. The chances of all that happening were too great.
And yet…
She couldn’t do this. There was no way she could sit through History, not with 1,000 thoughts racing around her head. She needed to get away from school, put some distance between her and the building and hope that she’d be able to think about it logically.
Ms. Reed, the librarian, came in as Emily was leaving; she raised her wrist and tapped her watch when she saw Emily.
“Sorry …” Emily said, already backing through the doorway. “I know I’m late.” She could barely hear her own voice over the sound of the blood gushing in her ears, and she stepped out into the hallway, almost colliding with Derek.
“Whoa, is there a fire?” Derek said jokingly.
Emily’s stomach twisted when she saw it was him. Mr. Dubium said Derek had been following her around school, another thing she couldn’t think about while she was here. Head down, she went to walk past him, but Derek reached for her arm, to stop her. “Don’t touch me!” she snapped.
Derek recoiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything.” Concern showed in his pale eyes as his head bobbed lower so that their faces were level. “Are you okay, Emily? Has anything happened?”
Emily stopped. Why would he think something had happened? Her head pounded with the tangle of thoughts she couldn’t seem to unravel.
“I saw Mr. Dubium follow you into the library,” Derek said. “I wanted to come in but—”
“You saw him?” Hadn’t Mr. Dubium said that he followed Derek to the art studio?
“I got your note. I was coming to meet you, but I saw him follow you from the cafeteria, and … I didn’t want to …” He studied the toes of his sneakers. “I should’ve come in.I’m sorry. What happened? What did he say to you?”
Emily chewed her bottom lip as the library door opened again and Ms. Reed peered at them both. “We’re going now,” Emily said too brightly. She waited for the door to close before saying, “We need to talk. Outside.”
They didn’t speak until they were outside sitting under the bleachers, their coats zipped up to their necks.
“He said that you’ve been following me,” Emily said finally. “He wants to go to the police. He thinks … he thinks that you’re involved somehow with the missing girls.” Despite the cold air stinging her face, Emily felt the heat rising in her cheeks—she was embarrassed because she’d also believed Derek was connected to what was going on.
Derek nodded. “I figured as much. You didn’t give me a chance to explain in the art studio, but before I arrived and found my project trashed, I saw him leaving the room. Dubium. I already had my suspicions and that confirmed it for me—he wanted me out of the way so that he could get to you.”
“You think he … the butterflies? You think he killed them and glued them to your painting?”
“I wasn’t a hundred percent certain, and I knew you kinda liked him—everyone does—so I didn’t want to say anything until I had proof, but my art project, the paint. It was too convenient that red paint was used in your locker and on my painting, and he just happened to be hanging around both times.”
Emily thought back to the warning.
YOU’RE NEXT.
She’d seen Derek near the lockers and automatically jumped to the wrong conclusion, but she’d almost collided with Mr. Dubium on her way to the principal’s office. Was it just coincidence? Or was she trying to convince herself that she was wrong because he was everyone’s favorite teacher?
“I think it’s him.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper as she told Derek about the hairclip. “At first, I was certain it was Jordan’s, but then … I don’t know.”
“Emily, you need to trust your gut.”
“But what if we’re wrong and he has rock solid alibis? What if we tell the police and … and there is no hairclip? He’ll get rid of it as soon as he realizes it’s there.”
“We’ll find another way to prove it’s him.”
She turned to him, her teeth chattering. “How?”
Derek took her hands in his and rubbed them, trying to stop her fingers from trembling with the cold. “If we can find something that connects him to the missing girls, we can go to the police and tell them what we know.”
“Do you think they’ll believe us? You said yourself the police already questioned the teachers.”
“If we have evidence, they’ll have to speak to him again. Even if he has alibis, he’ll know that they’re watching him.” Derek shrugged. “It might be enough to stop him.”
Emily nodded. It had to be enough; she didn’t want to be his next victim. She stared out across the playing-field at the sky, dirty-white and heavy with snow. It was impossible to imagine Mr. Dubium abducting her friends. He’d always seemed so friendly, so approachable, and easy to chat to; did he use that charm to his advantage? Did the girls not fight back until it was too late because they knew him?
She shuddered.
“Do you want to go back inside?” Derek asked.
“No.” She glanced at the school building. “I can’t go in there. Not right now.” She took a deep breath. “Where do we start? What are we even looking for?”
“Do you have your notes with you?” Derek’s face was almost blue, the tip of his nose pink. He must’ve been freezing—his coat was nowhere near as padded as Emily’s, and she was shivering.
She nodded, reaching into her schoolbag for her notepad. Emily opened it up at the list of missing girls and stared at the red lines she’d drawn connecting them all to people and places. When she’d done this in the safety of her bedroom at home, she’d almost felt like a character from a YA novel, one who was playing at being detective because, hey, it’s a book, and the protagonist will get her happy ending.
Looking at her own name now written neatly in blue ink, it felt as though her time was limited. When was the antagonist going to strike next? Mr. Dubium… when was Mr. Dubium planning on abducting her?
“Does Mr. Dubium teach the missing girls?” Derek asked, his voice trembling with the cold.
“I think so,” Emily said. “But he teaches lots of girls, so why them? Why me?”
“There must be another connection. Can you think of anything else that you all have in common?”
Emily studied the page, her brain seemingly unable to function. “Not really,” she said eventually. “The only place we all hang out occasionally is the club. We don’t do the same after-school activities. Jordan is the only one I’m really close to, although I know the others.” She peered into Derek’s eyes. “What are we missing?”
“And you’ve never seen him outside of school?”
“No.” She frowned, thinking about all the places she and Jordan used to go: the cinema, the park (in warmer weather), the diner. “I’d remember seeing him because we’d have stopped to chat to him. He’s not like Scary Merry; I know Jordan would cross the road to avoid Merry since he gave her a D in Chemistry, but not Mr. Dubium.”
Derek blinked at her, his eyes watering with the chill in the air. “Jordan likes Dubium?”
“Uh-huh. Everyone likes him.” When Derek didn’t elaborate, she pressed him, “What is it? What are you thinking?”
“I might be on the wrong track,” he said, “but I overhead Jordan arguing with Kyle before she went missing. He was accusing her of cheating on him, said she was talking nonstop about some other guy.”
“And?”
“And Jordan said he was being ridiculous because the other guy was a teacher.”
Emily’s stomach somersaulted. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t think it was relevant until now. What if …” he paused, “… what if all the girls had, like, a serious crush on him? It would’ve made it easy for him to abduct them because they would’ve all trusted him.”
It made sense. Now that Derek had said the words out loud, she recalled the way the other girls had all followed Mr. Dubium with their eyes whenever he walked past. Bella even joked about marrying him when she was older.
“There’s only one problem with that theory though,” she said. “I don’t have a crush on him.”
Derek shook his head. “He’s getting cocky. Taking the other girls was probably too easy for him and he sees you as a challenge. Think about it, the first one he was probably running on adrenaline and fear of getting caught. Then when nothing happened, he took a second girl. By the time he got to girl number five—”
“Jordan.”
“Jordan, sorry. He already knew he was getting away with it, so he raised the bar. Set himself a more difficult target.”
“Me,” Emily whispered.
CHAPTER 15
“What do we do now?” Emily never thought she’d be looking to Derek Graham for answers, but she couldn’t think this through logically. She was too involved. All she could see was Mr. Dubium’s hands closing around her throat if she tried to question him about Jordan’s hairclip.
Derek hesitated before speaking. “We could go straight to the police …”
“But …?”
“But … he has obviously covered his tracks well, and it’ll be a case of our word against his. He’ll play the paranoid, hormonal teenager card against you, and the desirable teacher card for himself.” Derek shook his head. “If we have concrete evidence, they’ll have to take us seriously.”
“How do we get that? Find Jordan’s hairclip and steal it back?”
Derek gave her a half-smile. “That’s not such a bad idea. Her family will confirm that it’s hers.”
Emily checked the time on her phone. “We have the self-defense class tonight. If it’s still in his back pocket, one of us could try to take it without him knowing.”
“Maybe it would be better if we confronted him about it, let him know that we’re on to him, see how he reacts.”
“He’ll deny it,” Emily said.
“Sure, but it’ll ring alarm bells in his head, because he’ll know that we know it’s him.”
It was too much to process, but Emily had a nagging feeling inside her head that this wasn’t going to be as simple as Derek expected it to be. And then it clicked. “You said he sees me as a challenge. If you’re right, then confronting him won’t change anything; he’ll only see it as another test of his abilities.”
Derek rested his chin in his hands. It was so long before he spoke that Emily was starting to think he’d changed his mind about the whole thing. Then he said, “We should try to corner him into a confession.”
“What … like ask him if he abducted the girls and wait for him to raise a hand and apologize? That’s too dangerous. I’m next, remember?”
She couldn’t help the anger rising inside her chest. Suddenly, she felt constricted by her coat, and Derek’s proximity. Crawling out of the bleachers, she stood and unlocked her phone, typing a message to Chloe. Safety in numbers. She knew that she was the key to stopping the teacher, but she also needed to psych herself up before she agreed to do something that might put her life in danger.
Derek followed her out. “Where are you going?”
“We should speak to Chloe. We can’t do this alone.”
**********
Chloe met them in the library when the last bell rang.
Emily explained what they knew so far about Mr. Dubium and the conclusion they’d reached that all the missing girls had a secret crush on the teacher, adding that he’d targeted Emily next as a way of controlling the situation.
Chloe’s gaze flitted between the two of them. “I’m calling the police,” she said.
“Wait.” Emily stopped her from unlocking her phone and dialing nine-one-one immediately. “We’ve thought of that, but what evidence do we have? We don’t even know if the hairclip really is Jordan’s.”
“I’ll go get it from him now.” Chloe stood, her chair scraping backwards.
“And then what?” Derek asked. “Tell him you’re giving it to the police as proof that he abducted five girls and threatened another?”
Chloe sat back down, the color draining from her cheeks. “The man Jordan spoke to in the club—it must’ve been him. He fits the description.”
Emily nodded. Chloe was right, and the girl in the cloakroom had said that Jordan knew the man. It also made sense that he waited until Emily was outside, because she’d have recognized him too. Then Abi popped into her head, and she clamped a hand over her mouth. “Do you think Mr. Dubium was Abi’s secret date?”
Chloe watched her, wide-eyed. “Oh my God. She said it was a silly infatuation. It must’ve been him.”
“We need to speak to her before the self-defense class.” Emily was already grabbing her coat and schoolbag. “If it was him, we can go straight to the police.”
They left the library together and found Abi hovering outside the cafeteria with her usual group of friends. Emily marched straight over to her, and said, “Can we have a word?”
Abi frowned when she saw who Emily was with. “Can it wait until after self-defense?”
“No, it really can’t.” Emily stood in front of her, poised to grab the girl’s hand and drag her away from her friends if necessary.
But Abi turned to the other girls and murmured, “Give me five.” She followed Emily back to where Chloe and Derek were waiting by the water fountain. When they were out of earshot of any other students, she crossed her arms. “What do you want?”
“That day in the diner,” Chloe jumped straight in, “were you waiting for Mr. Dubium?”
Abi’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not standing here answering your questions.” She went to walk away, but Chloe grabbed her arm; Abi glared at her as though she wasn’t used to anyone denying her whatever she wanted to do.
“Please, Abi, this is important,” Chloe said, dropping her hand. “We’re not judging you; we just need to know the truth.”
“Why? What’s it to do with you?”
“Abi, we just need to know if that was who you arranged to meet,” Emily said. “We promise we won’t tell anyone, but … we think that he might have met Jordan the night she disappeared.”
“Oh my God!” Abi backed away from them. “You think he did it?”
“Keep your voice down,” Chloe whispered. “We need to know because of the warning in Emily’s locker.”
Abi watched Emily carefully. “What warning?”
Emily took a deep breath. She didn’t want to scare Abi and have her freaking out on them, but she realized it was the only way they were going to get the truth out of her. “It said that I’m next.”
Abi shook her head. “I don’t want to be a part of this. I don’t want any trouble.”
“You won’t be in any trouble,” Emily said. “He … I think he has Jordan’s hairclip in his back pocket.”
“Are you serious?” Abi waited for Emily’s nod. Finally, her shoulders slumped, and she moved closer to them. “Okay, it was him. Look,” she said when she saw their frowns, “I know it was stupid but, well, he’s a teacher, and I didn’t think … if I’d have known …”
“We know.” Emily placed a hand on her arm. “He was still wrong to arrange a date with a student though.”
“Should we call the—”
Abi didn’t get a chance to finish because Mr. Dubium was walking along the hallway towards them, his usual dazzling smile in place. He clapped his hands when he saw them. “Ready for the next self-defense session?” he asked.
Emily and Abi nodded. Derek sidled closer to them protectively.
“Yes, sir,” Chloe said brightly.
“Emily maybe you should partner with me this time.” He gave Derek a friendly wink that made Emily’s stomach twist.
“I was going to partner with Abi,” she said, hoping that he didn’t hear the tremor in her voice.
He smiled at Abi, no trace of their secret rendezvous in his expression. “Are you brave enough to take her on?” he asked.
“Sure.” Abi linked her arm through Emily’s.
“Lead the way, sir,” Chloe said.
He turned and walked away, glancing at them over his shoulder to make sure they were following him.
Emily had already noticed that the hairclip was still where she’d seen it in the library. Chloe had noticed it too because her lips had formed a thin line, but what worried Emily was that they’d not had a chance to formulate a plan.
When they reached the gym, Derek waited outside while the girls followed Mr. Dubium inside. They were huddled together at the back of the room when their mobile phones vibrated.
Derek had come up with a plan.
CHAPTER 16
Emily’s mouth was so dry, she could hardly swallow. When Pete came in with Kyle, she barely heard what he was saying to the class about the moves they were going to be practicing. Her heart was thumping, and she was sweating despite that she was only wearing a gym vest. What if it all went wrong? What if he managed to drag her out of the building somehow, and they were too late to help her?
Emily partnered up with Abi as she’d suggested to Mr. Dubium, but before the lesson could start, Abi twisted her hair up on top of her head and peered around the gym. “Damn!” she said loudly. “I’ve broken my hairband. Does anyone have a clip or anything that I could borrow?”
Jessica went to slide a hand into her pocket and Emily flashed a look at Abi.
“Sir,” Abi blurted out, “can I borrow the one in your back pocket?”
The smile faded from the teacher’s face as he reached a hand round to his pocket and pulled out Jordan’s hairclip. He held it in front of his face for several moments. “Sure.” The smile was back as he offered it to Abi. “It’s my girlfriend’s but I’m sure she won’t mind.”
Abi took the hairclip and studied it, turning it around in her fingers and making sure that Emily and Chloe could see it. “It’s pretty, sir. Unusual.” She fastened her hair up in a messy bun and secured it in place.
Emily faced her, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, her expression bland. She waited until Pete started making his way around the gym before raising her voice. “I don’t believe you!” she said.
Abi shrugged. “It isn’t my fault he chose me over you.”
Emily let out a shriek and lunged at Abi. The other girl was lightning-fast; she grabbed a handful of Emily’s hair and forced her head down so that Emily lost her balance and was on her knees, her cheeks rosy with embarrassment.
“Hey!” Pete yelled from across the room.
Mr. Dubium was closer and reached the squabbling girls first, hands spread to calm the situation. “Okay, that’s enough,” he said to Abi, gesturing for her to release Emily. He knelt on the floor beside Emily whose face was now streaked with tears. “Are you okay?” he asked gently, lowering his face to make eye contact.
Emily glanced away and covered her face with her hands. So far, everything was going to plan.
“Emily, would you like a moment to compose yourself?” he asked.
She nodded into her hands.
Mr. Dubium helped her to her feet. “Pete, I’ll take her through so that she can wash her face.”
Emily heard Pete addressing the rest of the class as she allowed the teacher to lead her to the changing rooms where they sat on the same bench as last time.
“Do you want to tell me what that was all about?” Mr. Dubium said. “I thought you and Abi were friends.”
Taking a deep, juddering breath, Emily wiped her damp face with the palms of her hands. It had been easy to force the tears; the stress, the fear, the adrenaline of what they were about to do had culminated in them flooding out the instant Abi pulled her hair. Her scalp was still stinging. “I thought so too,” she mumbled. Now all she had to do, was wait for Derek’s signal, confront the teacher about Jordan, and wait for Derek to record the conversation on his phone.
But before Derek appeared, Mr. Dubium reached across and smoothed Emily’s hair away from her face. “You’re so beautiful, Emily,” he whispered, his face so close to hers that she could feel his breath on her cheek.
Instinctively, Emily recoiled, and went to stand so that she could get away from him. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He couldn’t possibly get away with abducting her from school while everyone else was in the gym, could he? Had they completely misjudged him? She wished now that she’d called the police earlier from the bleachers instead of going along with this silly plan.
Mr. Dubium grabbed her wrist and wrenched her arm forwards so that she couldn’t get away.
“You’re hurting me,” she said.
He laughed then, a short, snappy sound. “There’s no point struggling, Emily. Everyone knows how you’ve been coming on to me. This is the second self-defense class where you’ve asked me to escort you into the changing rooms so that we can be alone.”
“What?” Emily shook her head. “That’s not true.”
“Your word against mine, huh?”
He smiled at her, but it wasn’t the Zac Efron smile he saved for the girls in class. Now, he looked grotesque, his lips curled away from his gums and his eyes narrowed at her. What had Jordan and the others ever seen in him?
“I don’t care. I’ll tell the police. I know that you arranged to meet Abi.”
“You have no proof, Emily. You know how girls talk. Who do you think the police will believe when I have Pete on my side, huh? And the principal? I’ll tell them your new friend Derek has been stalking you … they’ll believe me when I tell them about your little obsession with me.”
She glanced over his shoulder, praying that Derek would be there, but there was still no sign of him. Where was he? Emily tried to free her arm, but his grip was too tight, her wrist burning beneath his fingers.
Mr. Dubium rose and pulled her closer to him, their chests pressed together, his eyes roaming her face. She flinched, turning away from him, but he gripped her hair with his free hand, and tugged until her neck was arched backwards.
“I know it was you,” she choked out. “That was Jordan’s hairclip you gave Abi.”
He laughed out loud. “Clever Jordan. She was always the pretty one, but not so much now. They’re fading, just like the butterflies. If only they would stop trying to escape, everything would be alright.”
“What?” Emily realized that if she could keep him talking, Derek would soon be here. Any moment now … “Who’s fading? What have you done to them?”
“I had to keep them hidden. My father would never let me keep them if he knew. He never did understand my love of beauty. The butterflies—they were so delicate, so fragile, and vibrant, but they wouldn’t keep still. All they wanted to do was get away from me.”
“Why did you kill them?” Emily whispered. The muscles in her neck felt like they were on fire.
“I couldn’t let them get away. I can’t let you get away Emily; you still have fire in your eyes, not like the others.”
There was a flash of movement in her peripheral vision, and Emily squeezed her eyes shut, praying that Derek was recording them, that it would be enough for the police to arrest this man before it was too late. She had to see this through for Jordan’s sake, and for the other girls.
“You can’t just take me away,” she said. “Like the others. You can’t keep people locked away like the butterflies. They’ll die too.”
“I’ll look after you, Emily. You’re special.” He leaned over her then, his eyes focusing on her as if he’d only just realized who she was.
Emily thought he was going to kiss her. She needed to get away, but his grip on her hair was so tight that she could feel his knuckles digging into her skull. She wasn’t strong enough to free herself. And then she remembered the self-defense moves, and Pete’s words that she didn’t have to be big or strong to take down an attacker, she just had to stay calm and remember what she’d learned.
Closing her eyes, Emily forced her shoulders to relax. In one smooth movement that she would never have believed she was capable of, she raised her right leg, leaned backwards, and thrust her hips forward, her knee connecting with Mr. Dubium’s groin.
The reaction was instantaneous. He released his grip on her hair and dropped to his knees in front of her, clutching his groin with both hands, as Derek stepped out from behind the lockers, and a team of police officers barged into the changing room.
Emily barely even registered the two officers handcuffing Mr. Dubium’s hands behind his back. A female officer led her outside, an arm around her shoulder, as Emily began to tremble uncontrollably.
CHAPTER 17
Jordan and Emily waited at the front of the gym, a clipboard in Jordan’s hands. It was the start of the new term, and the principal had given them permission to continue running self-defense classes after school for anyone who wished to attend. Tonight, the gym was almost full.
As they were counting heads, Derek and Kyle entered together, both wearing joggers and hoodies. They had agreed to continue helping out—after what happened with Mr. Dubium, they wanted their classmates to be prepared for any eventuality.
Kyle threw an arm around Jordan’s shoulders and squeezed her tightly. She was still pale. She’d lost so much weight while she was held captive in Mr. Dubium’s basement, that she still couldn’t eat much without wanting to throw up, but she was rebuilding her strength slowly. Bella had been in hospital for a couple of weeks after they were discovered—she had a stomach condition that no one knew about before she was abducted and had ended up seriously ill—but all the girls were thankfully on the road to recovery.
The principal had held a special assembly in their honor, and Emily had been presented with a bravery award for what she did to help convict the Literature teacher. She’d even been interviewed by the local news station, and the younger kids in school now treated her like a minor celebrity.
Derek clapped his hands. “Okay, everyone find a partner.” He smiled at Emily and offered her his hand. “Emily and I will demonstrate the first move.”
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