Chapter 72 THE LIST
POV: JOEY
Joey found out at eleven, slouched over his folder at the annex table, when Marcus Chen slipped him the news. Not the official story. This was the version that moved in whispers between scholarship kids, in half-sentences during bathroom breaks and late-night study sessions. If you had been at Thornfield long enough, you knew the official story was what the school put out when they wanted things buried.
Ryder Williams. East stairwell. Fractured skull. Broken arm. Ambulance called at nine-fifteen.
Joey just sat there for a minute, staring at the folder in front of him, letting the cold of the room settle into his bones. He glanced down at the list he always kept tucked inside—a narrow column, sixteen names. He stared at the pattern he had been tracking for nearly two years. He could almost feel it building, like a storm. The way Thornfield closed in on people who got too close to certain secrets.
Ryder had been getting close. Joey knew it, even though they had never really talked about it. He watched Ryder the way he watched everything at Thornfield, with the careful attention of someone who had learned that the most important people were the ones nobody was supposed to notice.
Ryder had the property records. Joey knew because he had found those same records himself, months ago, coming at them from a different angle. He had seen the account name. The pattern of students being erased—not just expelled, but wiped out of existence, their departure made to look like their own idea, a string of cancellations and paperwork so neat it almost looked kind.
Now Ryder was in the hospital. Skull fractured. Arm broken.
Joey picked up his pencil. He looked at the list, then turned to the back page where he kept a separate column. Not names—dates. Incidents. A record of what happened to people who got too close.
He wrote in today's date. He added, Williams. East stairwell. Deliberate.
He underlined deliberate, pressing hard into the paper.
That was the truth about Thornfield. The official story would always say it was an accident, just bad luck, just a boy in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Joey knew better. None of it was random. The system did not make mistakes. When someone got hurt, it was on purpose, but always disguised as something that could be explained away.
Dawson Matthews had never acted on his own. Joey saw that from the beginning. The way Dawson picked his targets, the way he seemed to know exactly what to do. It was too precise to be personal. Dawson was a tool, a piece of machinery in a system Joey had learned to watch out for. Cameron was the same. So were some of the faculty.
Tonight meant the machinery had kicked up a gear. Someone had gotten too close, and the system had done what it always did to keep its secrets. Ryder had found information that Thornfield could never let out.
Joey stared at the account name he had jotted in the margin of his notes six months ago. He stared at it so long he almost expected it to move.
He picked up his pencil, drew a line connecting the name to tonight’s date.
He leaned back in his chair, the annex around him silent and cold as always. Rows of alumni newsletters lined the shelves. The lock on the door had been broken since before Joey arrived at Thornfield. The room was forgotten, which made it perfect for someone who wanted to disappear.
He thought about Lena. He remembered the way she had seen him out at the ruins and how wrong her picture of him was. He thought about the tip she had sent in, fingers shaking, afraid but still helping.
He pictured Whitney Stephens, maybe sitting in the hospital waiting room right now, or maybe standing outside the dean’s office, or walking back to her dorm, carrying something heavy that was only going to get heavier tomorrow.
He looked at his list. Sixteen names. He looked at the empty space at the bottom.
He did not write Ryder Williams there. Not yet. Ryder was still alive. Joey was going to make sure he stayed that way.
He closed the folder and tucked it back between the stacks of old newsletters.
He stood up. He could feel it in his chest—he was going to have to move faster now. Patience had always been his best weapon, but it was not enough anymore. He was not done. And neither was Thornfield.