MEGAN FREEMAN

SCHOLASTIC INC. / NEW YORK

 ​Copyright © 2025 by Megan Freeman
All rights reserved. Published by Chicken ­House, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers
since 1920. scholastic, chicken h ­ ouse, and associated log­os are
trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for
author or third-­party websites or their content.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other­wise,
or used to train any artificial intelligence technologies, without written permission of
the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc.,
Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are ­either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to ­actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data available
ISBN 978-1-5461-1661-5
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 25 26 27 28 29
Printed in Italy  183
First edition, February 2025
Book design by Maeve Norton
 CHAPTER one
Id
­ on’t speak to the other girls. I ­don’t look at them. The morning
­music is still being pumped through one of the speakers that line
the halls and fills up what would other­wise be silence—­violins and
cellos and other instruments I ­can’t name weaving together.
I follow my roommates out of our dorm and into the narrow
hallway.
Single file, we trudge t­ oward the communal bathroom and join
the line of girls already waiting outside the door. Each of us carries
an identical lumpy washbag in one hand and a towel in the other.
The same old, brown towel I was given seven years ago when I
arrived ­here.
I think I recognize the composer from ­music therapy. Bach,
perhaps? I’m not completely sure, but like all the ­music they pump
into this place, it is slow and mellow. Soft ­music. Soothing ­music.
­Music that’s supposed to keep us calm and stop us from ­doing bad
­things.
Not that this works. Bad ­things happen ­here all the time.
The concrete floor is cold u
­ nder my winter regulation socks
and I am glad when it’s fi­nally my turn in the bathroom. I step
through the door and blink in the sudden glare. Every­thing is
white tiles and painted concrete. Harsh lights tint the room blue.
­There are stalls of toilets with no doors, a communal shower area,
and a row of sinks with ­little mirrors hammered into the wall
above.

1
 I take my place in front of an empty sink, looking in the mirror
as I fix my hair. Twenty brushes—­ten times on each side just like
Matron taught me to—­before tying it up in a ponytail.
As a ­senior, I’m expected to get myself ready for the day without
supervision. But Matron has trained us all well. How to wash cor-
rectly. How to brush correctly. How to tie up our hair. No looking
in the mirror unnecessarily. No talking. No procrastinating. Why?
­Because ­those are the rules, as Matron would say.
I brush my teeth and think of nothing.
I leave the sink and another girl quietly steps forward to take my
place. She starts to wash her face as I exit the room.
Back in my dorm, I deposit my washbag on my nightstand and
hang my towel from my rail. I am last back and the ­others are
already continuing with their morning routines. They fold and
tuck and brush, heads down and necks bent.
I turn and make my bed. Sheets first. Each corner tucked and
folded. A coarse woolen blanket draped evenly over the sides.
Next, I lay out my uniform: a white shirt and a gray skirt with
pleats that falls to exactly one inch below the knee, tights that itch,
and stiff black shoes. Lastly, a blazer to wear over the top. Our
school crest is embroidered on one side—­a bird flying above a
tree. Beneath the bird, elaborate script spells out the name of our
school:
Wildsmoor Fa­cil­i­ty.
Three smaller words are also sewn into the crest: Care. Education.
Correction.
My mind drifts as I dress myself and finish my morning chores
before leaving my dorm room.

2
 I’m outside Matron’s office. I blink, registering my surroundings,
surprised to find myself already h
­ ere.
But time is like that at Wildsmoor Fa­cil­i­ty, bitten off in g­ reat
big chunks. ­Whole minutes, hours, days, gone in a blink. One day
it’s January and the next it’s June. One day I am a ­little kid with
chubby cheeks and the next I am practically an adult, almost
sixteen.
Should this make me feel something? Should it make me sad, or
scared? Maybe I should care, but I ­don’t.
Students are lining up in front of the l­ittle hatch set into the
wall. I join the line, uniform in its neatness. Hands are b­ ehind
backs. Girls’ hair is shoulder length, tied into ponytails with a navy
band. Boys’ hair is short. Shirts are tucked in. No exceptions.
I fix my eyes on the hatch up ahead. I ­can’t see who is on medi­
cation duty this morning, but I can see a pair of hands dishing out
pills of all dif­fer­ent colors and ­little cups of ­water. Mr. Peters, one of
our teachers, stands on duty next to the hatch. He watches as we file
past, his eyes cold and remote. E
­ very now and again he rebukes
somebody for sloppy dressing: a missed button or a loose thread or
a toothpaste stain.
I step forward in time with every­one e­ lse, one place closer. By
now my hands are ever so slightly shaking and my mouth salivat-
ing. ­Little slivers of pain shoot through my head. Doctor Sylvie says
­these are all symptoms of my illness coming back as the medi­cation
leaves my body. I ­will the kids in front of me to move quicker. I need
my pills, and soon.
Fi­nally, it’s my turn.
“Emily Emerson?” A girl I know as Meera peers through the

3
hatch at me. Meera is almost ­eighteen now, the oldest girl ­here, but
still she ­hasn’t been cured of the same cognitive disease that affects
all of us.
Grimm-­Cross Syndrome. Or just “the Grimm.”
­We’re not allowed to leave the fa­cil­i­ty ­until w
­ e’re cured of the
Grimm, but every­one has to leave at ­eighteen anyway. I ­don’t know
what happens to the kids who turn ­eighteen without being cured. I
look at Meera’s empty face and somewhere deep down inside feel
a ­little prod of emotion. I d
­ on’t want to end up like her. Still sick.
Still ­here.
“Yes,” I say, stepping forward. I feel Mr. Peters’s sharp eyes on
me. Meera turns around, rummages in a few trays, and then turns
back. I hold out my hand automatically and she drops the ­little pills
into my palm. A ­little white round one and a big red capsule. I take
my cardboard cup of w
­ ater in the other hand.
“Next,” says Mr. Peters.
“No, thanks,” says a voice ­behind me, ever so quietly.
Mr. Peters’s head snaps around. “Excuse me?”
I turn to look too. A boy, younger than me by several years at
least, with cropped sandy hair and wide eyes fixed on Mr. Peters.
He’s shaking his head and his hands are gripped in front of him,
twisting into knots.
“No,” he repeats, louder this time, moving his hands b­ ehind his
body. “I ­don’t need to take any more medicine. I’m better now.”
Better. Better. Better—­the word echoes in my head.
He turns and tries to run, pushing his way through the line.
­There is a series of screams. A domino effect of bodies.
A girl stumbles and lurches into me. I fall to the floor.

4
 My cheek is pressed to the tiles. I squeeze my eyes shut and open
them again, not sure what I’m seeing. The boy is ­running still, but
his feet have somehow left the floor. He’s rising into the air, as if
gravity has forgotten him. He’s floating. Actually floating. Like a
helium balloon released from a child’s fingertips.
Around me the other kids stare.
He scrabbles with his arms as he collides into the wall above the
door. I can hear his fingernails scrape the concrete. He cries out, a
long, keening wail that sounds more like an animal than a ­human.
An alarm begins to clang. Doors burst open and blue-­uniformed
guardians rush into the room.
They grab his ankles and pull him back to the floor. One of
them holds a Taser to his neck and pulls the trigger. A buzzing,
crackling noise. The boy screams and arches his back. The muscles
in his arms tense, pushing against and resisting the three guardians
who are on him at once. A moment ­later he falls limp ­after another
guardian pulls out a syringe full of clear liquid, jabbing the needle
into his arm and pressing down the plunger.
The guardians lift his body between them and carry him away.
His head lolls obscenely to one side and his feet drag along the floor
that he was floating above only a moment ago.
I see another boy then, closer to my age, maybe a bit older. He
has a head of tight-­shorn curls, almost white in color. Eyes that find
mine and red lips that twist so quickly and suddenly into a smile
that I’m sure I’ve ­imagined it. He crouches, his hand reaching out
and scooping something off the floor in front of me.
A second ­later and the image of this stooped, grinning figure is
gone, replaced by Mr. Peters’s looming face.

5
 The alarm stops. Silence holds the air in a tight embrace for a
moment before m
­ usic begins to play. Mozart this time. A piano
piece that rises and falls softly in the space around us. The floor is
cool ­under my hot, thumping head. I guess it must’ve been mopped
recently, as disinfectant stings the back of my throat.
“Miss Emerson, get off the floor immediately.” Mr. Peters’s thick
eyebrows knit together in the ­middle of his forehead. His too-­pale
lips press together and make a thin line.
I push myself back to my feet.
“And clean up this mess,” he snaps. He gestures to the floor
in front of the hatch where my cup lies crumpled in a puddle
of w
­ ater.
“Yes, Mr. Peters,” I reply. I pick up the cup and put it in the
trash bin. I stare down at the floor, my eyes sweeping left and
right, searching along the scuffed baseboard and between other
c­ hildren’s feet.
“Well.” Mr. Peters claps, a noise like a whip cracking, and I jump.
“What are you waiting for?”
“Sorry,” I say. ­Under Mr. Peters’s gaze, I turn and walk away.
­There is a cupboard nearby that I know from cleaning duty has a
mop and a bucket in it. I push my way through the double doors
and they swing shut ­behind me.
I stop. I turn around and look through the win­dow set into
the door. The glass is smeared with cloth marks and it’s hard to see
anything clearly. Besides, I looked, and t­hey’re not t­here. T
­ hey’re
gone.
My pills are gone.
For a moment I consider ­going back in to try to find them again,

6
but then I see Mr. Peters yelling at someone for an untied shoelace
and change my mind. He might accuse me of clumsiness or care-
lessness. Or worse, lying. I’ve seen kids sent to isolation for less.
I walk to the cupboard. I open the door. I get out the mop.
—
I did a bad ­thing. That’s how I ended up h
­ ere.
That’s how all kids like me end up at Wildsmoor Fa­cil­i­ty, by
­doing bad ­things. We stuff it down and try to hide and swallow the
burning inside, but eventually it comes out.
I broke my ­sister’s arm, that was my bad ­thing.
It was the year I turned eight and Amelia, my s­ ister, turned nine.
We ­were dif­fer­ent in many ways. She was taller, I was shorter. She
had short hair and I wore mine long. She liked soccer and r­ unning
whereas I liked reading and imagination games.
But we ­were also similar. The same almond-­shaped eyes. The
same laugh. And the same fiery temper.
We argued about anything and every­thing, our anger flaring
fast and exchanging hot and heated words. We always made up,
our tempers usually burning out as quickly as they came, but
for some reason this night and this argument ­were dif­fer­ent.
We argued without end and without resolution. Dad was furious.
He yelled at us and then sent us both to bed early without
­anything to eat.
I fell asleep consumed by rage.
That night I dreamed of a monster that walked out of my head
and came to life. It grew bigger and bigger u
­ ntil it filled my w
­ hole
bedroom, bulging into the corners and snarling and snapping with
its many jaws. Its skin was pustuled and in some parts furred and

7
in o­ thers scaled. It glowed with its own light, as if it had eaten the
moon and was now trying to burst its way back out of the mon-
ster’s skin.
The monster broke out of my room with enough force that my
door exploded into splinters. It stood ­there, casting a faint blue light
across the landing, its body so large that it spilled over the banister
and oozed down the stairs. A door swung open and my ­mother came
­running out of her bedroom.
“Derek,” screamed my m
­ other. “It’s happening again!”
This ­wasn’t the first time my dreams had walked. I had been
hiding my strange dreams for months now, concealing my ability to
set my unconscious thoughts f­ree into the world. My parents had
caught me before. Once r­ unning around the h
­ ouse as my dream
self, chasing a puppy. And then another time when they woke up to
the ­house covered in iridescent flowers, thick like a forest and sowed
with nothing more than my unconscious thoughts.
I thought ­these ­things might make my parents smile, but instead
my ­mother cried and my ­father shouted. I learned that what I could
do was bad. So I stuffed it down and pretended that it w
­ asn’t t­ here.
But under­neath I could feel it swelling inside me, wanting to burst
out, and I knew it was only a ­matter of time.
When my dream monster’s eyes found my s­ister, it lunged. Its
many jaws snapped and globular drool oozed from its mouth. It
pushed up on its hind legs and opened its chest and roared. I d
­ on’t
think it was ever ­going to hurt her, just scare her, but my ­sister
­didn’t know that.
She screamed and ducked and ran. And in her panic, she fell
down the stairs.

8
 It was only then that I woke up and the monster dis­appeared,
but it was too late. My parents had seen the monster I had made.
­They’d seen its drooling face and sharp teeth. T
­ hey’d heard its
snarls.
But worst of all, they now knew what was ­really hidden within
me: disease and darkness. Nightmares so real that they walked the
earth with flesh and bone and blood.
­After that, they ­couldn’t pretend any longer. The next night,
back home from the emergency room with my ­sister’s arm bound
up tight in a pink cast, I heard them arguing in whispers. My dad’s
low voice rumbled through the walls and my mom’s whispers crept
­under the crack at the bottom of my door. I knew what they w
­ ere
arguing about, of course. Me.
I had it. I had the Grimm. And none of us could pretend any
longer that it ­wasn’t the case.
Hours ­later my dad came for me. When he shook me awake, I
was dozing fitfully, too distressed to sleep properly. His face was
tight and unsmiling and his eyes w
­ ouldn’t meet mine.
“What’s happening, Dad?” I asked. “Is it Amelia? Is she okay?”
Dad shook his head. “She’s fine.”
I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “What is it, then?”
“­You’re ­going on a trip,” he said.
I frowned, confused. A trip? In the ­middle of the night? “But I
­don’t want to go on a trip.”
can’t stay h
“You have to. You ­ You’re—­
­ere any longer. ­ it’s
dangerous.”
A cold, metallic taste appeared in my mouth. Dread. It began to
drip down my throat, pooling like poison in my stomach. “I ­can’t

9
stay ­here?” I repeated. “What are you talking about? Where am I
­going?”
My dad rubbed his hand over his forehead and through his hair.
“You have the Grimm, Emily. W
­ e’ve been denying it to ourselves
for too long.”
Realization hit me like a punch to the stomach and I suddenly
knew without him saying where I was ­going: a fa­cil­i­ty.
I had heard about facilities at school from the other kids. That’s
what they did with kids who had the Grimm. They sent them far,
far away and they never came back.
Iw
­ asn’t the first one at my school, and the names of the kids who
had been taken before ­were still whispered on the playground,
rumors that passed down from the oldest to the youn­gest.
Ashanti, who could make the ground shake ­under her feet.
William, who could break bones just with his thoughts. And the
year before, a girl in my s­ ister’s class had been taken. Nobody knew
what ­she’d done but it must’ve been bad, and ­after that her ­whole
­family moved away and nobody saw them ever again.
“Please,” I begged my dad. “Please. It ­won’t happen again. I can
make it stop. I know I can.”
But his mouth grew thinner and he pulled me from my duvet by my
arm. I strug­gled in his grip as he dragged me out onto the landing.
My mom was standing ­there, watching. Her lip trembled and
her eyes w
­ ere glassy with unspilled tears.
“Mom!” I screamed, reaching for her. “Help me!”
She opened and closed her mouth like a fish. “You’ll be okay,
Emily,” she said eventually. “You just need to go and get better and
then you can come home again.”

10
 But I knew this was just a lie, and when I realized that my
­mother ­wasn’t ­going to help me, I went into a frenzy. I bit and
scratched and screamed. I was incoherent and unthinking. Wild.
My ­sister, Amelia, emerged from her bedroom. She was wide-­
eyed and had bed hair, peeking out from her bedroom door.
“What’s happening?” she cried, r­ unning forward and trying to
pull me ­free with her one good arm. “She d
­ idn’t mean it. She said
she was sorry.”
My f­ather shook her off and turned to my ­mother. “Get me
a rope.”
My ­mother darted into the bedroom and returned with the
cord from her robe. My ­mother had owned this robe for as long as
I could remember, and even now I can still recall how she wore it
in the mornings making breakfast and how it felt against my
cheek when she hugged me, ever so slightly coarse from years of
washing.
My ­father took the cord from her and used it to tie my hands
­behind my back. It bit into my skin and made my fin­gers tingle.
Amelia started to cry, her face crumpling like a piece of paper
and sobs ripping through her chest.
“Get back into your room,” my ­father said to her.
Amelia’s wide, terrified eyes flickered between us. “­Don’t do it,
Dad,” she said, her words distorted by her gulping cries. “She said
she was sorry. It was only this once . . .”
My ­father flashed my m
­ other a look and she nodded. She pulled
Amelia away, back into her bedroom, before closing the door
b­ ehind her.
That was the last time I saw my s­ ister.

11
 Seven years have passed since that day, but it’s as if the darkness
that consumed me that night on my way to Wildsmoor, terrified
beyond anything I’d ever felt before, has never lifted. I’m not the
same person that I was.
I’m sick. I know that now.

12
ORDER YOUR COPY!