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She wanted to shed it like clothing. She wanted to let the thing inside of her out.
     
    Throwing her head back, Rylie screamed.
     
    The sound that ripped from her throat was more beast than human.
     

     
    Rylie awoke just before dawn feeling cold and damp from dew.
     
    She sat up with a groan, cradling her head in her hands. Rylie was amongst a mess of torn-up trees. A couple of the towering pines were snapped in half, their shattered pieces jutting toward the sky. Others were clawed like the grove where she found her cell phone. It looked like a storm had whipped through the clearing.
     
    And that wasn’t all. The ground had long claw marks in it, too. She ran her hands through the deep furrows in the ground. Her fingers fit perfectly.
     
    Rylie turned her fingers around to study her fingernails. They were caked with dirt and blood.
     
    “What the...?”
     
    Her head throbbed, and she pressed the heel of one hand against her temple. Thinking too much was hard, especially after the disorientation of finding herself in such a mess. A single thought emerged from her muddied brain: if she didn’t get back to her cabin before Louise came to wake everyone up, she was going to be in big trouble.
     
    Rylie had an easy time finding her way back. Even though she felt like she was recovering from the flu, the forest wasn’t as maze-like as it used to be. She smelled breakfast and followed it.
     
    The door to the counselor’s cabin opened when she approached, and Louise emerged, muffling a deep yawn behind a hand. She didn’t see Rylie as she went to the first cabin. Rylie’s was on the other end. She had enough time—barely.
     
    She scaled the cabin wall, using the grooves between the logs to lever herself up to the loft window. She wiggled inside.
     
    Nobody else was awake yet. Patricia was snoring. Rylie had just climbed into the cot and pulled the sheets to her shoulders when Louise opened the door. “Good morning, campers! Shower time!”
     
    Hoping she would be ignored if she stayed quiet, Rylie rolled over and pulled the blankets over her head.
     
    “You too, Miss Gresham,” Louise called up to the loft.
     
    Rylie picked out a fresh outfit and climbed down the ladder, trying not to grumble too loudly. Every inch of her hurt. She desperately wanted sleep, even though she felt like she must have been passed out most of the night.
     
    Stretching under the spray of river water helped work the kinks out of her muscles, but it didn’t clear her head. It felt like her skull was stuffed with cotton.
     
    Drying off with another hand-me-down towel, Rylie dressed and went to the mirrors to brush the knots from her hair. She found several pine needles and a soggy caterpillar tangled up in the back. She tossed them in the trash and hoped nobody noticed.
     
    Another group filed into the bathroom. Rylie caught sight of someone she recognized.
     
    “Cassidy!”
     
    “Hey,” Cassidy said. She looked almost as beat as Rylie. Her head tilted to the side, and she gave Rylie a funny look. “You look different today.”
     
    Her heart sped up. “Really? What do you mean?”
     
    “I dunno,” she said. “But you’re looking good. I need a shower wicked bad, but there’s a big campfire thing this weekend. Songs or stories or something. I’ll see you there, right?”
     
    She nodded mutely, and Rylie fled to the mirror as soon as Cassidy turned her back. She studied herself closely, half-expecting to see fangs or fur or something equally horrifying.
     
    Rylie didn’t see anything other than the same silvery scar she’d had for two weeks. Then again, there was something a little off about her face. It wasn’t quite the same reflection she had seen for the last fifteen years.
     
    Leaning closer to the mirror, she thumbed her eyelid so she could get a better look at the iris. Her eyes had always been pale blue to match her pale blonde hair. It made her look washed out and ghostlike.
     
    But her eyes were no