The Weight of Blood

by Tiffany D. Jackson, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Joy Nash, Christopher Salazar, Karen Malina White

Genres: Horror; Suspense; YA Horror; YA Mysteries & Thrillers

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson ramps up the horror and tackles America’s history and legacy of racism in this suspenseful YA novel following a biracial teenager as her Georgia high school hosts its first integrated prom. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection! 

When Springville residents—at least the ones still alive—are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.

An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she's dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.

After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High's racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school's first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it's possible to have a normal life.

But some of her classmates aren't done with her just yet. And what they don't know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives. 

 

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Release date: September 6, 2022

Publisher: Harper

Print pages: 411

Sample

One

MADDY DID IT

EPISODE 1

“It all started with the rain”

THE SPRINGVILLE MASSACRE COMMISSION

From the Sworn Testimony of Mrs. Amy Lecter

We heard the crash first. Right before the lights went out. We don’t live too far from the country club. Our son, Cole, even worked there during the summers as a caddy. Made good money too. Anyway, next we smelled the smoke and ran out onto the porch. I could just make out them flames over the treetops. That club must’ve been brined in gasoline—it lit up the sky purple. My husband, George, jumped in his truck to head on over there while I sat on the porch and waited. And waited. And waited. Two whole hours, I waited to hear something. Had no idea what was going on. Phones weren’t working.

Just as I was finna to head over there myself, I see Cole walking out the dark, limping down our driveway, eyes wide like he saw the face of God. I was so relieved that he was alright that I ran up and gave him a great big hug. But . . . he was soaking wet. Like he done grabbed his tux right out the wash and threw it on. It wasn’t until I stepped away that I noticed red all over my robe and started screaming.

We took him down to the hospital. Not a scratch on him but they transferred him to the mental ward on account that he wouldn’t talk. Still won’t talk much. And my Cole, he was a talker. From day one, we couldn’t get him to shut up if we tried. He was the tattle-tale of the family, always ripping and running. Now, he barely moves. Barely blinks, just stares off at nothing.

Only two kids survived Prom Night at that country club. Cole was one of them. They say when you go through something like that, your instincts kick in. So his mind must’ve told him to come on home. He walked over two miles through the mud with one shoe, covered in the blood of other children.

When I asked him what happened . . . he just kept mumbling, “Maddy did it.”

May 1, 2014

FIRST PERIOD. Gym.

Maddy Washington tugged at the bottom of her green gym shorts, eyeing the dark gray clouds circling above Springville High School’s racetrack. Her nose twitched.

It was going to rain.

“Jules Marshall?” Coach Bates bellowed.

“Here,” Jules yawned.

“Wendy Quinn?”

“Here!”

“Ali Kruger?”

“Here!”

The girls gathered by the far fence, using it to help them balance as they stretched their calves and hamstrings. Maddy nibbled her thumbnail down to a bloody stump, simultaneously touching the roots of her bone-straight hair, feeling for its silky smoothness.

“Coach, are you really gonna make us do this?” Charlotte McHale whined, stomping in place like a toddler.

Coach Bates checked off her attendance list without looking up. “You ladies need a run. Do those muscles some good.”

The girls grumbled in response. Coach stuffed the clipboard in her armpit, her long gray hair tucked under a Springville Pirates softball hat.

“Don’t you want to stay nice and thin for your prom dresses?” Coach teased.

“I don’t have to worry about that,” Jules quipped, bumping Wendy with her butt. “Don’t know about the rest of these fat asses.”

Wendy laughed, pinching Jules’s exposed thigh. “Speak for yourself!”

They giggled, playfully evading each other’s grasps. Maddy wasn’t paying attention. She could only hear a pulse beating against her eardrum, nose picking up the scent of her greatest nightmare.

It wasn’t supposed to rain. She’d checked. She always checked. Every day, she turned the radio on while cooking breakfast and called the weather hotline twice before walking out the front door. Even with a 20 percent chance of rain, she would’ve stayed home. The forecast called for cloudless skies, seventy-five degrees, low humidity. So why did the sky look like it was about to change its mind?

“Earth to MADDY! Come in, MADDY!”

Maddy whipped around, pushing her crooked brown frames up her nose. “Huh?”

The entire class stared at her, scowling.

“Well, thanks for joining us,” Coach Bates snapped. “I only called your name about five times.”

Maddy quickly eyed the ground, combing through her long ponytail with shaky fingers.

Coach Bates shook her head and pulled out a stopwatch. “Alright, ladies! Line up. Time to head out. You’ll run down by lower field and back. Two loops. On my count!”

Maddy glanced at the sky once more. Something sour dripped down the back of her throat, forcing her to do the unthinkable.

“B-b-b-but . . . it’s gonna rain,” she blurted out in a shrill voice.

The entire class turned, dumbfounded. Maddy hadn’t said more than three words all year. Now, mid-May, she had strung together an entire sentence.

Coach Bates, shocked at first by the sound of her least favorite student’s voice, rolled her eyes.

“Well, guess that means you ladies will be running faster. Now move it! You’ll be back long before it starts. Let’s go, ladies. Chop-chop!”

Maddy’s lungs turned to stone, leaking out quick, shallow bits of air. One drop. That’s all it would take to end things. Her eyes darted to the school doors, biting a trembling lip as her father’s voice raged inside her head.

“No one can know. No one can ever know!”

She could not, under any circumstance, get her hair wet.

But if she tried to escape, Coach Bates would catch her, and who knew what that would lead to. The principal’s office? Detention? Suspension? Maddy had never been in trouble a day in her life.

So she tucked her low ponytail inside her shirt and followed the line down field.

The girls ran in pairs, except for Maddy, who huffed alone in the back, trying to keep up, trying to outrun the threat of rain looming above them. She wasn’t as athletic as the other girls. Had never played any sports or taken a single dance lesson. Papa wouldn’t allow it. The sweat would’ve only ruined her hair.

“No one can know. No one can ever know!”

“Well yeah, the dress came, but it’s nothing like the picture,” Jules said to Wendy, winded. “I was gonna have Cindy’s momma take it in, but she said she’s backed up as it is, and I said I don’t want to wait . . .”

Maddy watched their long red and blond hair bounce in sync with their strides. They weren’t worried about the rain. They lived a carefree life. Maddy swallowed her envy and tried wrapping her ponytail into a bun, but didn’t have a pin to hold it in place. Not watching her footing, she tripped on a stick, nearly tumbling to the ground with a loud “Oof.”

Jules shot her a look, shaking her head.

“Jesus, could she be more pathetic?” she grumbled to Wendy, who only laughed.

The wind kicked up, blowing Maddy’s hair to the side. The buttery grits, bacon, orange juice, and daily vitamins she’d had for breakfast splashed around inside her belly.

“Anyway, what d’you think I should do? I can go on down to Atlanta, but all the good dresses are probably gone by now and I can’t be caught dead twinning with any of these bitches.”

“We can go together,” Wendy rasped, her face sweaty. “I’ll help you pick something.”

Maddy’s heart hammered. She tried to run faster, wheezing with each stride, and yet still fell far behind her classmates.

“Please. Please,” she begged the sky. “Please.”

The girls made a right turn down by the old soccer field, running near the edge of the woods. The stench of damp mulch permeated the air. Maddy could spot the high school in the distance. They had one more loop to complete their two miles. Maybe the rain would hold off, she thought. Maybe it’ll be okay.

That’s when the first drop hit Maddy’s glasses. Then another. She flinched with each drop, trying to cover her roots with her hands, but the shower came down like an avalanche. The girls screeched and giggled, running faster, wet mud splashing up their legs, thin white T-shirts sticking to their skins.

Maddy’s hair, now drenched, wrapped around her shoulders like a cape, the rain masking her sobs all the way back to school.

Maddy studied herself in the mirror, the last in the locker room that smelled of bodywash, hair spray, and wet sneakers. Any other day, she would’ve changed and rushed to class before the humidity could catch her. She never took showers with the other girls. Couldn’t risk her hair coming in contact with water.

But all that had ended in a rainstorm.

Moist lashes rimmed her hazel-green eyes, skin blanched white. Without a towel, she had nothing to help sop up the water from her saturated locks, which had already begun coming to life. Her hair always dried quick, then rose like sourdough. If her scalp could withstand a perm, it might not have been so bad. But instead, it frizzed, growing larger by the second, a massive lion’s mane, a sleeping monster no regular brush could tame.

She needed a hot comb.

Her hands trembled, desperately attempting to pull the thickening strands through another rubber band. It snapped, slapping her wrist and falling on the floor, just like the others. A pile of dead worms lay at her feet. “You look like you have a painted Brillo pad on your head.” That was what Papa would’ve said if he were standing over her. The words echoed through the chambers of her memories.

Everyone is going to know now, she thought, tears spilling over.

But . . . if she stayed hidden, she could possibly sneak out of school, run home without being seen. Or she could go to the nurse’s office and call Papa to come rescue her. He wouldn’t be too mad. How could she have known the sky was going to change its mind?

“Maddy?”

Coach Bates stormed out of her office, eyes falling on Maddy’s hair, rendering her speechless. For an insane moment, she thought maybe Coach would clearly see her dilemma and take pity. Maybe even send her home without explanation.

Hopeful, she faced the woman, smiling through the tears.

It took Coach a moment to collect herself before barking, “What are you still doing back here?”

Maddy blinked, her smile fading. “I—I . . . I just . . .”

“Get to class! You’ve missed enough of my classes, now you’re trying to miss your other ones too? Why even bother coming to school? You might as well drop out. And you can forget about me giving you a late pass.”

Maddy took one last long look in the mirror and resigned herself to her impending fate with a small prayer. Even if she didn’t understand, God does not make mistakes. She drifted out of the locker room to sunlight beaming through the hallway windows. The sky was a cloudless brilliant blue. No signs it had ever rained. With the hallway empty and the doors a few strides away, she considered making a run for it.

But behind her, Coach Bates stood by the locker room exit, her arms crossed. Watching.

Maddy had no choice but to go to class.

SECOND PERIOD. US History.

Jules Marshall sat in the back of Mrs. Morgan’s classroom next to Wendy, twirling a strand of red hair around her index finger. She was scrolling through her nudes, trying to decide which one to send her boyfriend, when she happened to glance up at the door.

“Holy shit,” Jules whispered, gawking.

Wendy, taking furious notes, followed her best friend’s gaze. “Oh. My. God.”

Charlotte covered her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming, but the sound slipped through like a cough.

Maddy’s hair arrived in the classroom before she did. The dark frizzy strands swelled around her tiny frame. She looked more hair than human. Mouths dropped at the sight.

“Holy shit,” Jason Conway said, falling on his neighbor and teammate Chris Lively, howling with laughter.

Mrs. Morgan, standing at the whiteboard, held her marker midair, blue eyes bulging.

“Maddy?” she gasped.

Maddy didn’t respond. Head down, she clutched her books to her chest in one hand, using the other to grip the strap of the heavy book bag hanging off her shoulder. She shuffled to her third-row seat while her classmates failed to stifle their collective giggles.

Mrs. Morgan quickly scolded herself for being no better than the brats she was tasked to educate. After all, it was just hair. She didn’t dare ask for a late pass, drawing more attention to Maddy. It was clear why she was late. Instead, she turned back to the room and put on her poker face.

“Settle down, everyone,” she ordered. “Take out your homework and turn to chapter fifteen in your text.”

Maddy slid down into her chair, trying to squeeze herself to the size of a snow pea as Mrs. Morgan quizzed students.

“Now, can anyone tell me . . .”

Jules’s face and neck turned beet red as she shook with silent laughter to the point of tears. Wendy laid her head on her notebook, trying to hold it together.

“Hey! Jules? Wendy,” Mrs. Morgan snapped. “What’s so funny?

“What’s so funny?” Jason said incredulously. “Bro, do you see that Afro?”

The classroom erupted with snickers.

Maddy breathed through her nose, tears puddling. She folded her hands, praying harder than she ever had before for rescue. After class, she needed to run. Didn’t matter how much trouble might fall on her. She had to get out of there.

“Jason,” Mrs. Morgan said, seething. “Do you want to go to the office and explain why you’re disrupting my class? Do any of you? If not, then I suggest you knock it off.”

The class simmered down, but not completely. No one was paying attention to Mrs. Morgan. All eyes were on Maddy.

A wicked smirk spread across Jules’s face. “Watch this,” she whispered, plunging a hand into her book bag. She retrieved a sharpened number-two pencil, twirling it around her fingers. Wendy and Charlotte held their breath. Closing one eye, Jules aimed, then softly launched the pencil across the room. It made an arc in the air before landing in Maddy’s hair. Maddy didn’t feel it at all.

The girls convulsed with laughter. Jules grabbed another pencil.

The pencil planted in her hair stuck straight up, as if placed there on purpose. Snickers grew into loud cackles. Maddy didn’t bother turning left or right to see what was happening. She knew they were laughing at her. They were always laughing at her. Skin burning, her pulse beat harder.

Mrs. Morgan had turned around just in time to see the second pencil sail and disappear into a forest of tight black coils and curls.

The class all but rolled in the aisles, laughter echoing down the hallways.

“Hey! Who threw that! Wendy? Charlotte? Jules?”

“It wasn’t me!” Jules said, all innocent, her hands raised. “My pen is right here.”

Wendy could barely contain herself, her freckled face turning into a cherry.

Maddy squeezed her eyes shut tight to keep them from twitching. “Please stop it,” she mumbled in a small voice, then felt a soft tug of her hair.

“Yo, it even feels like a Black chick’s hair!” someone shouted behind her.

“I said, knock it off!” Mrs. Morgan shouted.

At that moment, Debbie Locke’s hearing aid squealed like a mic dangerously close to a speaker. She hissed through her teeth and shook the device free from her ear.

“What the fuck?” she mumbled, palming it. But no one heard her. They were all too busy cackling at Maddy Washington’s hair, a giant sculpture sitting in the middle of US history.

“Stop it,” Maddy begged, tears streaming, as the voices descended.

“Do you see the size of that shit? It’s huge!”

“Hey, Maddy, where’d you get that ’fro?”

“Mad Mad Maddy with the Mad Mad Hair!”

“Stop it, please, stop,” Maddy begged, trembling.

The only two Black students in the class eyed the room in disgust. Mrs. Morgan noticed. Her creamy skin flushed red.

“I said, that’s enough!” she shouted.

A crack in the window next to Wendy began to snake its way up, splintering out like a family tree. Wheezing for air, Maddy gripped the desk, and the room spun. Something prickled and hummed across her skin.

“How could she have an Afro like that?”

“Wait, is she Black?”

Mrs. Morgan, trying to regain control of the rowdy class, noticed the lukewarm coffee in her mug on the table ripple, as if a strong breeze had blown by.

Suddenly, Wendy cussed under her breath with a wince, covering her ears with both hands.

“What the hell?” she gasped, exchanging a frantic look with Charlotte, sitting wide-eyed. She felt it too. Their ears were on fire.

Something pinched behind Maddy’s eyes, her muscles clenching as she muttered, “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.”

“Bro, is she?”

“Yo! Maddy is a . . .”

“STOP IT!”

In an instant, every desk and chair lifted four feet in the air as if snatched up by rope. Wendy gasped at the sensation, similar to that of a carnival ride moments before it plummets back to earth. Then, the desks slammed onto the floor, metal legs shrieking. Windows cracked and overhead lights burst, raining shards of glass down on the screaming students. The ground bucked beneath Mrs. Morgan, bringing her to her knees. Her head popped up in time to see students grabbing their belongings, running for the door.

All except for Maddy, who somehow, was in the back corner of the room, curled into a ball.

 

Two

MADDY DID IT

EPISODE 1, CONT.

Michael Stewart: “‘It all started with the rain.’ That’s what the people of Springville say whenever asked about the fatal Prom Night that occurred over a decade ago, leaving a town in complete ruins.”

This is the opening line of author David Portman’s book Springville Massacre: The Legend of Maddy Washington. It examines the events leading up to what he refers to as “the Bloody Prom,” when a girl named Madison Abigail Washington nearly burned down her entire town, killing two hundred people, including the majority of her senior class, at their first racially integrated prom. The opening line, along with the testimony we played at the beginning of this program, has haunted me with more questions than answers. But if you ask anyone from Springville, or at least anyone still alive, what happened that fateful night, they all say the same as Cole Lecter—“Maddy did it.” How? Well, that’s still up for debate. The survivors of that night witnessed the horror unfold firsthand, so why doesn’t anyone believe them?

Hello. My name is Michael Stewart. I’m a producer here at NPR radio, and before we go any further, I want to introduce my lovely, albeit unconventional, cohost for this series, Ms. Tanya King.

Tanya King: Hello, hello!

Michael: How about you tell us a little about yourself, Tanya?

Tanya: Sure. I’m an anthropologist and professor at the University of Sydney.

Michael: Okay, so full disclosure: Tanya and I met at a bar a little over six months ago.

Tanya: Translation, he was hitting on me.

Michael: *laughs* Okay, fair enough. Well, I was striking up a convo about what I do for a living.

Tanya: Which is?

Michael: I investigate true crimes. And I had just gotten a break in a case that I’d been obsessed with since my freshman year in college. So I was kinda excited and told her about it.

Tanya: To which I replied that I had never heard of the Springville Massacre.

Michael: Then I promptly said, “What rock have you been living under? Were you too busy fighting off giant spiders and kangaroos down under?”

Tanya: The date ended quickly after that. But he did hold my attention for a bit with his passionate babble about some girl who could move furniture with her mind.

Michael: Honestly, I thought the entire world had heard of the massacre. Especially given all the conspiracy theories surrounding it.

Tanya: And that’s probably why I hadn’t. Because it just sounds crazy. I pride myself on being a realist.

Michael: So, I thought this would make a great social experiment. I mean, what better way to approach this case with a fresh pair of eyes than by presenting it to an extreme skeptic who has absolutely no tainted knowledge of the massacre? For the next few weeks, we’re going to retrace the events leading up to Prom Night, turning over old leads, maybe even dig up new evidence, and let you and our listeners be the judge.

Tanya: I mean really, it all sounds like a fantastic urban legend. But I am curious about these conspiracy theories you mentioned. Can I hear some?

Michael: Well, for starters, consider the way the entire town went up in flames. It just couldn’t have been the work of one teen girl with quote “magical powers.” That’s what people have a hard time processing. Hence the state investigation, the interrogation, the burying of facts. The high school was already under a lot of heat as it was, which we’ll dive into later, so in the general public’s eyes, Maddy had to have had some help destroying the place.

Tanya: Did they consider it a domestic terrorist attack of sorts?

Michael: Something like that. You also have the conservative swamp believing Black Lives Black Pride, or BLBP, had something to do with it, given all the protests that took place in the weeks prior to Prom Night. Then there are people who believe that it never happened at all. That it was all Hollywood effects and crisis actors, which is just disgusting.

Tanya: I believe kids died. I believe they existed. I just don’t believe the cause of their death.

Michael: Yeah, neither did the state of Georgia. Neither did most of America, which is why Portman’s book went virtually unnoticed. But I do have one theory to add to the mix.

Tanya: Okay, let’s hear it!

Michael: I believe Maddy Washington is still alive.

Tanya: Oh God, Mike. You’re not serious?

Michael: Remember the lead I mentioned earlier? I spoke to someone who may have proof Maddy didn’t die in those fires. And that she had help escaping.

May 1, 2014

Maddy sat on a bench outside the principal’s office, clutching a notebook, her heavy book bag by her feet. She rocked softly back and forth, nibbling on her thumb. Her hair, now three times its normal size, draped around her shoulders like a frizzy blanket. Above the bench hung a painted green-and-white banner: SPRINGVILLE HIGH! Home of the Pirates! 4× State Champions! surrounded by framed photos of students both current and past. Maddy kept her eyes focused on her lap, ignoring the gawking stares from the administrative staff, mostly women in their midsixties, dressed in mom jeans, grandma sweater vests, shift dresses, and clunky loafers. On the school secretary’s red oak desk sat a small white block with a scripture: For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.

Maddy prayed that was true.

Mrs. Morgan watched Maddy through Mr. O’Donnell’s office window, arms crossed around her stomach. She replayed that morning several times, frustrated by all the witty responses she had finally come up with that eluded her while the students had been mocking Maddy’s hair. Why hadn’t she put those punks in their place? She wouldn’t have thought twice about it at her previous school. Her old kids respected the way she could dish it right back to them. But at this new school, it felt as if the kids knew they were untouchable, that they were the ones really in charge, and that unemployment was just one complaining parent phone call away.

“You’ll have to move rooms,” Mr. O’Donnell said behind her. “Probably for the rest of the school year until we can have those windows replaced.”

The incident with Maddy had left her so rattled that she’d almost forgotten about the broken glass carpeting her classroom floor. That could wait. Her priority was the frightened, mousy student sitting outside Mr. O’Donnell’s office. She couldn’t fail her again.

“I don’t care about the stupid room, Steve,” she huffed.

“Okay. So . . . what happened?”

Mrs. Morgan turned in time to catch Mr. O’Donnell reorganizing his desk for the second time and rolled her eyes. She had always made him nervous, jittery. Which wasn’t what one would expect from a school’s top official. It annoyed her that students were left in the hands of such a spineless slug who bowed at ignorant parents’ feet.

“Kids were throwing pencils at her right before the earthquake,” she said. “They were making fun of her hair. ...