Aven's Dream (6 page)

“Our department maintains meticulous records of any fluctuations in the native populations to guard against the possible migration of invasive nonnative species or unusually virulent pathogens,” Montague said. “However, at this point in time, we have made no determination regarding a relatively moderate increase in reported deaths.”

Montague added that it was unusual to find reclusive creatures like mountain lions so close to densely populated areas. He declined to comment on the nature of the predator’s injuries.

The police department is asking that residents in the surrounding areas, especially those with property adjacent to the woods, keep all pets and young children indoors well before sunset.

“We’re certainly not discounting the fact that recent events could be linked to a roving pack of dogs,” said Winters Sheriff Robert Greenbauer. “Residents are asked to make sure their pets are accounted for and to check all fences and restraints before leaving the premises.”

Authorities ask that community members contact the Sheriff’s Department at (541) 455-1018 if they come across a dangerous animal.

A knock at my door sent me flying out of my chair.

“Aven, I’m back. Are you going to bed?” my dad called.

“Uh, not yet. I’m going to take a shower.”

I opened the door, hoping my dad hadn’t heard me unlocking the door before I turned the knob.

“Is she all right?” I asked, still unnerved by the frightened expression in Mrs. Hendrix’s ancient eyes.

“Oh, I think she’ll be fine. She’s just shaken up about some story in the paper. Dogs getting loose, that’s all. She’s worried about Angel. I think that little dog is all that keeps her going most days. That and your spaghetti sauce. I think I saw her sneak a couple of antacids before dinner.”

He paused.

“You know, honey, I think we’d manage all right if you wanted to go out with your friends one of these nights.”

I tried not to wince at his optimistic use of the plural when it came to the word
friends
.

“Thanks, Dad.”

He patted my head before heading down the hallway toward his room. I raced to get ready for bed, desperate to tell someone about Will Kincaid—even if my confidante was an inanimate object. As soon as I finished with my shower, I hurried back to my room and turned on my new computer.

I opened a blank document, and the empty page stared back at me. I suddenly felt ridiculously self-conscious, like someone was looking over my shoulder as I tried to think of something to say about Will Kincaid. I barely knew this person, and yet I couldn’t get the image of his face—his eyes in particular—out of my mind. He was unquestionably dazzling in a movie star kind of way. And like a movie star, he was indisputably out of my league. But there was something else about him. A strange intensity that made my blood rush.

My reverie was interrupted when my phone buzzed with a message. There was only one person, other than my dad, who had my new number. Sean. He was working late at the bookstore. I opened his message and laughed at the picture he sent—him with a goofy sad face and a message:
Come with tomorrow night. We’ll have fun. Promise. S
. I sent him a note back:
Okay. You owe me.

Sitting down at my desk, I typed the words:
I met Will Kincaid today
. Then I saved the document and shut down the computer before switching on the lamp next to my bed. Darcy was already asleep when I turned out the light and laid my head on the pillow. I groaned at the unwelcome realization that I needed to find something to wear to the party I had just agreed to attend. But that could wait until tomorrow. I closed my eyes and tried to relax. But sleep wouldn’t come. I rolled over, staring up at the ceiling, the image of Will Kincaid stubbornly swimming in my head.

Snapping awake, I looked around the room, half expecting to find someone looking back. I shook my head groggily; other than Darcy’s snoring, the house was quiet. Apart from my mom’s desk, the newly acquired furnishings around my room created an unfamiliar terrain as a dull twilight-gray light filtered through the blinds. It was either very early, very rainy or both. I couldn’t remember having fallen asleep, but the digital display on my clock read a little after six. I
never
woke up this early on weekends. Rolling over, I tried to go back to sleep, but seconds later Darcy, sensing someone was awake, arrived at the side of the bed and nosed my hand.

“Yeah, yeah. Good morning to you, too.” His tail thumped on the floor when I acknowledged his presence. I yawned. “All right. I’m getting up.”

Almost every Saturday since we had moved, my dad and I went to the bakery in town for breakfast. It was the same routine each time. I got decaf Earl Grey tea with a healthy dose of cream and sugar, and my dad always drank a straight shot of espresso. I had made the mistake of taking a sip of his once. Bleh. It tasted like rocket fuel. My dad had laughed and said, “It’ll put hair on your chest.” I had responded with a quick, “Thank you, no.” Usually on these mornings when I managed to wake up early enough, I tried to summon the motivation to take a jog before we left. I smirked. Six o’clock was certainly early enough by my standards.

My goal was to stay in reasonable shape now that I wasn’t running cross country. I had never been fast, but I still enjoyed running. There were a couple of girls on the team back in Irvine who I had hung out with pretty regularly, but after a few e-mails and texts over the summer, none of us had much to say. For me, that part of my life had stopped evolving.

Dressing in my sweats, I drifted downstairs and peeled a banana while Darcy crunched on a bowl of dog food. The house was so still that my ears began to ring. My dad would be asleep for at least another hour and a half, giving me ample time to run and shower before we left. I decided not to text him so his phone wouldn’t wake him up. Instead, I left a note on the counter reminding myself to tell him about the party with Sean.

I figured most kids my age had better things to do on Saturday mornings than go to breakfast with their dads. Then again, most of them had licenses, social lives, and places to go. Still, it didn’t feel like I had the luxury of skipping out on the little things—because there wasn’t always time to go back and change things later.

At five years old, I had asked my mom what happened after we died. Her ancient gray cat, Popcorn, who had been named for his habit of eating popcorn straight out of the bowl, had died in his sleep that summer while sunning himself on the back porch of our house. More philosophical than religious, my parents had struggled to provide me with the answers about death that I had craved so badly at the time.

Years later, when I had asked my mom again, she had said that death was an inevitable part of life. Then she had admitted that she couldn’t say definitively what happened after we died. Her answer had caused me quite a bit of frustration, causing me to envy anyone whose parents subscribed to one religion or another. Eventually I had settled on my mom’s answer: I was just never going to know for sure what happened after we died.

After losing her, thinking about my own mortality became both an obsession and a punishment. I dreamt of seeing her again, but on nights when I couldn’t sleep, I would stare up at the ceiling, feeling my breath come in and out. In those moments, all I ever felt was a sense of panic, a desperate need to hold onto that single moment, before it was gone.

By the time I stepped outside, quietly closing the front door behind me, I could see just enough light behind the clouds to indicate that it was morning. A thick layer of fog crept down our street as I stretched, and I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt to ward off the cold. I had just gotten to the street when I noticed Darcy was still on the front steps. I waited for him to join me, which he did, after a moment’s hesitation. Suddenly I remembered that I had agreed to go to Jason Everett’s party, and my stomach clenched. Chances were good that I wouldn’t know anyone, except for Sean, and what were parties other than a chance to hang out with a bunch of people I didn’t know? In other words: torture.

As I started jogging, the concrete beneath my feet felt unforgiving, and I struggled to establish a decent pace. A miserable side-ache was already hindering my efforts, but I kept going. Slowly. Instead of turning toward the park where I had met Will Kincaid the night before, I turned toward town. This early on a Saturday I was likely to have the streets to myself, and there was something exhilarating about having the town all to myself while most people were still asleep.

There were several streets I had never gone down before, partly because my sense of direction was so bad. Sean joked I could get lost in my own room. During a trip to downtown Portland at the end of summer, I had turned the wrong way in the mall when I left the bathroom, forcing Sean to spend the better part of an hour looking for me.

My heart skipped a beat when I passed a street called Kincaid Lane, and I made a split second decision to double back. Darcy kept pace as we turned up the hill. My breaths came unevenly as we climbed toward the top. The homes lining Kincaid were statelier and much larger than ours, and much older looking. Over the summer, before finding the bookstore where Sean worked, I had visited the tiny town library and read about an older residential section of Winters. I was guessing this was it. As the fog crept in, it gave everything around us a ghostly feel.

High wrought-iron fences or brick walls, covered by ivy, guarded many of the homes, making them difficult to see well from the street. I jogged as far as possible. High up on the hill and bordered almost entirely by woods, there was a particularly imposing house. Ivy had grown up over stone-carved figures that stood watch over the massive doors at the front entrance. It looked like no one had lived there for a long time. I wanted to get a better look at the grounds, which sprawled well beyond the main house, but like many of the other homes on the street, a gate—this one rusted and ancient—guarded the entrance to an endless driveway. Welded to the center of the gate was a macabre iron figure. I stared, fascinated by the oxidized character, which looked like it was laughing down at me.

Backing away until I had reached the street again, I looked around with a sudden sense of apprehension. Darcy was sitting, dutifully waiting for me about ten paces back. Looking past the house, I could see another entrance to the woods in the distance. Turning, I jogged quickly in the direction I had come with Darcy at my side. When I turned back for one more look at the house on the hill, it seemed to have disappeared into the mist.

M
y stomach was performing back flips while I sat on the couch waiting for Sean.

He was late, and I was starting to rethink my decision to go to the party. I watched as Darcy paced up and down the hall, whining. Apparently my case of nerves was contagious. Silently, I cursed myself for agreeing to go with Sean.

After offering to pick me up from the party, my dad had quickly retreated when I gave him a pained look that implied he should know better. Since I never really went
out
on the weekends, I didn’t have an official curfew. I always carried my phone with me, with the promise that I would call if I were going to be late. But that had never happened, not even back home. Besides, my dad almost always fell asleep by ten in the middle of grading papers or doing research for his classes.

The sound of knocking sent Darcy clattering for the front door. I took a deep breath and rushed to open it, surprised to find Sean standing on the doorstep. We had reached a point where it was natural for him to honk to announce his arrival.

“Smokin’,” Sean said, looking me up and down.

“Uh huh, sure.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. He always made it feel like an epic event any time he saw me wearing anything other than jeans, as though they were part of my mandatory uniform. Tonight, I was dressed in black pants, an emerald green top that I thought contrasted well with my hair, and a pair of black ballet slippers I was hoping wouldn’t get soaked. I felt totally ridiculous—and conspicuous. I had decided to change into jeans and a sweatshirt at least half a dozen times, but I had managed to talk myself out of it. Leaving Sean at the front door, I ran up the stairs to kiss my dad on the cheek.

“If you need me to pick you up, just call,” my dad said as I raced out of his office.

Sean whistled again as we walked to his car.

“You clean up pretty nice, Casey.”

I admired Sean and grinned, noticing his outfit resembled the one worn by Will Kincaid the day before. It made me wonder if there was any chance Will would be at the party. I shook off the thought, not wanting to get my hopes up.

“You’re not too bad yourself.”

Sean smiled and shrugged.

“All right, then. Let’s go.”

We stopped off at Ford’s for shakes and then wandered around town for a while to avoid showing up too early. Jason Everett’s house was across town, closer to school, in one of Winters’ newer housing tracts, an upscale neighborhood that my dad referred to as
nouveau riche
. We parked down the block, since the street was already packed with cars. It looked like the entire high school had already shown up to his party. Every light in the house was on, and I could hear the steady beat of music as we approached. I wondered what the neighbors thought when Jason’s parents were out of town.

“You owe me,” I grumbled at Sean.

“It’ll be fine,” he laughed, hip checking me.

When we reached the huge front doors, which stood open, I took another deep breath of fresh air. Stepping inside, I felt like I was watching a movie. There were people everywhere, but no one I recognized. Sean’s expression relaxed when he spotted Matt and Jeff across the room. The entire school
had
shown up. I wanted to share in Sean’s relief, but I felt even more alone as we joined the others. Sean yelled something over the music to the others, and Matt yelled
hi
to me. Jeff just smiled. I liked them both, and they were always friendly in school, but Jeff was usually kind of quiet, around me at least. They were Sean’s friends, not mine.

I tried to focus on what they were saying, but I couldn’t hear anything over the music. Someone bumped me from behind, and I realized that was what my brain felt like right now—like it was getting bumped into. A girl teetered by in platform shoes, grabbing my hand for balance. Feeling a sharp wave of dizziness, I suddenly felt like crying. When I looked up at her, I saw her makeup was smeared, and her eyes were red. Someone else bumped into me, brushing my arm. For no reason, I started laughing. Sean glanced at me, and I looked down.
This
was why I was better off on my own. … Because around a lot of people, I started feeling crazy.

I glanced around. There were people packed so tightly throughout the first floor of the house that it was difficult to breathe as the music vibrated through the floorboards.
So this is what I’ve been missing
. One big anxiety attack.

I lasted for another few minutes, vacillating between wanting to laugh maniacally or cry hysterically, before I gave Sean what I hoped was the universal sign for getting a drink. His eyes bulged a little until I mouthed
water
. Really, I just wanted to find a place away from people to breathe and stop feeling insane. Turning to face the crush of people, I took a deep breath and headed toward the back of the house as bodies pressed in around me. I caught a glimpse of Allison Monroe, clad in a bright red mini-dress and—not surprisingly—surrounded by devotees. Sean would die when he saw her, I thought glumly.

It was slow going as I made my way toward the kitchen, and I could finally see why. Set up on the floor was a keg, while a giant tub held chilled bottles and cans of various beverages. I strained to see if there was any soda. I had almost made it to the edge of the kitchen when I felt a large hand come down on my shoulder. Yelping in surprise, I turned to find Jason Everett behind me. His spiky dark hair, broad shoulders, and square facial features really should have been attractive, but his egotistical I’m-hot-shit attitude just didn’t do it for me.

“So he did bring you,” he said, leaning in close to be heard over the music.

I leaned away from him, feeling uncomfortable with his sudden interest in me.

“I didn’t know you and Sean knew each other.”

Really, I wanted to say:
I didn’t think you knew I existed
. But I didn’t.

Jason shrugged.

“Little League.”

“Oh. Nice house,” I offered without enthusiasm.

It was the truth, but I didn’t know how nice it was going to look in the morning with the way things were going. Jason didn’t look concerned.

“You want a drink?”

“Soda?” I asked carefully.

We began moving again toward the kitchen with Jason in the lead, pushing through the crowd with an air of authority I had obviously lacked. I followed behind him and then watched as he poured some soda into a plastic cup before turning away from me and adding something from a bright green bottle on the counter. Jason raised his cup in toast, and I sniffed the radioactive green beverage. It could have been antifreeze for all I knew. Pretending to take a sip, I decided to dump it the first chance I got. Jason’s eyes scanned the room for something or someone. It looked like he was losing interest in playing host.

“Bathroom?” I mouthed.

He pointed toward the hall, before imparting that there were four additional bathrooms upstairs.
Four
? I wondered how many people lived here as I moved away from him. Within a few steps, Jason had disappeared, swallowed by a heaving sea of people, only a few of whom I recognized from classes.

To the left of the foyer, I saw a line of people waiting for the bathroom. I scanned the downstairs. The house was expensively furnished and contained pricey looking paintings on many of the walls. The blue- and white-striped upholstered couches in the formal living room were straight-backed and uncomfortable looking. I couldn’t imagine any family sitting on them after dinner to talk about the day’s events. Above me, a chandelier with hundreds of sparkling crystals swayed in time with the music.

I hadn’t seen Sean, Matt, or Jeff since reemerging from the kitchen, so I continued my path toward the upstairs to find one of bathrooms on the second floor, feeling a monster headache coming on. I noticed looks from some guys I vaguely recognized as friends of Jason’s, but I was preoccupied with thoughts of how I was going to find Sean again. Then again, he was probably looking for Allison Monroe, not me.

By the time I reached the second floor, I had begun to feel like Alice during her trip to Wonderland—infinitely tiny and in a land of strangers. The house itself resembled a model home. Nicely appointed, but cold. If there hadn’t been a crowd of people here, it would have been easy to believe that no one really lived in this house. Several doors down, I found an open door that led into a powder room. Inside, I locked the door and poured my drink down the sink before filling the cup with water. I sank down on a little bench and stared at an ostentatious vase of fresh flowers that looked like it had been professionally arranged.

Taking the cell phone from my pocket, I tried calling Sean, but it went to voicemail. I sighed. He probably couldn’t even hear his phone over the pounding music downstairs.
Am I supposed to be having fun here
? I wondered. It sounded like everyone else was.
Staring at the face in the mirror, I barely recognized the person looking back. Before leaving the house I had put on eye shadow, a light dusting of blush and lip-gloss. It felt like I was playing a game of dress-up.

A loud knock from outside startled me, and I opened the door, quickly stepping aside as a guy raced past me and into the bathroom beyond the powder room. His face was green, and I heard retching noises behind me. Suddenly, I felt a wave of relief that I had poured out my nuclear-green drink. Retreating into the hallway and away from the sound of heaving, I entered the sea of people and felt my headache ratchet up a notch as I moved toward the stairs. Then I heard someone shouting over the music. I kept walking, but the voice continued to get louder until it was right behind me.

“
Hey
! Girlie! Wait up.”

Girlie
? I didn’t turn toward the voice, but then a meaty hand shot out, taking hold of my wrist before I made it to the stairs. A bad feeling slithered through me, like a snake had just wrapped itself around my wrist. Turning reluctantly, I saw that the hand belonged to Scott Adams—Jason’s friend from my U.S. History class. I frowned. Neither one of them had so much as looked at me, much less said hello, until tonight.

Like Jason, Scott was good-looking in a boring, beefy-yet-boyish sort of way, with wavy brown hair, a slightly ruddy skin tone, and hazel eyes, which were heavy-lidded and added to his overall look of arrogance. Something in his expression—the permanent smirk maybe—told me he was used to getting what he wanted. And his reputation had preceded him. According to Sean, Scott had dated half the cheerleaders, most of the girls’ volleyball team, and occasionally he swooped down on a bewildered freshman. One of the girls in my English class had a crush on him, though I couldn’t understand why. According to Sean, girls’ reports varied from unrepentant jerk to charming. I assumed he could easily be both. His smile made me think of the stereotype of a used car salesman. Slick and untrustworthy.

“Mind if I have my arm back?” I said plainly.

“No problem.” He dropped my wrist and smiled. “I’m Scott.”

He held out his hand, swaying a little where he stood. I took his hand briefly—it was sweaty—before pulling away.

“Nice to meet you,” I said dryly.

I didn’t offer my name, and suddenly uneasy with the way he was staring at me, I turned and started to walk away when his hand clamped around my wrist again.

“Hold up. I want to show you something.”

I twisted my arm, and jolt of panic surged through me. When I couldn’t break free of his grip, I looked around. There were hundreds of partygoers around, and it wasn’t like he was going to murder me in the middle of a crowded room. Still, where was Sean?

As my gaze swept across the downstairs, my eyes locked onto Will Kincaid, who was framed in the open front door, staring in my direction with a venomous expression. He wasn’t looking at me—he was looking at Scott. My heart thudded in my chest, and I yanked at my arm, digging my heels into the carpet. Despite my efforts, Scott easily began towing me down the hallway. I looked into the crowd one last time before he shoved open a door and pulled me in after him. I blinked. Inside, the room was illuminated entirely by black lights, casting our surroundings in a strange purplish glow that made Scott’s teeth appear abnormally white and his eyes a creepy, milky white. He looked like a ghoul.
A little early for Halloween
was all I could think.

“See, isn’t this cool?” Scott asked.

I hadn’t noticed before with the blaring music, but his words were beginning to slur together.

“It’s great, but I need to go find my friend, Sean. He’s giving me a ride home,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and authoritative.

My palms began to sweat and my knees felt weak.
Something’s wrong here
, I thought with a sick feeling. I took a step back. Across the room, I could see French doors that led onto a balcony, and I wondered distractedly how far I could jump without breaking any major bones.

“Come on, girlie. Stick around. Everyone’s ’aving a good time.”

Scott let go of my wrist, which had begun to sting, but he was still blocking my quick escape to the door, which I was pretty sure he had locked behind him. I took a step back and then was startled by the sound of laughter. I watched as two shadowy forms appeared from an adjacent door. A wave of relief swept over me. It was short-lived.