Be Not Afraid (12 page)

I leaned back, as if he were holding a lit match under my chin. “What is it?”

“I don’t know yet.” Dominic made no move to pull the book back. “I found it in Cassie’s room the other night. It’s filled with all these weird words and writings and shit. I looked through it—there were a few things written in English, but I couldn’t make anything else out.” He moved the book another inch in my direction. “You don’t know what it is?”

“How would I know what it is? I’ve never even seen it before.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” Lie number three, just in the past two minutes.

“Okay.” He dropped his arm and then put the book back inside his pocket.

We walked on, the sun beating down relentlessly along the tops of our shoulders. The scarf around my neck felt too warm. I pulled it off and stuck it in my pocket. A ring of sweat dampened the neck of my T-shirt, and I rubbed my fingers under it. They were trembling.

“Here’s the thing, Marin.” Dominic’s voice was low, ominous. “I don’t think my sister has epilepsy.”

“What do you mean? Your mother told us yesterday that the doctor said he was ninety-nine percent certain that was what she had.”

“Marin.” His eyes were steady, locked on mine.

“What?”
My voice was rising and trembling at the same time. “I saw her have a seizure right in front of me.
You
saw it!”

“She did have a seizure. But I don’t think it’s because she has epilepsy.”

“Oh, you’re a doctor now? You know what’s going on with her?”

“I don’t know
what
the hell’s going on with her. I just don’t think it’s epilepsy. All that shit she’s been saying … the things she screamed out at Mass yesterday? The number she carved into her face? I mean, come on. Some people with epilepsy scream during seizures, but it’s really rare. And they just … scream. You know,
aaaarrrgggghhh,
because their bodies are all out of whack. I looked it up on the Internet. I mean, I must’ve read fifty different sites, including the Mayo Clinic. People with epilepsy don’t cut their faces up or yell stuff about Mass. About religion.”

“So what are you saying?”

Dominic stopped walking. “I think something’s been going on. Or something went on. Between the two of you. Maybe when you came to the house? Back in October?” He pulled the book out of his pocket again when I didn’t answer and held it up. “Is this some kind of witchcraft manual or something? Did you guys get involved in some spirit thing that day she locked you in the closet?”

I could feel the blood draining from my face. “You can’t be serious.”

Dominic bit his lower lip, as if the movement might quell some of his frustration. He stared down at the book, thumbing slowly through the pages before closing it again. “For the last two days, my sister has been repeating your name over and over again. All she wants is to see you. And then you came and stood in the same room as her, and in less than ten minutes, she said the pain in her head left for a little while.” His fingers closed around the book. “Why? Why you?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re lying.”

“Screw you.” I whirled around, heading back the way we’d come.

He grabbed me by the wrist and I shook him off hard,
furious now. Leaning in as close as I dared, I stuck my finger inches from his face. “You
said
you wouldn’t grab me, and you
said
we didn’t have to talk about Cassie. Who’s the liar now?” He didn’t move, regarding me with wary eyes, and I moved forward another inch, my finger still under his nose. “I’ve been over to your house
once.
And if you remember, it was one time too many. You have the wrong person if you think Cassie’s … condition … or whatever’s wrong with her has anything to do with me. I barely even know her. And after what she did to me, I don’t ever want to know her!” My voice rose to a shout, if only to force back the tears rising in my throat. “And the same thing goes for you! Now leave me alone! I mean it! Just leave me the hell alone!”

My flip-flops smacked against my heels as I continued walking back to my house. Or maybe it was the sound of my heart beating beneath my shirt. I was holding my breath for some reason, and the taste of vomit lingered in my throat.

“Marin!” Dominic called. “Come on, wait!”

But I didn’t wait. I kept walking, staring straight ahead at the oak tree alongside the pond. Its enormous limbs jutted out from either side, the ends flush with wide leaves. From this distance, the top of it looked like hair. Green, leafy hair. A few hundred more yards, and I could turn into the driveway, walk up the steps, and shut the door.

He caught up to me and then surged ahead, turning around and jogging backward so that he could look at me as he talked. “Marin, please. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. And I shouldn’t have said you were lying. I’m
sorry. Please. It’s just … God, there’s been so much going on. I’m just trying to put the pieces together. I gotta start somewhere.” His knees were moving too high, and his elbows flapped up and down as he tried to maintain the awkward gait. “The only thing we have
—I
have—to go on right now is Cassie’s connection to you. And maybe it’s not even a connection. Maybe she just thinks it is. I’m just trying to get things to add up here, all right?”

I strode on ahead, pretending to ignore him. Behind my sunglasses, I could see the blue shape lodged in his wrist, like a piece of sea glass.

“Please,” he persisted. “I didn’t mean to jump all over you. You’ve got to believe me.” He made a gesture over my shoulder, toward our previous destination. “Can we at least turn around and keep walking? And can you please stop walking so fast so I can stop running backward? I feel nauseous.”

“Good,” I said, but I didn’t mean it.

“Good?” The side of his mouth lifted into a little grin. “You know what happens when people get nauseous while they’re moving, don’t you? This weird feeling starts in their belly, and then they—” He stopped, puffing his cheeks with air, pretending to gag. “That T-shirt you have on looks pretty clean. I’m sure you don’t want to get anything on it.” He heaved again, clapping a hand over his mouth.

“Bite me.” I suppressed a smile and shoved past him.

“Marin, please.” I could hear him stop and then a soft clapping sound as he lifted his arms and let them fall against
the sides of his pants. “I’ve got nowhere else to turn. It’s you or nothing.”

I slowed at his words and then stopped altogether.
It’s you or nothing.
Under any other circumstances, those four words would have meant something entirely different. But we weren’t under any other circumstances. Still, I closed my eyes, let the weight of them drape over my shoulders.

“I don’t have anything to tell you.” My voice rang out over the dusty road. “I swear. I’m not involved in anything having to do with Cassie.”

“Okay.” Dominic trotted up next to me, took a deep breath. He sounded resigned, but I could hear a fragment of hope somewhere in there too. “So maybe I’m jumping to conclusions here. Or maybe it’s just something you and Cassie have to work out.”

“There’s nothing Cassie and I have to
work out.
” I turned around, heading back down the road again toward town. My voice was fierce. “I don’t even
talk
to your sister. I haven’t said a word to her in over six months, and that’s not going to change any time soon.”

“Okay. Then just tell me this.” He raised both his arms and draped them over the top of his head, surrender-style. “What really happened the day I found you in that closet?”

I bit down hard on my lip, stared out at the traffic up ahead as it rushed by, the spin of metal, the blur of color. It was here. The moment I’d been waiting for, without realizing it, since the day it had happened.

And yet.

“Nothing.”
It came out in a whisper.

He nodded, as if he’d been expecting me to say such a thing. “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot lately, trying to remember back to that day, and I realized that it was right around the time when my sister started acting really strange. I mean, even stranger than bringing someone home and locking her inside a closet. You might not believe this, Marin, but that’s not who my sister is. She’s never done anything like that before.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

“True.” Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Very true. But right after that was when her behavior started to get really weird. She wasn’t sleeping, for one. She’d get up late at night and wander around the house for hours, like she was looking for something. And then just a few weeks ago I found her in the kitchen when I came down for a drink of water. She was opening and closing the cupboard drawers, rummaging through things, and then moving on to something else. When she saw me, she got this strange expression on her face, like she didn’t know who I was. When I asked her what was wrong, she just blinked, like she hadn’t heard me. And then when I went over to her and asked her again, she hissed at me.
Hissed!
Like a cat.” Dominic made the noise between his teeth—
ssssssst
. “I leaned back a little, you know, because it kind of freaked me out, and she laughed. And, Marin, I’m telling you, it wasn’t her laugh. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was this completely foreign sound, this deep, weird noise, like someone else’s
voice had gotten stuck inside her throat. It was all of three seconds, but it was the freakiest thing I ever heard.”

“What’d you do?”

“There was nothing I
could
do.” Dominic shrugged. “She just turned around and walked back out of the room. Went inside her bedroom and shut the door, like nothing had ever happened. The next morning, she was up and dressed, ready to go to school.” He rolled his bottom lip over his teeth. “I just … God, I have so many things running through my mind that I don’t know what to think. I just want to figure out how to help her.”

We were on the sidewalk now, on the corner of Market and Main Streets, a bus stop looming ahead of us like a wide plastic cave. The bench inside it was empty. I headed toward it and sat down, glancing at the scrawl of graffiti marring the smooth surface:
Jesus loves you. Go fuck yourself. Brian-n-Lacey Forever!
The juxtaposition of the phrases was so stark that looking at them, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. How was it that love continued to exist alongside such ugliness? Or did it?

Dominic followed, settling himself in the space next to me. “Can you please just tell me what happened in the closet that day, Marin?”

“I don’t know!” I burst out. “I don’t know
what
happened that day! I swear to God I don’t! It wasn’t my fault!”

“I’m not saying anything’s your fault,” Dominic said. “I’m not blaming you for anything. I just want you to tell me what happened.”

“Why?” My voice was ragged, the sound coming out of my throat like something torn. “Why do I have to keep being involved?”

“Because you already are. You were there.” Dominic touched my arm. “Don’t you understand, Marin? You’re the only one who knows what really happened. Which means that you’re the one who holds the key to fixing it.”

“
I
can’t fix it!” I shook my head. “I can’t do anything! I didn’t even want to be there! She forced me to go inside that closet!”

“I know.” He winced, remembering. “But, Marin, listen to me. There’s got to be some kind of connection between whatever happened that day and what’s happening now.” He reached over and took my hand, sliding it inside his. “Think about it. All of this can’t be a coincidence. I know it’s not.”

I wasn’t sure if I heard anything else after he took my hand in his. It was such a natural move, completely devoid of self-consciousness, as if he’d done it a million times. Which of course, he probably had, with other girls. His fingers looked too big to be wrapped around mine, the nails short and neatly clipped alongside my stubby, gnawed ones. But they felt just right there, too, as if they belonged somehow. The blue disk inside his wrist seemed to fade a little as I regarded it from this angle, and I fought the urge to reach out with my free hand and run my fingertips over the top of it.

“Marin.”

Oh my God. What was I thinking, getting all worked up about him taking my hand? He wasn’t interested in me. Not that way. He was here for a singular objective only, one that involved me finding the “key” to unlocking the crazy box his sister had gotten herself into. I glanced away from his pleading eyes and stared instead at the cracks in the sidewalk beneath us. A weed sprouted up between the cement, green and flourishing despite its tiny prison. I crushed it under the sole of my shoe.

“Can you please—”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” I pulled my hand away from his and turned on him. “Seriously! I mean, first it’s your sister, and now you!”

He didn’t answer right away, looking stunned by my outburst. Then: “I just want you to be straight with me. Tell me what really happened that day at my house.” His eyes looked like pieces of glass in the sunlight. “I’m on your side here, remember?”

My side? Since when had things been divided into camps? And who was in the opposite one?

I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself.

I had to start telling the truth about something.

To someone.

Even if it was him.

And even if it meant I might lose everything because of it.

Cassie had been riffling through a rack of clothing inside her closet that day when she paused and threw a dress on the bed. “How about that one?” Her tone was careless, bored even. “I never wear it anymore. Actually, I don’t even think I wore it at all. It’s a four. You wear a four, don’t you?”

I nodded, gazing at the dress, which was floor length, with a bias cut and deep neckline. Molded cups had been sewn inside the navy blue material to accentuate the bust, and tiny rhinestones glittered around the waist.

“You like it?” she asked over her shoulder.

“It’s beautiful.” I fingered the silky material, letting it slip through my fingers like oil. The rhinestones looked like little balled-up pieces of tinsel. I’d had lots of dresses before, but none like this. This was like something a woman would
wear at a movie premiere. On Johnny Depp’s arm. It had to be exorbitantly expensive. “What about the other girls, though?” I asked. “Maybe we should wait till they get here and have a chance to look at everything too.”