Brighter, a supernatural thriller (5 page)

Ramona thought about her future or her lack thereof. She tried not to think about Angelica, or the fact that she'd seen Angelica after her death one night in October. So, she had no idea why she started talking about it that night. Maybe it was because she was drunk. Ramona blamed a lot of things on being drunk that April. That year. She felt like she spent half of her life drunk. She wasn't sure if she didn't almost like her drunk self better than her sober self. Maybe her drunk self was the real her. She didn't know. She just thought that maybe she was going insane. Elston had crawled into her veins, into her blood vessels, into her neurons. It was causing her to malfunction in all kinds of ways. It wasn't her fault. It was Elston's. Damned fucking town. Why couldn't it just let her go?

Maybe it was because Garrett was there. It was the first time Ramona had seen him since he'd arrived in town six months ago. He'd been lying low. And with good reason, because Owen would probably kill Garrett if he ever saw him. From the way Owen talked about Garrett, you would think Garrett was Satan incarnate. So Ramona was surprised when she saw him that evening, and he didn't look...evil. Zane pointed Garrett out to her. "I just want to let all the girls in town know," Zane said. "So you'll stay away from him."

He pointed.

It was a Wednesday night at The Frog, but it was still too cold for the garden to be open, so it was fairly crowded. Conversation like white noise underscored Zane's warning. The air was thick with cigarette smoke. It stung Ramona's eyes even though she was a smoker herself. She followed Zane's gesture to a table in the corner, where Garrett Hillard sat. He was alone. His head was bent over a book, so at first all she could see was his shaggy, sandy-colored hair. Then he looked up, almost as if he could feel her looking at him. His jaw was strong, his nose straight. He had the longest eyelashes she'd ever seen on a boy. He was cute.

She thought he was attractive, but she didn't say it. Zane certainly wouldn't approve. Hell, no one would. Garrett was a rapist. And everyone in town was convinced he'd killed Angelica, even though the police hadn't made any arrests. Thinking a rapist-killer was cute wasn't the right thing to do, as far as Ramona knew. So, she kept her attraction to herself. But she did end up talking to him.

She didn't try to talk to him. Not really. After Zane pointed him out, she nodded. Told Zane that she would be sure to keep her distance. And she did. She hung back. She kept four feet of smoky air between her and Garrett at all times. But she couldn't stop staring at him. It was as if he were a magnet for her eyes. Every once and a while, he'd look up, and she'd jerk her head away, only to feel her head inch back of its own volition, or as if it were being pulled on a string. She didn't seem to be able to keep her eyes off of him, and he seemed to notice.

After about an hour of this, he tucked a bookmark into the book he was reading, set it down on the table, picked up his empty beer bottle, and got up. Ramona's breath caught in her throat as he captured her eyes with his own. Their eyes locked as he started walking. He came closer and closer to Ramona. Then he veered away from her and went to the bar. Ramona couldn't help it. She followed him.

Garrett had his back to her. He was leaning his elbows on the bar, waiting for the bartender to pay attention to him. Ramona tiptoed next to him, gingerly placing her hands on the bar.

Garrett didn't look at her. "Finding me interesting?" he growled.

Ramona removed her hands. Took a step sideways. "I'm—I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not true," he said.

"What's not?" asked Ramona in a tiny voice.

"What they say I did to Blair," he said. "It's not true."

Of course he would deny it. It didn't really mean that it wasn't true. But hadn't Ramona wondered if Blair might not have been lying? Hadn't she almost wished it? And what if Garrett were innocent? An innocent man punished by a sea of silence and prejudice in a small town?

Ramona took a step closer to him. "I believe you," she said. The minute she said it, she wished she hadn't. It wasn't strictly true, for one thing. But it also wasn't smart for her to make friends with Garrett Hillard. No one talked to Garrett. If she talked to Garrett, then when she was with him, no one would talk to her. It was an enormous social risk she was taking. Was she ready to defend him? Was she ready for the concerned looks she'd receive, the cautionary speeches she'd get? Everyone had told her to stay away from Garrett Hillard. Now, she was standing next to him, whispering to him. It wasn't wise, was it?

Garrett just laughed. "You don't believe me," he said.

"I do," said Ramona. "Well...maybe not entirely. But I recognize that it's a possibility that you're telling the truth. That's better than nothing, right?"

Garrett didn't answer. The bartender was in front of him then, so he ordered his drink. The bartender looked expectantly at Ramona. She shook her head. She still had half a drink.

The bartender strode away from them, to the cooler to get Garrett's beer. Garrett watched him, staring straight ahead, ignoring Ramona. Suddenly, she felt desperate to get him to trust her. She wanted him to pay attention to her.

"I saw Angelica the night she died," she said. "After she died."

Garrett slowly turned his face towards her. He raised his eyebrows.

Ramona gulped down the rest of her drink. When the bartender returned with Garrett's drink, she ordered another one for herself. Why the hell had she said that? Why was she talking to Garrett? Why was she telling him things she didn't even think about anymore?

"I saw something weird once too," he said.

Ramona drew in a breath, waiting for him to continue. Instead, she felt an arm fall heavily around her shoulders.

Startled, she looked up. It was Zane. "He bothering you?" Zane asked.

"N-no," said Ramona.

But Garrett swept up his drink and stalked off, shooting a murderous glance over his shoulder at Zane.

Ramona shook Zane's arm off. "Jesus, Zane, what's your problem?"

Zane spread his hands in confusion. "What?"

"I don't need a knight in shining armor, okay?"

"Okay," said Zane. He grinned. "Don't be pissed. I'll buy you a shot, okay?"

* * *

Ramona glared at the sunlight streaming through the windows of the admissions office, hoping the three ibuprofen she'd taken earlier would kick in soon. She was hung over. She hadn't had that much to drink the previous night, but she guessed she wasn't as young as she used to be or something. She remembered going out and drinking every night in college, waking up, doing whatever she needed to do, and then being fine to go out and do it again that night. Lately, whenever she drank, she woke up the next morning worthless. She needed an entire day to recover from one night of drinking. Life after college sucked.

She wasn't supposed to be staring out the window. She was supposed to be working on a historic blurb for a brochure for the college. Her supervisor, Maxine, had given her the project the day before. Maxine wanted her to do research on the town and the college and come up with a few interesting historic happenings that they could use to punch up the brochure.

This task seemed too much like a high school book report. She had to do
research
. Ugh. To start Ramona off, Maxine had brought her three large boxes of brochures from years past. Ramona was supposed to go through these to see if anyone had done any articles like this before so she could get some ideas. Ramona had been at work for fifteen minutes now, and all she'd done was look at the boxes.

Maxine swept through the outer office with a paper in her hand—obviously heading for the copier. "How's it coming, Ramona?" she called over her shoulder.

Ramona sighed. "Just getting started," she called back and opened one of the boxes.

She pulled out a stack of brochures, each from a different year, and began to look through the first one. It was from 1945. It was black and white. It was old. Ramona tried to focus on reading the text in the brochure, but the little black letters squiggled out of her vision. She set it aside. When was the painkiller going to start working?

The next brochure was from the eighties. Ramona guessed it would have been too much to ask someone to box the brochures in a conceivable order. Ramona started to read the brochure. She hadn't been at the bar very late last night. She'd been in bed by 1:00 AM. Which wasn't bad, really. She'd gotten seven hours of sleep. She should be fine. But she wasn't. She was achy, tired, and dehydrated. She sipped at the bottle of water she'd snagged at The Grind this morning. She also had a coffee somewhere... She looked around. There it was. Next to box number two of brochures.

God. Maxine didn't really mean she had to go through all of these, did she? That was just a waste of time. What Ramona really should be doing was trying to find out interesting historical things that had happened in Elston. She looked up from the brochure and considered. Did interesting things ever happen in Elston? Maybe during the Civil War? There was that monument to the guy who'd built a steamboat or something.

No. The thing was—this was a stupid project. It was busy work. Maxine had given it to her because she couldn’t think of anything else to give Ramona to do. Ramona tossed the brochure she was reading aside. She looked at the next one.

Maybe she was just feeling like this because she was hung over. Maybe if she hadn't gone out to the bar last night, she wouldn't feel like getting up and leaving the admissions office and never coming back. She didn't guess it mattered. She was stuck with this project, and she might as well make the best of it. So, if she felt like leaving the admissions office, maybe she should.

Ramona ducked her head into Maxine's office and told her that she thought she'd have better luck doing research in the library. "The brochures are great, but they aren't in any kind of order, and I just don't know where to start, so maybe I can find a book or something," Ramona told her.

If Maxine minded, she didn't let on. Ramona took her coffee and her water. She left the admissions office. Once outside, she lit a cigarette. She took a few drags and considered her options. She could go to the college library, which was, frankly, a better library than the public library. It had more books and better resources. She should clearly go to the campus library. But the public library was a block closer, and maybe she didn't want to find her answers quickly. Maybe she wanted to take her sweet time with this project. At least until the ibuprofen kicked in, anyway. She could barely think now.

The Elston Public Library sat squarely in the center of Duke Street. Cars drove around the library. Southbound traffic went to one side of the library. Northbound traffic went to the other. (Not that there was ever much traffic in Elston.) The library was brick. It had been painted white. It was a diminutive building, though two stories. The buildings across the street (half the street, to be more precise) towered over it. An oak tree grew in front of the building, its huge roots ripping up the concrete of the sidewalk. To get to the entrance, Ramona had to watch her step. She'd tripped over the roots before. The oak tree had thick branches and a thick trunk, but never had many leaves. It was always sparsely covered, like a comb-over on a balding man's head. The top story of the library had two small windows. At Christmastime, the librarians placed electric candles in the windowsills, lighting each window up. Sometimes, when it was dark, and Ramona passed the library, the two windows looked eerily like eyes, and she couldn't shake the feeling the library was watching her. It was really festive, all right.

Ramona didn't even glance up at the windows on her way in that day, however. She was too busy navigating around the roots of the oak tree. Finally at the door, she pushed it open and came face-to-face with the librarian at the desk, which faced the entrance.

The librarian was Garrett.

"Uh..." said Ramona. "Hi." Didn't you have to get your master's degree to be a librarian? What the heck was Garrett doing here?

Garrett looked surprised to see her as well. "Hi," he said.

"So, you work here?" said Ramona.

Garrett nodded. "My mom pulled some strings," he said. "I needed a job."

Ramona nodded. Some strings his mother had pulled. She didn't think Garrett had a master's degree. But what the heck did she know? He could. She guessed. Hell, she should be getting her master's. She needed to apply to grad schools. "Cool," she said.

"You, um, need help finding anything?"

"I'll let you know," she said. She went to the computer that housed the card catalogue and started to type into the search field. She turned. "Uh. You were going to say something last night, but we were interrupted."

Garrett looked at her, but didn't say anything.

"You said you saw something," she prompted.

"I thought I saw something," said Garrett. "It's not important."

"What was it?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. Really. I'm sorry I said anything before."

Ramona wanted to press him, but she couldn't do that without being impolite, so she just went back to the computer screen. She found a few books on Elston's history and spent the next few hours reading through them. On her way up the steps to the second level of the library, she noticed a door directly across from the steps. It was strange because she'd never seen the door before. Ramona didn't spend much time in the library, but she'd lived in Elston for almost five years, so she thought she would have seen it at some point. She didn't like the door, and she wasn't entirely sure why. It was painted white, and it was maybe six feet high—a short door, probably because the building had been built in the 1600s or something. People were shorter then. So maybe it was because the door was short and squat—a door for dwarves or gnomes. Maybe it was because it was an old door. It had a farmhouse latch on the front, no doorknob. The door looked ancient, like a door to another time. Or maybe it was because it hung limply on its hinges. And half open, so that Ramona could see that it led to the basement. Behind the door lay darkness, a gaping hole deep into the earth. Ramona didn't like turning her back to it to ascend the steps to the second level.