Dead Silence (20 page)

And then she realized why that was.

It was gone. Her music-box imprint . . .

It was gone.

She shook her head, because surely her sanity had slipped, if only a notch. It wasn’t possible for an imprint to just . . . vanish. It wasn’t something you could just
lose
.

Yet here she was. Sitting alone in the dark, in total, complete, utter silence.

The phone, when it vibrated on the nightstand beside her, made her jump and caused her heart to start racing all over again. She lunged for it, pressing her hand against her chest as she took another breath and glanced at the screen.

“Rafe?” she whispered, her voice unsteady. “What’s wrong?”

Static poured through the line from the other end, and she thought at first he might not hear her, that they had a bad connection. Then his voice reached through the phone, finding her. “Hopefully nothing. That’s why I was calling. I wanted to see”—he paused—“how
you
were.”

“I’m . . .” She swallowed her word. She’d started to say “fine,” something she’d said so many times before it was nearly automatic now. Yet here she was, no longer sure whether that was true or not. Under the circumstances,
I’m losing my effing mind
might be more accurate. Instead, she settled for “confused.”

In the background she heard noises: metal banging against metal, maybe; the clang of buckles, probably. What was he doing?

“But better, right?”

“Bett—” Her mind whirled as she tried to make sense of their strange conversation. “What have you done? Did you . . .
do this
?”

She heard the distinct whooshing sound of a zipper. “Look, I only have a minute. I probably should’ve waited to call, but I wanted to see if it worked or not.”

Violet lifted her hand to her lips. “I don’t understand . . . how . . . ?” And then stopped pretending, because she did understand. She understood entirely too well. “You didn’t . . . ? You didn’t just dig him up, did you?” She lowered her voice to barely a breath. “You could get in so much trouble.”

Rafe actually laughed. “Well . . . I didn’t
just
dig him up, I had to do some other stuff too. Really gross stuff. And since you haven’t said otherwise, I assume it worked. You can thank me later. But for now, I’m cold and I’m dirty, so I’m gonna go.”

She tried to imagine Rafe going to the graveyard at night and digging up a body—
Caine’s body
.

She squeezed her eyes shut, wondering whatever had possessed him to do such a thing, to take such a risk.

But she knew. “This doesn’t change anything, you know?”

There was another brief pause, right before she heard him say, “Oh, I don’t know, V. I think it changes everything.” And then he hung up.

CHAPTER 9

WAKING UP THE NEXT MORNING HAD BEEN strange. And quiet.

And . . . well, strange.

Violet hadn’t slept much after hanging up with Rafe, but this time it had nothing to do with the ghostly imprint she’d become so accustomed to. Or rather it had everything to do with it. Its absence was palpable, and Violet kept waiting for it to reappear, kept searching for it in the darkness of her mind.

Odd how something she’d once thought she hated had become such an integral part of her daily life. Like breathing.

And without it, peace was nearly as hard to find as it had been with it.

But not impossible, and eventually Violet had found the silence comforting, letting it wrap around her, swaddling her in solitude.

In the morning, she thought about other things. Like Rafe, and what he’d done to make the spectral sounds vanish for good.

She wanted to tell everyone—or at least Jay and her parents. She wanted them to know what he did, that her imprint had been silenced. But she wasn’t sure she could . . . or should. What Rafe had done was criminal.

So she said nothing, pretending instead that everything was the same as it always had been. That the music-box imprint still followed her. Haunting her.

Marking her as a killer.

“I think we should talk,” Rafe told her as he scooted his chair across the aisle so their desks were lined up side by side.

Violet peered toward the front of the classroom, knowing that if Mr. LeCompte caught them like that, they’d be in trouble. Again.

Rafe was continually breaking the rules in class, but it was Violet who Mr. LeCompte always seemed to catch. So far this year, she’d been reprimanded for talking, passing notes, and for pushing the perfectly aligned desks out of order—all because of Rafe. Just once, Violet wanted to see Rafe take the blame.

“Stop it,” she hissed, scooting her desk away from his, but knowing that wasn’t the solution. She’d only be scolded for disfiguring her row too.

He reached across, surprising her when he captured her hand with his, and she felt that far-too-familiar jolt. “I mean it, Violet. You can’t just pretend I didn’t”—his eyes held hers, and everything around her went still—“
do what I did
last night. We need to talk about it.”

She started to draw away from him, to tell him where he could go—in terms that weren’t exactly ladylike, either. But something about his expression stopped her.

She looked at him, really looked at him, and thought about all the secrets—and the pieces of the puzzle that still didn’t fit. Maybe she
did
need to talk to him.

Overhead the class bell rang, and before Violet could change her mind, she nodded. “Fine. But not here,” she insisted, staring at the students who were still settling into their seats. “Grab your backpack and let’s get out of here.”

Rafe looked confused at first, like he hadn’t really expected her to take him up on his offer. Like she’d just said the very last thing on earth he’d expected her to say. But it only lasted a second, that stunned expression, and then he was lifting his backpack off the floor and his desk screeched as he stood too abruptly. Too impatiently.

Violet stood too, just as Mr. LeCompte sauntered into the classroom, wearing a self-righteous smile on his face, ready to teach thirty-three high schoolers the finer points of AP Lit.

His pointed gaze fell on the two of them as they stood in the aisle, but ultimately landed on Violet, giving her his signature reproachful shake of the head. “Tardy again, I see,” he drawled in his pretentious, false accent.

She opened her mouth to respond, even though she had no idea what she actually planned to say, but Rafe didn’t give her the chance. He dragged her, instead, down the row as every student in class watched them head to the front of the classroom. “Actually, we
are
late. But not for class,” he explained as they passed the smug instructor on their way out the door.

“Well, I—you can’t just . . .” Violet heard Mr. LeCompte sputtering behind them, but it was too late. They were already halfway down the hallway. She thought she heard him bellowing something about the principal’s office and detention—or maybe it was
suspension
—but she couldn’t be sure. Rafe didn’t slow down, and neither did she.

He led her past the front office, out the entrance, and through the parking lot. It wasn’t until they were standing in front of his motorcycle, and he was handing her a helmet—a sweet bubble-gum-pink number that could only belong to Gemma—that she realized his intention.

“Oh no.” She threw her hands up in front of her, warding off the offensive fiberglass helmet. “Not in a million years. I saw what that thing did to you. There’s no way I’m getting on it.” She still couldn’t look at his new bike without remembering the way his old one had sounded as it had skidded across the concrete—metal against asphalt. Without imagining Rafe lying in the center of the intersection, looking hopelessly broken. “I can’t believe Gemma agrees to ride it at all.”

Rafe grinned slyly. “She only gives me one day a week. The rest of the time I have to ride in that little Barbie-mobile of hers. I’m likely to get my ass kicked just for being seen in that thing.”

Violet had seen Gemma’s car, a Mini Cooper that was just a few shades lighter than the pink helmet Rafe was holding now. She’d wondered how Gemma could afford a car like that, especially knowing Gemma’s background as a foster kid, but she’d held her tongue. Asking questions insinuated curiosity, and curiosity might be misconstrued as caring.

And she definitely didn’t want Gemma to think she cared.

“If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t the same bike,” Rafe offered, still trying to persuade her to get on. “If you recall, that one was totaled.”

“Is that seriously supposed to make me feel better?” She reached out and punched him in the arm. “You can be a real ass, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told. Come on, V. It’s safe, and I’ll drive real slow. I promise.” He held Gemma’s helmet out again, and this time Violet’s resolve cracked. Not because she wanted to ride his stupid death-mobile, or because she trusted his word necessarily, but because she could see Mrs. Jeffries from the office coming out the front entrance to investigate. She wondered if Mr. LeCompte had made good on his threat to call the principal.

She wrenched the pink helmet from his grasp and forced it over her head, realizing too late that her head must be at least two sizes larger than Gemma’s as the helmet crushed her skull. She tried to make herself feel better by telling herself it was probably just because she had so much more hair than Gemma.

Rafe secured their backpacks using bungee cords, while Violet kept checking over her shoulder. So far, Mrs. Jeffries was just watching them, but she was positive the office lady knew who they were, and she was equally sure they could expect letters in their permanent files when they returned to school. When Rafe reached out for her, Violet let him help her climb on clumsily behind him.

She felt wobbly on the bike, and she waited for Rafe to give her a quick lesson on how this would work, explaining to her where she should put her hands and her feet . . . to give her some instructions about motorcycle etiquette. Instead, he started the engine. It rumbled up through her entire body but was muffled through the thick layers of foam that lined her helmet.

“Hold on,” he called over his shoulder, his only piece of advice before he hit the accelerator and took off, leaving the school and Mrs. Jeffries behind.

She was surprised when they pulled to a stop in the nearly empty parking lot of Wally’s Drive-In, not that she’d given a lot of thought to where, exactly, they were headed. She sort of thought they’d go to the Java Hut, where other kids from school would go if they were ditching class. Rafe didn’t exactly seem like a Wally’s kind of guy.

Violet turned around to squint at the restaurant behind her. Java Hut might be where all her friends hung out, but if Buckley had a tourist attraction it was definitely Wally’s. People came from all over to eat at the drive-in burger joint. There wasn’t a kid in town who didn’t love pulling up to one of Wally’s menu boards, which were set up in each individual parking space, then having their food delivered right to their car.

Rafe pulled off his helmet as he dropped the kickstand in place. From behind, Violet could see that his dark hair was rumpled, but after he ran his fingers through it a few times, it fell into place, as if on command.

Violet wished her hair would be so manageable. She knew what hers must look like as she stripped off her own helmet. She could feel her curls twisting and coiling, tickling her cheeks and standing up riotously all over her head.

“I hear this place has great shakes,” Rafe said, stepping off the bike gracefully and leaving Violet feeling somewhat trapped on the machine. He reached out to give her a hand.

She stared at him, suspicious of his words. “Who told you that?”

Rafe just shrugged. “Everyone says it. I’m surprised you haven’t heard. I figured it was something everyone here in Podunk knew.” He spent extra time saying the word
Podunk
, making it more than clear what he thought of her hometown.

He was right, of course. Everyone
did
know about Wally’s shakes. But it was hard to imagine Rafe carrying on an entire conversation with
anyone
about milk shakes.

She took his hand and eased off the motorcycle. It hadn’t been bad, the ride. Not nearly as perilous as she’d imagined it would be. If she was being honest, and she supposed she could be—at least in the privacy of her own thoughts, right?—it had even been sort of fun. Sort of. In an I-can-barely-breathe-because-I’m-a-little-terrified kind of way.

And if she was being
completely
honest, she might even admit there were moments there when she’d allowed herself to relax—brief snippets of time when she hadn’t been thinking about the accident, or about whether she was holding on tight enough, or too tight, or listening to the whine of the engine—when she’d felt sheer exhilaration as they whipped down the highway. When she felt free.

Although she’d never admit as much out loud. And never to Rafe.

They went inside and ordered—a chocolate shake for him and a peanut butter chocolate chip one for her. The woman behind the counter gave them a strange look, probably because it was only eight in the morning and milk shakes weren’t much of a breakfast. Or maybe because it was obvious they should’ve been at school.