Deadgirl (10 page)

My heart hammered and my lungs bellowed. I knew I was hyperventilating, pulling in tiny shocks of air and gushing them out just as quickly. But I couldn’t calm down. My mind wouldn’t even form rational thoughts. Despite the warm sweat glistening on my skin, my core felt cold. Like I’d swallowed an icicle the size of a baseball bat.

It smelled like urine between the soda machines, but only a distant part of me recognized it. My ears were turned up to their maximum gain. Every rattle in the soda machines, the shriek of every grease-starved shopping cart wheel. The dull whoosh of the sliding doors of the store not twenty feet from where I cowered. The sound of cars starting up and dying off. The creak of car suspension and the groan of tires.

One car was moving fast. Its rush swept from my right, but it was coming quick. I tucked my face against the soda machine and pulled my elbow up to cover my head. Through a tiny crack in my defenses, I saw the car fly past the soda machines. In that split second, I saw a long white boxy car with green-tinted windows, and the outline of the driver’s head. The supernova of terror exploded inside my chest, a crescendo of horror. My breath stuck in my throat, and I tried to burrow into the brick wall, anything to get away from that terrible source…

The car whipped a right turn back into the bulk of the parking lot, zipped through one lane, and turned another right to skirt the furthest edge of the parking lot. Without fanfare it pulled out onto Lincoln Street and disappeared down the road.

The panic disappeared. My hands trembled, and I could feel the hiccup of my shaking breath. The sweat on my skin had turned into ice-water, and I knew I was trembling from more than just adrenaline. I was freezing.

I crept out from between the soda machines and went to unlock my bike. I tucked the bag with the Shake ’N Bake into my backpack, mounted the bike, and stood for a long moment trying to quiet the quakes rocking my body.
Were they in that car? The boys who had… Baldy, with that sick smile and that silver revolver. Could I sense them?

Through the windows of the supermarket, I saw Morgan in the check-out line. She couldn’t see me. Not still here. Not like this. I jumped onto the pedals and raced off across the parking lot.

I didn’t see the white car again for another three days.

Chapter Six

Freeze

I spent the rest of Sunday at home, alone. My phone buzzed with calls and text messages, but my only response was a mass text I sent to everyone telling them I was okay, and that I’d be at school on Monday. Six missed calls from Zack. My chest tightened, but I didn’t relent. My mom gave me crap for forgetting her Cosmo, my dad burned every excuse he had to avoid me, and I spent more than a little time listening to my MP3 player and lying in bed. A little emo, certainly, but I think I earned it.

I didn’t eat anymore the rest of the day—I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t unaware that that put me at two full days with nothing more in my system than three eggs and four pieces of bacon. And even that had been less hunger and more habit. I marked the breakfast on my wall calendar out of morbid curiosity.

The night brought me to the grey beach, somewhere I was beginning to fear less and less. I spent the night walking up and down the shore, picking up little grey rocks and little grey shells and hurling them into the waves. My fear of the man-thing made of light floated somewhere in the back of my mind, but it hadn’t been that hard to avoid the first time, and it had made a terrible racket when it arrived. I didn’t think it could sneak up on me any more than a train could. I left the beach every night with the rise of the sun since the first night, but my first excursion told me that leaping into the water would wake me up right away. It was an emergency exit.

When the sun came, I woke up and got ready for school. My first instinct was to dress down, to try to blend in and deflect what attention I could. But then I thought of the questions and the pitiful stares and the spinning gauntlet I was about to enter and decided I’d need all the self-esteem I could muster. I spent most of the morning curling my hair into a mane of black tresses, and I spent the rest of it digging through my clothes for my long black skirt and my witchy-poo boots. I completed the look with an eye-scorching pink top and a black cardigan. I made my eyes as startling and green as I could with my best eye-liner tricks, scooped up my backpack, and bounced downstairs.

“Luce! Luce, you missed breakfast.” My mom said from the kitchen.

“It’s okay,” I said, grabbing the books I needed and stuffing them into my pack. “I’ll eat a big lunch.”

I wanted to say “it’s cool, I’m a freak,” or “all the cool kids are anorexic now,” but I managed to spin the words before they came out. When she came out of the kitchen, her eyes bugged out. She scanned my appearance with more than a little disapproval.

“I see why you missed breakfast,” she said in a tiny, tight voice. “Is this really appropriate, Luce?”

I frowned and indicated my clothes with a sweep of my hand.

“I’m not dressed slutty.”

“I—” she said and stopped, clearly exasperated at my candor. “That’s not what I meant.”

I felt that stupid defensive pride grab the wheel again.

“What did you mean, Mom?” I asked. “Big puffy sweatshirt, ponytail?”

“Well,” she said, and her face twisted into one that probably mirrored mine more than a little. “What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with healing, Luce.”

“Healing from what, Mom?”

Her anger deflated immediately. Mine didn’t.

“I just meant if you want to lay low I understand—”

“Can we go?” I asked. My tone could slice steel.

She sighed, seeming to shrink a foot in height, and nodded. She grabbed her purse and blew past me out of the door. I followed her with tight-lipped crispness. I made sure to slam the heels of my witchy boots into the concrete as hard as I could. I sounded like a pissed-off woodpecker.

The ride went in the kind of awkward silence that deserved to be filmed. We picked up Morgan, who was dressed in typical Morgan fare and looking much more put together than at the grocery store. She caught the syrup-thick tension in the air immediately and said nothing more than a muted “Hey, Luce,” that faded away just after the “Lu.”

Mom told us the usual time she’d pick us up, a somewhat obvious piece of information, but I’m sure she was just trying to say something before we left. I grunted something that sounded like an affirmation and she drove off with a little chirp of the tires.

The school parking lot was already beginning to fill, and students flowed past us with increasing density. Morgan turned toward me, and she looked to be attempting diplomacy.

“You look great, Lucy. Really great, actually.”

I smiled and let out a sigh of relief, “You sure know how to say sorry.”

Morgan grinned and threw her arm over my shoulder, “What are friends for? How do I look?”

“Awful,” I said, shaking my mane of black curls. “Just awful.”

Morgan stuck her tongue out at me, and we walked off through the parking lot with the renewed vigor that can only follow intense weirdness. We didn’t talk about The Night, thankfully, on the way to class. She walked me right up to Journalism class and reached out to squeeze my hand. I tightened up.

“Morgan.”

“I know,” Morgan said, and smiled. “I’m really glad that I have you.”

I couldn’t stand up to that. I pulled her into a tight hug.

“Me, too.”

She didn’t say anything else, mercifully, before squeezing my hand again and walking off. I only just managed to get myself under control and not burst into big girly tears before heading into class. I floated to my computer, ignoring the looks I had been expecting. Twenty minutes into class, and thus, twenty minutes into a particularly frustrating game of Text Twist, Will slid into the chair of the empty computer next to mine.

I tried to hide my deep breath and turned to face him. I offered a pleasant smile.

“Hey, Will.”

“Hey, Luce,” Will said. He was a freshman to the bone. Nervous voice, rail-thin boyish body, the red skin tone of pre-acne. He sat at lunch with us, and Daphne had taken him in as some kind of apprentice/squire. Daphne used him as a valet, essentially.

I waited the appropriate five seconds before speaking again.

“What’s up?” I asked him.

He shook his head and laughed. “I’m sorry. Sorry. I just wanted to say hey.”

Sure. Liar.

“Hey,” I said, and turned back to my computer.

After I shifted the words around in Text Twist a few times and still wasn’t able to come up with anything coherent, I turned back to him. He hadn’t budged.

“Can I…I mean, you look really good,” he said. His face went bone-white.

My eyebrow arched, “Uh, thanks?”

“I just meant. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Well, he wasn’t wearing the pity mask, I’ll give him that. His eyes were eager, and he was smiling. He meant it—he wasn’t fishing for anything. I let out a long breath and nodded.

“Thanks, Will.”

“You’re uh, you’re welcome. Luce.”

“Well, I should…” I indicated my game.

“T-totally. You, uh, you Twist yourself silly. I’m gonna…I have that article.”

I nodded, my lips tight, trying to suppress genuine laughter. The poor guy looked like he might explode, or melt into the floor. He jumped out of his chair and bounced off back to his computer.

I dived into 2nd period World History with vigor. No one bothered me, no one stared at me, and the subject was pretty cool. After the lecture, I finished the worksheet Mr. Stater gave us, and thus my homework, and bounced out of the classroom with a good mood on the horizon.

Just like last week, Morgan and Wanda sideswiped me as soon as I hit the hallway. I smiled at Morgan and turned to Wanda. She looked like she had a big secret, had to go to the bathroom, or was about to sneeze. I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Hey, Wanda. Cold out today, huh?”

She nodded, trying to look casual. She even stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and nodded again.

I sighed.

“Get it out.”

“LUCY!”

She mauled me, not unlike the last few people to see me alive. Well. Alive. When she released me, I nodded, trying to act understanding. I’d be freaking out, too. It was impossible to ask everyone to ignore what happened.

She told me how glad she was to see me, how worried she was. I nodded and smiled and told the same story I’d told a hundred times. The back of my head ached halfway through—I touched the contusion again with a mixture of wonder and certainty. I shook my head. Of course it hurt—I’d been pistol-whipped in the back of the head.

Liar.

I nodded through the rest of Wanda’s sentiments on the way to English. I knew it was only going to get worse. I was headed into the meat grinder—all of the girls had English with me.

I didn’t take a step into Ms. Fleece’s class before Sara and Daphne both hit me with a group bear hug. I sighed at Morgan, who was now laughing both hysterically and silently. She shook with the force of it. Wanda just looked confused, and Sara and Daphne lifted me off my feet.

“She lives,” Daphne said, in her megaphone voice. “My girl lives!”

“Stupid chick,” Sara said. “I should knock your block off.”

I smiled sheepishly. The whole class was watching the show now.

“All right, all right,” I said, and together they let me back down. “I’m fine. And I’m not telling the story again.”

Daphne shrugged, “Morgan already told us all.”

Morgan’s silent laughter renewed itself. I flashed her a threatening glare, which only made her shake harder.

“Well, swell,” I said, and dumped my backpack next to my desk. “Let’s get a-learnin’.”

The girls slid into the chairs next to me. Ms. Fleece looked to be oblivious at the board again, scribbling out instructions, but that had fooled us once before. Daphne didn’t allow even a minute of silence before she leaned back and threw her arms up theatrically.

“So how did the
date
go?”

She and the other girls burst into screaming fits of laugher. I sighed, ducked my head, and inscribed death threats into the margins of my notes. Ms. Fleece eventually reined in control of the class and got us back to
Lord of the Flies
.

Sara was reading that day, the part just after the wild blood-orgy that culminated in little Simon’s death, when a student messenger walked into the class. Sara stopped reading, but Ms. Fleece gestured for her to continue as she intercepted the messenger. I watched Ms. Fleece read the note—I saw her face crumple in something like annoyance.

Sara kept reading, telling us about Simon's body floating away on tides of silver I drifted in and out as Ms. Fleece nodded and shooed the messenger away.

“One second, Ms. James,” Ms. Fleece said to Sara, and Sara stopped reading.

Ms. Fleece moved down the aisle and handed me the small pink slip of paper. It told me in scrawled blue ink to report to the principal’s office. I glanced up at her, the paper rustling in my shaking hand.

“Right now?”

She nodded. I gave my head a numb shake, scooped up my backpack, and headed for the door. Right as I crossed the threshold, I heard Daphne’s voice rise above the silence.

“Ooooo, you’re in trouble.”

I smiled, despite myself, as I left the class.

I crossed the gigantic quad and walked to the principal’s office. I’d never been sent to the principal’s office in my whole life. I’d received a few detentions in my time, but I’d never racked up the kind of points it takes to get a ticket to the Head Screw’s office. I wondered where I had acquired my prison lingo as I walked into the main office. I showed my slip to the plump secretary at the first desk—she waved me past her and pointed toward the right office. The door was open. Principal Ortiz sat in a typical educator’s brown suit behind his desk, and two people sat in the chairs opposite him. There wasn’t any room for me to sit.

Principal Ortiz gestured for me to enter—he looked as nervous as I felt. I folded my hands behind my back and glanced around nervously.
Nowhere to sit. Awesome.
I half-expected the people in the office to start making bids or something.