Don't Turn Around (10 page)

“I let you down?” Peter said, seriously pissed off. “This is the second time in two days I’ve had to deal with these assholes.”

“Peter,” his mother said warningly.

“I told you we’d talk about it this morning. You never goddamn listen.” Bob was off the couch now. He ran a hand through what was left of his hair, sending strands jabbing out in conflicting directions. “I ask one simple thing, that while you live in my house you give us the common courtesy of doing what we ask you to—”

“Calm down, Bob,” his mother said, grabbing at his arm.

“I will not calm down. This kid”—he pointed at Peter—“we give him everything he wants, computers, cars, you name it. He wants to stay out all night? Fine. He forgets your birthday? Sure, no problem. But we ask him to do just one goddamn thing for a change, and he craps all over us.” He turned back to Peter’s mother and spat, “It’s your fault for spoiling him.”

“I spoiled him?” Priscilla was off the couch now, the strength back in her voice.

Peter fidgeted. It was almost as if they’d forgotten about him now, too.

“It sure as hell wasn’t me!” Bob’s face was florid, bright red scalp visible through his hair plugs. “I said we needed to try to keep things as normal as possible, but no, you wanted to make sure he had everything. As if that would ever make up for Jeremy and—”

Priscilla drew in a sharp breath and his father’s voice faltered, breaking off whatever he’d been about to say. She dropped back to the couch, her voice a whisper as she said, “I can’t believe—”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean …” Bob said softly. He sat and tried to draw her into him, but her whole body had gone rigid. She resisted his efforts to embrace her, hands shielding her face as he stroked her hair. Peter watched, transfixed. It was like all the air had suddenly been sucked from the room. There was one tacit, unspoken agreement in their family: They
never
talked about what had happened to his brother. This was the closest they’d ever come.

“If I may,” Mason said softly.

At the sound of his voice, Peter’s parents jumped. They straightened, recovering themselves. Priscilla brushed some imaginary lint off her lap and edged a few inches farther down the couch.

“Sorry,” Bob said gruffly, “it’s just—”

“My main concern today is to make sure that we all reach an understanding,” Mason said smoothly, as if the previous exchange had never occurred. “I’m afraid that we haven’t been clear enough with Peter. Perhaps if he fully grasps the … consequences of his actions, he’ll be more amenable to changing his behavior.”

“What kind of consequences?” Peter asked. He jerked his head toward the guy blocking the closest door. “Is he going to shoot us?”

“Peter!” his mother said sharply.

Mason smiled thinly again. “I believe I’ll allow your parents to explain.” He inclined his head slightly. “I hope this will be the last time we meet, Peter.”

And with that, he left the room. The guards stayed, though.

There was a long moment of silence. Finally, Priscilla said, “There are things going on, Peter. Things that you probably wouldn’t understand.”

“What, I’m an idiot now?” Peter said.

“Will you please sit?” she asked.

“No.” Peter crossed his arms over his chest. Part of him felt like a peevish kid, but the fact that they were acting all normal, like this always happened on a Sunday evening, bothered the hell out of him.

“All right.” His parents exchanged a glance. Bob looked like he was afraid to open his mouth again and let the wrong thing slip out. His mother cleared her throat, then said, “Mr. Mason said they caught you going through your father’s files last night.”

“He’s lying,” Peter said. “I was on my laptop. That’s what they took, remember?”

Priscilla’s eyes narrowed. She slipped into what he always referred to as her “lawyer voice.” “As you said, Peter, you’re not an idiot. And neither are we. You were snooping in your father’s drawer, and saw something you shouldn’t have. It made you curious, so you decided to check it out on your own laptop. Can we at least agree on those basic details, and not insult each other’s intelligence?”

After a beat, Peter reluctantly shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

“All right, then. Apparently, today, Mr. Mason found you doing something similar at the library.”

“And how the hell did he know that?” Peter demanded. “Who are these people? What are they, following me?”

“Probably,” Bob chimed in. “They’re probably watching all of us.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” Peter said, incredulous. He looked back and forth between them.

His parents appeared chastened. “You have to understand, there’s a good reason for it,” his mother said in a low voice. “We wouldn’t have put us all at risk unless …”

She trailed off. When she didn’t continue, Peter said, “Unless what? Why would you agree to let a bunch of guys follow us around?”

“Bottom line is this, Peter.” Bob spoke up. “If you keep digging around the way you do, with, you know, computers—” Bob made a circular motion with his hand; technology had never been his strong suit. “Very bad things will happen. And not just to us, but to other people, too.”

“You said we weren’t insulting each other’s intelligence anymore, right?” Peter asked, looking back and forth between them. “So just tell me what’s going on. I’m almost eighteen; I’m going to college next year. Don’t treat me like a kid.”

“We can’t tell you,” his mother said, a note of pleading in her voice. “Believe me, Peter, we’d love to. But we simply can’t.”

“Why not? If I’m already in danger, don’t I deserve to know why?” They didn’t answer, and he pressed, “What’s Project Persephone?”

His mother blanched, but Bob’s jaw set back into a familiar line. The authority in his voice returned as he said, “You are not to go digging around anymore. Period.” After a beat, he tacked on, “And you’re grounded. No car, no computer, no phone.”

“Crap,” Peter said, suddenly realizing that jackass Mason had taken his iPhone with him. The creep was probably reading his texts from Amanda right now.

“And if we find out you’ve been disobeying us,” his father continued, “that’s it. You’re out.”

“Bob—”

“Out?” Peter was floored. “Like, out of the house?”

“That’s right,” Bob said. “I’m done with this. You want to be a pain in the ass, go do it under someone else’s roof. Here, you do what we tell you to do.”

His mother tried to interject. “He doesn’t mean—”

“Damn right I do.” Bob jutted his chin up an inch. “Your choice, Peter. You want to be treated like a grown-up? Fine. It’s your life.”

“But, Dad—”

“You know what?” Bob continued, his voice suddenly cold. “Your brother would never have done anything like this.”

“Bob!” his mother exclaimed with horror. “Stop it!”

He whirled on her. “It’s true, and you know it. We lost the wrong son.”

His mother turned toward him, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. “Peter,” she said, chagrined, “your father didn’t … he doesn’t really—”

“The hell I don’t,” Bob barked. He spun back to Peter, his face flaming. “You know what? Just get out. I can’t stand the sight of you.”

Peter felt like his insides had turned to liquid, and if he took a step they’d wobble and flow right out of him. Tears bubbled in his eyes, casting his parents in a watery shimmer. He stared back at Bob, who had gone completely stony and expressionless. They’d fought before, but never like this. Peter barely recognized him; it was like facing off against a total stranger.

His mother stood slightly behind him, looking stricken, her hands opening and closing as they dangled by her sides. She appeared to be fighting back tears, too. But she didn’t say another word.

Peter turned to leave the room. The guy by the door eyed him but didn’t make a move to block it. Pushing past him, Peter stormed down the hall. He heard his mother make a strangled sound, and the two of them started arguing again. He didn’t care anymore.

Once he got to his room, Peter slammed the door. A wave of sound in his head like a train roaring through, chasing away the capacity for clear thought. He went back to the door and slammed a fist against it, as hard as he could. The pain brought him back.

He shook out his hand, then collapsed on the bed. But he was too agitated to remain still. He jumped back up and started pacing. The worst part had been the guilty expression in his mother’s eyes. Seeing it, he knew—this was something his parents had discussed, something they secretly agreed upon. Peter could picture them sitting across from each other over breakfast, lamenting the fact that the wrong son had died.

Peter grabbed a bag from the back of his closet. He started packing it without thinking, just cramming stuff in until the duffel was full. Peter got the bag zipped halfway shut; then it strained and refused to close all the way. He yanked out a few handfuls of clothing and tossed them on the floor, then tugged it closed and pulled it over his shoulder.

He was still wearing his jacket and shoes, since he’d been hustled into the house and hadn’t had a chance to take them off. His backpack was downstairs, but it wasn’t like he’d need the textbooks; he wasn’t planning on going to school tomorrow. Peter patted his pocket, checking for his wallet. Then he swallowed hard and popped open his bedroom window. Even though it was on the second floor of the house, there was a trellis leading down to the backyard. When he was younger and theoretically still had a curfew, he’d used it to sneak out a few times.

This time, he was using it to leave for good. Peter took one final look at his room. Then he eased out onto the ledge and pulled the window shut behind him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

N
oa rarely dreamed, but when she did, it was always the same. Smoke and flames. Screaming. Leaves flickering red and orange and the smell of terrible things burning.

She’d been asleep during the accident. The most important thing that had happened in her entire life, and Noa had only regained consciousness halfway through it. Back then she’d been an extraordinarily heavy sleeper. Her father used to tease her about it, called her his little bear because she went into hibernation every night.

They’d been driving home late from vacation. A dark road in Vermont, windy and steep. The last thing she remembered was her mother singing along to the radio, some sappy ballad that had been popular at the time. Noa was snugged into a booster seat in the back, her head drifting back and forth as the car swayed around corners. The whole car danced along the road in time to the rhythm of her mother’s voice. Her father chimed in on the chorus, off-key. Her mother sang louder along with him, a laugh in her voice, her hand lightly brushing his shirtsleeve.

It was winter, New Year’s Day. Noa had a dim memory of staying up late the night before. A slew of older kids running around, leaving her feeling slightly awestruck. She’d been too young to be included in their games, and too old to play with the babies. That was okay, though. As an only child, she was used to spending a lot of time alone.

She’d overheard puzzling snippets of adult conversation, someone’s dad getting a little too loud before being gently ushered from the room. People counting down and cheering and kissing one another. A constant din of conversation rising and swelling around her. Noa sat there for hours, wide-eyed, tired but too exhausted to sleep, until someone noticed and her father lifted her in strong arms to carry her to bed. She let her head fall limp against his shoulder, felt her mother’s soft lips brush against her cheek as her eyes drifted shut. That final night she’d slept on a sagging air mattress in a room full of other kids, their breathing soft and irregular around her, the air uncommonly musty, the smell of stale alcohol and dog hair drifting up from the carpet.

Brunch the next day, the adults’ voices set on mute, the roar diminished to a grumble. Kids yawned and whined and teased until someone snapped at them to quiet down. They ended up staying late, even though her mother wanted to get on the road. Her father said it was only a few hours’ drive, they’d be home in plenty of time, and besides, this way Noa would sleep in the car.

The radio, the song. The sleep. Then the fire.

In the dream, Noa’s eyes were fixed on the trees webbed through the shattered moonroof. They throbbed and pulsed, hot and red, in time to her heartbeat. There was a monster in the car, a loud angry one that roared as it devoured. She could hear her mother scream, fighting it. Her father never said a word; he’d already been overcome. Noa couldn’t see the monster; her head refused to move. But she listened as it consumed her parents, then came for her. She felt its hot fingers stroking her legs, reaching for her hair, trying to wrap her in a tight embrace. It was like that giant snake that coiled around its victims, then swallowed them whole. The minute she felt that heat reaching for her, she pictured scales and dryness and a massive mouth opening wide …

At the last possible moment, Noa was torn from the monster’s grasp. She was suddenly thrust out into a sharp cold that was almost as bad as the heat. More shouting and then other hands were on her, frigid ones this time, and she still couldn’t see; her eyes were running too wet for her to focus.

Sometimes she made it all the way through the dream, but more often she woke up as the monster loomed above her. Every time, Noa wished she could change it, make it so that she, too, had been consumed. It would have been better for a lot of reasons.

Tonight, though, she woke up as soon as her body landed in the snow. She bolted upright, confused by the strange surroundings and the fact that she was fully dressed. Then she remembered: the operating table, the apartment she’d rented.

She still shivered, despite the fact that she had three wool blankets and a down comforter piled on the bed, and the heat remained on eighty. She got up, keeping one of the blankets wrapped around her shoulders as she turned the dial on the thermostat up even higher. Noa padded to the fridge, but the sandwich looked even less appealing than it had earlier.

The clock on the stove read three a.m. Noa stretched an arm above her head. She’d been asleep for about five hours, but felt as if she’d slept for days. She picked up her laptop and stretched out on the couch. Idly she wondered how Linux was doing. He was a ratty feral cat that had started hanging out on the window ledge outside her apartment shortly after she moved in. Noa figured that the previous tenant must have fed him, because he’d sit there for hours, giving her a reproving look. So she caved and started setting out a bowl of dry food every day. He refused to actually enter the apartment, but would nap there on nice afternoons, paws tucked beneath him. Once he even let her pet him.