Drain You (20 page)

Whit picked it up and handed it to me. Then he went downstairs, leaving me alone in the living room to change.

I tried to shimmy into the thing, but it was supertight around the waist, so I had to stretch it and keep wiggling my hips to get in. I tried to scope my reflection in the big bay window. The dress was a Kelly Bundy cut, not my thing at all. And it also wasn’t much longer than the T-shirt I’d been wearing. I looked kind of slutty actually. Naomi, you suck.

I had to get back to my house, and I only knew the phone number of one free taxi service in the city: Morgan. It was pathetic, weird, low, rude, evil, all those things, but I had no choice. I grabbed the phone, dialed, and mercifully he let us skip past the lameness, the silences, the tense sarcasm. He could tell from my hello that I wasn’t so whatever tonight.

“I need a ride home.”

“Okay, from where?”

“I’m at Naomi Sheets’s house.”

“Why?”

“Morgan.”

“Sorry, I don’t get it. Naomi has a car, right?”

“Please,” I said.

There was nothing on the other end. I thought he’d hung up.

“I can’t leave Olivia here,” he said finally.

“Oh.”

“Never mind. I’ll bring her. What’s the address?”

I gave it to him. He was thirteen minutes away, maybe less.

“I owe you. Again.”

“Just be outside.”

This was working. Confidence was creeping back in. All I needed now were shoes.

I hunted around the living room for a minute and then remembered that I’d left my Converses in Whit’s room. I dashed down the stairs and threw open his door, which slammed right into his shoulder.

“Hey, watch it!” he yelled.

“Why were you standing right there?”

“I was coming to get you.” He stopped, looked at me, and held back a laugh. “Where’s the rest of that dress?”

“Very funny. She hates me. Old news.” I grabbed my shoes and sat on his bed, starting to tie the laces. “Morgan’s picking me up.”

“You know I can’t let you go. You heard James.”

“Look, it’s chill, I just have to remind my parents I’m alive. It won’t take long.” One shoe done, on to the next.
“And I’ve got to relax. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown if I stay in this house.”

Whit shook his head. “He told us to stay together.”

“I’ll be safe at home.” Second shoe done.

“You’re safe here.”

“No one’s safe anywhere.”

Whit moved the hair out of my eyes, tucked it behind my ear.

“I’ll just run in, say hey, get the Lexus, and come right back.” I was handing out empty promises like boxes of kittens today.

“Just…don’t let anything happen to you. James would kill me.” He tried to smile.

We hugged, and I was out the door. The house was darker, the sun was basically down. How much had I already missed? James was probably there by now, maybe even inside. The plan was so flawed, so random, I could only doubt it.

I sprinted up the stairs, through the living room, out the front door, up the driveway to the street. The light was fading, the horizon a dim crimson line. One minute later a car horn honked and Morgan pulled around the corner, his sister Olivia sitting in the front, waving at me. I hopped into the backseat, and we were off.

Olivia had a ton to say. Morgan, not so much. So we let her ramble on about Nickelodeon, Judy Blume, shiny
stickers, fuzzy stickers, swimming, whatever. Now this was a sister I could get into. This sister loved me.

When Morgan finally parked in front of my house, I felt the strangest sensation. It was either like I never expected to see the place again or like I’d forgotten it still existed at all. I turned to Morgan, who hadn’t given me crap for the stupid short dress, hadn’t grilled me about Naomi or the rest of her family, hadn’t made me apologize profusely or thank him incessantly, who’d only let me be, in peace.

“Morgan, you amaze me,” I said. I meant it. Maybe everyone hated me, but I loved them all. They were all amazing.

“My parents are still in Maui. You could come over if you—” But Morgan knew me so well, knew I wouldn’t go back to his house with him, that he actually stopped himself midsentence.

My heart hurt. How could it be so unconditional, so endless? I’d done nothing, literally nothing, to deserve this. I was just a flip-flopping flake. “No, I’m cool.”

“Got it.”

“I wish I could tell you this was the last time I’ll need something like this.”

“I know.”

“How about we say one more time and then I’ll promise to stop, like, ruining your entire life?”

Free kittens, anyone?

Morgan stared at me, amused.

“Right, okay.” I laughed. “Going now.”

I high-fived Olivia, squeezed Morgan’s hand—transmitting all my psychic unspoken love—shut the car door, and watched them drive away. The Lexus was in its usual spot. Inside, the keys were on the kitchen counter. On the fridge, the sweetest note yet:

I grabbed a pen and scribbled on the same sheet of paper:

Oh, I was getting grounded for sure. Whatever. The Diet Cokes were gone. So was the sun.

I ran through stop signs and ignored speed limits and got to the twins’ place in about six minutes. There was no
light left, streetlamps had turned on, prime-time sitcoms were about to start; it was officially night. I squinted in the shadows and got nervous and decided to park a couple of blocks away just to be safe.

The streets were empty. I spied in some front windows and saw families walking around, TV sets on, dinner tables cleared. Life was normal everywhere except in my tiny microcosm, where life was totally psychotic. My boyfriend was lugging around a jug of Drano, I was stalking through strangers’ front yards like a homeless weirdo, my parents were nowhere, and my friends were all pissed or perma-fried.

Finally I got back to the twins’ property. I ducked down low and creeped alongside a row of cacti running parallel to the driveway. I snuck past the main house, past the short brick wall dividing the main house from the guesthouse, and as I entered the backyard I froze—I could just make out a hooded figure crouched in some bushes in front of the window.

I took a deep breath and made a break for it, dashing straight across the lawn to the bushy shrubs James was hidden inside. As I got closer I saw he had one hand on the edge of the windowsill and was trying to peer in, but the curtains were closed. When he heard me approaching he whipped around, his eyes panicked.

Then the color in his eyes drained. The gray went
grayer, if it was possible. He looked destroyed. Like I’d died. Like I’d chosen to die.

I ran to him anyway and hugged him, careful not to make a noise.

“Are you crazy?” he whispered.

I nodded because, yes, I was crazy, and there wasn’t a better way to explain it.

He just stared at me, broken. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.

“It’s okay, I’ll help you,” I whispered.

“No, you won’t.” He turned and stared back at the window in silence.

“Did you go inside?”

James nodded but wouldn’t open his mouth, his face still hard. Seeing him this worried worried me. Over his shoulder, shoved deeper inside the hedge, I noticed the bottle of Drano, empty and without its cap.

I trembled and gripped his hand. “What do we do now?”

“Just wait. Wait for them to drink.” He stared ahead, so bleak. “Pray to God.”

So we waited. James and I sat like that forever, camouflaged in the bushes, deep in the leaves. Time passes strangely when you’re doing nothing and saying nothing yet terrified out of your mind. Maybe we waited thirty minutes, maybe three hours. Gnats buzzed in our ears.
Ants crawled on my shoes. We were in the trenches.

I’d almost started to meditate when a sudden sound broke our trance: a car driving up the alley on the other side of the guesthouse. Doors swung open, loud music blaring from a stereo, then the car turned off, doors slammed, and footsteps clicked against concrete, coming closer.

Then there was the sound of a door opening on the far side of the house. Apparently there was another entrance facing the alley. And apparently people were coming over. They’d come in. Stiles and Sanders had guests. No, no, no, no, no.

We heard voices in the living room, muffled but recognizable. Dewey. Cooper. The gang was all here. James looked at me and mouthed the word
Who
. I shook my head sadly and mouthed back,
Two more
. This was going to get so much worse.

Footsteps came closer, and James yanked me facedown into the foliage just as Dewey’s hand snatched the curtains open. Neither of us moved a muscle. More muffled voices. The footsteps went away.

Every nerve in my body was pulsing, a blur of electricity. My lips were pressed against dirt and leaves, my hair tangled in branches, my mind in fragments.

I tried to get a grip. I slowly sat up and peeked through the bushes, through the window. Dewey was on
the couch, legs crossed, talking to Cooper, who was over by the kitchen. I tried to concentrate on their words, but I couldn’t make out any of the conversation. I closed my eyes to focus on the syllables, but then James tapped me and pointed, his eyes wide with shock. I looked up.

Cooper was in front of the fridge, one hand on the door, the other tilting back a tinted glass bottle. He was drinking.

James didn’t breathe and neither did I. We watched, frozen, so frozen it felt like my heart had stopped. I was like James.

Cooper finished the bottle and set it on the counter. Dewey kept talking, gesturing with his hands. We kept waiting. Then the wait was over.

Suddenly Cooper dropped to his knees and clutched a hand to his throat, coughing violently. Dewey leapt off the couch, shouting. Cooper’s face turned more blue than pale, and then he fell to all fours, hacking, losing control. For a moment he thrashed back upward, his face lit up for us to see. It was all there: dread, chaos, pain, death. Cooper was dying. Again. This time for good.

But before we could celebrate, Stiles was there, bent over Cooper’s body, screaming at Dewey. He grabbed the empty bottle off the floor and sniffed it. Sanders was there now too, crossing the room, yelling something at both of them. Then Stiles snapped his fingers at Dewey,
who was grabbing bottles from the fridge and putting them on the counter while Sanders started pouring them down the drain. There were dozens of them.

Then Stiles crouched back down by Cooper, who was still twitching slightly, and stared at his body.

I tried not to. I did anyway.

He was dead. Realizations floated up like fog from somewhere deep inside me.
This is what death looks like. Is supposed to look like.

Then James was shaking me. “Get in your car!” he scream-whispered. “Go, drive to your house!”

But it felt like nothing. My body was just a shell, just a guesthouse. Sometimes people lived there and sometimes no one did. It felt empty now, and one day it’d be empty forever.

“Come on, get up!” James was pulling at my arm. I let it happen.

Then I was up, on my feet, watching James’s face, animated, panicked. His mouth made the strangest shapes.

“Do you understand me?” I heard James asking.

I tried to nod but looked back inside instead and saw Sanders walking toward the front door, yelling something at Stiles. Then he opened the door and slammed it shut behind him.

“Wait, where will you be?” a weird voice asked from my throat.

“I’ll follow you.” James’s hand around mine, dragging me across the grass.

“Why?” Night air, my feet breaking into a run.

“Don’t talk, just go, now!”

Everything was a tunnel—we were hurtling along the only path, one destination. We were past the brick wall, past the main house, onto the street. A man walking his dog stopped and waved, but I didn’t understand what he was doing in this reality so I didn’t wave back.

James shoved me toward my car, shouted one last “Go!”

I came to. I was here. A thousand things were happening.

Now I was the helpless kitten, hoping someone would take me home.

I don’t know
what I thought about during the drive to my house. Maybe James, maybe dying, maybe nothing. I have no memory of it. There was a blur of streets and signs and stoplights and the feeling that everything in my life was accelerating to some fatal crash. But suddenly I was parking in my driveway, James right behind me, and my hands were shaking. I looked through the windshield at my house, and the realization hit me hard: This place was no longer safe. Nowhere was, not anymore.

A flashback of Stiles shaking Cooper, sniffing the bottle, outraged, calculating. Something in his black eyes said it: He knew I was the one responsible. I didn’t know what to do tonight. I had no idea how to make it to tomorrow morning.

And instead of focusing on that, instead of figuring
out a way to help all of us, a different, darker thought floated up in my mind. Maybe Stiles had never wanted to kill Libby. Maybe he’d just wanted to turn her into one of them. Maybe he had, and Libby wasn’t human, and our rescue was for nothing. I couldn’t swallow. I’d started all this, and I didn’t have the power to end it.

Then there was a knock on the glass and James was at my window, mouthing the words,
Quinn, there’s no time
. I dropped my head in my hands and stared at the floor. I wanted to cry and cry and not stop until the car was full of tears and I drowned. But that’d take forever, and I didn’t have forever. Like James said, there wasn’t any time.

“Fine,” I said through the glass, then took a deep breath, flung open the door, and walked up the stone steps toward my house.

When I got to my front door, I turned around to take James’s hand, but he wasn’t beside me. He was back by the Lexus, leaning against it. He wasn’t coming in.

I shouted, “James,” desperately.

“I’ll wait out here. Just grab some clothes. Hurry.”

I stared at him, then nodded. This was only our first stop tonight.

Inside all the lights were on. Even weirder, my parents were home. A new panic set in. Any interaction with my mother and father required a minimum of half an hour,
which was half an hour more than I had to burn tonight.

I sprinted upstairs to my bedroom and emptied my LeSportsac of all the stupid crap I carried: papers, pens, notebooks, an extra bra, socks, sunglasses, mascara, lanyard string, locker key, glitter nail polish. I surveyed the rest of my room for stuff to pack. I grabbed a pair of Docs, some cutoff shorts, a Nirvana shirt, my dad’s cardigan, and that was it. I had no idea if that was enough, because I had no idea when I’d be back.

Racing down the stairs, I remembered to smile. My parents loved when I smiled.

“Quinn, is that you?” my mother called from the kitchen.

“Yeah, I was just grabbing some stuff.”

In the kitchen my mother and father were dancing happily around each other, working in separate stations—Mom on dishwasher, Dad on Tupperware—listening to some funky Stevie Wonder song on the radio. Look at them. More amazing people I loved, more amazing people I’d let down.

“Got your note. Or whatever you’d call this.” My mother held up the paper, stained with some sort of sauce, and waved it like a piece of evidence.

“So you know I’m sleeping over at Naomi’s tonight. Good,” I said, super casual, perching on a stool and setting down the keys to the Lexus. I only needed to hold
this act together another five minutes and then I could bounce.

“No way, José. You’ve been out two nights in a row,” my dad said, looking over from his saucepan. “I think that’s enough.”

My father’s logic. Still lost on me.

“But Dad, I slept at home the night before last. So…technically this would only be the second night out, and
that
would be enough. Then tomorrow night I’ll sleep at home.” My own logic. Equally lost on them.

“Uh-uh, I don’t think so,” Mom said. “Movie night at home with us. You can call Naomi and invite her to sleep here.”

“Compromise,” Dad said, very pleased.

I considered a new counterattack. The smell of whatever they’d cooked was making me dizzy. And hungry. But James’s words echoed:
There’s no time.

“Sorry, can’t do it,” I said. “I promised Naomi I’d sleep over. Her parents are out of town and she’s watching the house, so she needs company. She gets scared at night.” Then I pushed it even further: “I’m just trying to be a good friend.”

Was anyone buying this? Somewhere Naomi was laughing her ass off. I hoisted my bag over my shoulder to indicate that I was leaving, that our conversation was wrapping up.

“You know, you can’t just write a note saying you’re taking the car. That doesn’t count as asking for permission,” my mother said. “And what dress are you wearing?”

“Focus, Mom. Morgan had a flat tire, he was stranded. It was an emergency.”

Shameful.

But the very sound of his name instantly softened her scowl, and she reached and gave me a tender rub on the hand. If I’d just bring Morgan over for dinner one night a week every other week, I could probably do whatever I wanted forever. Knowing that made me want to smash something.

“That was nice of you. But you’re not roadside service. Next time ask. You may now go to your friend’s house.” My mother put her arm around me. She squeezed me. Suddenly I wished I wasn’t in such a rush.

“Thanks, Mom.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her middle like a teddy bear. “But I gotta motor. Morgan’s outside waiting.” I excused myself from the embrace. As long as they went on just like that—dancing, cooking, smiling, eating, expecting very little out of a totally impossible teenage girl—everything would be okay. My smile, in that moment, short but sweet, was totally real.

“Can’t promise we’ll save your leftovers,” my father warned, with his head in the fridge.

“That’s okay. I don’t eat vegetables.”

That made both of them laugh. It was good to see.

I’d done it. In and out and in seconds flat. I skipped down the steps, relieved to be free, happy to be alive, about to sing out for James, when suddenly I saw them. James. With Sanders. In front of my house. Talking. My heart felt like it puked in my chest. Sanders was on my front lawn. He could kill my parents. He could kill me. I froze in place, staring at the vampires.

They exchanged some final words and shook hands. Then Sanders turned his head, caught my eye, flashed a grin, and walked away, down the street, into the night. I wanted to scream until I lost my voice. I dropped down to the grass instead.

I heard James approaching. He bent down next to me and asked, “You ready?”

My mind was cracking, the pieces shipping off to every character and every scene in my life. Of course Stiles and Sanders had been here before—at least one of them had—but they’d never let themselves be seen. Even after we stole Libby and they had every reason for revenge, they still never crossed that line. Now that line was just chalk, blow on it and it blows away.

“Come on, we have to get back.” James’s hands guided me to the car.

“What was he doing here?”

“He wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“Fixing this.”

“Why was he at my house, James?”

“I’m working it out.”

“We can’t leave my parents here.”

“They’ll be fine. They’re safe,” he said, opening the door and pushing me into the passenger seat. Once inside he started the engine and was instantly speeding, going almost fifty, weaving through the winding canyon roads.

I clenched my fists, gripped the leather of the seat.

James looked over at me. “Sanders and I are going to make a deal.”

“You can’t trust that piece of—”

“It’s done,” he interrupted, sterner.

“It’s a trick. Whatever he’s saying, it’s a lie.” The twins didn’t play nice, and they certainly didn’t play fair.

“No. He doesn’t want to fight. He’s sick of all this.” We were all over the road, going way too fast.

“Spare me. He’s lying. He’s evil.” The worst. The second worst.

“Quinn, I’m asking you to trust me.”

“Does he know we killed Cooper?”

James met my eyes, then looked back to the road and ignored me.

“Does he know it was us?” I yelled.

“He knows, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t care about Cooper any more than we do.”

“But…it wasn’t meant for Cooper. Do they know that?”

James nodded.

“So we’re dead,” I said. I couldn’t process another tragedy. One per day was my max.

“No, we’re fine. I just have to make sure.”

“Make sure how?”

He paused. “We’re meeting later.”

James was meeting Sanders later.

“Are you stupid? That doesn’t make any sense. Stiles will be there and they’ll kill you and I’ll never see you again!” My voice was a wail. I punched the car door.

“I obviously wouldn’t go if I thought that was true.”

“Please don’t go. Stay with me.”

“I’m making it easier to stay with you. I swear. Whatever I have to trade with him, I’ll do it.”

“What is there to trade? Except me?”

“Something else that Sanders wants.”

Then we were there, cruising down the Sheetses’ driveway, parking, sitting in silence. I turned to look at James, and he leaned in and kissed me, hard. When I kissed him back, he pulled me over the seat divider onto his lap and we locked lips, the steering wheel jamming into my spine, my knee banging the seatbelt buckle, my
elbow the window, my head the sunroof. We breathed in each other’s mouths and eyes and ears. He slipped a hand up my thigh, under Naomi’s dress. I grabbed his face.

“Please don’t go,” I whispered.

“I’m not leaving for hours. I’ll be with you all night, until you’re asleep.”

“I won’t fall asleep. How could I?” But I was exhausted. I could already feel my body aching for bed.

“Come inside.”

My stomach groaned. Loudly.

“I’ll feed you.”

“You’re trying to sedate me.”

Then he leaned forward, pushed me closer to the steering wheel. “Let’s go.”

“To your room?”

“No, the main house.”

“They don’t want me in there.”

“I don’t care what they want,” he said. “I need you all together tonight. Can you understand that?”

I could. I wanted to be together with everyone too. James, Whit, Mom, Dad, Morgan, Libby, even Naomi. Stella Block. Jody Bennett. Tori, for heaven’s sake. I wanted everyone to be together and make it through tonight together.

We started walking toward the front door, holding on to each other tightly. I thanked God for this closeness,
anything we could share now that wasn’t tears or shouts or freak-outs. And I thanked God we were close because when we got about twenty feet from the door I spied it lying there, white with blue-red lips, contorted, gross, deader than dead.

Cooper’s body.

James froze and held up an arm to stop me from getting closer. As if I wanted to. I stared at it, hypnotized. I waited for it to disintegrate, turn into ash, disappear. I waited for it to catch fire, dissolve, explode. I waited for the supernatural. But Cooper’s dead body was like a regular dead body. Aside from the bluish lips and glassy eyes, he looked pretty much the same as he did the last time I saw him, at Libby’s party, in the kitchen. I tried to remember him like he used to be, when he was just a jock I saw around school sometimes, pre-bloodsucker, the salad days. But the memory was too faded. All I could see was his body in front me, dead for the second time.

My emotions cycled through a Ferris wheel of changes, from terrified to disgusted to sad to okay to completely psyched. I crested on the last one. One of the four was gone, hallelujah. No one would miss him.

“Go back to the car!” James shouted at me. He didn’t want me to look at it.

But I’d already soaked in the sight. Actually seeing
one of them dead was like a revelation: It could totally be done.

“Did you hear what I said?” James was still shouting, more frantic.

I pretended to walk away.

Then I heard him run to the house, open the door, and start calling out for Whit and Naomi. Once he was gone, I turned back around and stared some more at Cooper. I thought of all the horror movie endings where the villain jumps back up, not dead, for some maniacal final fight. I stepped slowly toward his body and, when I got close enough, kicked it. It felt like nothing. Double dead.

Then a voice said, “What are you doing?”

I looked up.

Whit was in the doorway, watching me nudge a corpse with the tip of my Converse. He looked haggard and crazed, like he’d been ripping his hair out. “Will you just get inside, please?”

“James told me to go back to the car.”

“So he didn’t tell you to play with the body?”

I shook my head no.

“Get in here.”

I walked around Cooper to Whit, who put his arm around my shoulder in an exhausted way and led me through the door and into the living room, where Naomi was balled up on the couch, crying into James’s lap. His
hands stroked her hair and rubbed her back, alternating. It’d only been a couple of hours, but somehow it seemed like days since I was last here. So much had happened.

“How long has he been out there?” James asked Whit.

Whit shrugged. “Ten or fifteen minutes maybe.”

“What happened?”

Whit pushed his glasses up on his nose. He was stiff, sweating. “We heard a car pull up and thought it was you. Then the porch light turned on. Naomi went to the door and it was just lying there.”

Naomi broke into a fresh set of sobs.

“Then we heard a car start and they drove off. We couldn’t see who it was.”

“Stiles.” James didn’t ask.

“That’s what Naomi said, but I don’t know. It was dark, could’ve been his twin.”

“No.” James met my eyes. “Not Sanders.”

Naomi lifted her wet, red, splotchy face and said to all of us, “It was Stiles.”

“Who’s the body? Did you know him?” Whit asked.

“A friend of the twins,” James said. “He used to go to school with Quinn and Naomi.”

Whit looked at me.

“One of the Spaders.” I shrugged. “Taste-tester.”

James glared at me. Whatever. They had a right to know why Stiles was dropping bodies on their doorstep.