Fury (13 page)

“Fine,” Em said. Her chest ached. “I have a lot of homework to get done before break is over.”

“It’s just . . . you seem a little on edge.”

“I’m fine.” Em tucked her hands into the too-long cuffs of the sweatshirt. “A little stressed is all.”

“So I guess you don’t have time today to hang out with a Fountain of Nerdiness,” JD said, heading toward the door. “Or a Booger-Eating Eternal Virgin.”

“Aw, JD, that’s not true. Don’t talk down about yourself,” Em teased, following him into the hall as he started to leave. “I know you don’t eat your own boogers.”

He turned around in the front doorway, letting in a cold gust of wind. “But the Eternal Virgin part?”

Em laughed, twisting her hair into a bun on top of her head. “Well, that part remains to be seen.”

Once JD left, Em returned to the kitchen. She fixed herself a cup of Calming Chamomile, just what she needed, and poured it into the mug Gabby had gotten her from Cabo last year.
Caliente!
it said in bright orange letters around the side of the cup. The note
Gabby had included with the gift had said,
For one of the hottest mamacitas I know.
Em still had the note; it was one of the mementos she had taped to the edge of her mirror upstairs.

Gabby would understand. She had to understand.

Em blew on the scalding tea, absentmindedly dunking the teabag up and down, and then reached into the cabinet for some honey.

Suddenly the window over the sink slammed open, and a gust of wind burst into the kitchen. The mug flew to the ground, shattering, and hot tea splashed across Em’s sweatshirt. Em gasped and reached over with trembling hands, shutting and locking the window. For a second, it sounded like someone was wailing. She looked outside. Two pine trees swayed at the corner of the yard. Another big gust of wind sent snow spraying off their branches. Otherwise, the yard was still.

Em stood there for a moment, unable to shake the creepy feeling that had washed over her. She whispered the first line of her poem:
“You enter my heart like a sudden chill.”
When she’d first written “Impossible,” she hadn’t realized how scary those words could sound.

Chase was in a daze. A sleep-deprived, distracted daze. He had tossed and turned all night, obsessively checking his phone to see whether Ty had called or responded to his texts.
U okay?
he’d written.
Can we hang out again this week?
No response. Just a call from Zach, which he’d screened.

And now he was on his way to a football meeting—a postseason wrap-up session at Coach Baldwin’s house—where he’d be expected to be
on
. Next year he would be captain of the team, the senior starting quarterback. It was no joke.

He tipped his head to one side, then the other, stretching his neck. He checked his phone again. Nothing. Okay. He vowed to leave his phone in the car and not check it again until after the meeting. He hoped it wouldn’t take more than an hour.

As soon as Chase stepped inside Coach Baldwin’s house—a
sprawling ranch near Emily’s place—he sensed it: The vibe was all wrong.

“It’s the local charity case!” Carl Feder, a running back, shouted. Chase looked around to make sure Feder was talking to him. Some of the guys laughed, others averted their eyes.

“Yo, Singer,” Andy Barton said. “You need more money for manicures?”

Another voice, from across the room: “You begging for a winning senior season?”

“That’ll come naturally,” he answered with a smirk.

“Recruiters don’t like it when you beg, Singer.” This from Barton again, who sat in the corner with a plate of lasagna in his hands.

These barbs felt different from the team’s usual banter. “What are you talking about?” Chase asked, addressing no one in particular.

Sean Wagner sauntered over and shoved his phone in Chase’s face. On it was a picture of Chase from last night. The night of the snow angels. Chase saw himself kneeling on the ground, fingers clasped, a pleading expression on his face. Ty must have been just outside the frame. Ty. He barely registered the embarrassment of having been caught in that position—Chase, who had built his entire life around
not
being humiliated. All he could think was her name.
Ty. Ty. Ty.
Like a chant, or a spell.

He shrugged, taking a second to collect his thoughts. Then he grinned. “You guys have nothing better to do than follow me around when I’m out with a hot girl?”

“She
is
pretty hot, Chase. Nice work,” Zach said, appearing from around the corner holding a plate piled high with salad and pasta. Chase nodded, knowing Zach had no idea who Chase had been out with. It was good to know Zach still had his back.

“Hey, guys—Mrs. Baldwin wants me to tell you that there’s more of those breadsticks in the kitchen,” Zach announced. He smoothly scooped up a forkful of lasagna and winked at Chase as he walked by. “I tried to warn you,” Zach singsonged as he passed. “That’ll teach you not to screen my calls.”

Chase knew that fending off the barbs was Zach’s way of thanking Chase for keeping his mouth shut about what
he’d
seen yesterday. If any of the guys on the team found out about Zach and Em, it could easily get back to Gabby and ruin Zach’s game. Zach probably hoped the guys
suspected
something was going on, but was happy to keep them in the dark about the actual details, at least for now. At least until he could tell them on
his
terms. And that’s where Chase came in—keeping his secrets once again. This was how Zach worked: You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

Chase shook his head, thankful that Coach Baldwin was calling the meeting to order.

As he moved to take a seat on the couch next to his coach, Barton whacked his arm.

“So, Singer, are you bringing this mystery hot chick to the Feast?”

Chase clasped his hands in front of his chest and pumped them in front of Barton’s face. “I’m
begging
you to shut the fuck up,” he said, much to the others’ amusement.

But even still, his hand instinctively went to his right pocket to check his phone; he clenched his fist as he remembered that he’d left it in the car. What if Ty was calling right now, and he missed it? His breath caught in the back of his throat, the same way it did when his shirts weren’t steamed correctly, or when he left his playbook in his locker overnight. He needed to fix this.

But Coach Baldwin was asking him something about the South Portland Red Riot defense, and he struggled to focus. The team might think he was pathetic, but they still needed him as a leader. That’s how the next forty-five minutes went—Chase would tune out, Coach would ask about this tackle or that passing play, and Chase would snap to, answer as best he could, picture himself on the field, running fast, running past the others.

The teasing stopped. They were talking about the Super Bowl, about the Patriots offense, and, when Coach went into the kitchen to refill his 7UP, about how Amy Cushman had
taken off her shirt in Minster’s hot tub toward the tail end of the party. It all sounded like background noise to Chase. And then, when he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, the meeting was over. He bolted. He didn’t even bother to say good-bye to the others—just threw a nod in Zach’s direction as he left. He didn’t care that none of them went out of their way to say good-bye to him, either.

He ran to his car, fumbled with the keys to unlock the door. Sitting in the driver’s seat, hands shaking, he opened his phone. Nothing but the time blinked back at him. He threw his phone down in disgust.

He turned the key in the ignition and left the phone where it had fallen, on the floor on the passenger side. He didn’t care. He had to get his shit together. He was reversing out of Coach Baldwin’s driveway, trying to distract himself by picturing York’s offensive lineup in his head, when he heard it.

Beep-beep-beep.

Chase practically crashed into the mailbox at the end of the driveway as he leaned down, his foot still on the gas, going backward, trying to grab the phone. He threw the car into park, picked up the phone, and then he couldn’t stop smiling. It was her.

He almost didn’t want to read the message; he could have stared at her name for the next hour.

Want to come over today? I need you!

Chase’s heart pounded. Not only would he get to see Ty
but he’d get to see her house—he knew that was a great sign. But he tried to play it cool.
Yeah, that would be great
.

She responded almost immediately.
Okay. Come to 128 Silver Way.

Chase pulled into the gravel lot of the new mall, scanning the chicken-scratch directions he’d copied off his laptop, wishing he had a phone with GPS—or Internet at all.
Wait.
This
is Silver Way?
Like many old towns, Ascension had lots of tiny roads—but still, this seemed weird.

The mall, only halfway completed, sat huge and hulking up ahead, monolithic and boxy with a gaping hole at the end where an “atrium” was planned. No wonder people—kids and local reporters alike—called the place the Behemoth. The air was dead quiet except for the distant hum of construction cranes and drills. The place was covered in tarps, so the workers could work in the cold.

He must have missed a turn somewhere. This couldn’t be right.

But sure enough, there was Ty, emerging from behind a low concrete barrier, picking her way through the snow and gravel and around orange cones, wearing high heels and a tiny denim skirt. Her hair was tied back with some kind of little scarf, and the thin white streak in her hair glowed in the winter sunset. Chase got out of the car.

“Um, this is where you live?” He swallowed hard. He really didn’t know the first thing about this girl. What was she doing climbing around a construction site?

“Yeah, I live in that pipe,” she deadpanned, before breaking into her silvery laugh. “Of course I don’t live here, silly. Come on.”

She grabbed his hand and tugged him away from the car. As usual, Chase felt a shock of electric recognition as soon as they touched. The day-old snow crunched beneath their feet as she led him behind the Behemoth, toward the woods that surrounded it. Chase could see a narrow path cut into the trees. They passed the landscape of gravel and concrete into the shadows of the snow-covered pines. The snow here was untouched, and Chase’s boots sank into it as they walked. Night was starting to fall, and the path was barely marked, but Ty blazed confidently forward. Chase stumbled along behind her, trying to keep up. It seemed like she was skimming over the snow.

“So you don’t live in that pipe, but you do live in the Haunted Woods, huh?”

“The Haunted Woods?” Ty slowed for a moment, looking at him over her shoulder.

“Yeah—everyone says these woods are haunted by ghosts . . . oooooooohhhhh,” Chase said with a shrug, trying to sound dismissive. “It’s just this dumb story people tell.”

“I’ve never heard that! Tell me about it—I love ghost stories.” Her eyes flashed and she sucked her bottom lip under her teeth. It made her cheekbones even more pronounced.

“It’s just some crazy stuff people say to make Ascension seem more interesting. If there are ghosts, they’re probably wasted from leftover beer and secondhand pot smoke—there’s a clearing to the west of here where kids like to hang out. No neighbors around to call the cops, you know. Some of the parties get pretty nuts.”

Ty turned and squinted, like she was trying to remember something. “I heard some story once about these weirdo sisters who used to live out here, like, hundreds of years ago. Do you think they’re the ones who stuck around?”

“I haven’t seen any ghosts around here yet,” Chase said. “But if there are any, I’ll protect you.”

Ty smiled and kept walking.

“We’re almost there,” she said, squeezing his hand.

The nearly full moon illuminated a house around the next bend in the path.

“There it is.”

In front of the shingled house, which had big, dirty windows and a peaked roof with a stone chimney, there was a small patch of charred-looking grass. There didn’t seem to be a driveway, and Chase couldn’t see any other structures farther down the path.

Chase’s thoughts were like cards being shuffled in his brain. This was Ty’s old house? Did Ali and Meg still live here too? Maybe the house was foreclosed. Maybe her family had gone broke or could never sell it. She told him she had moved away. . . .

Suddenly, everything made total sense. No wonder they understood each other so well. Ty
got it
—they were both anomalies among Ascension’s population of rich assholes.

“It’s not much, but—”

Chase cut her off. “It’s cool. Let’s go inside.” His brain kept up its mad shuffle, considering and reordering different scenarios, different explanations for Ty’s mysterious background. Maybe when her family had left Ascension, they’d left in a hurry? Maybe her family was in some kind of trouble. Maybe her parents were in jail and she couldn’t go to college because she had to pay off some bills. Maybe her father was in the mob and they were on the run.

Maybe, maybe, maybe . . . The word drilled endlessly in his mind. He wanted to ask her these questions—to know everything about her. But he didn’t want to scare her off, either. He knew that just seeing her home was a huge step. He didn’t need to push things any further unless she offered. He could sense that, like him, she wasn’t a big fan of discussing the past.

Ty went into the house first, walking in the dim light over to a floor lamp that flickered on at her touch. The large,
wood-paneled room was nearly empty. A few hard-backed chairs sat in the living room next to a blackened fireplace; a rickety table in the kitchen. The windows didn’t have curtains and there wasn’t one electronic device to be seen except for an old-school radio. A can of paint sat on the floor in what may have once been a dining room.

Chase took it all in, silently. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something moving, slithering by, but when he whipped around to look, he saw nothing but a shadow in a bare corner. So they must have sold almost all their furniture. Okay. It was creepy, but he tried to remember how nervous he got whenever anyone saw his pathetic trailer. How much it stung to be judged by what you owned instead of who you were.