Heartstopper (47 page)

And then, what?

What?

And then—nothing.

A faint memory—or was it her imagination?—of someone pushing something into her face, of noxious fumes filling her nostrils, of the world fading to black. Had that really happened?

How had she gotten here?

Where was she?

Megan returned to the cot, sank back down. She took another sip of water, then lowered the bottle to the floor. If she drank too much water, she’d have to go to the bath-room—her bladder was already pinching, making its presence known—but no matter what, no matter how insistent her bladder became or how painfully her stomach cramped, she would never use that stupid bucket. She would never give them—whoever they were, Joey and Tanya and Ginger and Greg—please don’t let it be Greg—that kind of satisfaction. So it was better not to drink, and better not to cry out, because the more she used her voice in this dank, depressing, hot, little room, the thirstier she’d get, and the thirstier she got, the more she’d drink, and the more she’d drink… No, enough. She was going to make herself crazy. And for what? For the amusement of a bunch of perverted cretins?

Thank God Liana’s killer had been found. Thank God Cal Hamilton had been arrested and was in jail awaiting trial. Or she’d really be making herself nuts. She’d be having all sorts of wild and crazy thoughts. Thoughts of sadistic serial killers. Of being raped and tortured and brutalized. Of having half her face blown away with a single shot. Of her
lifeless body lying for days in some snake-infested marsh, of insects and alligators feasting on her remains. Of her mother being called to identify what was left of her body.

A stream of involuntary tears washed down Megan’s cheeks when she pictured her mother’s anguished face, and she wiped them away. They will not see me cry, she determined. Damn you, Joey. Damn you, Tanya and Ginger. Damn you, Greg. Damn you most of all.

It’s just that it’s easy to get lost in the moment
, she heard her mother say.

I won’t get lost.

Promise?

Except that’s exactly what had happened. She was lost. And one moment was pretty much the same as the next when you didn’t know what time it was. And maybe if she hadn’t said no, if she
had
gotten lost in the moment, then she wouldn’t be here now. So in a roundabout way, this was all her mother’s fault.

So damn you too, Mommy. Damn you.

Where are you?

What was her mother doing now? Megan wondered. Was she asleep? Did she even know her daughter was missing? Was she anxiously waiting for her to come home, trying to decide on the proper consequence for staying out past her curfew?
Was
it past her curfew? Was her mother out looking for her? Was she even now combing the streets, waking up the neighbors, rousting the sheriff from his bed? Would they find her before it was too late?

Too late for what?

Cal Hamilton was in jail. She had nothing to worry about.

Unless.

Was there any chance he’d gotten out?

The horrifying thought pushed Megan off the cot and into the middle of the room. Was it possible Cal Hamilton
had escaped or that someone had posted his bail? He had a reputation as a ladies’ man. Had one of those silly women actually believed his stupid story about being framed and come up with the money for his release?

Or maybe it was a copycat. Another sicko who’d heard about what Cal had done to his wife and Liana and that other poor girl, Candy whatever-her-name-was, and he’d seen Megan fleeing the party and seized the opportunity. Somehow he’d managed to spirit her away without anyone seeing him.

Had anyone seen him?

“No one saw him,” Megan said out loud, “because he doesn’t exist.” She hoped the sternness in her voice would succeed in dispelling such ridiculous thoughts from her brain. The idea of another killer targeting the tiny town of Torrance in so short a time was too ludicrous and farfetched to be taken seriously.

Reality was much more ordinary. And the reality was that Joey Balfour had come up with this stupid idea, and that he’d somehow managed to convince Greg to go along with him, and even now, the whole cast of
Kiss Me, Kate
were probably sitting somewhere watching her rant and rave and carry on, and were all having a good laugh at her expense. Hell, she was probably in the basement of Lonny Reynolds’s house. Of course. That’s where she was. Although she didn’t remember his house having a basement. Most homes in Florida didn’t.

Was she still in Florida?

“Okay, this is silly. You’re being really silly now.” Of course she was still in Florida. Where else would she be? Did she think she’d been driven out of state? That she was in some kind of holding cell, about to be sold into white slavery? She’d seen this show on television about girls being kidnapped and sold into prostitution, having to work for years before being released or, more likely, killed
by their pimp. But those women were usually poor girls from destitute countries, not pampered American teenagers. As for the sex trade in America, wasn’t that restricted mainly to children? Surely she was too old for the child porn industry. Although there were those disgusting websites she’d stumbled across before her parents had put a block on her computer, sites filled with photographs of young women just like herself, some of them bound and gagged, others being whipped, still others being probed with cattle prods. It seemed there were sites for every conceivable depravity, including films where they actually killed people. Had she just landed another starring role?

“Oh, God. Oh, God.”

No, don’t be silly. Calm down. You see what you’re doing? You’re getting yourself all worked up. This isn’t about porn. This isn’t about being sold into slavery. This is about a bunch of stupid kids being even more stupid than usual. This is about knocking you down a peg or two. It’s about being jealous and small-minded and angry because you wouldn’t come across. It’s about seeing what you’re made of, a rite of passage, a hazing you have to go through to get accepted into the club.

Not that she wanted anything to do with any of them anymore. As soon as she got out of here, as soon as she got home, she was going to tell her mother she was ready to move back to Rochester. In fact, if this was a dream—and she still had hopes that’s what it was—then obviously this was exactly the message it was trying to impart: that it was time to leave Torrance, that they’d overstayed their welcome, that it was time to cut their losses and run.

“Please let me wake up,” she whispered under her breath.

She returned to the cot. Once more she closed her eyes, although she didn’t lie down. Think pleasant thoughts, she told herself. Think about that bikini you saw in that little shop in South Beach, the black one with the tiny blue bows,
the one your mother said was too expensive, except that you heard her telling the salesgirl to put it aside, that she’d come back for it later. So she was probably saving it as a surprise for her birthday, which was on July the first, July the first being a big deal in Canada, sort of like the Fourth of July in America.

She liked Canada, Megan decided, going with the random flow of her thoughts. Not that she’d seen very much of it. Only Toronto, which she loved because it was so beautiful and there was so much to do there—the CN Tower and the Science Centre and the theater district—and all of it right across the lake from Rochester. Just last year, they’d taken the ferry there one Saturday morning, toured the dinosaur exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum that afternoon, had a wonderful meal at a celebrity-frequented restaurant called Sotto Sotto, where they’d actually seen Kiefer Sutherland dining with Ethan Hawke—Kiefer was much cuter than Ethan, who was way too thin and looked like he could use a good bath—then taken in the latest touring production of
Les Misérables
, before returning by ferry to Rochester the following day. They’d had such a good time, she remembered. Of course that was before her father met Kerri Franklin in an Internet chat room, before he’d talked Sandy into moving the family down to Florida. If only she could hop on that ferry now, Megan thought. If only she could get the hell away from here.

Where was she?

Her stomach rumbled, and she wondered how long it had been since she’d last eaten. “I’m getting hungry, guys,” she called out. “I think the joke’s gone on long enough, don’t you?”

But nobody answered.

Despite her best intentions and stubborn resolve, Megan lowered her head to the cot and cried.

F
or God’s sake, stop crying,” John pleaded angrily, trying to keep what remained of his temper in check. After all,
he
was the aggrieved party, not his wife.
He
wasn’t the one who’d drunk herself into a—he wished he could say stupor—state of hysteria. He wasn’t the one who’d embarrassed them both publicly, airing their dirty little secret—all right,
his
dirty little secret, and was it really a secret if everybody already knew it?—in the middle of the most popular restaurant/bar in town. He wasn’t the one who’d been sick in the car on the way home, then sick again as soon as she’d walked through the door. Hadn’t he cleaned it up, for God’s sake? Hadn’t he bitten his tongue and refused to take the bait when she’d called him a bastard, an adulterer, a fat pig? Hadn’t he refrained from putting his foot through the television when she’d stumbled into the bedroom and turned it on full blast? He was the very
model
of restraint, for God’s sake, he thought, pacing back and forth in front of the bed. “What the hell are you crying about?” he shouted over the noise of the TV.

“I’m crying because of the way you treat me,” she shouted back. She was sitting on the bed, her back against the headboard, one leg stretched across the bedspread, the other foot reaching for the floor, the front of her blouse open and disheveled, her normally lush auburn hair
hanging limply, her mascara outlining the flow of her tears in black.

“The way
I
treat
you?”

“Everybody knows about your affair with Kerri Franklin.”

“Well, if they didn’t, they certainly do now.” John unbuttoned his navy sports jacket, the jacket he kept for special occasions. And tonight had started out very special indeed. The spontaneous burst of applause that had greeted him at the school auditorium, his daughter’s terrific performance in the play, the impromptu celebration at Chester’s that followed. Everything had been going along great, until Pauline had ordered one drink too many, and the little barbs she’d been tossing his way all evening became more pointed, the veiled references less hidden. Both Avery Peterson and Lenny Fromm had sensed disaster lurking and exited the premises as quickly and graciously as they could. Rita had tried to deflect the escalating animosity with a barrage of inane banter. Eventually Pauline had settled into a morose stillness. And then Sandy Crosbie had wandered in and given him the excuse he’d been looking for to leave the table. He’d even picked up a game of pool and was busy congratulating himself on his self-control, when whammo!
The pièce de résistance
, as Pauline would say: the entrance of Kerri and the good doctor, and the eruption that followed. Would he ever live it down? “Look. I don’t know why we’re talking about this now. It’s old news. The affair with Kerri happened a long time ago.”

“It shouldn’t have happened at all,” Pauline snapped.

John nodded. What else could he do?

“And don’t insult my intelligence by telling me it won’t happen again. As soon as the doctor dumps her, she’ll come crying on your shoulder—”

“He’s not going to dump her. She’s not going to come crying.”

“—and you’ll go running.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t run so fast these days.” John was exhausted. All he wanted was to climb into bed and fall into unconsciousness.

“What? Is that a joke? Is that supposed to be funny? You’re a pig, you know that?”

“I believe you may have mentioned it earlier.”

“Yeah? Well, guess what? I’m mentioning it again.” Pauline began pulling at the sheets beneath the bedspread, trying to gather them around her shoulders.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m cold.”

“You need to take a shower.”

“You need to take a hike.”

John threw his hands up in disgust. “Is this how you want your daughter to see you?”

Pauline waved away his concern with a flick of her wrist. “Amber’s not home. She’s at the cast party. In case you’ve forgotten.”

John checked his watch. He hadn’t forgotten. It was after midnight. “She’ll be home in less than an hour.”

“I think she likes that boy,” Pauline observed, as if they hadn’t been screaming at each other only seconds ago.

“What boy?”

“Sandy’s son. What’s his name? Tom? Tim? Timber?”

“You’re imagining things. As usual.”

“And you’re oblivious. As usual.” She laughed. “It’s really quite ironic, when you think about it. I think
ironic
is the right word. Have to ask Sandy next time I see her.”

“What are you nattering about?”

“Our daughter and Sandy’s son. It’s kind of poetic, don’t you think? Almost like it’s meant to be. I mean, here we have Sandy, wife of Ian, and Ian, lover of Kerri, and Kerri, former paramour of John, and John, cheating, no-good husband of Pauline. What did you say? Did you say I was nattering?”

“I said I think you need to clean up and pull yourself together before Amber gets home.”

“She won’t come in here. She never does.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I am? No! Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

“Get in the shower.”

“Get lost.”

“Look,” John began. “You’re going to take a shower whether you like it or not.”

“Really? Who’s going to make me? You?”

“If I have to.”

“And how are you going to do that exactly?” Pauline goaded. “Are you going to pick me up and throw me over your shoulder à la
Kiss Me, Kate?”

“I think I’d rather drag you by the hair.” John lunged toward her. He had no intention of resorting to violence, although the
à la
almost did it. But he’d seen enough of innocuous family squabbles gone bad, and he had no desire to join the ranks of men who physically abused their wives. Wasn’t cheating on her abuse enough? “Come on, Pauline. Don’t give me a hard time.” He grabbed at her hand, and she slapped his arm, but ultimately he got a grip on her elbow and pulled her from the bed.