Instinct (10 page)

“This is
stupid,” I say out loud, trying to push the conjecture out of my head. But the
mention of her ex stalking her resurfaces and I wonder who he is. Phillip was
obviously the boyfriend referred to, and Nicole the best friend, but there is
still no indication of who could be the ex. Maybe someone whose stalking could
have pushed her to the brink.

Or just pushed
her.     

I force myself
to shut down the computer and work on my homework. But as I am drifting to
sleep later, the steady, shining fall of snow outside my window hypnotizing me
into unconsciousness, Miranda’s face still fills my thoughts.

I am standing
on the bridge, the entire world outside of the iron skeleton and the swiftly
moving water beneath it dark and bleak as a void. Sound is muffled, as though a
glass jar has been dropped over my head, and a rushing fills my ears,
accompanied by frantic drumming I recognize as my pulse. Soft laughter rasps
behind me and I spin around, only to freeze in terror, my breath choked into a
white cloud before my face. Cole stands before me, the same wicked grin
stretching his face that I saw this afternoon. His eyes are glittering chips of
emerald, swallowing the dark surrounding us like an empty vessel.

“Jump,
Miranda,” he whispers, the sound of his voice dragging across my skin with
claws. I try to tell him I’m not Miranda, he’s made a mistake, but no air fills
my lungs and the edges of my world are growing dim.

“Jump,
Miranda,” he whispers again, stepping forward until his face is a breath away
from mine, the flash of green light in his eyes boring into my brain with
indescribable pain. He opens his mouth, teeth white as a shark’s, and blows a
kiss at me. The world drops from under me and I am falling, falling, and
everything is cold and dark, and I see him above me, still smiling, his green
eyes vivid against the black cloud that hovers like a dark halo above his head.
A quiet gasp escapes me, but I feel it inside like a primal scream, the sound
of my heart stopping.

I jerk awake,
my heart racing so fast I cannot breathe, the scream still caught in my throat.
For a moment, my body is rigid with the terror of the dream, as though Cole is somewhere
nearby, pouring panic into my veins. Gradually my pulse slows and my limbs
loosen into rest. The muscles in my legs ache as though I’ve run a marathon.

The clock
reads four-fifteen. With a groan, I sit up and rub my eyes. Two nightmares
featuring Cole in two nights. I am beginning to think that no matter how hot
and charming he is, how much we have in common, he may not be good for my
mental health.

I get a glass
of water and return to bed, telling myself I am overreacting because I’m worried
about sharing my secret with Cole. I’m not very convincing. By the time I am
calm enough to fall asleep something strikes me as odd about my nightmares. In
both dreams, I distinctly remember Cole glaring at me with vivid green eyes.

Cole doesn’t
have green eyes.

“Where were
you yesterday?” I demand as soon as Nicole comes into view. I have been waiting
for her outside the classroom since I got to school. She looks up at me with
red-rimmed eyes and splotchy skin, limp brown hair hanging over her face like a
ragged curtain.

“I don’t want
to live,” she whispers, pushing past me. Guilt burns in my throat as I follow
her, realizing I have been thinking about how her absence affected me, not what
was wrong with her.

Hastily I take
my seat next to her. “I’m sorry, Nicole. I wasn’t thinking. Are you okay?”

She gives me a
weak smile. “Don’t worry about it. Look, it’s probably better if you don’t hang
out with me.”

My chest
tightens with unexpected disappointment. “I said I was sorry,” I mumble.

Nicole frowns
at me and finally allows a smile to soften her face. For a second, I glimpse
the bright-eyed, carefree girl in the photo Phillip had on his phone yesterday,
but she fades as quickly as she came.  

“No, that’s
not it. Look, you’ve probably heard about how…unpopular I am by now.” She looks
at me expectantly and I nod, knowing there is no point in denying it.

“Yeah, I’m
sorry about that.”

“Not your
fault. Anyway, looks like the campaign to make me miserable is starting up
again,” she says, her voice breaking slightly. “If you hang around me, you’ll
just get caught up in it too.”

There is such
defeat in her tone that I want to take Tasha’s neck and throttle it. Nicole has
done nothing to deserve such treatment. She lost her best friend and instead of
being embraced in sympathy by the world around her, she is outcast, tormented
by the very people she once called friends. I remember how dismissive everyone
was at the lunch table yesterday. Even though Phillip and Ruth said it was
mean, they still looked at the posting and didn’t try to set the record
straight.

The bags under
Nicole’s eyes are so dark she could be bruised, and I think deep down she is. I
wonder if the injury that has been done to her can ever be healed.

“Screw them,
Nicole. I’m your friend now, and I don’t care what anybody says. The truth is
all that matters to me,” I whisper fervently and then Ms. Sullivan calls the
class to attention.

Nicole stares
at me blankly for a moment and then an unguarded smile creases her face, tears
shining in her eyes. I hold her gaze for a moment more and she nods, wiping her
cheeks with her sleeve. Her eyes shift behind me and something hard enters her
expression before she turns to face the front of the class. I glance around and
see Phillip watching Nicole with a thoughtful expression, his moss-green eyes
narrowed. There is something so cold, so detached in the way he looks at her
that a chill settles around my shoulders. After a moment he senses my scrutiny
and turns to me, mouth stretching in its trademark blinding smile. My lips
twitch in response and I face forward, my skin humming almost painfully.

Class cannot
move quickly enough for me, and I am out of my chair before the tone sounds,
turning to Nicole eagerly. Before I can say anything, Phillip takes my arm, his
fingers pressing on the bruises Jake left yesterday. I flinch and his grip tightens
slightly before he releases me.

“Can I walk
you to class?” he asks, completely ignoring Nicole as she watches us with a
concerned expression.

“Oh, thanks,
but I need to catch up with Nicole. I’ll see you later.” I smile at him and
grab my bag, feeling his eyes on me as I gather my things. He is still standing
there when I glance up again, his lips pulled tight, pupils constricted to a
pinprick.

“Yeah,
Phil
,”
Nicole adds, a sharp edge to her voice. “Not trying to steal away another of my
friends, are you?”

He jerks his
head to spear her with a stare so quickly I’m surprised I don’t hear his neck
crack. Nicole pales under his glare, but holds his eyes, exchanging some silent
conversation that doesn’t look new.

With a smile
that doesn’t extend to his eyes, Phillip turns back to me. “Nicole still thinks
Miranda stopped hanging out with her because of me. Is it my fault that we were
so crazy about each other?” His face sobers and he looks down at his hands. “I
miss her too, Nicole.”

Nicole’s
cheeks redden but she doesn’t reply. My skin is buzzing so hard it hurts, like
I’ve stuck my finger in an electrical socket. Everything about Phillip is
screaming ‘liar’ at me, but I have yet to get any sense of the truth from him
the way I would with anyone else. I am more unsettled than I’d like to admit.

When neither
of us responds, he sighs heavily and slings his bag over his shoulder.             “Well,
see you later Derry. I’ll look for you at lunch.” 

I smile at him
noncommittally. He has been nothing but pleasant and thoughtful to me, but I am
having trouble ignoring my instincts about him, however misplaced they might
be. I begin to hope he forgets about asking me out again, because in the pit of
my stomach something revolts at the thought of him touching me.

He disappears
through the door and I turn to say something to Nicole. She is trembling and ashen,
as though she was holding off some intense reaction while Phillip was there and
only now succumbed.

“Nicole? Are
you okay?” I reach out to touch her arm. Her skin is clammy and covered in goose
bumps.

“Yes I’m
fine,” she lies. I hesitate and then dive right in.

“No you’re
not. C’mon. Let’s go find somewhere to talk.” She resists for a moment and then
nods, following me submissively as we merge into the foot traffic of the
hallway. “Is there anywhere we can go?”

She rouses and
glances around. “Yeah. The library.”

She doesn’t
elaborate so I simply force my way through the crowd, maneuvering through the
maze of hallways until we reach the door that leads to the media lab and
library. As we enter, I am overwhelmed by the smell of bleach, the inside of my
nose tingling and bringing tears to my eyes.

“What the hell
is that?” I whisper, looking around for some kind of puddle of the noxious
stuff, but am greeted by gleaming countertops and the neatest library I’ve ever
been in.

There’s
something about a place that houses books that needs a little comfortable
chaos, the sense you could turn the corner and find the story you’ve been
looking for waiting for you on the arm of a sunken armchair. There is a scent
to books that is almost tangible, the flavor of all the hands that have touched
them, the minds that have devoured their words; and no library should be without
the solid sense that someone has been here before, has dropped their coat and
gotten lost for a while.

This library
is sterile and cold. The temperature is too low here, especially for the dead
of winter. The rest of the building is comfortable, maybe even a little on the
toasty side, but this cavernous room has sucked all the warmth from the air and
I shiver involuntarily, wishing I hadn’t left my coat in my locker. There is no
sign of even a single book being off the shelf, no papers lying loose on the
counter, and the fluorescent lights are bright enough to cause a glare off the
white concrete walls.

“Oh, yeah.
It’s the librarian. She’s OCD.” Nicole shrugs, but she’s looking a little less
frail. “There’s a reading room in the back. No one is ever there.” She leads me
through the stacks, while I marvel at how even the spines of the books are. Not
a one is out of place. I wonder if anyone is actually allowed to check any out,
or if the entire library is illusion, like the fake food and TVs that furniture
stores always put out to make their layouts seem real. Everything is ‘look, but
don’t touch.’

We turn into a
small enclosure at the back of the room where several stiff-looking armchairs
and a couch are scattered around conversationally. Still unnerved by the
surreal atmosphere, I sit down cautiously, half expecting the chair to be made
of cardboard.

Nicole slumps
down in the chair opposite me, dropping her bag to the floor and burying her
head in her hands. I am unsure of what to do, whether I should say something or
pat her shoulder in comfort, but she looks up at me before I can do anything.

“Has Phillip
asked you out?” she asks abruptly. I blink in surprise and then nod slowly,
frowning.  “I thought he might have. Don’t do it. Don’t go out with him,” she
orders, her tone uncompromising.

I bristle
slightly. I don’t like being told what to do, even by someone as damaged as
Nicole. “I wasn’t really planning on it, but that’s my decision,” I reply
frostily.

“No, look, I’m
not trying to tell you what to do, but…” She pauses and frowns, looking at the
floor as though it will answer for her. Finally, she gives a resigned sigh and
looks at me with renewed purpose in her eyes.

“I’m going to
tell you some stuff, but you’ve got to promise to keep it quiet.”

“Sure,” I
promise, leaning forward in avid curiosity.

She studies me
for a moment, gauging my sincerity and then nods. “Ok. I think…no, I know
Miranda didn’t kill herself. I think it was Phillip.”

I stare at her
for a moment, more surprised at my lack of shock than her theory. “That’s a
pretty serious accusation. Why do you think that?” I ask cautiously, wanting to
know but still skeptical.

Reassured by
my interest, Nicole leans forward and speaks in a whisper, even though I
haven’t heard anything to indicate we’re not alone in this strange, sanitized room.

“Miranda and I
were friends since fifth grade. We told each other everything, did everything
together. We were like sisters. A few weeks after she started dating Phillip,
she stopped talking to me.”

“At all?”

Nicole shakes
her head, memory etched into her face. “Not completely, but she wouldn’t say
anything about Phillip, kept me away from him. It wasn’t like her. When she was
dating Jake, she told me stuff all the time…”

“Wait,” I
interjected, a piece of the puzzle falling into place. “Miranda and Jake were a
couple?”

“Oh yeah.
Since freshman year. Then…something happened between them last summer. He
shoved her into a pool.”

“Shoved her as
in play, or shoved her as in trying to hurt her?” I ask, desperately interested
in her answer.

“As in he was
pissed off and shoved her so hard she had bruises on her chest.”

A clear
picture of Jake sinking to his chair, pale and shocked after I had accused him of
killing Miranda, floats through my head like a stray photograph.

“So she broke
up with him?” 

“Yeah. It was
pretty bad for a while. He called all the time and would show up outside her
house, dropped flowers off and stuff. He always seemed to be around, wherever
we went, begging her to take him back, saying how sorry he was. But Miranda
said that if he hurt her once, he’d do it again. And I agreed with her.”

So Jake was the
mysterious stalker-ex mentioned in the true version of the article I read. I
had no doubt that he did shove Miranda; he had amply demonstrated his capacity
for violence and strangely obsessive behavior already. The dark purple smudges
on my arm could attest to that.

“So what does this
have to do with Phillip?” I ask, trying to get back on track.

“He asked
Miranda out on the first day of school, as soon as word got around that she and
Jake weren’t together anymore. I think she was too surprised to say no.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, Phillip
hadn’t ever dated anyone from school. Or anyone that I ever heard. No one
thought he was gay or anything; he just never seemed interested. He told
Miranda that he’d been waiting for her. She thought it was so romantic.”

Nicole leans
back against the chair, the slick vinyl fabric squeaking dissonantly.

“She just
stopped after that. For a few weeks she was all giddy, telling me about the
attention he lavished on her, the presents, the dates, and then one day she
just…dried up. She started sitting with him and his friends at lunch, and
suddenly I wasn’t allowed. He stole her from me. She was never the same after
they started dating. And she lost weight. She looked tired all the time. She
was skittish, always looking over her shoulder and flinching when you touched
her. She was afraid, and she wouldn’t tell me why.”

Nicole’s voice
is so quiet I can barely hear her, and slender tracks of tears wind down her
face as she remembers her dead friend. Unable to stop myself, I reach out and
put my hand on hers. She glances up suspiciously and then gives me a troubled
smile, patting my hand before pulling away.

“I’m okay.
It’s just hard to think about, you know? I got mad at her for how she was
acting, and she didn’t come to me for help.” She closes her eyes, drifting for
a moment, and then straightens, eyes piercing me with a fierce intensity.

“She didn’t
kill herself. I don’t care how depressed she was, or what was going on, Miranda
would never have killed herself. She wasn’t like that. She would have fought
back eventually. And Phillip knew it. He couldn’t let it happen. So he pushed
her off that bridge.”

Nicole sounds
so certain, and I believe that she is telling me what she thinks is true, but a
light hum under my skin contradicts her. I think about earlier when she
unknowingly confessed that she didn’t want to live. Wasn’t it possible that
Miranda had felt that way too? Even just briefly enough to make a terrible
mistake?

“But why are
you so sure it was Phillip? Jake sounds like a more likely candidate.”

She scoffs and
rolls her eyes. “Jake wouldn’t have done it. He might have hurt her in the heat
of the moment, once, but he wouldn’t have killed her. He was crazy about
Miranda.”

“But he shoved
her into a pool. Maybe he was on the bridge with her. It could have been an
accident,” I say thoughtfully. Although Phillip puts me on edge, Jake’s violent
nature makes him a far more conceivable murderer.