Messenger of Fear (9 page)

And, in unworthy self-pity, I needed to cry for myself, because surely whatever I had done to deserve this, whatever had wrung soul-searing sobs from me, it must surely have been a mistake, an accident, like Liam and Emma. For surely whatever I had done, it was nothing that sank to Kayla’s level. I didn’t believe I was capable of true wickedness.

But I would learn that we don’t always know ourselves.

I would learn that and more.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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IT WAS WITH THE GREATEST RELIEF THAT I SAW we had moved on, leaving poor, doomed Samantha Early to read the 140 character mocks and insults and false expressions of disgust.

We stood outside a house perched just below a narrow, one-lane, poorly blacktopped, and winding road. My house? For a moment it was almost as if Messenger had read my thoughts, my search for my own roots, and was taking me to a familiar place. There was a familiarity about the place, but no, of course this wasn’t my house, it couldn’t be.

“This is Kayla’s home?” I asked, and received no answer. I was becoming accustomed to Messenger’s taciturnity, to his grudging release of any information, as though truth was a poison that must be taken with the smallest of spoons, over time, allowing immunity to build up.

Kayla’s family had money; that much was clear. The home was large, six bedrooms, with a pool to the side and a view of a stand of woods that might be inviting on the sunniest of spring days but now felt sullen, dense, and silent.

The slope behind the house was quite steep, even more sharply declined than the steps from the road down to the front door. That rear slope led down to Sleepy Hollow Creek. White alders, willows, and buckeyes grew tall, and the deck at the rear of the house was in the midst of those trees, so that sunshine only rarely struck the cedar planks and . . .

I blinked in confusion. I had not been to the back of the house—I was still standing on the road, looking at the house between parked cars. Was I now acquiring information without even the need to pose a question? Was I a fish swimming in a sea of information to which I had now, by virtue of my incredible situation, become entitled?

We stepped into Kayla’s room, as though walking from the one-lane road directly into her room was a matter of course. There was an architecture, a geography to this sphere I now inhabited. I thought that eventually I must come to understand it if I was ever to free myself from an existence as a helpless appendage.

I could only wonder what my own home was like. The brief flashes of memory I’d enjoyed had given me very little to work with. I still had no idea what my room was like, but I felt sure it was not as nice as Kayla’s.

She had a queen-size bed with an antique-white headboard detailed with a blue stripe that picked up the color on one of her walls. The other walls were lighter, avoiding the heaviness that can come from too much blue.

The furniture . . .

Wait a minute. I knew the furniture. That was a Restoration Hardware bed. The dresser and desk were both antiques. How did I know that? Why did I know that? I was too young to be some kind of interior decorator. Was this an interest of mine? That would be an embarrassing bit of knowledge if it turned out I was a student of home furnishing.

I had felt from the start that I cared about words. Cared maybe too much, but that at least felt organic to me, part of me. This unusual knowledge of furniture must come from some personal experience. Maybe my own room had been redecorated?

I tried to force a picture to appear, but it would not, and my attention was drawn to Kayla, who was doing homework on her laptop, tapping, dragging her finger across the touch screen, tapping, glancing at a book, tapping some more.

Above her desk was a cork bulletin board, squeezed in between posters of pop stars and actors and a wistful travel poster from Venice. I moved in to see the bulletin board. A course list. A shopping list—very organized was our Kayla: eyeliner, socks, moisturizer, scrunchies.

My eye was drawn then to a ribbon, a blue satin rectangle with the letters “NaNoWriMo.” I knew what it meant, which was both reassuring and unsettling. National Novel Writing Month. Kayla had participated, even won some sort of recognition.

The door opened. I fought back the instinct to hide. We were invisible, of course, except when Messenger decided otherwise. Through the door came a woman. She was pretty in a chrome-and-glass kind of way, cold, face unnaturally smooth, hair a glossy black, very different from Kayla. I was sure that black hair should be at least touched with gray, might have been so touched at some point in the past.

She was dressed in a too-short skirt and too-tight blouse over too-ambitious breast-enhancement surgery. She had the aspect of a woman trying very hard to be other than what nature had meant her to be.

“We’re going out,” the woman said.

Kayla didn’t turn around. “You’re supposed to knock.”

“I don’t need to knock in my own home.”

“Your home. Of course,” Kayla sneered. “Yours and
his
now. Maybe he should be able to walk in on me without knocking, too. I’ll bet he’d like to.”

“Kayla, unless you have something to say, unless you have some kind of sensible thing to say, do not go there.”

Kayla waved a dismissive hand and went back to her work, but she wasn’t really reading; she was waiting, tensed and angry.

“Do you have something to say, Kayla?” her mother pressed.

“No, Jessica,” Kayla said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Not at all. After all, I’m sure a man who is fifteen years younger than you, and only ten years older than me, has no interest at all in walking in on me.”

Jessica crossed the room with long-legged strides, grabbed Kayla’s shoulder, and spun her around. Kayla half fell from her chair and yelled, “Get out and leave me alone!”

“Listen to me, Kayla, if Arnie has done anything . . . questionable . . . you tell me. Otherwise, you stop spreading poison.”

“Questionable? Has he done anything
questionable
? You mean, aside from moving into my house and sleeping with my mother in my father’s bed?” Kayla’s voice had risen with each word, louder, more insistent, and by the time she had reached the final syllable, there were tears in her eyes and her voice was a scream.

“I have a right to—”

“To sleep with whoever will have you?”

“You spoiled little—” Jessica snapped.

“Get your hands off me!”

“I am your mother, Kayla, whether you like it or not. I won’t tolerate your disrespect.”

“My mother? My mother wasn’t a slut!”

“Watch your mouth!”

“I don’t even want to be here. Oh, my God, I hate you! I wish Dad hadn’t died!”

Jessica blinked and drew back. “Of course you miss your father, I—”

“Do not tell me that you miss him, too,” Kayla said. Her tone was ferocious, a mix of anger and deep sadness. “He wouldn’t . . . If you had died . . . he would never have . . .”

“He already was,” Jessica said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she blanched, covered her mouth with one hand, and reached for Kayla with the other. Kayla slapped her hand away.

“What did you just say?” Kayla demanded. “What did you just say?
What did you just say?
”

“No one in this world is perfect or without failings, Kayla. Not even your father.”

The room felt cold suddenly, the light gone grim and gray, as the two looked at each other. Kayla’s face was red with anger; her eyes blazed through tears. Her mother was abashed but also, somehow, relieved of a burden.

“Go away,” Kayla said. “This is my room.”

“Kayla . . .”

“If he did, it was your fault!” Kayla said. “Now get out. Get out. Leave me alone.”

At that moment the picture froze, though of course it was no picture but a reality, an actual scene that must have played out in some corner of the time-and-space continuum Messenger so casually defied.

“What is the point of showing me that?” I asked Messenger.

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and I was none too deferential. I felt bruised by the confrontation I had just witnessed. Maybe it was normal in its own way; after all, mothers and daughters fought. I didn’t know enough to judge who was in the right, or indeed whether they were both right or both wrong.

Messenger let time flow, so next I had to witness Jessica storming from the room and worse, see Kayla break down in tears.

She cried for a long time, deep, wracking sobs, the particular rhythm of a person who has suffered some terrible loss. I found I couldn’t bear it. She was crying for her dead father, and I knew that I must have cried that same way, for that same reason. Perhaps I, too, had lashed out at those around me, unable to come to terms with my own feelings of unfairness and helplessness.

After far too long, Messenger said, “Good and evil are real. But the lines are seldom neat.”

“Great, Obi-Wan,” I said. “And what am I supposed to do with that?”

Messenger either didn’t detect the sarcasm or didn’t consider it worth addressing. He answered the question as though it had been sincere.

“The Messenger must understand,” he said.

“Wonderful,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. “So now I understand.”

Messenger did not speak—he waited—and now Kayla was typing again. Not a Pages document but something on Facebook. A status update. I moved closer, curiosity overcoming the niceties of privacy, and read it over her shoulder.

Oh. My. God!
she typed.
You will not even believe this. But I have a copy of Spazmantha’s so-called manuscript. Okay, here’s the love scene from page 102.

She proceeded to type in an R-rated sex scene between a character named Jason and a girl named Sammie.

It was hastily written, but not so carelessly that it would set off alarm bells in a willing audience that so wanted it to be true.

It was explicit. It was humiliating. It was meant to sound as if it was a poorly disguised version of a sex scene between Samantha and Mason, the boy from the lunchroom. Kayla had some talent—that was the thing. She had enough talent to include some detail for verisimilitude. Enough talent to just about sound as if she was writing something that could be published, though her style could be stilted and overly dependent on multisyllabic words.

I glanced at Kayla’s bookshelf and was not surprised to find Poe and Lovecraft amid the Roths and Greens and Krauses. Kayla had an interest in the gothic.

The Facebook posting sat there, long enough to be read, and then the “Likes” began to add up quickly. And then the “Shares.”

Kayla switched to her Twitter feed and posted a pointer to her Facebook status. And those tweets were re-tweeted and favorited.

And just like that, the one thing Samantha Early had ever done that made her feel worthy and important was turned into a dirty joke.

Kayla included a sound that Samantha was supposed to have made.

That was the genius moment, I knew. I could practically feel Kayla’s dark pleasure, knowing that this, above all, would be the stiletto to Samantha’s heart.

Gurgle, gurgle, Sammie said.

It was silliness. It was false.

It killed Samantha Early.

“Consider what you have just witnessed,” Messenger said. “Think on it, Mara, and come with me.”

It sounded like an invitation, but of course it was no such thing. Before I could blink, we had left the now cold and remorseless Kayla behind and were once again with Liam and Emma.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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“I OFFER YOU A GAME,” MESSENGER SAID.

“What game?” Liam demanded.

Messenger would not explain. “If you win the game, you will both go free to consider what you have done. If you lose the game, you will suffer your greatest fear.”

The two of them looked frightened already, like they’d already had plenty of fear, but I could see that Liam at least felt confident in his ability to win a game. Not cocky but confident. Perhaps, I thought, he is an athlete accustomed to games, accustomed to competition, and has a justifiably high opinion of his abilities.