Night Sky (13 page)

He just looked at her.

Cal spoke. “At least give us your cell numbers, in case we need to reach you.”

“Yeah,” I said, chin high as I glared at Dana. “In case we find Edmund before you do. Because I'm not going to stop looking—for him
or
for Sasha.”

“You really think we have cell phones?” Dana scoffed. She looked at Milo imploringly. “You don't honestly want to babysit Goo and Gah here, do you?”

“She can smell evil,” Milo said quietly. He was talking about me. “And if you train her, the way she wants? We won't be babysitting for very long.”

And there we all were, in the silence of that old movie theater, as Dana and I tried to stare each other down. I was not going to be the one to look away, regardless of the freaky color of her eyes.

Cal broke the silence. “I kinda need to get home,” he said to Milo as if he'd identified the boy as the only other sane person in the room. “Are you and Ms. Crazy Pants camping out here?”

“No,” Milo answered him. “We tend to keep moving, never staying in the same place for very long.”

Even though Dana and Milo weren't that much older than Cal and me—they both looked to be about eighteen, maybe nineteen at the most—it was clear that they didn't have a mom—insane or other—waiting for them at home.

It was also pretty clear from that
we
that Dana and Milo were together.
Together
together. But really, what did I expect—that Milo
wouldn't
be madly in love with a girl like Dana?

“So what's the best way to get in touch?” Cal asked.

Milo chuckled a little. “Would you believe me if I said all you have to do is want us to show up, and we'll show up?”

“I thought Hot Shot wasn't telepathic,” Cal said.

“It's not quite the same thing.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

Dana blinked first. “Meet us tomorrow at noon,” she finally said. “The Lenox Hotel, downtown Harrisburg. Bring pictures—printed photos—of Edmund Rodriguez. Wear shoes you can run in and a Kevlar vest if you have one. And don't be late.” She turned and walked out of the theater, and I could still hear her when she added, “Jesus, I'm going to hate this.”

“Would you rather,” Cal said on Sunday morning as we headed into the heart of Harrisburg, “projectile vomit or develop sudden, uncontrollable Tourette's while on a blind date?”

I'd made it home last night and gotten into the house without Mom waking up. This morning as I'd nearly collided with her in the kitchen, I'd been tempted to ask her if the whole stacked-up-pillows-beneath-the-covers thing had really worked, but obviously that would have defeated the purpose.

As it was, she'd looked at my pink V-neck tee, skinny jeans, and pink sneakers and said, “Ooh, you look nice. Where are you heading?”

“Cooking class.” I couldn't help myself, mostly because I was still smarting from seeing my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Yeah, I looked nice, but next to Dana, I was going to look like a “nice” twelve-year-old boy in a pink shirt and sneakers.

But Mom looked so sad at my caustic comment that I quickly relented. It wasn't her fault that I didn't have boobs. My father—he of whom we never speak—had to have been responsible for my height and coloring, so he was probably responsible for my less-than-generous physique as well.

“I'm walking over to meet Calvin,” I told her. It was not quite a lie. I just left out the part where I was walking over to his car rather than his house.

Now, as I sat in his car, I realized I'd been in such a rush to escape that I'd forgotten to “forget” my cell phone at home.

“Dammit,” I said as Calvin pulled onto the highway, heading for Harrisburg. I held up my phone. “I'm gonna shut it off. If she calls you, don't answer.”

“Yeah,” Cal said, “'cause I always answer, because I
love
the time I spend chatting with your mom.”

I laughed, but then weirdly found myself defending her. “I think she seriously lost it after the accident. I mean, she was always overprotective, but…” I sighed.

“But you weren't even hurt.”

I looked at Calvin, who as a child had survived his own near-death experience and ended up with a crappy heart and legs that didn't work. I didn't know what happened—what buttons my accident pushed—but when my mother came to the hospital, she acted like it was the freaking end of the world. I don't think it helped that the ER doctors kept rechecking me. They couldn't believe that I'd walked away from the totaled car without a scratch, while my now-former best friend Nicole was in the ICU, barely alive.

“My mother's crazy,” I told Calvin as I tried not to think about that night more than six months ago in Connecticut, when Nicole had lost control of her car. We'd slammed into the median and started to roll…

I exhaled hard, pushing those images away, unwilling to relive it, unable to talk about it, even with Cal. It was over. I was alive and Nicole was too—although her parents had shipped her off to a special school in Switzerland.

Special
school
. Right.

“Well,” Calvin said, bringing me back to the here and now, “I guess moms worry no matter what. Mine sure does.” He looked at me. “Did you bring the photos Dana wanted?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling the printed snapshots out of my purse. Most of them were blurry, because Edmund was always in motion, always laughing at something. The two best included the just-out-of-the-pool shot that Detective Hughes had shown me, as well as a five-by-seven posed portrait of the Rodriguez family that Sasha had given me at Christmas.

Looking at the photos of Sasha made my throat tighten up. I missed her, and I wanted her back.

“So?” asked Cal. “Projectile vomiting or Tourette's?”

I considered the question, placing the photos carefully back in my bag. “Is the blind date someone I'd like to see again?”

Calvin took the same exit we'd taken to get to the Sav'A'Buck. “Absolutely. He's smart, funny, and super sexy. Basically, he's got all of my irresistible charm and more.”

“Then Tourette's. Because dropping the f-bomb requires less cleanup than puking does.”

“Good call,” Calvin said, nodding. “I'm with you.”

We passed the Sav'A'Buck on the right. Its neon sign was unlit in the daylight, and the place looked dingier than ever. I thought about the lady who had jokered in the store, and chill bumps popped up on my arms and legs. She'd willingly taken a drug made, at least in part, from the blood of girls like Sasha and Lacey.

And me.

The road we were on led directly into downtown Harrisburg. As we drove, the shops and homes became even more dilapidated and filthy. I stared at a brick building covered from sidewalk to roof with multicolored graffiti. Like the artwork in the old cineplex, it was pretty—but the mountains of trash piled up in what had once been a parking lot were not. The roof of another building had caved in, and its windows were boarded up. The next didn't even have boards in place—just a jagged rim of broken glass around gaping holes where the windows had once been.

You could practically smell the neglect, and truth be told, I was breathing through my mouth because the stink of rotting fish and burning plastic was so strong. The people here were filled with fear and something else. Despair? Whatever it was, it was awful.

“Dang,” Cal whispered, slowing the car just a bit. “This is downtown?”

I'd thought I knew what Mom meant when she talked about the Second Great Depression, but the tired seediness of the CoffeeBoy or the Pizza Extravaganza in the less-well-off parts of Coconut Key was nothing compared to this.

A single hanging stoplight blinked red at a four-way intersection, and Calvin stopped for a moment. We both pressed the lock button on the door to make double sure it was engaged.

Across the street on the corner, a woman stood hunched over a brimming grocery cart full of garbage. She rearranged plastic bags, dented cans, blankets, and other miscellaneous objects, her face shaded by an oversized shawl. As Calvin and I drove past, the old lady turned to stare at us, revealing a horribly disfigured profile. Half of her chin was just…missing. One eye bulged almost completely out of the socket, while the other was swollen shut. She smiled—at least I think that was a smile.

I gasped and Calvin pressed the accelerator.

“Please tell me that's not the she-thing you saw in Sasha's room that night,” he said, his tone light even though I knew he was spooked.

“No, that woman was homeless, but she wasn't evil,” I replied.

“You say that like you know her personally,” Cal said.

I shrugged. “No sewage smell.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “I almost forgot.”

We kept going, further into the decaying center of Harrisburg, where more and more people were out on the sidewalks. Some of them pushed grocery carts; others huddled in the shade beneath the tattered awnings of stores, their knees drawn up to their chests. They looked defeated, as if they were already dead. The only other vehicle on the road was a pickup moving slowly in the opposite direction and ringing a bell like an old-time ice cream truck. It had a big, hand-lettered sign on it that read:
Human
Corpses
Only
.

I turned to look out the back as a man flagged down the truck. He gestured back toward a building where two other men emerged, awkwardly carrying something child-sized that was covered with a dirty sheet. The first man sank to his knees on the sidewalk.

I realized that the hint of cinnamon that I could smell, even though the car windows were tightly closed and the recirculate button was on, was grief.

This was worse than I could have ever imagined.

“What are we looking for?” Cal asked. “I've forgotten the name.”

“The Lenox Hotel. There, up on the right.” I pointed at the looming brick building ahead. It was taller than the buildings around it, but no less dilapidated. It had a sign that said THE LENOX in block letters, in a style that reminded me of medieval knights, complete with a stylized lion.

“I hope for Dana and Milo's sake this isn't where they're staying.” Cal pulled up next to the building.

I didn't answer, but I silently agreed. The hotel's front double doors had cracks in the glass that were covered by peeling duct tape. A faded and grimy black-and-white pinstriped awning hung overhead, part of it torn and hanging down almost all the way to the sidewalk.

“Should we go inside?” I asked uncertainly.

Calvin turned on his hazard lights. The only other car parked on the street was an abandoned two-toned hunk of metal with three of its tires missing. “Should we even get out of the car? The locals don't look too friendly.”

An old man lingered below the hotel's awning, scratching compulsively at his scalp. He looked at Calvin's car and pointed a gnarled hand at us. Then he yipped like a dog.

A hand rapped on my window, and Calvin and I both screamed.

“Hey, Scooter! Open up!”

Dana stood on the sidewalk—where had she come from?—one hand on her hip. She was wearing the same knee-high boots that she'd had on last night, this time with black jeans and a black tank top. Her super-short hair was slicked back with a thick black headband. Pencil-thin red bra straps peeked out from underneath her shirt.

Calvin did as he was told. The yipping dog-man began to approach the car, but when Dana turned around and clapped her hands aggressively at him, he scurried away.

She hopped in the back, and Cal quickly locked the car again.

“You're late,” she informed us matter-of-factly.

I frowned and looked at my watch. It was twelve oh two.

“Where's Milo?” Cal asked.

“We're gonna pick him up. He had to make a store run.”

“He left you all by yourself?” Cal asked, astonished, adjusting his rearview mirror so he could see Dana while he drove.

Dana gave Cal what I'd come to think of as her dead-eye glare. “Don't you mean,
I
let
him
go
to
the
store
all
by
himself
? Considering I'm a G-T and he's not?”

“Right,” Cal said as he pulled gingerly away from the curb. “Sorry. Where to?”

“Dead ahead. The SmartMart's two blocks down.” As Cal drove, Dana settled back in her seat. “I figured we'd start today's search over where Edmund Rodriguez's truck was found. And a heads-up, kids, because unlike this good part of town, where we're going is extremely dangerous.”

I exchanged a look with Calvin.
This
was the
good
part of town.

“Coupla hard and fast rules to follow,” Dana continued coolly. “Stay within sight of me at all times. And if I tell you to do something, you do it. You don't ask why; you don't hesitate. And if you have even the
slightest
suspicion that a jokering Destiny addict is in the vicinity, you get the hell out of there, double time. Am I clear?”

I looked at Cal again as we both nodded.

She laughed. “Although, sometimes there's no getting out. I once saw the aftermath of a joker who sent out such a blast of power that he turned every car in a two-block radius into shrapnel.” She leaned forward to point out the front. “There.”

The SmartMart was little more than a crumbled hut, the front windows opaque with overlapping posters. I noticed an ancient sign that read: “We accept food stamps.” Someone had crossed out the words and written “Eat shit and die” over it. Posted next to it was a more current ad for Good Times vodka.

Milo must've still been inside, because although there were plenty of very large, scary-looking people hanging out front, none of them was him.

Cal pulled over as Dana continued her story about the cars-into-shrapnel thing. “Although truth be told, you can't outrun
that
kind of shit. Everyone in the area was turned into hamburger—including the joker.” She laughed as if that was funny. “Joke was on him, huh? But dozens of people were all just completely chewed up. All that blood in the streets…” Now she sighed heavily as she sat forward to look out at the convenience store. “What the hell is taking him so long? Oh, my aching God. Milo seriously
had
to pick today to be a hero.”

I had no idea what was so heroic about going to the SmartMart. I did have a suspicion, however, that Dana told that story to try to scare us into leaving. And I could tell from the expression on Calvin's face that she was at least half succeeding.

Cal was looking out the windshield at the bikers gathered in front of the SmartMart. I was more worried about the two tattered-looking men who stood across the street, talking to each other as they pointed at our car. Another creepy old woman stood on the corner, rocking back and forth. She held an old rag doll in the crook of her elbow. Each time she moved, the doll's head lolled limply back and forth.

“I'll find him.” Dana sighed again as she reached to open the car door. But then she stopped and narrowed her eyes at the bikers outside the store and warned us, “Lock up behind me and don't open the doors for anyone. Y'understand?” She got out, then stuck her head back in the car to ask, “Your windows
are
bulletproof, right?” But she didn't wait for an answer. She just slammed the door and stomped her way toward the store.

Calvin clicked the lock a few extra times as we watched her vanish inside.

And then, it was like they all came out of the woodwork at once.

As if on cue, the bikers all turned and looked at us, more than one of them eyeing me through the windshield and licking their lips. Gross. One of them seemingly casually flicked open his jacket, and I spotted the glint of something metal in his waistband—a gun to test whether or not Cal's car had bulletproof glass?

But the bikers weren't the only potential threat. Across the street, a guy with a cane and a badly stained trench coat headed toward us. The old woman we had seen earlier with the horrible face approached with her grocery cart. She waved her fingers almost coyly at Calvin. The two old tattered guys started to cross the street as well. Everyone was heading in our direction.