Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (5 page)

I was honored when Coach Peters chose
me to be Captain of Westwood High’s Varsity Women’s lacrosse team.
But the responsibility that came with leadership sucked. Every girl
on the team could opt out of three Saturday practices per season,
except for me. As captain, my presence was mandatory.

“Well, el ca-pi-tan,” Elizabeth
drawled each syllable from her sanctuary. “I think I’m exercising
my right to miss today’s practice.”

“You can’t. I need a ride. Devon
already called dibs on not going.”

This marked Devon’s third
missed Saturday practice, and the first game was the following
Friday. Coach Peters would be furious. Part of me thought she had
made me captain in the hope that I would keep Devon in
line.

Like me, Devon made varsity as a
freshman, and she was no doubt the better player. But she was
irresponsible and lacked focus ― Coach Peters’ words, not mine ―
and had therefore been passed over for captain. Devon was a natural
at everything: academics, sports, popularity. She wasn’t used to
losing. While Devon assured me that she was happy I’d been
selected, I knew it secretly bothered her.

“Fiiiiiiiiine.” Elizabeth
gave an exaggerated sigh. “Pick out some clothes for me while I
take a cold shower and wake my brain.” With that she disappeared
into her bathroom, and the next thing I heard was the sound of
running water.

While Elizabeth showered, I
used the guest bathroom to get cleaned up. The cut on my foot
looked a lot better this morning, just a little puffy and red. As I
showered and applied fresh bandages, I tried to recall the dream
that had startled me awake. I remembered water and nothing else.
Not that I normally remembered my dreams after waking up, except
for the recurring one from my childhood about the green-faced witch
chasing me into a cage – I loved the
Wizard of Oz
. But not being able to
recall the details of this one bothered me. Remembering felt
important, like it somehow mattered in the grand scheme of
life.

Since time was short, I skipped
washing my hair, even though the stench of lake water still clung
to the strands. When I tried to brush out the tangles, the bristles
kept snagging at the base of my skull. Frustrated, I switched to
using my fingers to comb through the more matted pieces. Something
sharp sliced my skin; it felt like a paper cut. I looked at my
finger. One small drop of blood welled on the tip. Tentatively, I
felt around the lump on my head. Several sharp pieces of something
that felt like glass were stuck in my hair. I worked them free, my
anxiety spiking. I had a bad feeling, which was confirmed when I
examined the small slivers. They weren’t glass at all. They were
identical to the blue-green shards that had been lodged into my
foot.

I swallowed thickly, closed my eyes,
and counted to ten to calm my racing heart. Shards of rock, I told
myself, just as I’d told Devon the night before. Once I felt more
in control, I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection over the
porcelain sink basin. “There was nothing in the water. Your mind
was playing tricks on you,” I said out loud.

My jaw clenched, the muscles around my
mouth twitching noticeably. Even my reflection knew that what
happened in the water wasn’t purely a figment of my
imagination.

****

Twenty minutes later, Elizabeth pulled
her sleek BMW into Westwood High’s jock lot. The school was so big
that it needed five parking areas for all of the students,
teachers, and staff. Jock lot, as it was so aptly named, was the
one closest to the locker rooms. Both the junior varsity and
varsity girls were already congregated and stretching on the
practice field.

Elizabeth and I grabbed our sticks
from the trunk and dashed across the grass to join them.

“You’re late, Andrews,” Coach Peters
called as I took my place in the center of the circle next to the
JV captain, a sophomore named Anna Beth Walters.

“Sorry, Coach,” I apologized, dropping
my stick to the grass and mimicking Anna Beth.

“You and Bowers owe me suicides on the
hill,” she said pointedly, gesturing to a steep, grassy slope
behind the practice field.

I caught Elizabeth’s gaze across the
circle. “I’m soooooo sorry,” she mouthed. I shook my head to let
her know it was fine.

Frequently relying on Devon for rides
to practice meant I was often late. It wasn’t the first time, and
certainly wouldn’t be the last, that Coach punished my tardiness by
making me run that hill.

Practice went as well as I could have
hoped on barely four hours of nightmarish sleep. During the warm-up
drills I was sluggish and dropped several easy passes. Most of my
shots on goal went wide, but since I normally played defense, that
wasn’t unusual.

Elizabeth didn’t fare much better. She
was normally one of our leading scorers, but she missed every
eight-meter shot she attempted. Every time the ball sailed over the
goalie’s head, Coach Peters’ jaw clenched tighter, and I knew that
she was keeping a mental tally of our respective screw-ups so she
could assign a corresponding number of suicides.

“Sorry I missed your party last night,
Eel. Want to do a birthday lunch?” Anna Beth called once Coach
dismissed both teams. Even though Anna Beth was two years younger,
we’d gotten close over the past six weeks since our captain duties
often brought us together. Apparently, she had decided to be
responsible the previous night, and declined the invitation to my
surprise party.

“She owes me sprints,” Coach Peters
growled with a malicious glint in her eyes.

Great! My birthday celebration had
been a catastrophe, and now I was going to suffer physically for it
as well.

“Maybe next week,” I called back. Anna
Beth shot me a sympathetic smile before scurrying after her
teammates.

As I walked dejectedly towards
Elizabeth and Coach Peters, I noticed our assistant coach placing
bright orange cones at intervals on the grassy slope. Elizabeth
hung her head and stared at her cleats while Peters lectured her on
the merits of punctuality.

“It’s my fault, Coach,” I said,
sidling up to them. “We stayed up a little late celebrating my
birthday.” I added the last part in hopes of eliciting a little bit
of sympathy from our tough- as-nails leader. She didn’t so much as
bat an eyelash at my excuse. Instead, she put the silver whistle
dangling from a lanyard around her neck to her lips, and a shrill
peal mingled with the sounds of my teammates’ departing
cars.

“GO!” she shouted to drive home the
message.

Elizabeth and I sprinted for the first
orange cone on the hill. The grass was slick with residual dew, and
even with our cleats we both slid when we made the turn. Even with
my hurt foot, I finished my first suicide a full thirty seconds
before Elizabeth, and therefore had time to catch my breath before
Coach Peters’ whistle punctured the air again.

Ten suicides later, my lungs ached
from all the panting, my glutes burned, and my left sock was
soaked, leading me to believe the cut had started bleeding again. I
squatted, palms on thighs, my head dangling between my knees, and
tried to catch my breath, when Elizabeth finally collapsed on the
ground next to me. Her face had a sickly green hue to it, and her
chest rose and fell in rapid succession.

Coach Peters brought her whistle to
her lips one last time and blew. “Don’t be late again,” she said in
a tone that hit me like a bucket full of ice. With that, she turned
on her heel and left the practice field, her assistant not far
behind.

“I think I’m going to be sick,”
Elizabeth moaned, rolling onto her stomach.

I grabbed her long, blonde ponytail
just in time to save it from the mess that projected from her
mouth. As I rubbed her back, I held my breath so I wouldn’t be
compelled to join her vomit party, and vowed never to be late
again.

I drove Elizabeth’s car back to the
Bowers’ house. Luckily, Devon and Mandy were still there, so I
didn’t need to ask Helen, the Bowers’ housekeeper, to drive me
home.

“How’s your history paper coming? Mine
totally sucks.” Devon asked as she pulled the Chevy out of
Elizabeth’s development.

I rolled my eyes. Nothing Devon ever
did sucked. She liked to play down her brains in favor of playing
up her looks, but she couldn’t hide the fact she was a near
genius.

“I have a bunch of words written. I’m
just not sure they make any sense,” I told her.

Devon snorted. “I hear ya.” She
glanced in my direction, taking her eyes off of the road for a
heartbeat.

The air inside of the car became
heavy, a thick fog suddenly invading the small space. Devon’s next
words echoed as though she were standing at the opposite end of a
very long tunnel, instead of sitting right next to me. “Want me to
come over later? We can work on them together.”

An eerie feeling crawled over my skin
and I shivered. Then, the fog began to swirl, churning faster and
faster and causing my head to spin. A picture formed in my mind: us
barreling through a stop sign at the same time a Bronco shot
through the intersection. My breath hitched in my throat. I’d been
in this same situation before; I could feel that. Not just because
Devon was a bad driver, which she truly was. It was more than that.
I had experienced this very moment before - I just couldn’t
remember when or where. Blood roared in my ears and I reached for
the door to steady myself.

“Stop sign! Stop sign! Stop sign!” I
screamed, and squeezed my eyes shut and braced for the inevitable
impact.

Devon swore loudly, a string of
expletives that would have made a sailor proud and her mother
cringe. The Chevy’s tires screeched against the pavement. My body
jerked forward. The seat belt locked, forcing me back into my seat
with bruising force. I opened my eyes just in time to see a blue
Ford Bronco dart through the intersection in front of
us.

Shakily, I glanced at Devon, panting
like I’d just run the mile in PE. Weird didn’t begin to explain how
I felt.

“Sorry about that,” Devon said
sheepishly, not nearly as fazed by our close call as I was. Then
again, Devon wasn’t the one who’d known the Bronco was coming. I
was.

I didn’t respond. I just sat facing
forward, blinking rapidly as if that would right the
world.

We rode the next ten minutes in
silence, with only the morning show playing quietly on the Chevy’s
radio.

“So I’ll come by later with pizza?”
Devon asked when she stopped in front of my big brick house, my
mother’s Saab noticeably absent from the open garage
bay.

“Yeah, sure,” I responded
automatically, not entirely sure what I’d just agreed to. All I
could think about was the near miss with the Bronco. What was it
called when something happened and you thought you’d experienced it
before?

“You okay?” Devon asked, pulling me
from my thoughts.

I forced a smile. “Of course. Just
tired. Practice was rough.”

My legs shook as I climbed from the
passenger seat and hurried up the walkway to my front
door.

“See you in a little,” Devon called
after me.

Agreeing to let Devon “help” me with
my history paper was a poor decision. No research or paper would
get done. But when I walked into my big, empty house and found a
note from my mother saying she would likely be at the office until
late tonight preparing for her trial, I was relieved I had made the
concession.

The home I shared with my mother
wasn’t as large or luxurious as Elizabeth’s, but it was in the
wealthier section of town and expertly, if not impersonally,
decorated by a professional. We did have a housekeeper who came in
twice a week, since my mother was too busy to take care of such
trivial measures as cleaning. Unfortunately, Mom didn’t put as much
stock in eating, so she refused to hire a cook, which meant I was
forced to fend for myself at mealtimes. Luckily, the Holloways and
Helen normally took pity on me and made sure I wasn’t malnourished,
or worse, resigned to eating fast food for three meals a
day.

The morning’s torturous practice had
driven all thoughts of the previous night from my mind. Now, alone,
I had nothing to distract me from the incident at the lake. Had it
been real? Had I actually seen something, or rather someone, in the
water? And what the hell had just happened with the SUV running
that stop sign? In the last twenty-four hours my mundane life had
taken a turn towards the surreal.

The mark on my cheek tingled, a
physical reminder of the boy who’d saved my life. I hurried to the
downstairs powder room and checked my reflection in the mirror. The
red patch was still there, but fainter now than it had been earlier
that morning. The small circle of skin was warmer than the rest of
my face.

I leaned closer to the mirror, turning
my head from side to side, examining the mark from every angle.
Devon was right; it did resemble a burn.

“Weird,” I muttered to my
reflection.

Returning to the kitchen, I hit the
blinking light on the answering machine. I crossed my fingers that
my father’s voice would speak from that machine, even though the
odds of him leaving a message were slimmer than Ross Perot’s
chances in the 1996 election. Mom would freak if he called the
house. She actually forbade him to do so.