Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) (8 page)

“Does six work?”

“I’ll be there,” I promised
him.

“I can’t wait to see you, Eel,” Dad
said, his voice heavy with emotion. “Do me a favor in the meantime,
though. If you feel uncomfortable in a situation or you meet
someone new and you don’t feel safe, trust your
instincts.”

“What?” I stammered. I was eighteen, a
little late for the “don’t talk to strangers” discussion. Then I
remembered Kannon and how uncomfortable he’d made me. The intense
way he’d stared at me, the tight coil of fear that had developed in
the pit of my stomach while we were sitting on the grass, the burn
his fingers had left on my cheek.

“I promise I’ll explain when I see
you,” Dad continued. “Keep your phone on and close in case I need
to get in touch with you again before then.”

“Okay,” I whispered, not wanting the
conversation to end but knowing it was about to.

“I love you, sweetheart. I’ll see you
soon.”

“I love you, too,” I told him and then
disconnected.

I sat back on my bed, a
mixture of longing and disbelief. In just over seventy-two hours I
would see my father in the flesh. The
once-a-year
phone calls were not
enough. I tried to imagine what he would look like. Five years was
a long time. I imagined his hair would still be full, but maybe a
little grayer around the temples. He’d worn glasses for as long as
I could remember, and I doubted he’d bothered to get Lasik. I got
my athletic abilities from his side of the family. He played water
polo in college and had always been a distance runner, so I figured
he’d be in good shape for a man in his fifties.

Of the two of us, I was the
one who’d probably changed the most. My auburn hair hit the middle
of my back, a big change from the chin length do my
mother insisted looked best on me.
I wasn’t much taller, only an inch or two. I
hoped he would recognize me.

Despite my father’s warning, I
immediately texted Kannon. I needed to put the past couple of days
behind me and move on to what was really important. Until I talked
to Kannon, that wasn’t going to happen.

Me: How did you get this #?

Kannon: Can we talk in
person?

Me: Answer my question and I’ll
consider it.

Ten minutes passed more
slowly than a snow mound melting in January. I tapped the desk
impatiently with my nails, the
click click
click
loud in my otherwise silent bedroom.
Finally, my phone dinged, signaling his two-word response: Jamieson
Wentworth.

I stared at the cell, mouth agape. I
blinked several times to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks
on me. No, I’d read the text correctly the first time. A hot flush
of anger made my cheeks burn. What the hell was going
on?

My phone dinged again.

Kannon: You two are friends,
right?

I laughed bitterly. In another life,
yes, Jamieson and I had been friends, best friends. Now? Not so
much.

The damned phone dinged a third
time.

Kannon: So, when can we
meet

?

Quarter till
never
, I thought. Any friend of Jamieson’s
was not someone I wanted to associate with. Sure, the animosity
between Jamieson and me had cooled over the past several years ―
nothing like it had been right after I’d moved away and left St.
Mary’s, which Jamieson took personally. But we still couldn’t be
near one another without her making some snippy remark. I usually
ignored her; there was no reason to poke the beast. Sometimes,
though, she made me so mad that I couldn’t help but take the bait.
Those encounters never ended well.

To Kannon, I replied simply: We
can’t.

To my surprise, he didn’t push the
issue. Initially, I was thankful he left me alone so easily; but by
bedtime I was more intrigued than ever, and it took a great deal of
willpower not to rescind my earlier refusal.

Chapter Five

Monday morning was cool for spring in
Maryland. The Bug’s heater took nearly the entire ten-minute drive
to Westwood High to warm the interior. Instead of dwelling on the
weekend, I made a mental list of all the things that I needed to
focus on for the upcoming week. While I had made progress on my
history paper, it was nowhere near finished. I had a calculus quiz
on Tuesday that I hadn’t started studying for yet. And I had
practice every day after school.

The mundane details of everyday life
were a welcome distraction from my bizarre weekend. The excitement
over the visit with my father hadn’t worn off, but I was trying not
to let it distract me from what needed to be taken care of in the
interim. Unfortunately, between that and my continued curiosity
over Kannon and the lake creature, nothing else seemed
important.

The school day was blissfully
uneventful. My new cell phone didn’t buzz once in my pocket. I
didn’t foresee any potentially deadly accidents. Devon was rude to
Mandy at lunch, Elizabeth flirted with the boys’ soccer coach
during study hall, and Coach Peters made me run suicides on the
hill because she thought I was too slow during practice. All was
right with the world.

The stress to write a
better-than-average paper for history made me go straight home
after practice and get to work. Mr. Randell had informed us that it
would count for one-third of our grade, and I couldn’t afford to
risk writing it poorly at the last minute. Throughout the evening,
my mother called my new cell phone once an hour to check
in.

The following forty-eight
hours sped by in a blur. The mild curiosity about the boy who’d
saved my life was now verging on obsession. I thought about him
constantly. Sometimes I’d daydream about him in a tuxedo with his
hair artfully mussed and a smile stretching his lips. The image was
so clear in my mind, even though the one time I
had
seen him in person he more
closely resembled a drowned rat than a GQ cover model. The thoughts
weren’t always pleasant, though; other times, I’d picture his face
on the lake creature. His bright green eyes were staring into mine,
instead of her black orbs. His strong hands were wrapped around my
throat, not her delicate pale ones. The thought made it feel like a
boulder was sitting on my chest, and each breath was shallower than
the previous. More than one of my teachers had called me out in
class to ask if I was okay.

Somehow, I managed to finish my
history paper and earn a B on my calculus quiz. Both Monday and
Tuesday nights, I awoke in my bed covered in sweat and panting,
with tears streaming down my face. Only three details from the
dreams remained once I was awake: fire, water, and
Kannon.

On Wednesday morning, I
woke up well before my alarm clock, my anxiety too powerful to let
me sleep any longer. Despite my early rising, my mother’s car was
gone from the garage when I made my way downstairs to scrounge up
some breakfast. She had, however, left me a note, saying that there
may, or may not, be some unexpired yogurt in the fridge.

When I opened the
state-of-the-art refrigerator to search for the yogurt, I found one
carton of Blueberry Yoplait that had expired two days prior. I
peeled back the top back and sniffed. Artificial fruit filled my
nostrils, and I dipped my pinkie in the purple cream and
tentatively touched it to my tongue.
Tastes okay to me
, I thought as I
searched for a spoon and began to eat the contents.

The entire day I was a
bundle of nerves. For some reason, I hadn’t told anyone about the
planned meeting with my father. Not even Devon. Of course, I
wouldn’t tell my mother. She would forbid me to go. But I didn’t
tell Devon or Elizabeth or anyone else because part of me worried
the meeting might not happen. I knew it was stupid, but whenever I
wanted something really badly, I kept it to myself. And I’d never
wanted anything as badly as I wanted to see Dad.

I barely touched my chicken
nuggets at lunch― a fact that Devon noticed immediately. “Chicken”
was what the cafeteria sign said they were, but the greyish color
of the meat made me skeptical.

“Still haven’t heard from your
father?” she asked, her tone barely above a whisper.

Our lunch table was crowded; everyone
was preoccupied gossiping about the upcoming weekend and the
fast-approaching prom, or doing homework for their afternoon
classes. I glanced around to be sure no one was paying attention to
us.

“Just the opposite, actually,” I
mumbled, aimlessly swirling a fry in a pile of ketchup and
mayonnaise.

Devon arched an eyebrow in response as
she sipped her soda through a straw.

I sighed. Not telling Devon was a lot
different than lying to her. And I never lied to my best
friend.

“I’m meeting him tonight,” I admitted.
“We’re having dinner.”

“What?” Devon exclaimed loudly,
drawing curious looks from Elizabeth and Cooper, who were copying
Mandy’s Latin homework for the class that all three of them had the
following period. Mandy had ear buds in, and kept mumbling French
phrases under her breath.

Devon hurriedly shoved a nugget in her
mouth, while I nibbled the end of my fry. Once Elizabeth and Cooper
had lost interest in our conversation, Devon continued in a much
lower tone. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just,
what if he doesn’t show? No point in both of us getting our hopes
up for nothing.”

“He’ll show,” she replied, nodding
confidently to drive home the promise. “He loves you, Eel. Have
some faith.”

I had faith alright. Faith that the
meeting was too good to be true. I’d been waiting five years for
this. Until I saw my father and looked at him with my own two eyes,
I wouldn’t truly believe that this was really happening.

“Do me a favor?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“If my mom calls you, will you cover
for me?” I hated asking Devon to lie for me, but I wanted to cover
all of my bases. I had already planned on calling Mom on the way to
the Moonlight and telling her that I was having dinner with Devon.
And now that I’d told Devon the truth about meeting my father,
enlisting her help with my alibi seemed like a good
idea.

“Don’t worry,” she smiled broadly,
“I’ve got you covered.”

****

The drive to the Moonlight
only took twenty minutes. I arrived there early, a full thirty
minutes before six o’clock. I passed the time by scripting how the
meeting would play out. Dad would tell me how much I had grown. I
would tell him he hadn’t aged a day. He would say he loved me and
that there wasn’t a moment that went by he didn’t think about me. I
would tell him that now that I was eighteen, Mom couldn’t keep him
from seeing me. We would laugh and cry and it would be the stuff
of
Seventh Heaven
reruns.

The parking lot was empty,
except for a beat-up Dodge Ram parked by the dumpsters. It wasn’t
surprising since the Moonlight closed after breakfast and didn’t
reopen until dinnertime. Time dragged. I repeatedly glanced at the
clock on my dash and my cell phone. One minute passed, followed by
two. Nothing on the radio held my attention. Not even the Rush Hour
Renegades and their nightly top five, most-overplayed,
over-requested, songs in the nation. At five before six, I turned
off the
Bug’s
engine and made my way up the wooden steps that led to the
Moonlight’s front door. The sign on the door was still flipped to
“closed.” An elderly man was sweeping stray peanut shells into a
dustpan inside. He looked up when I knocked and slowly made his way
to greet me.

“I don’t usually have pretty girls
beating down my door so early in the evening,” he said when he
opened the door.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I’m supposed
to meet someone here at six. Guess I’m a little eager.”

“Not a problem. Come on in.” He held
the door open. “Sit wherever you like. I’ll get you a
menu.”

The diner was small. Ten booths ringed
the perimeter, while six tables were organized in the center of the
space. A row of five wooden bar stools sat in front of a waist-high
counter, with placemats and neatly rolled silverware waiting for
the day’s patrons. Behind the counter was a six-by-six foot griddle
on top of an industrial-sized oven.

I selected a booth with a
window so that I could see the parking lot. Not that I had any idea
what type of car my father drove these days, but at least I would
see him as soon as he arrived. The old man retreated
behind the counter
and
then limped back over to me, wiping a rag across the plastic
menu.

“Something to drink?” he asked,
handing me the menu.

“Coffee, please,” I
replied.

The man chuckled. “A little young to
crave caffeine,” he teased.

“Long day,” I told him even though I’d
been drinking coffee since I was thirteen. When I was little, I was
always cold and my father would give me his coffee mug to warm my
hands. Sometimes I’d take a sip, pretending like it was some great
treat that I wasn’t supposed to have. Once he was gone, I kept up
the tradition. Only now, I actually drank the coffee.