Second Verse (28 page)

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I don’t want to picture it, but I can’t help it from playing out in my mind like some horror movie. “Stace said Kelly is okay, at least?”

“Yeah, she’ll be fine. She’s just downstairs but going home today.”

“That’s good,” I say, still replaying the scene in my mind. “When do I get to leave? Any idea?”

Vaughn shifts in his chair. “I don’t know. Your injuries aren’t all that bad, really. Just some cuts and stuff. But they want you to talk to some therapists and they have to find your real parents.” He looks at a spot over my head and I realize what he’s not saying.

“I can’t leave because I have nowhere to go. That’s it, isn’t it? I literally have no family and no home.”

The truth is like a punch in the stomach and I fall back, deflated, against the pillow.

Vaughn rubs his thumb against my cheek, wiping at the tears. He pulls my hand to his chest, taps it against his ratty old Zeppelin tee shirt.

My eyes meet his and I understand exactly what he’s saying. He’s my person. He’s my home.

B
Y THE END
of the week, I’m feeling fine physically and I’m antsy to get out of the hospital. I’m tired of the doctors and nurses and psychologists fussing over me. But they still won’t let me leave.

As usual, Vaughn visits in the afternoon.

I close my sketchpad and push it aside. I haven’t really been able to draw anything anyway.

“How was school?” I ask, scooting over so he can lie beside me.

“Good, I guess. It’s school, you know? Everyone says hi.” He rolls onto his side to face me.

“Everyone, huh?”

“Pretty much. It seems like every single person I pass stops to ask how you are. Even Stace was happy when I told her how well you’re doing.”

“Yeah?” Things really
are
changing. Stace has visited with everyone a few times. It’s not like we’ll ever be best friends, but after all the violence we’ve all gone through, she seems to have mellowed considerably. I don’t know if she still has feelings for him, but she seems to have accepted me and Vaughn together.

“Yeah, she was downright bubbly today about her mom’s wedding plans. Apparently she volunteered to make the handmade invitations.” He nudges me. “Hence the envelopes, by the way.”

“Ahhh.” I cringe. “Oops.”

“Yeah. Oh, and it’s official: The Hunt is done for good. Everyone agrees after what happened, a fake murder isn’t exactly something anyone wants to do anymore.”

“End of an era, huh?”

“I guess.” He shrugs and kisses my forehead. “You look tired.”

“Nightmares,” I say. “They won’t stop.”

The details of Monday night are still torturing me. It’s unraveling in my mind, years of lies and deceit that culminated in the scariest night of my life. I keep seeing Gerard out there somewhere. The police haven’t found him, but I try not to dwell. Not now. Not while I’m healing, anyway.

And as much as I’m sick of sitting around this hospital room, it has given me time to think about some stuff. Like how Cheryl’s death is hard for me. Knowing I took a life is not easy, even if it had come down to my survival. I can’t fathom the lie my life has been, the way she plotted against me, waiting all this time to kill me and mess with my soul. I can’t fully accept that my life has been fake, some evil Obitus experiment. And even though her last moments were crazed and evil, I saw enough uncertainty and regret to believe she wasn’t fully in control of herself. She didn’t want to do it. Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe. I can’t face it otherwise.

Or that I almost died.

And I’m especially not ready for what’s coming next. So yeah, my nights are filled with nightmares.

Vaughn brushes my hair back. “Want to talk about it?”

“No. I’m reliving it enough when I’m asleep. Tell me something else. Something about school. I feel like I’m missing everything.”

“Nah. It’s all bland without you there.”

Neither of us say what we’re obviously thinking; that this is how it will be from now on. That I’m not coming back to Preston.

“Draw anything today?” He asks, lips flitting in my hair as he pulls me against him.

I look at the closed sketchpad on the bedside table. “Not really. Not yet. Scribbles.”

The smell of Vaughn—simple soap and that unmistakable guy scent—surrounds me as I bury my face in his shirt, trying to etch every part of this moment to my memory. The rumble of his voice against my cheek, the way the soft, over-washed cotton bunches under my chin.

“Any music?” He laughs gently against me, referring to the iPod he bought and loaded up for me, determined to get me up to technology and music speed. My favorite track is his recording of the song he wrote.
Abyss
. Our song.

I nod, swallowing around the lump in my throat that’s swelling by the second. Vaughn rubs my back, gentle strokes like letters, like he’s spelling out a secret. Somehow, he pulls me even tighter.

“They coming back tonight?”

I nod. “Around seven.”

Tonight’s agenda: Another awkward visit from my real parents.

Stewart and Annie Cambridge were located a few days after my ordeal. A nice couple who live in North Carolina with my sister, in the town where I was abducted and filed as a missing child sixteen years ago.

“Want me to stay and hang out with you guys?”

“Nah. I have to get used to them. And they’re nice. It’s just…”

“Weird?”

“Yeah. I mean, I have to move in with strangers. Nice strangers, but strangers, you know? I’ll be hours away from the only friends I have. Hours away from you.” I trace the line of Vaughn’s jaw with my fingers, realizing how something as simple as two-day-old stubble is going to be a memory soon.

But it’s only a year and a half apart. Right?

“Can you sing to me?” I whisper, nodding to the guitar he left against the wall so that even when I wake alone, it’s like he’s here.

“Of course.” Vaughn pulls himself to sit beside me. He lets his fingers linger on my shoulders, on my cheeks and lips, and finally in my hair and I wonder if he’s feeling the ache of what’s to come. But then he picks up his guitar and he sings to me, like he always, always does.

When I think about all the people who were instrumental to
Second Verse
becoming a real book, I’m overwhelmed and amazed and filled with heaps of gratitude. It really does take a village.

Major kudos to Tracy Blanton, my first reader, the one who read the earliest, ugliest, messiest drafts—and every draft thereafter. (And there were many!)

Huge, huge thanks to all my critique partners and beta readers who pointed out the gazillion things I missed and needed and didn’t catch myself: Steve Cordero, Debra Driza, Sarah Fine, Melanie Kramer, Tracey Martin, Dawn Rae Miller, Jaime Reed, Angie Spartz, Jenn Wood and the extra wonderful Shveta Thakrar.

And to all those who helped me navigate the publishing details: Kell Andrews, Emily Kokie, Stephanie Kuehn, Alice Loweecey, Gretchen McNeil, Jan O’Hara and LynDee Walker: thank you, thank you, thank you!

Of course that also extends to all members of all my various writing groups: The Purgies, The LBs, The Writer Nighters and the Divorcees—you people kept me sane at times, helped stoke the insanity at others, but always kept me laughing, no matter what. I never met more knowledgeable, smart, witty, and downright hilarious people as all the writers in my life.

Thanks also to my wonderful editor, Tracy Richardson, for her keen eye and insight and for being such an amazingly nice person to work with. Working with you is a dream!

Rachel Marks, thank you for making my book so pretty with your awesome pixy magic!

Barbara Schutzman who let me read every single book on her shelf, some even two or three times. You helped me fall in love with books.

And to my parents and brother, who have always been excited, supportive, and there for me with encouragement, no matter how far away the dream, I love you.

To all my extended family and friends for being there and always listening to me go on and on about writing and publishing way more often than you likely wanted to hear it, a million thanks.

To my wonderful boys—Love you much, more, most! To the moon and back.

The one question I’m asked most often is how in the world I have time to write. There is only one person to thank for that. Paul—thank you so, so very much for always, since the beginning, treating my writing as something real. Without your incredible support, the dream never would have become a reality.

And thank you to everyone who reads the book. I hope you like it.

When Jennifer Walkup isn’t writing or reading, she’s spending time with her husband and young sons, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers, and coming up with costume ideas for Halloween. She’s obsessed with good coffee and new recipes and likes broccoli on her pizza, flowers in her hair, flip-flops on her feet, and the number 13. A member of SCBWI and RWA, Jennifer also serves as fiction editor for
The Meadowland Review
and teaches creative writing at The Writers Circle.
Second Verse
is her first novel. You can find her online at
www.jenniferwalkup.com
.