The Veil (6 page)

Gran shook her head. “I suppose it’s my fault. We never celebrated this ridiculous holiday when you were little, so now that
you’re old enough to think for yourself, you can’t get enough of it.”

Gran and I had spent our first Christmas together less than a month after my parents died. Neither of us had felt much like celebrating that year. And somehow, over the years,
not
celebrating the holidays had become a tradition with us. I was totally onboard with our boycott when it came to Christmas—celebrating that particular time of year had never felt right to me either—but I was not quite as willing as Gran to forgo
all
major holidays.

Still, I understood why she felt the way she did, so I tried not to flaunt my enthusiasm for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, and every other day you could buy a Hallmark card to commemorate.

Halloween was not until Monday, so I had to keep the contraband out of Gran’s sight for another couple of days. I ran back upstairs; by the time I stashed the candy and the bowl in my room, in a drawer where the cats wouldn’t be able to get to them, it was time to pick up Nate for rehearsal. I ran back downstairs and yelled goodbye to Gran, who was humming as she banged around the kitchen.

——

Because the school auditorium was being renovated, the second rehearsal for Olivia’s play took place in the school courtyard. The technical crew consisted of only three people: Nate was the stage manager, Terrance Seaver was his assistant, and I was the property manager.

As soon as rehearsal started, Mrs. Grimsby dragged me into the art studio where all of the play’s props were being stored. She parked me in front of a large cardboard box and shoved a script into my hand. On the front, in big letters, it read:

Mrs. Grimsby shook the box so the props inside rattled. “These are the things we got from College of Marin. By the end of the day, I need a list of the props we’re missing. God help us if it’s too many. The lighting has already put us over budget.” She continued to grumble as she hauled Nate and Terrance outside.

I settled myself on the ground beside the box and began leafing my way through the script, highlighting every time a prop was used and noting in the margin whether it was a prop we had in the box or still needed to get. Olivia’s play told the story of a group of people who gather at the country estate of the late Harriet J. Goodrich for a reading of her will and begin to die mysteriously, roughly in the order they were to inherit. Victoria Goodrich, Olivia’s character, was Mrs. Goodrich’s dutiful and adoring niece.

The script was much heavier on dialogue than on sets and props; by the time I made it through the end of the last act, I’d concluded we had pretty much everything we needed, with the exception of the most important prop in any murder mystery—the gun.

“Did they give us anything useful, or is it all junk?” Olivia asked over my shoulder. She rooted through the box and extracted a floppy hat; smiling, she shook it free of dust and placed it atop her head.

“Actually, it’s looking pretty good. We just need a flower vase we don’t mind shattering—one for each performance actually, plus a few extras for rehearsals, I guess. We also need a gun.”

“Oh, I’m taking care of it. The gun, anyway. Mrs. Grimsby wants us to use a stupid water pistol, but I’m trying to talk her into letting us use my dad’s flare gun.”

“A
real
flare gun?”

“Unloaded, obviously,” she said. “The water pistol is tiny, and it looks stupid on stage. The flare gun is oversized, so it looks like a normal-size gun from the audience. The only problem is that it’s bright orange. We’ll have to paint it black.”

“And your dad’s okay with us using it?”

“He will be, when I get through with him. Oh, and, I meant
to ask you earlier . . . are you doing okay? After yesterday, I mean?”

“I’m fine,” I said mechanically, looking down at the script in my lap for a change of subject. “Hey, I can’t believe your character dies!”

“Shhhh,” Olivia raised a conspiratorial finger to her lips. “That’s the best part. Everyone knows I wrote the script, so no one will suspect I’d kill myself off! Plus,” she smiled sheepishly, “I’ve always wanted to do a dramatic death scene.”

“You will die beautifully, my dear,” Nate said, sneaking up behind her.

Olivia smiled at him, grabbed his wrist, and twisted it around so she could see the time on his watch. “It’s late!” she yelped. “I’ve got to find Casey and see if she’ll run lines with me before she leaves.”

As Olivia left to chase after her costar, Nate stuck out his hand and pulled me off of the floor. “Mrs. Grimsby says we can leave,” he said, then added, “I don’t have to work tonight.”

“Do you want to do something?” I asked.

He shrugged. “The rally for the Sonoma game is starting soon. I don’t care about the game, but the bonfire might be kind of cool. If we go check it out, there’s a greater-than-average chance we’ll get to see a cheerleader catch on fire.”

“Ohhh, don’t tease me Nathan Whitting.” I laughed, my thoughts automatically turning to who besides me, Nate, and the potentially flammable cheerleaders would be on hand to help whip the Cougars into a Sonoma-Shark-eating frenzy. A rally didn’t really seem like something Lucas would be interested in. But Emily was probably going, and if she was there, he would probably be there too.

Oh God, I was back to obsessing about Lucas again. The thought that I was finally over him had been one of the only good things about my awful day yesterday. How disappointing that it hadn’t stuck.

The bonfire was being held in the vacant lot adjacent to the football field. By the time Nate and I arrived, there was already a
giant pile of wood in the center of the field, surrounded by a pack of cheerleaders holding signs. The football team itself was amassed on the southwest corner of the field, and a few students were staking out their positions around the soon-to-be-blaze by laying down towels and coolers full of food and drinks.

Principal Chatsworth and a horde of faculty volunteers hovered warily on the edge of the field, clutching fire extinguishers.

“This is crazy,” Nate announced. “What’s Chatsworth thinking? This isn’t the Midwest. The entire town is not going to close down because there’s a game down at the ol’ high school. They’ll be lucky if twenty kids show up to this.”

But even as Nate was talking, students were trickling down onto the field. By five p.m., there was standing room only around the still-unlit bonfire.

I spotted Emily’s crowd on the other side of the woodpile from where Nate and I stood. Beside her, as always, was Lucas. He was scanning the crowd, searching for something. Or someone.

I stepped back so I was halfway behind Nate. “Apparently there’s more school spirit at Marin County High than you thought,” I ribbed him.

Nate shook his head. “Don’t kid yourself. A hundred dollars says everyone is here for the exact same reason you and I are.”

“To see a cheerleader catch on fire?” I asked, confused.

He shook his head again.

“Morbid curiosity. I can’t wait to see what Chatsworth does when this thing gets out of control.”

Over Nate’s shoulder, I could see Lucas. He had finally stopped looking around. Emily leaned back against him, and he bent his head down toward her when she looked up to talk to him. My stomach gave an ominous roll, and I was suddenly anxious for this stupid rally to be over with.

A cheer erupted as Coach Rollins approached the pile of firewood and squirted a can of lighter fluid onto it. The cheerleaders
kicked their legs and waved around their pom-poms. The cheers turned into roars as Coach Rollins pulled out a box of long matches, lit one, and tossed it dramatically onto the very top of the woodpile.

There was a hushed silence as absolutely nothing happened.

Then, a thin wisp of smoke puffed its way up into the air, and the tiniest of flames sputtered to life, working its way up from the depths of the woodpile.

Thank God we didn’t have a school band, because if we did, it would have burst into triumphant song at exactly that moment. Instead, there was a roar of applause, after which Coach Rollins dragged over a microphone and a portable amp and introduced us to the starting lineup of the football team. As he spoke, the tiny bonfire managed to work itself up into what could charitably be considered a blaze. Principal Chatsworth and his army of volunteer fire fighters edged ever so slightly closer.

“I think Terrance Seaver was right,” I yelled over all of the noise, directly into Nate’s ear. Then, remembering Nate hadn’t been in precalc with me to hear what Terrance had said, I added, “This would have been better after dark!”

As if on cue, the world went dark around me.

I could still hear Coach Rollins rambling on about his team’s prowess, and I could hear my fellow students as they punctuated the coach’s every other word with loud cheers, but I could no longer see them. I couldn’t even see Nate, and he was standing barely two inches to my left. It was like someone had dropped a black shroud over my head. I could’ve believed that was exactly what had happened if it hadn’t been for the bonfire. I could still see it perfectly, smack-dab in the center of the field, struggling to gain momentum and burst into the kind of two-story high flames you see at college football rallies in old movies.

And then it did just that.

The brilliant flash of light momentarily blinded me. I blinked spots from my eyes and tried to focus on the flames, which by now
rose high above the vacant lot, far above the heads of the gathered students. When I could see properly again, the flames had turned a brilliant yellow-green and seemed to be spinning around.

That’s when I saw the people.

Not the people around me—there was still nothing but darkness as far as I could see, except for the fire. I’m talking about the people
inside
the fire; the people who screamed pitifully to be set free as their bodies, freakishly elongated and contorted by the spinning flames, burned alive.

I started screaming too.

I frantically pawed the space beside me where Nate should have been, but my fingers found only empty air. I groped and stumbled, but there was nothing around me but darkness. I was alone. There was nothing there except for me, the fire, and its victims.

There was no one who could save them except for me.

I opened my mouth to scream again, but then a hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around.

“Nate!” I shrieked.

But it was not Nate. Standing behind me, the only person whose face was visible in the surrounding blackness, was Lucas Stratton.

——

L
UCAS
’
S GREEN EYES HELD ME
momentarily paralyzed. They were all I could see; as far as I was concerned, they were the only things left in the universe.

Then I became aware of a hand on my shoulder. And then another hand, on my other shoulder. And then I was shaking. Or the hands were shaking. Or we both were.

“Addy! Addy, come with me!”

The hands stopped shaking me and started pulling. My legs reluctantly moved to catch up with my top half as the hands pulled me away from the fire, away from the people being burned alive. Away from—

“Nate!” I screamed, fighting to turn around and get back to him. But the hands kept me firmly on course.

“Nate’s fine,” Lucas’s voice said, as we reached the edge of the vacant lot. “Turn around. See?”

I turned.

It wasn’t dark anymore. The fire was tiny again, and Coach Rollins was bellowing into his microphone, still being cheered on by the gathered students.

Nate was near the edge of the crowd, exactly beside where I’d been standing moments earlier. Had it been only moments? He turned in my direction, a curious expression on his face.

“Wave goodbye,” Lucas ordered. “Smile so he knows you’re okay.”

I looked over at him strangely, and he shrugged.

“I just don’t want him to think I’m kidnapping you,” he explained.

“Is that what you’re doing?” I asked. My throat seemed strangely dry all of a sudden.

“Of course not, Addy. I’m taking you home. Now, wave.”

I stood frozen for a moment longer, entranced at the sound of my name on his lips. Then mechanically, I raised my hand. I could feel the corners of my mouth go up, ever so slightly, as I tried to smile.

Nate waved back, still looking confused.

“We’ll take your car,” Lucas said, guiding me toward the parking lot with one hand underneath my right elbow. Without hesitation, he led me straight to Gran’s Oldsmobile. “Keys?” he asked.

I handed them to him. He opened the passenger door for me and I sat down numbly. The lone thought in my head was that this was only the second time in quite a while that I’d been in the passenger seat of this car.

Lucas sat fluidly behind the wheel and within seconds, we were out of the parking lot and halfway down Grant Avenue.

I turned to look at him. Lucas Stratton. Driving my car.

I was starting to feel a little bit dizzy.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“I told you. I’m taking you home.”

“You know where I live?”
And my name? And my car?

“I know a lot of things about you, Addy Russell. For one thing, I know that’s not your real name.”

I let out a shocked noise, something between a laugh and a cough.

“Of
course
it’s my real name. What are you talking about?”

He was silent for a good, long minute.

“We’ll see,” he said finally, turning left onto Seventh Street.

He
did
seem to know where I lived; he stopped directly in front of Gran’s house. We both got out of the car and Luc hesitated for a moment at the curb as he took in the overgrown yard and the vine-covered front of the old Victorian.

“It’s not haunted,” I said, suddenly defensive about Gran’s house in a way I never had been before.