Uncertainty (21 page)

Standing up on quavering, unstable legs, I turned around to face Lainey's house. Lainey and Madison were streaming towards me down the lawn, with a bunch of people watching from the open doorway. Lainey looks liked she'd be more than happy to break my nose again, her beautiful face twisted and raw.

"What are you doing here?" Lainey barked, her cocoa eyes on fire. She was wearing a very short pink dress, her bares legs sticking out like tanned stems beneath the hem. On her feet were impressively tall stilettos.

I was silent, collecting my thoughts, steadying my resolve. And then I launched at her. Storming up to cross the space between us, I got right in her face.

"Don't worry about me," I spat, holding up Jenna's necklace still in my clenched fist, like I was going to punch her. "How did Jenna's necklace get here?"

Lainey stepped back, looking intimidated for once.

"I don't know what you're talking about, you animal," she shouted.

"Jenna's necklace was twisted up in the weeds around the dock. Don't lie to me!" I matched the volume of my voice to hers.

"You're crazy!" Lainey cried. "You've always been weird, Ariel, but you have completely lost your mind."

"Did you really find that out there?" Madison butted in. She was biting at her artificial nails, looking confused. She gazed at her leader. "Is it Jenna's?"

"Maddie, shut up." Lainey glared at her. Madison looked offended, but didn't say anything.

"What did you do to her?" I shouted, lunging at her again. Strong hands wrapped around my arms, restraining me. I knew instinctively it was Henry; there was something about the pressure and shape of his body I could identify. But I didn't want to be held back.

"I didn't do anything. Jenna drowned, we all know that, but it had nothing to do with me," Lainey said.

"You're lying! Hush Lake is over a mile wide. How would her necklace just so happen to get stuck right by
your
dock."

"She probably lost it one of the times she came over. Stop freaking out, you psycho."

"You're the psycho," I said, and started tugging out of Henry's grip again. He was whispering some words meant to be soothing in my ear. Something like
calm down, it'll be alright
, but I couldn't make sense of them. Lainey wobbled backwards in her stilettos in the dirt.

"Jenna always wore that thing," Madison said, one nail popping off. Her bug eyes looked ready to jump out of their sockets. Lainey scoffed at her.

"Get this dog off of my property, or I'm calling the police," Lainey said coldly, still looking afraid.

"Shut up, Lainey," Henry said, which I heard clearly. "Have a little respect. Her friend is dead, she's upset."

And now she looked embarrassed, an expression I'd never seen on Lainey's face. Her emotions were normally as carefully controlled as her makeup. But now she looked like she'd been reprimanded by her father.

"This is my house. She needs to have respect for
me,
" Lainey protested.

"Why, because your family is full of stuck up assholes?" I shouted.

"Get off of my property," Lainey growled. When I didn't bunch, she said to Madison, "Go get my phone, Maddie."

"Ariel — " Henry began.

But I wrenched out of his clinging hands and stepped away. He let me go, releasing me. Fury had burned a hole in my senses, directed towards every player in the game standing before me.

"Do not
touch
me," I hissed at him. Even with how I'd felt after I'd seen him kissing Lainey, I'd still felt softly towards him. But now I looked at him and felt a burst of undeniable hatred. For all the twisting he'd done to me, into knots that couldn't be untied. "You're a traitor. I don't know what I was doing with you. You just using me, you always have. Just leave me alone."

He repeated my name, but I was already storming away from them. I jogged across the lawn covered in streamers and Solo cups, past all of the riches and the world I no longer wanted any fleeting part of.

Theo and Alex were walking towards me, out of the front of the house. I couldn't tell if they'd witnessed my face-off with Lainey or not. My guess was yes, telling by their twin worried expressions.

"Ariel, are you okay?" Theo asked.

"I'm fine. I just need to be alone." I burst into a full-on run. I felt a moment of guilt, since they were my friends, but I couldn't slow down or I was going to explode.

I didn't stop running until I was far down the road, and the line of deserted cars finally ended. The party music was still faintly playing, but even that soon stopped. I noticed cars zooming past me few minutes after that, and my guess was I'd broken up the party. Good.

I clutched my arms, even though it was a warm night. A chill had settled down to my bones. I felt like an idiot in the stupid outfit.

All this time she knew something. Despite her protests, it was too big of a coincidence. And she had looked terribly guilty.

Not to mention, I was terribly worried about Jenna. Whatever she'd seen had scared her, and then she just disappeared.

I heard footsteps behind me, but my legs were already threatening charley horses. I couldn't run anymore. If it was someone coming to kidnap me, I foolishly welcomed it.

"Ariel, please stop!" Henry shouted from behind me, his deep voice echoing off the street. Of course, who else. I'd be better off with a kidnapper.

He jogged up and reached out for my arm. I dodged away from him.

"I told you to leave me alone," I said wearily.

"I thought, up there..." He was out of breath, and he stopped with his hands on his knees to catch it. "I thought things were going back to old times between us."

I snorted, the fire inside me rekindling just enough to remind me I was mad.

"Up there, as you say, was a mistake. Nothing more. A moment of weakness. I'm tired of your back and forth, up and down. It's driving me crazy, and it's not worth it. Things would be so much simpler if I didn't have to worry about you. You complicate everything," I ranted.

"You don't know the whole story!" Henry said, suddenly shouting. I thought he'd wake up everyone on the block. "Don't you think it's hard for me? I know I should stay away from you. But I can't."

"I'll make it easy for you," I said, retreating backwards down the road. "Go back to Lainey. Forget I exist, because I never should have for you. I should have been a nameless picture in the yearbook."

I turned, and used the last burst of adrenaline in me to sprint away into the dark. My last image of him was standing in the middle of the road, his shoulders slumping, the moonlight turning his face white.

I traveled in circles. I should have known my way home, but I didn't. I kept coming upon the outcropping of trees, but I'd veer away from them. I didn't want to run through forests, because the forests were all connected in Hell.

I wanted to get lost. Get lost and forget.

Headlights reflecting off the mailboxes in front of me, and groaned, thinking it was Henry again. But as it drew closer, the familiar hum of the creep let me know who it was.

"Ariel, get in the car," Theo called. I turned, and her upper torso was hanging out of the passenger side window. "Your supposed to be sleeping at my dad's house, remember? And Hugh and Claire will bloodhound any booze scent on you."

"We might have to get a tranquilizer dart," I thought I heard Alex say. I didn't realize I was still walking, still clutching my elbows for support. Now that they were here, I just wanted to collapse.

I forced my body to halt, then walked over to the Creep and slid into the back seat. I realized, looking at the clock on the dash, that more time had passed then I'd realized.

"We've been looking all over for you," Theo said, turning in her seat. She looked like she'd sobered up some, although still a little buzzed. Worry was written in lines all over her face. "What happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it." I said, kicking around empty energy drink cans and chicken nugget boxes on the floor.

"Okay. Maybe later. I'm just glad you're okay," Theo said. She sounded a little hurt, and again I felt guilty. But I was too tired to apologize or cope.

I laid my head back on the seat. Alex and Theo started talking about how Lainey was ashen faced when I left. Apparently, Madison asked her if she did actually want to call the cops, but Lainey screamed no and ran upstairs.

"And then everyone just broke up after that. Kind of a mood killer," Alex stated.

My hand hurt suddenly, like I'd been stung or bitten by a spider. I opened my eyes and looked down. I had been clutching Jenna's necklace so tightly that blood had started to trickle down my wrist.

Alex dropped us off at Ms. Vore's house that night, instead of Theo's dad's. It was nearly 3:00 AM. Theo passed out as soon as she flopped on her stomach, snoring loudly with her mouth open.

Her room was familiar and comforting to me, almost more so than my own. I liked being around things that didn't remind me of my own life.

But I had a long wait before I got to sleep. I lay on my side, staring at the mesh bag of arcade prizes Theo had simply tossed in the corner. The bright orange tiger on the coffee mug was at the bottom, and in the dim light from the moon he stared at me. The unblinking black eyes gave me the creeps.

Every now and again, I'd drift into nightmares. Then I'd wake up with tears ready to spill out, a weight on my chest, and I'd forget what had so frightened me.

I put Jenna's necklace in the front pocket of my jeans for safe keeping. Every time I awoke, I checked that it was still safely there, as if it might disappear. After all, it could be a figment of my imagination.

Finally, just after dawn, I crashed, and slept like a rock. My troubled mind settled and I no longer dreamed. I woke up with my eyes crusted shut. Theo was shaking my shoulder hard.

"What? What is it?" I heard myself asking.

"Sorry. But it's almost 4. You've been sleeping a long time. I thought you might want to get up and join the living."

"Four in the afternoon?" I asked groggily, sitting up. It felt like invisible hands were trying to pull me back into slumber.

The word for how Theo appeared was hungover. She had no glitter on, except for a few loose speckles around her face. That was absolutely unheard of for her; it was like her power substance. I could smell the very strong tea a mug in her hand.

"Are you wearing perfume?" I asked. There was something baby powdery and cloying along with the tea smell.

"Yeah," she said sheepishly. "To mask the dispensary leaking out of my pores." Deep purple shadows hung beneath her eyes, and she was breathing through her mouth. "You're right, cupcake is a bad marriage with vodka. I made several trips to revisit it last night in the bathroom."

"That's all I was saying."

I sat up all the way, throwing off the quilt she'd put on top of me. I rubbed my eyes and tried to gather my bearings.

"So are we going to talk about last night?" Theo finally asked, settling down cross-legged beside me. "Or are we pretending it never happened?"

"We should talk," I said, even though I really didn't want to. I had to try to make some sense of the night, before the details slipped away.

"Are you sorry you went?" Theo asked.

I thought about it. Somehow I wasn't. It had brought me some clarity. "No. I'm not sorry."

"Me, neither. Even if I did get sick. So what caused the girl brawl?" Theo asked, reaching up to set her tea on her low-topped vanity.

I pulled out Jenna's necklace. It was strange for it to be real in the light of day, even though my hand was still sore with punctures from squeezing it. I probably required a tetanus shot.

She took the rusted metal and looked it over. "What is this?"

"Jenna's old necklace," I said. "The one I gave her." I explained where I found it, but I said that I had just been putting my feet in the water. She didn't know a thing about me seeing ghosts, or Jenna in particular.

"Do you think that's where Jenna was put in the water?" Theo asked.

"Yeah. That's exactly what I think."

"So Lainey drowned her?"

"I don't know if she'd have that in her." Lainey was a basketball player, but Jenna had been athletic herself, and her runner's legs would easily kick Lainey to a pulp. Plus, Jenna had been talking about two guys.

She handed me the remnant of the necklace back. "Wow. That's pretty serious. No wonder you guys were going thunderdome. Are you going to the police?"

I hadn't really thought about it. The police had been conducting a long, exhaustive investigation of the girls' deaths, but hadn't seemed to find much.

"I can't go to the police yet," I said. "I was trespassing on private property. They could easily turn it into me planting the necklace. Lainey's family is boss in this town, and now he's like the VP of Thornhill. Not to mention, it's very circumstantial."

"You must have watched a lot of cop dramas," Theo said, sipping at her tea again.