Unleashed (3 page)

Kate moved away from Corey when she saw them approaching, but Claire noticed the way Corey’s hand lingered on Kate’s arm. She used her hatred of him to strengthen her, to rebuild the emotional wall that had crumbled the moment she saw the dead girl.  

“I’m taking Claire home,” Logan said to the group.

“Huh? Why?” Kate asked. Steph stood up from the sidewalk.

Claire tried to hide her eyes, which were still brimming with tears, but they saw.

“Oh no! Claire, what’s wrong?” Kate said, rushing over with Steph beside her. As far as Claire knew, this was the first time she’d ever cried in front of them.

Corey smirked. “Did you get busted stealing towels?”

“Shut your mouth, Corey,” Logan said.

Corey stepped forward. “You going to make me?”

Logan met him halfway.

“Enough!” Claire said, finding her voice and the rest of her strength. “The police will be here soon.”

Logan turned to her. “Why?”

“Because I found a girl in the locker room. Dead.”

Everyone went silent for a long moment. Finally, Logan said in a hushed tone, “I can’t believe it! That’s horrible. Are you okay?”

Claire straightened her shoulders. “I’m fine.”

As long as I don’t close my eyes
. She looked away. Not far off, Ethan was leaning against the school, looking in their direction. She couldn’t help but wonder what he must be thinking.

“Do we know her?” Steph asked, staring at the school.

She followed her gaze. “I don’t think so.”

Mrs. Summers came out of the front doors and walked toward them. Claire knew by the frightened look in her eyes that she’d seen the body too.

“The police will be here any minute,” Mrs. Summers said when she reached them. “They’ll want to talk to each one of you, especially you, Claire. Why don’t you all come wait in the office? It’s going to be a long afternoon.”

Mrs. Summers was right. The police took forever doing whatever it was they did when someone dies, and afterwards they interviewed each one of them. Claire had to be interviewed twice—once on site and again at the police station. And by the questions they were asking, she got the feeling they thought the girl had been murdered.

At the suggestion of a police officer, she called her mother, but when Claire told her what had happened her mother asked if she could deal with it on her own. She was at work and they needed the money, she reminded Claire. Yes, definitely more important.

Fortunately, Logan stayed with her the entire time, one more thing she’d owe him for. Afterwards, he drove her home. It was nighttime, and although the sky was dark, the windows in her home were darker.

“Is your mother home?” Logan asked when he turned off the car’s engine.

Claire stared out the window. “It’s a Saturday night. She won’t be back for hours.”

“Working?”

“Something like that.”

“You going to be okay tonight?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, but inside she trembled.

Logan opened his door. “Let me at least walk you in.”

She waited for him to round the car, her hands gripping the dashboard. The car felt safe. Her home was empty. A cracked shell.

Logan opened the passenger door. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll see.”

She forced a smile and stepped outside, away from the shelter of the car, and followed him across long, green grass that was in desperate need of a cut. It slowed her down, making her want to stop. To not move forward.

“I’ve never been questioned by a policeman before,” Logan said. “What a freak show.”

She wasn’t listening. Panic threatened to choke her the closer she came to the front door. Why was she so scared? It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen death before. But never had it been so unexpected and in her face. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the girl’s open, pale, blue eyes, staring at her like they wanted to tell her a secret.

Logan stopped walking. “Do you have a key?”

She stared at the front door. “What?”

“A key to get in?”

“Right. Sure.” She removed a key from her pocket and tried to slide it into the keyhole, but she was shaking so badly that it fell from her hand.

“Claire?” Logan asked. He bent down and picked it up.

“I’m fine.”

“Look at me.”

She couldn’t do it. She’d already cried once today, and that was once more than Logan had seen in all the time they’d known each other. Her darkened image reflected back in the door’s window. It was so dark she couldn’t see her eyes.

He stepped between her and the door.

“Look at me,” he said again.

Her eyes slowly met his and she shook her head. “I can’t be alone. Please. Don’t leave me.”

Tears fell again. That made twice.

He hesitated before putting his arms around her, but when he did, she didn’t recoil from being touched. Not surprisingly she hadn’t when Ethan had held her, either. There were benefits to feeling numb.

“It’s okay,” Logan said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She inhaled deeply, her breath quivering while more tears fell. He was staying. She wasn’t alone. She had faced death once before with her sister. Give her anything else to battle, and she could do it, but death was something she just didn’t know how to fight.

FOUR

Albert closed his eyes and opened them again. Not far from him, jammed into a crowded school hall, Claire Williams shoved books into her locker. She looked the same as always: long dark hair, tanned skin, and bright green eyes. But she wasn’t the same. Not even close.

The hard exterior he’d grown accustomed to over the years had crumbled the day she’d discovered the girl’s body. He’d seen her exposed, had felt her naked emotions bleeding onto his arms. To experience the vulnerability of someone who appeared void of feeling had made him reconsider his whole outlook on life. If Claire could do this, then maybe others could too. Maybe even his father.

Albert wondered what it’d take for his dad to show emotion, to destroy his obsessive need to control. That’s what emotions were to him—uncontrollable. 

He looked up just in time to see Claire coming down the hall. He quickly ducked into the nearest classroom, wanting to go unnoticed. He discovered days ago that when he did this, he could catch glimpses of her softer side that he never noticed before. Like the other day when she’d gone out of her way to help a handicapped kid gather his spilled homework, or another time when she tried to break up a fight (she ended it by throwing a few punches herself, but that hadn’t been her initial goal). Claire seemed to notice what others didn’t, and he was sad he hadn’t noticed it sooner.             

As soon as she passed, he fell in step behind her. Her wake smelled faintly of lilacs and apples. She didn’t look at the students around her or glance in the famous Bandon High mirror like all the others girls. Above the black, framed mirror was the inscription, “Know Thy Self.” Claire never looked in it. Instead, she walked with purpose, as if she were walking away and never coming back.

But she always returned. Maybe that explained her perma-pissed expression.

It’s not that Claire didn’t have good reason to be upset. Everyone knew her older sister died of cancer a few years before. At her sister’s funeral, Claire had sat by herself, dry-eyed, even after her mother had arrived late, drunk and slurring obscenities. Her father hadn’t shown up at all. And shortly after that he was sent to prison. No one really knew why, but there were rumors.

Before Claire walked outside, she paused at the front door and looked around as if she was looking for someone. After a few seconds, she continued forward and down the concrete steps. Albert followed. Since that day he’d held her, she had unknowingly become a bright light in his life, shining through the darkness that continued to plague him.

He closed his eyes tight, remembering the night with Mindy. The moment the Bodian drug had left his system, he couldn’t believe what had happened.  The violent way he’d handled her appalled him so much that he was sick every day after. He’d even seriously considered suicide, but then Claire had cried. Her tears had given him hope. She was someone he thought he knew really well, but those tears had proved him wrong.

“Come on, Claire. Let’s go!” Kate called from the front seat of a beat-up Corolla parked in front of the school.

He followed Kate’s gaze until he found Claire speaking to a sophomore girl with a flyer in her hand.

“One sec,” Claire called back. A minute later she jumped into the car with Kate.

Albert walked over to the girl holding the flyer. “Can I see that?”

“You can have it,” she said. “Not my type of music.”

He took the paper and read over it. This weekend Beautiful Demise and a few other local bands were playing at the Bandon fairgrounds. This was information he already knew. He folded the flyer and shoved it into his back pocket.

The whole way home he thought of Claire. He had to. If he didn’t, then his thoughts would return to the way Mindy’s head had slammed into the wooden bench, or how incredibly powerful the drug had made him feel. Either thought made him queasy. So did driving up his driveway.

He sat in the car for several minutes, staring at his family’s ordinary tan house and its ordinary lawn. But what it sheltered wasn’t ordinary. A therapist could spend their whole career studying his family’s jacked-up dynamics and still never come up with an explanation for their behavior.

Cursing under his breath, he opened the car door and headed inside. His father wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours, but his mom would be waiting for him. With a list.

“Where have you been?” his mother said the second he stepped inside.

He opened the hall closet and hung up his jacket and backpack, then removed his shoes. When he turned around, his mother was blocking his path to the kitchen. The bun at the back of her head was pulled so tight it strained the skin on her face. 

“I asked you a question,” she said again.

“I was at school.”

“You should’ve been home fifteen minutes ago.”

“I was sitting in the driveway.”

She blinked. “Let me see your hands.” Her thin lips stretched to the sides of her face like a puppet’s.

“Why?”

“Are you questioning me?”

He raised his arms, palms turned up. She gripped them with vulture-like claws and inspected them thoroughly, even sniffing them.

“Did I pass?” he asked. For some reason, his mother always thought he secretly smoked.

Her claws curled into a fist, but she left one finger pointed at his chest. “You watch it young man or we’ll revoke your free time.”

“I have plans this weekend,” he said, trying to stay calm.

“Plans can change.” She removed a crisp piece of paper from her apron and handed it to him. “Maybe if you finish this by the time your father comes home, I
might
not tell him about your tardiness.”

“Fine.” He looked down at the paper. Usual stuff—cleaning the same places that had been cleaned twenty-four hours ago.

“Well?” his mother said, still standing in front of him.

He looked up. Her stern puppet face had been replaced by the face of an angel. She batted her eyes and smiled.

“What?” he asked, totally confused.

“Don’t I get a hug? You are my boy after all.”

He paused, wondering if he should decline, but that would definitely seal his fate for the weekend. Leaning toward her, he reached around her back and patted lightly, trying to ignore the bile rising in his throat.

“That’s more like it,” she said. “Now be a good boy and don’t forget to do your homework.”

He left quickly.

His mother hadn’t always been psycho. He still had memories of a normal mom who used to take him to the park and read to him, but that was before his older brother of nearly eight years had turned into a meth head and ended up in prison for killing someone during a home invasion. The day Benjamin was taken away something had snapped in his mom’s brain, and she hadn’t been the same since. For years he tried to understand her craziness, even feeling sorry for her at times, but now all he felt was revulsion.

After sticking headphones into his ears and cranking the music, he began his chores, starting with spraying off the house. Because he’d done it the day before, he simply waved the spray of water back and forth to give the illusion of cleaning. No doubt his mother had her ear to the wall, listening to his every move.

He finished spraying the house, then mowed the lawn, swept the driveway and the garage, tried to find something to trim on the bushes, washed the cars, and finally went upstairs to clean his room. He was slow going up the white, carpeted stairs, and took deep breaths to calm his sudden racing heartbeat. Cleaning his room was the worst of the jobs.

Albert stopped at his bedroom door, his hand shaking just above the doorknob. Out of the corner of his eye, his mind registered something out of place in the long, darkened hallway. He glanced over. His mother was standing erect at the end of the hall, her hands clasped together. She didn’t say anything, didn’t blink, didn’t move. She just stared, her eyes made darker by the lack of sunlight in the narrow space.

The cold metal of the doorknob touched the underside of Albert’s palm, and he jumped as if shocked. He quickly turned the handle and slipped inside his room, closing the door behind him. Breathing heavily, he leaned against the door, keeping his eyes closed. He was hoping he’d hear his mother walk by, but he didn’t hear anything. For all he knew she was still standing there. Sometimes she’d stay like that for hours.

After several minutes, Albert opened his eyes. His reflection looked back at him, face pale and forehead beaded with sweat.  He wanted to turn away, but it wouldn’t make a difference if he did. No matter where he looked, he saw himself. Years ago his parents had lined every wall in his room with mirrors. And every day he had to clean them.

Albert set to the task, all the while thinking about the Bodian drug hiding beneath his bed. It could make all of this go away. But then he remembered Claire.

At six o’clock on the dot, his father came home. He listened from his room as the front door opened and closed. He looked down at his watch. If his dad didn’t come see him within three minutes, then Albert would know his mother had told him about being late.

When the second hand on his watch passed the allotted time, his chest tightened. He would be grounded for the weekend, and that meant he couldn’t see Claire. His insides began to tremble, and his sanity felt as if it had been dropped into a blender.

Maybe he could ask for the paddles instead. It had been several months since they’d been used, but he knew his dad still considered the option. He’d threatened it just last week. Sometimes Albert wished his father were a raging alcoholic who lashed out in anger. That would be much easier to accept than a— 

The door opened. His father’s massive frame filled the doorway. “Your mother said you were late, Albert.”

Albert grimaced at the sound of his given name. He wished he never had to hear it. “Only by fifteen minutes, and I was just in the driveway.”

His father’s chest rose and fell. Deep breaths, slow and steady. “Don’t make excuses. You know the rules.”

“Yes.”

“Other than going to work, you’ll be staying home this weekend.”

“Please, Dad. I already have plans.”

“I don’t care about your plans.” He turned to leave. His ironed blue shirt barely moved. A shell.

“Wait!”

His father stopped and turned around. Dark eyebrows shadowed even darker eyes.

Before his father could scold him, Albert quickly said, “Can you punish me another way?”

His father’s gaze moved to a set of paddles hanging on a mirror. “You will receive both punishments for questioning me. I’ll be back in one hour.”

The door closed.

Albert cursed and smashed his fist repeatedly into a pillow. Months ago, he had stopped trying to convince his parents that he would never become like his brother. They never believed him then, and they weren’t about to now. In their minds, the family name would never be tarnished again, and they saw to this by imposing crazy rules and punishments upon him.

Clenching his jaw, he squished beneath his bed and scooted to the back corner. There was no reason for him to feel like this. Not anymore. He curled his fingers around the edge of the carpet and pulled back, exposing a wooden floor.  After removing the nearest board, he peered in and stared at the glass vials.

He’d promised himself that he would throw them away after what had happened with Mindy, but now he was glad he hadn’t. He reached in and took hold of the nearest tube. Just touching the cool glass relaxed him, and he inhaled deeply.

Wriggling back out from under the bed, he sat on the floor and studied the clear liquid. He remembered the day he’d stolen it. His father had taken him to work late at night to retrieve paperwork he said he’d forgotten. Because his dad’s buddy was working security, he let him take Albert into an area normally forbidden to outsiders.

While there, he overheard his dad and the guard talking about Bodian Dynamics’ latest project for some huge corporation. Their scientists were developing a drug to make soldiers, not only fearless in battle, but stronger, too. His father pointed out the concoction on the other side of the lab, admiring its application. “If this works,” he’d heard his dad say, “then someone’s going to have one hell of an army. Finally the world will have some real men in it.”

As soon as his father left, Albert entered the sterile room and took as many vials as his coat pockets could handle. His father didn’t notice anything amiss when he returned, but if he had looked closely, he would’ve noticed sweat dripping from Albert’s forehead.

Albert couldn’t explain why he’d done it. Maybe he was tired of pretending to be someone else, to both his parents and his friends. Or maybe he just wanted to prove to himself that he was worth something.

Holding the glass to the light, he stared at the vial, unable to comprehend how such a small amount could make him feel so incredible. He pulled a black plug from off its top.
Just a few drops
, he thought.
Just enough to numb the pain.