The Unleashed

by Danielle Vega

  Out of nowhere, she felt a deep pang of sadness. She was glad that she going to visit Raven. She missed her. When she first got to Drearford, Raven had acted as a kind of antidote to Portia. Where Portia was intense and overbearing, Raven was chill and laid back. To Hendricks’s surprise, she felt tears prick the corners of her eyes as she thought about her friend, all alone in that house, machines beeping around her.

  Hendricks parked at the end of the block and climbed out of her car.

  Raven lived in a big craftsman-style home with a brick porch and a wide, open front lawn. Hendricks took the steps to her porch two at a time and knocked.

  A short Asian woman dressed in a no-nonsense outfit of cropped khakis and a gray sweatshirt answered the door. “Hendricks,” she said, looking a little surprised. “It’s so good to see you, come in.”

  Raven’s mom’s name was Cheryl, Hendricks remembered. Everything about her read as efficient and intentional. Her hair was cropped in an easy bob, and she wore no jewelry or makeup. In other words, she was the exact opposite of Raven.

  Despite this, Hendricks couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under Cheryl’s eyes, the lines that seemed to have appeared along her forehead and around her mouth overnight. She looked tired, stressed. Hendricks was suddenly ashamed with herself for showing up empty-handed. She should’ve brought a casserole or a pie or something. What type of food did you bring people in times like this? Lasagna? Ziti?

  Cheryl ushered Hendricks into the front hall. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea? We have chamomile.”

  Hendricks’s voice felt suddenly stuck inside of her throat. She remembered how Raven used to bring the little packets of chamomile tea to school with her and steal hot water from the teacher’s lounge.

  “No thank you,” she said, when she could speak again. “I actually can’t stay long. I just wanted to say hey.”

  “Of course.” Cheryl smiled kindly and led Hendricks to Raven’s bedroom. “Take however long you need,” she said and pulled the door shut behind her.

  Raven was lying in the center of her bed, looking even smaller than she had on her birthday.

  Now that Hendricks was in the same room with her, she found that she didn’t know what to say or how to act. The only times she’d come to visit Raven before this had been with Portia.

  This is Raven, Hendricks reminded herself, sinking into the chair next to her bed. She doesn’t act like a person until she gets her morning coffee and she wears little boys’ T-shirts that she finds at the Goodwill and she’s obsessed with anything creative or artistic. Hendricks swallowed. She refused to let things be awkward between the two of them.

  She grabbed the arms of her chair and scooched forward. “Raven?” She hesitated, and then—remembering her vow not to let things get awkward—she took her friend’s hand. “Hey.”

  Raven didn’t look like herself at all. Gone were her fun accessories and bright makeup. Her skin looked dull, her hair limp.

  Hendricks felt a lump form in her throat. She suddenly wished she had a cute bracelet or some earrings that she could give her friend, to help her feel more like herself.

  She cleared her throat. “So, school’s been super weird without you,” she said haltingly. It felt strange to be talking to someone who looked like she was sleeping, but she forced herself on. “Portia needs a lot of attention. I guess I didn’t realize because you took care of that when you were, uhm, awake. But yeah. She can be a lot.”

  Hendricks paused, like she was waiting for Raven to answer. But the only sound was the softly beeping hospital machines. Beep . . . beep . . .

  “I’m making it sound like she’s not worth it,” Hendricks hurried to add, feeling guilty. “She’s been great throughout all of this. She tries really hard to be a good friend.”

  Beep . . . beep . . .

  “And then there’s the whole Connor drama.” Hendricks laughed softly. “I’ll spare you the details of that. It’s complicated. I wish we could just go back to being friends.”

  Beep . . . beep . . .

  “Owen misses you.” Hendricks suddenly remembered the sweet, poetic boy that Raven had developed a crush on before she fell unconscious. “He hasn’t said anything, but I can tell. He canceled his prom date with Samia and is going out of town that weekend instead. Everyone knows it’s because of you.” Hendricks’s throat felt tight. “Maybe . . . maybe if you wake up before prom, we can make a plan for you to ask him? Feminism and all that, you know? Girls shouldn’t wait for a boy to ask them anymore.”

  It was exactly the sort of thing Raven would do: walk up to a boy she had a crush on, tell him how she felt, and ask him to prom with her. Hendricks could practically picture it happening.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t continue. She doubled over just as a sob bubbled up to her lips. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, trying to calm herself down. For all she knew, Raven’s mother could hear everything. It seemed selfish to break down when she was already going through so much.

  “Wake up, Raven,” Hendricks whispered, once she’d managed to swallow her tears. She took Raven’s hand and squeezed. “I need you, okay? I need you to—to wake up and tell me that Eddie’s gone and that closing the portal is more important than wanting to see him again. And I need you to . . . I don’t know . . . tell me to go to prom with Connor and make up with Portia and help me convince everyone else to do this dumb séance with me.” Her voice cracked. She squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing. “I know I should know how to do all that stuff on my own, but I don’t. So, wake up, okay? We need you out here.”

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she felt a very light pressure around her fingers, the beginnings of Raven squeezing back. Her heart ached. She stared hard at Raven’s face, looking for some other sign.

  But there was nothing.

  CHAPTER

  21

  Moonlight drifted in through the basement windows, painting Hendricks’s closed lids silver. It was still late, and she was lying in Eddie’s bed, her face tucked beneath his chin. His chest rose and fell beneath her cheek.

  “You’re not crazy,” Eddie murmured, close to her ear. She could feel the soft scratch of his stubble against her forehead. There was a light pressure on the back of her head, his hands, touching her hair.

  “How do you know?” she asked, her voice muffled by his T-shirt.

  “I don’t . . . I guess I just figure it you’re crazy, then I must really be losing it.” Eddie said this with a bit of a laugh, but Hendricks could hear the vulnerability beneath his words, the fear.

  “We’re both crazy, then,” she said.

  A pause and Eddie added, “Complete wack jobs.”

  “Total loons.”

  Eddie laughed, the sound a low rumble. Hendricks felt something inside her relax, a muscle she hadn’t realized she’d been tensing. Right now, in this moment, she felt closer to Eddie than she’d ever felt to another human being in her life. She kept her eyes closed but smiled against his chest. If she concentrated, she could feel his heart beating against the corner of her lips.

  She stopped smiling. Time slipped.

  Hadn’t this happened already?

  For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was.

  You’re in Eddie’s room, she told herself. You just ran away from Steele House, from the ghosts. Eddie’s protecting you.

  But no, that wasn’t right. Steele House had burned down.

  And Eddie . . .

  Fear shot through Hendricks’s chest. She pulled away, her eyes searching Eddie’s face. He was barely more than a silhouette in the dark, the line of a jaw, the curve of a nose.

  “Where were you?” she asked, her voice cracking. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “I’m okay, I promise,” Eddie said. “But I need to tell you something.” He looked serious all of a sudden, his brows low over his eyes, his expres
sion drawn. Hendricks felt another beat of fear. “You have to let go.”

  “I can’t,” Hendricks said, her voice choked. “You have to come back. You have to.”

  Eddie’s dark eyes seemed even darker than they had when he was alive. Hendricks couldn’t stop staring into them. They seemed to be pulling her in, sucking her down . . .

  And then, they started to burn.

  Hendricks scrambled out of his bed, her heart leaping inside of her chest. Fire licked at the skin around Eddie’s eye sockets and crawled up his face, making it bubble and melt. His eyebrows lit on fire. Hendricks tried not scream.

  “Let go,” he said.

  Hendricks couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak . . .

  And then the bell rang.

  Hendricks jerked awake, still screaming. She couldn’t remember where she was, what time it was, what day. The lights blaring above her seemed so, so bright. They cast the room around her in intense, neon colors.

  Hendricks blinked, and slowly the room came into clearer focus. She wasn’t at home in her bed after all. She was sitting at her desk in history class, surrounded by other students, and she’d fallen asleep on her textbook.

  She straightened, wiping the drool from her lips as snickers erupted around her. Her heart was beating fast inside of her chest. It was a dream, she told herself.

  Of course, it was a dream.

  It’s just . . . it had felt so real. She could still remember how the nerves in the back of her head had flared as Eddie patted her hair, how his T-shirt had felt against her cheek. All warm and worn and cozy. A pang hit her right in the chest.

  She thrust her arm into the air. “I—I’m not feeling well,” she told her stunned teacher, already pushing away from her desk. She had to get out of here.

  Her teacher said something, but she couldn’t hear what it was. Her heart was beating hard and fast inside of her head, blocking out all other sound. She was finding it difficult to catch her breath. Her head was too full of Eddie’s smile and Eddie’s smell and Eddie’s warning.

  Let go.

  She rushed into the hallway. The classroom door slammed shut behind her, and the sound echoed off the metal lockers so that she seemed to hear it again and again.

  She buried her face in her hands, a second before the first sob escaped from her lips. It had seemed to claw up from some deep place inside of her. Tears blurred her eyes. It was the kind of crying she hadn’t done since she was little. Her entire body felt like a closed fist, every muscle tight and aching. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything but let the sobs overtake her.

  Her legs wobbled, and then she was crouching on the ground, shaking.

  Let go.

  How? she wanted to ask. It was the question that echoed through her head. Please, Eddie, just tell me how.

  When she finally opened her eyes, Hendricks saw that the floor around her was covered in black rose petals.

  * * *

  • • •

  Hendricks hovered outside of the front doors after school, bouncing on the tips of her toes. She watched the students stream out until finally Connor appeared. He was surrounded by some track guys that she still didn’t know, as well as Finn and Blake, and he was talking and laughing.

  Hendricks felt a sudden jolt of nerves. When she’d played this out in her head, Connor had been on his own.

  Suck it up, Becker-O’Malley, she told herself.

  “Hey, uh, Connor!” Hendricks called, waving. “Over here!”

  Connor waved goodbye to his track friends and jogged up to her. “Hey, friend,” he said, knocking her on the shoulder with his fist. “How are you?”

  Terrible, Hendricks thought. But she couldn’t say that.

  “Swell,” she said instead. She’d been trying to come off sounding laid back, but the word seemed weird the second it left her mouth.

  “Swell, huh?” Connor said, grinning.

  Hendricks swallowed. “I actually wanted to ask you something.”

  Connor raised his eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  There was a beat of silence.

  Connor laughed at her. “Okay, so now would be the time that you actually, you know, ask it.”

  “Right.” Hendricks swallowed. Here I go. “So. How are you?”

  What was wrong with her?

  Connor laughed again, but this time it sounded a little strained. “Well, at least that’s an easy enough question. I’m doing pretty great. We have a meet this weekend, and my times are better than ever. I heard you fell asleep in history.”

  “Oh right, that.” Hendricks cringed, wishing that story had not made its way back to Connor. “That was embarrassing.”

  “I bet. It sounded like you were having a nightmare.”

  Shit. “What are people saying?”

  Connor was trying very hard to keep a straight face. “The phrase ‘screamed bloody murder’ might have come up.”

  Hendricks groaned and lowered her head to her hands.

  “Come on,” Connor said, laughing. “It’s not that bad.”

  “How?” Hendricks demanded. “How is it not that bad?”

  Connor narrowed his eyes, like he was turning something over in his head, and then he leaned forward. “Okay, so you can’t tell anyone this,” he said, in a much lower voice. “But when I was in ninth grade, I fell asleep in English class.” He paused, studying Hendricks. “Have you ever met Miss Lowell? The freshman English teacher?”

  Hendricks shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  Connor blushed. “Oh. You would remember her. She’s . . . let’s just say that she isn’t unattractive.”

  Hendricks laughed. “Okay . . .”

  “And I was a freshman, remember. I had all these hormones. So, I fell asleep in her class one day, and uh . . .” He looked suddenly flustered, like he was wishing he hadn’t started telling this story. “Well, I . . .”

  “Wait,” Hendricks said, stopping him. “This isn’t going to be gross, is it? I’m not sure I want to hear about some weird sex dream.”

  “No!” Connor blushed deeper. “God, it might have been better if it was a sex dream. This was even worse. I dreamed that we . . . got married. We had this big church wedding, she was in a white dress, and all my friends were there. It was the whole thing.”

  Hendricks pressed a hand to her mouth, snickering. “Oh my God . . .”

  “That’s not even the worst part,” Connor continued. “Apparently, I was talking in my sleep the whole time, just saying I do over and over again. Blake still won’t let me live that one down.”

  Just then, a car rumbled up to the curb, the window buzzing down.

  “Hey, O’Malley,” Blake called, his voice oddly stiff.

  Hendricks lifted a hand in an awkward wave. “Hi, Blake,” she said. “And my last name is hyphenated. Becker-O’Malley, not just O’Malley.”

  “Yeah, well, Becker-O’Malley’s kind of a mouthful,” Blake said. Finn was sitting in the passenger seat, but so far, he hadn’t bothered looking at her.

  “Connor, you coming?” Blake asked.

  “Hold up a second!” Connor shouted, waving at him. Then, turning back to Hendricks, said, “Was that all you wanted?”

  “No, actually.” Hendricks wetted her lips. “I went to see Ileana last night, and she thinks we can get rid of the ghost that’s been stalking Portia once and for all, but it means doing another séance. Tonight, during the full moon.”

  Hendricks hesitated, glancing back at Blake’s car, before adding, “We’d all need to be there, though. The original seven.”

  Connor ran a hand back through his hair. “Ah . . . to be honest, I don’t know whether they’ll go for it. They’re still . . .”

  “Pissed at me?”

  “Pretty much,” Co
nnor said apologetically. “And this whole situation has them really freaked out.”

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” Hendricks said. “I just want all this to be over with.”

  Connor nodded. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll ask.”

  He waved goodbye and started walking toward the curb.

  Do it, Hendricks told herself. She took a deep breath.

  “Connor, wait!” she called, jogging after him. “There was just one more thing. I . . . I wanted to say that I think we should go to the prom together after all.” She swallowed and then added quickly, “As friends.”

  Behind her, Blake laid on the horn, the sound causing every muscle in Hendricks’s body to tense up at the same time.

  “Let’s go,” he called, once the sound had died. “We’re gonna miss it.”

  Hendricks noticed that the muscles in Connor’s jaw had tightened, just a little. “The old Drearford drive-in theater is doing a marathon of all the Die Hard movies,” he explained. “Blake wants to go early, to get a good spot.”

  “Oh,” Hendricks said.

  “Prom sounds cool,” he said. And then, quickly, “As friends.”

  “Great . . . friend.” She punched him in the shoulder, just like he’d punched her, but it somehow felt more awkward when she did it. Connor rubbed his arm where she’d touched him.

  “Enjoy your movies,” she said.

  He laughed, “It’s Die Hard, how could I not?”

  As he started to jog back toward his friends, Hendricks couldn’t help but hope that maybe she could still be the girl he wanted her to be.

  Someday.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ten minutes later, Hendricks was hovering outside of Portia’s window, bringing her knuckles down hard against the cool glass.

  There was a long pause, followed by a sound like shuffling footsteps inside Portia’s room.