Blur (Blur Trilogy)

by Steven James

  He passed through the crowd looking for Stacy, but didn’t see her anywhere. Not even in the groups of girls who were now forming on the dance floor.

  A strobe light hung somewhat precariously above them. For some reason there was even a fog machine.

  A huge screen hung at one end of the gym with music videos of the songs that were playing. Once things got started it would actually help some kids who were having a hard time knowing how to dance.

  Earlier in the year it’d looked like Kyle and a couple of his friends who were trying to put a band together were going to play for the dance, but for some reason that had fallen through—probably because their music wasn’t so much high school dance fare, but had more of a college-coffeehouse vibe going on.

  A senior whom Daniel had seen around but didn’t really know was DJing and was choosing mostly pop and electronica trance tracks. Whichever song he’d chosen must have been popular, because kids flooded the dance floor.

  The music became intense. Students in the middle of the gym, where no chaperones opted to go, started grinding against each other crazily in the erratic, pulsing light.

  Stacy was nowhere to be seen.

  Trying not to be too conspicuous, Daniel made his way across the gym searching for her, but if she was here she was also invisible, because he couldn’t find her anywhere.

  He checked his phone, then the punch table again.

  Nope.

  Nothing.

  But he did see Nicole standing by herself at the far end, holding a plastic cup.

  He could hardly believe that a girl as popular as Nicole wasn’t dancing with someone, and the only thing he could think of was that whatever guy she was with had just stepped away for a minute.

  Leaving her alone.

  Like Emily was.

  Before she died.

  For a moment he thought back to the beach, to the glasses, to what Ronnie had told him the other day about his suspicions that his sister had been killed.

  Nicole looked a little embarrassed when she saw Daniel, but nodded a greeting. When he asked her how she was doing, she gave him a somewhat forced smile. “Good. I’m good. You? Having fun yet?”

  “I pretty much just got here.” The music throbbing around them made it a little hard to carry on a conversation and they had to lean close to each other to talk.

  She gazed past him and he guessed she was trying to figure out if he was here with anyone. For a moment he thought about telling her that he was looking for his date, but then decided against it.

  A few seconds later one of Nicole’s friends came by, so she excused herself, and he went to look for Stacy again.

  Ten minutes later he still hadn’t found her or gotten any messages from her.

  As he was leaving the gym to search by the front doors once more, he ran into Kyle and Mia. Neither of them looked too into the DJ’s choice of music. When Kyle saw that Daniel was still alone he raised his hands palms up: Well?

  Daniel shook his head and joined them. “I’m not sure how long I should wait for her.”

  Kyle turned to Mia. “A girl’s perspective. What do you think?”

  “You want honesty or politesse?”

  “Honesty.”

  “I think it sucks—and that’s way toning down my honesty.” Then she said to Daniel, “Leaving you hanging like this? Very uncool. Especially not even returning your texts.”

  “Give it a few more minutes,” Kyle suggested. “Then we can bail. Chill at my place.”

  Even though Daniel was good friends with both Kyle and Mia, truthfully, he did sometimes feel like a third wheel when it was just the three of them hanging out together. On the other hand, it was really awkward being here at the dance without a date.

  Just head home. If Stacy doesn’t show up, take off. You don’t need to stay.

  The song ended and when the DJ threw on a slow dance, Mia took Kyle’s hand. As she led him toward the dance floor he called back to Daniel, “Hey, we’ll see you in a bit, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Daniel’s eyes followed them into the gym and he saw Nicole standing by herself again, this time near the door to the visitors locker room. Ever since he’d spoken with her earlier he hadn’t seen her dancing with any guys.

  Maybe she’d come alone after all.

  Or maybe her date stood her up, just like yours did.

  For a couple seconds he was tempted to ask her to dance, but in the end he figured that wouldn’t fly too well with Stacy if she did happen to show up.

  He went to the parking lot to look for her and checked his messages again.

  Still nothing.

  The night had cooled, and gray tendrils of fog were snaking out of the nearby woods.

  His thoughts trailed back through the unusual and tragic events of the last week, and his frustration over Stacy’s not showing up shifted unexpectedly to concern.

  Could something have happened to her?

  Something bad?

  No, that was just ridiculous.

  She was fine.

  For whatever reason she’d just decided not to show.

  Okay, he was a big boy. He could deal with that. There was no reason to start getting paranoid.

  He was about to text Kyle and tell him that he was heading home when Nicole stepped out of the building.

  She held up her hand. “Honestly, I’m not stalking you,” she said. “I just needed some fresh air.”

  “You waiting for someone too?”

  “Actually, Brent Beslin was supposed to meet me forty-five minutes ago.” She shook her head. “Jerk.” A much stronger word might have been in order, but just the fact that she held back from using it said something about her.

  Daniel knew Brent, and if he was supposed to be here with Nicole, he was definitely dating out of his league. Not at all the kind of guy Daniel would have guessed Nicole would come to the dance with, but since she still hadn’t had a date yesterday when he spoke with her at school, Brent obviously hadn’t been her first choice.

  You were.

  “Yeah,” he said at last. “Jerk.”

  Daniel knew that, personally, he wouldn’t have left Nicole hanging if he’d been the one to ask her here. No, there was no way that would have happened.

  For a moment he remembered Emily, her funeral, the fact that she was the kind of girl that people ignored and—

  “So, do I know her?” Nicole asked him.

  “Do you know her?”

  “The girl you’re waiting for, silly. Coming to something like this by yourself isn’t your deal at all. You’re more private than that. Besides, you’ve been looking for someone ever since you got here.”

  “You know me pretty well.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Stacy.”

  “Stacy?” She looked a little confused.

  “The new girl.”

  “Oh.”

  “She was supposed to meet me here.”

  “Of course.”

  Ty and his friends were still lurking nearby. They’d stopped smoking, but were joking around about something among themselves. Every once in a while one of them would glance over at Nicole and smirk and whisper something to the guy next to him.

  Daniel didn’t like the way they were leering at her. Not at all.

  She got a text, checked it, then shook her head. “So I was gonna head home, right? But Gina gave me a ride here, and now she’s decided to stay.” A sigh. “Perfect.”

  Nicole had worked together with Daniel on a project last year for biology and their study group had met at her house. It wasn’t far from his place. “So,” he said, “you don’t have a ride home?”

  “Not till later.”

  That meant Daniel had a choice to make.

  He could wait here for Stacy, he could take off
for home, or he could offer to give Nicole a ride to her house.

  Yeah, and if he did that, he could just imagine Stacy showing up right in the nick of time to see Nicole climbing into his car. Oh, that would be brilliant.

  But Stacy wasn’t here, hadn’t been in touch all day, had obviously changed her mind about coming.

  So, stay?

  Leave?

  Offer a ride?

  Nicole seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

  And finally he did: “I could drop you off at your place, if you want?”

  “Naw, I’m . . . well . . .” She faltered, obviously reconsidering. “Seriously?”

  “It’s no big deal. I was about to leave anyway.”

  “Is that alright? I mean, since . . . ?” She left the rest unsaid, but he could anticipate that she was thinking about how he was supposed to be meeting Stacy.

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “That’d be awesome, actually. Let me go tell Gina. I’ll be right back.”

  She slipped back into the building, Daniel texted Kyle that he was taking off, and when he looked up from his phone, he saw that Ty and his friends had left.

  A few minutes later Nicole returned, walked with Daniel to his car, and they left school together to head to her home west of town.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The farther they drove into the country, the thicker the fog became.

  It was almost as if they were passing into another realm, a bleary, unexplored world that was slowly unfolding before them from nowhere as they drove into it.

  “So your head’s okay?” Nicole asked.

  While he appreciated everyone’s concern, he was getting a little tired of people asking him how he was. “It’s a good thing it’s as hard as it is.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “You weren’t supposed to agree with that.”

  “Well, like you said earlier, I know you pretty well.”

  “I guess you do.”

  But that’s not exactly what was running through his mind. Instead, he was wondering if his head really was okay.

  He kind of wanted to tell her, “You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I passed out at the game not because I got smacked on the head when I was tackled, but because I saw Emily’s ghost, just like I did at the funeral. So I really don’t know if I’m okay at all.”

  No, it probably wouldn’t be the best thing in the world to be quite that open and honest with Nicole tonight.

  On the other hand, maybe she would be good to talk to, at least if he wasn’t quite that forthcoming.

  “I know this is sort of out of nowhere, but do you believe in ghosts?” he asked her.

  “Ghosts? Have you been talking to Mia about her book?”

  “No, just thinking about them.”

  “I don’t know. What about you?”

  I might be starting to.

  “I’m not sure.” He recalled the blog entry Nicole had read yesterday in class. “In that prayer you wrote for Teach’s class, you mentioned demons. Was that for real? Do you believe in them or was that all symbolic?”

  “No, I do.”

  “But not ghosts?”

  “Well . . . maybe.” She gave it some thought. “I mean, when I was working on that assignment, I found this story, in the Bible, you know, about a guy named Saul—he was the king of Israel. Anyway, he found this medium and had her try to summon back a prophet named Samuel from the dead to talk to him.”

  “What happened?”

  “It worked. Samuel appeared—or at least his ghost did. I’m not exactly sure which it was.”

  “But Samuel was dead when he appeared to Saul?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like a ghost to me.”

  “Yeah,” she admitted. “Me too.”

  “So it’s possible, then, for dead people to communicate with the living?”

  “At least in that case it was.”

  Daniel had heard about people doing what Saul did—trying to consult with the dead. For just an instant he wondered if that might be a way to get some answers.

  But just for an instant.

  Because, really, the last thing he needed to do was ask dead people to show up and start talking to him. They were doing that pretty well on their own.

  At least one of them was.

  “And,” Nicole went on, “Jesus apparently believed in ghosts. Twice his disciples mistook him for a ghost and he told them he wasn’t one, proved it the second time by letting them touch his hands and his side.”

  “How does that show he believed in ghosts?”

  “Well, he said, ‘A ghost does not have flesh and bones.’ But if ghosts weren’t real, why would he have put it that way?”

  “Oh, I get it. If ghosts didn’t exist he would’ve just told his friends they were being idiots—because how could he be a ghost when they weren’t even real?”

  “Yeah—instead of proving to them that he wasn’t one.” She looked at him questioningly. “Why the interest in demons and ghosts?”

  “Just wondering.”

  Ghosts. Demons. What a great conversation to be having when you’re driving through the countryside on a fog-enshrouded night.

  They were only a couple miles from Nicole’s house when they came around a curve and Daniel saw something ahead of them, lying in the middle of the road.

  At first he wasn’t sure what it was, but as he slowed down he realized it was a toddler’s plastic swimming pool. The road dipped slightly and the headlights revealed that it was a little crunched on one side and partially filled with murky water.

  It was directly in the middle of their lane.

  Daniel stopped.

  Let the car idle.

  The fog fingered through the night, and taking into account what he’d been talking with Nicole about only a few minutes ago concerning whether or not his head was okay, he had a thought that he did not like.

  Maybe the pool wasn’t really there at all. Maybe he was just imagining it, and Emily’s ghost was going to rise out of the water and walk toward his car.

  He waited, hoping Nicole would say something about the pool to prove that it was there, because if it wasn’t, that would mean he definitely was starting to lose touch with reality.

  Daniel studied her face in the dim, greenish glow cast from the dashboard lights. She was still staring in front of them at the road. He anticipated that if she didn’t see the pool she would’ve most likely been looking at him instead, trying to figure out why he’d stopped the car. So he took her intense gaze out the windshield as a good sign.

  The silence went on until it became uncomfortable, then she said, “Drive around it, Daniel. Just go through the other lane.”

  Well, that was good. At least she saw it too.

  “I think I should move it.”

  “Just leave it. I don’t like this.”

  He reached for the door handle and felt her hand on his other arm. “Something’s not right. It couldn’t have just fallen out of someone’s truck or something. It wouldn’t have water in it then.”

  “I know. Wait here. Lock the doors behind me.”

  Daniel stepped out of the car.

  The cool night wrapped around him. Some kind of owl he couldn’t identify shrieked in the distance, and slight rustling sounds in the darkness told him he might have disturbed an animal hidden in the shadows along the side of the road.

  Tendrils of dreary mist curled through the night, filtering eerily through the headlights’ beams.

  No stars. No moonlight.

  Daniel didn’t hear the doors lock so he opened his again. The car was still running. “Lock them, Nicole. I’ll be right back.”

  “Daniel, let’s just—”

  “Trust me.”


  He closed the door, and after a moment, she hit the lock button.

  Fog encircled him as he paced forward.

  The pool was ocean blue and had pictures of happy cartoon dolphins and small green fish imprinted on it. The left side was crinkled enough for some of the water to have seeped out.

  When he was about fifteen feet away, he heard movement again out of sight along the edge of the road. Something large crunching across the leaves.

  “Hello?”

  No reply.

  He came to the toddler pool and grabbed its edge to drag it off the road. The water made it a little hard to tug, but as he lifted one side, some of it sloshed out the other, and he was able to drag it along the pavement toward the ditch.

  He’d made it about halfway there when he saw the first figure step out of the darkness and into the headlights, right next to the car.

  Ty Bell.

  And since he almost always had his three buddies with him, Daniel couldn’t imagine that he’d come out here alone.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Even though Ty was mostly backlit, his face was partially visible and he was giving Daniel a steady, unflinching gaze. “Byers.”

  Daniel dropped the edge of the plastic pool. “Get away from the car, Ty.”

  He appraised Daniel as, one by one, his three friends emerged from their hiding places along the edge of the road.

  If Daniel remembered correctly, one of the boys had a pickup; they could have easily transported the pool in that.

  They must have overheard you talking to Nicole at school, offering to drive her out here.

  But were they really close enough to hear you? How long were they planning this? Was—

  Right now all that mattered was getting Nicole out of here.

  Ty nodded toward his three friends, who approached the car.

  “Step back,” Daniel ordered them.

  But one of the guys tried the driver’s-side door and cursed when he found it locked.

  Daniel started toward them. “I said, get away from the car.”

  But the other guys just circled it, unsuccessfully trying all the doors. Daniel heard Nicole call out for him from inside the sedan.