She broke into a light jog and slowly accelerated as she made her way toward the stadium. By the time she passed the wooden sign in the woods, she was hot and sweaty and gasping for breath. The humidity made the air feel thick, like she was drawing hot steam into her lungs. Running here might be more difficult than she had thought.
Just outside the stadium, she stopped to catch her breath and stripped off her sweatshirt. She leaned against a wall, and the brick spread a cool calm up and down her spine. Her head was aching, and she winced as she remembered the swigs of whiskey she had taken earlier. Finally, she stood up and took another few steps toward the turf.
The game had ended almost two hours ago, and a cleaning crew must have long since finished and left. The field was pristine, the moonlight casting it in a watery blue haze. But it wasn’t empty.
A guy stood on the 50-yard line, hands on his hips with his back toward her. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and she could see the light reflecting off his broad, angular shoulders. Her breath caught in her throat as she recognized his shaggy blonde hair. Jeremy.
His chest was heaving as if he had just stopped to catch his breath. As she watched, he looked down at his wrist, pressed a few buttons on his watch, and then took off in a full sprint. He ran a few dozen yards, then cut back and sprinted toward the center of the field, brushing the turf with his hand as he turned. She watched, mesmerized as his legs and arms pumped hard through the humid summer air. He was fast — really fast.
He did six lengths before stopping, then checked his watch and put his hands behind his head. He stood there for a while, chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. For a few moments, she felt like they were the only two people in the world. Then he turned around.
She jumped and tried to duck back behind the wall, but it was too late. She felt excruciatingly exposed, like she had just been caught spying by someone in the middle of her own dream. He waved.
At a loss for a more appropriate response, she waved back. They stared at each other for a few moments, until awkwardness won out and she turned away. She abandoned her plan to do sprints completely, instead heading back toward the woods.
She ran along the path back toward the beach, and soon the crashing waves were loud enough that she could hear them over her headphones. She turned the music off and just listened to the rhythmic sound of her breathing, the rolling waves, and her footsteps pounding on the gravel. When she ran, she let her mind go completely blank, listening only to her body. She loved that feeling. She craved it. Even if it sounded like something only a hippie from Oregon would do.
She drew level with the Graff tower and slowed to a walk. She had never been this close to the tower before, and for the first time she realized how huge it was. The spit of land it sat on looked like it had once been paved with smooth stones, but now they were cracked and worn, and weeds had wound their way up through the fissures. She stood there for a moment in the dark, staring up at the black, hulking structure. She could have sworn she could see a hint of light glowing in one of the slits that served as windows, but she knew it was just her eyes playing tricks. A cloud had passed over the moon, and it was so dark, she could barely even see where the beach ended and the sea began. She turned her headphones back on and took off back toward Keating.
She was dripping with sweat by the time Ashby loomed into view. She thought about a long, hot shower and hesitated, tempted to head inside. Then she remembered Thayer’s smug smile and thought about how much satisfaction she would get if Sadie failed. Instead she turned up the volume and sprinted back toward Graff.
Near the tower once again, she took off her headphones and doubled over, heaving, against a tree. As she waited for her pulse to slow, she heard an unmistakable sound: the crunch of gravel and the soft purring of a car engine.
Instinctively, she ducked a little farther into the woods. She angled herself so she could see a few hundred yards down the path. As she watched, a black SUV appeared on the road beyond the tower, crawling slowly along with its lights off. It was just a truck, like the kind a nighttime security guard might drive, but still Sadie felt goose bumps pushing up through her skin. She pressed her body even closer against the tree trunk.
When the car got to the tower, it turned onto the little spit of land, curved around the side of the building, and disappeared. She stepped out from behind the tree to get a better view, but the truck was gone.
She squinted at the tower windows, willing her eyes to see another flicker of light or movement, but there was nothing. Jessica had said the tower was abandoned, just some old, empty ruin that was too old to tear down and too expensive to maintain. Sadie cocked her head as she heard a car door slam. Or maybe not so empty.
Suddenly she was very aware of where she was — alone, in the dark, a mile from anyone she knew. The fear moved in quickly, flowing in icy waves from her chest out to the tips of her fingers. Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed, willing herself to relax. She moved to slip on her headphones, but something stopped her. She froze, barely breathing until she heard it again. A twig snapping, then the soft crunch of gravel. Someone was there.
She heard another twig snap, closer this time, and she whipped her head in the direction of the sound. She knew she should run, but her legs felt weak and grounded, like the kind of half-baked paralysis that always happens in dreams. Somewhere far away, she heard the truck’s engine roar back to life, and the sound brought the blood back into her limbs. She took a step toward the path, but she stumbled over a tree root and pitched forward into the darkness, branches scratching at her cheeks as she fell. As her palms hit the dirt, she cursed. Then, straight ahead, she saw them.
There were two, both dressed in black with hoods pulled low over their faces. They just stood there, staring at her as she tried to untangle herself. She tried to yell, but the sound died in her throat, nothing more than a sad, strangled whimper. One of them laughed.
She got to her feet and turned and ran deeper into the woods, falling forward blindly with her breath pounding in her ears. She couldn’t tell if she was being chased — she just ran.
Finally she saw a glow of moonlight and broke through the trees onto the path. She doubled over, heaving and shaking in the dark. She tried to tell herself she had imagined them — she was delirious from the run, from the heat and the dark — but her hands were still trembling as she forced herself to put her headphones back in. She took a long, shaky breath, bouncing a few times on her toes. Then, just as she turned to run back to Keating, she felt a hand close down on her arm. This time she screamed.
Chapter 7
“Whoa, whoa, relax!”
The hand on her arm was gone as quickly as it had come, and she leapt back, bringing her fists up in front of her face like weapons. She realized she was shouting nonsense, like she was trying to intimidate a mountain lion. As her vision cleared, her jaw dropped open and her cocked fists wilted against her sides.
Her attacker, who was neither wearing a hood nor, actually, wearing much of anything, was cowering in front of her, holding up his hands like he was afraid she would shoot. In that moment, he looked even more terrified than she did.
“Damn it, I’m so sorry,” he blurted, taking another step away from her. “I wasn’t — I’m not — look, I go to Graff. My name’s Jeremy.”
“Holy creepy stalker in the woods, Jeremy,” she yelled, jerkily wiping the cold sweat from her forehead. “You almost just gave me a heart attack.”
Her heart was still pounding, and she could feel the adrenaline pulsing through her veins. “What the hell were you doing? I think I’m having heart palpitations — for real. If my left arm starts going numb, it’s your ass.”
He bit his lip like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “Deal.”
He jerked his head back down the path. “I just came from Cranston-Wim. I tried to call your name, but I think you had your headphones in.” He motioned to the ear buds that now hung limp around her neck.
“It’s
okay, I just … wow, I really thought I was about to get dragged off into the woods and chopped up into pieces.”
“I know, I’m an idiot. I saw you run this way like half an hour ago, though, and you never came back even though you left this.” He held up her gray sweatshirt. “It sounds so stupid now, but I was kinda worried. It’s so dark out here.”
She mumbled a thanks and took it back. She was glad he couldn’t see her blush.
“What are you doing, anyway?” he said.
She sighed. “Trying to get ready for this damn running test. I’m new, and I don’t like running on unfamiliar turf.” She took a deep breath and looked down at her shoes. “Sorry about being so awkward earlier, by the way. I just didn’t expect to see anyone else on the field.”
He smiled. “No worries. It’s Sadie, right? The transfer from Oregon?”
“Yup. Portland. You?”
“San Diego. I’m dreading our test, too. Everyone tells me it’s brutal.”
“Is yours on Monday?”
“Yeah.”
“Ours, too.”
They looked at each other for a moment. Sadie glanced at her watch.
“Well, I should really head back.” She motioned toward the path. “But it was nice to meet you. I guess I’ll probably see you on the field? Next time try not to unwittingly cause my premature death.”
He smiled widely, and she felt her stomach flip.
“Definitely.” He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. “At least I hope so. Good luck on Monday.” He held up his hand in a wave and then turned back toward Graff.
She watched as he ducked under a few tree branches, her stomach now flipping around like a kid three doses behind on his Ritalin. She put her headphones in and turned back toward Keating. Double crap.
“He said what?” Jessica screeched.
Sadie grabbed a striped pillow off of Jessica’s bed and sat down, cross-legged, with it in her lap. “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Oh screw that, Sadie. You’re trying so hard not to smile right now.”
Sadie grinned and hid her face in the pillow. “Okay, fine — it was pretty cute. But of course, I made a total ass of myself.”
“No way. He said he was worried about you and that he hoped he would see you soon, so you basically have a date to the next formal already. Un-effing-believable.” She crossed her arms and pouted.
Sadie swatted her with the pillow. “For all I know he’ll turn out to be a complete douchebag who has pet names for both of his balls and talks about himself in the third person.”
Jessica grinned. “Well, he does go to Graff.” She yawned. “Okay, get out of my face already. I need to get some sleep. You should too. First practice is at 9 A.M. tomorrow. Breakfast at 7:45?”
“Sure.”
“See you in the morning,” Jessica called as Sadie shut the door behind her.
She padded back to her room. The hallway lights were dimmed, but she passed Madison as she was huddled in one of the window bays talking on a bright pink phone. Sadie waved, but Madison just frowned and tapped the face of her diamond-encrusted watch.
Trix and Gwen were both in bed when she got back from the showers, and she could hear one of them mumbling in her sleep. She sat down on her bed and cracked open her laptop to check her e-mail. She had one new message, but she didn’t recognize the sender. It was from an anonymous Keating address, just a jumble of letters and numbers, and the subject line was a single word: Fate. Even stranger was the cryptic message inside.
We are all at the mercy of fate.
Soon you will know yours.
-Z
Sadie’s eyebrows slid toward the ceiling. If this was some kind of motivational message from the school, they really needed to work on their delivery. She was tempted to be creeped out, but she was just too tired and happy to care. It was probably a virus anyway, like one of those scams that e-mails everyone you’ve ever met an ad for generic Viagra and penis enlargement pills. She shut the laptop and lay back on the bed.
She hugged the covers close around her body, closed her eyes, and imagined herself back on the beach with Jeremy. She curled herself tighter into a ball and buried her face in her pillow, holding the image in her mind. Finally, she drifted off to sleep, the faint smell of salt still lingering in her nostrils.
When something woke her hours later, she assumed it was the twins. They had a habit of disappearing right after lights out and then showing up back in bed right around dawn, smelling like smoke and sweaty cologne. She blinked into the darkness and lay still, listening for their slurred whispers and sloppily stifled giggles, but all she heard was the sound of her own breathing and the slow creak of weight moving across old wooden floors.
She stopped blinking and opened her eyes wide, waiting for her pupils to dilate. The room was quiet again, and she told herself she had imagined it. She was still a little freaked out about what had happened in the woods, and she knew she was probably half asleep and dreaming. She closed her eyes and willed her body to unclench, focusing on letting each of her limbs sink fully into the soft mattress. She took a deep breath and tried to let her mind go blank.
Before she could exhale, the blankets and sheets were ripped off of her body. She opened her mouth to scream, but a heavy hand clamped down across her jaw, forcing her head back into the pillow. She tried to kick, squirm — anything to get the hands off of her — but they only pressed harder. As she struggled, a single thought ran through her head: Soon you will know your fate. She tasted something sharp and metallic just before the dark closed in.
At first, all she felt was cold. She was sitting on something hard — a bench, maybe — and her hands were tied behind her back. She was blindfolded and gagged, and some kind of strap was wound tightly across her rib cage. She could feel a rigid cuff wrapped around her upper arm, and the air around her smelled old and stale, like each breath she drew in hadn’t been moved in a long time.
She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to wake up. Stuff like this only happened on detective shows and in cheesy CIA movies, and she was pretty sure some hot, muscle-y actor wasn’t about to burst in with a SWAT team and rescue her. Some hysterical part of her almost wanted to laugh, but the rest was so terrified she could barely breathe.
She felt a puff of air on her neck, and she stiffened. She told herself it was the wind and repeated the word in her head, over and over, as if she could will it to be true. Then she heard the voice, just inches from her right ear.
“Just relax,” it purred. It was male and patronizing. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
In her mind she was screaming.
She had seen enough low-budget horror movies to know those words usually led straight to death by chainsaw or pickaxe. The screams trickled out as pathetic whimpers, strangled by the wad of coarse cloth pressing against her tongue.
The voice began again. “At least, it’s less messy that way.” It laughed, and she screamed again in frustration.
“Just answer the questions, and you’ll get to go home.”
She stopped.
“Much better. I’m going to take your gag and blindfold off. Promise you won’t scream?” The voice waited. She paused, trembling. Nodded.
She felt movement behind her head as someone untied her gag, then her blindfold. As the fabric fell away, she looked around frantically, searching for some sign of where she was. The room was dark, but there was a single, weak bulb hanging a few feet over her head. It cast a small circle of light around her, and beyond it she could just barely make out shapes in the darkness. There was something large and bulky in front of her, but nothing moved.
She craned her neck and looked behind her, but the voice and hands had slunk back into the shadows.
“Hold still,” it said. “Look straight ahead. Speak only when spoken to.”
She turned and faced the hulking shape, squinting into the darkness. She felt strangely calm now, and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be in shock.
Another bulb switched on ahead of her, then another, and a third, and things started to take shape. The mound in front of her was a large podium, set high on a dais three steps above her. There were three figures behind it, all in black robes with hoods pulled low over their faces. She blinked her eyes rapidly in disbelief. Either she was hallucinating, or she had been kidnapped by a satanic cult that watched way too many horror movies. She figured the odds were about even.
Then the center figure spoke. “Welcome, Sadie Marlowe. You have been summoned to prove your worth in front of the tribunal. We are the Moirae.”
Sadie’s jaw almost hit her chest. The voice was young. And female. The whole thing was some kind of sick joke — hazing, or just a really elaborate prank. Fear gave way to simmering anger.
“I am Clo — ”
“What the hell is a Morray? Someone who celebrates Halloween all year round?” The words were out before Sadie could stop herself.
For a moment there was silence, and then one of the other hoods spoke up.
“It’s moy-ray,” second hood said, with a little huff. “Like the Greek — ”
Sadie heard a loud thunk under the podium, followed by a little yelp of pain.
“Hey, I was just — ”
“Shut. Up,” first hood hissed. Another thunk.
Sadie was trembling again, but not out of fear.
“I am Clotho, the spinner, the giver of life,” first hood started again, voice reverting to the low bellow she probably thought was super intimidating.
“I am Lachesis, the drawer of lots,” second robe said, trying to match her tone and sounding like she might be having a mild stroke.
“I am Atropo, the inevitable.” Third hood kinda pulled it off.
Finally all three spoke at once. “We are the Fates, gatekeepers of the Order of Optimates, protectors of the brotherhood, and avengers of those who move against us.” Their voices echoed eerily in the drafty room. “You have been called before us to demonstrate your intelligence, your pedigree, your integrity, and your worth. If we deem you deserving enough to be one of us, you will be richly rewarded. If you are found wanting, you will be cast out. In either course, you will never speak of what has happened tonight. Swear upon your life, and the lives of your family members, that you will never breathe word of this to anyone.”
Poor Little Dead Girls Page 6
