Shade Me

by Jennifer Brown

  Even though it was fall and the temperature outside was pretty mild, it was toasty inside my car when I slid in. But I welcomed the warmth, not realizing until it began to seep into my skin how chilled my fingers and toes were. Like the freezing-out from the others had somehow wormed its way into me. Well, screw them, I thought. They could judge all they wanted. They could accuse me of whatever they wanted. They could talk. I had work to do.

  I fired up my engine and drove straight to the hospital.

  DRU WAS SITTING by Peyton’s bedside. I didn’t realize until I was in the room that I’d expected to see him there.

  He looked up when I came in. His face was weary but brightened with a smile as soon as he saw me.

  “Hey,” he whispered, getting up. He hadn’t shaved, his stubble reminding me a little of Chris Martinez. I felt choked with violet and yellow and gray shards flying at me in a confusing blast. Who was Dru, really, and who was I when I was with him?

  “Hey.”

  He came around the bed and, with no hesitation, scooped his arm around my waist and pulled me into him. His arm was strong and warm against my back, and while it still felt weird to be doing this at Peyton’s bedside, it felt comfortable now somehow, blasting the shards away. Like I belonged there, in the crook of his arm. He leaned in and kissed me, both of us swaying a bit, my back arched over his forearm.

  “Hey,” he said again when he was done, his lips still close enough to tickle mine when they moved. He relaxed his arm so that I lowered myself off my toes. “I wasn’t expecting you yet.” He looked at his watch. “Isn’t school still on?”

  “Technically,” I said. “But it’s lunch shift, and I wanted to see Peyton.”

  His arm slipped around me again, and he pulled my hips to meet his. “I think you meant you wanted to see me.”

  “You, too,” I said. “But I did come to see her. How’s she doing?”

  He released me and went back to his chair, shaking his head. “No change. I thought maybe she fluttered her eyelids earlier, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe I was wanting it too much.”

  I glanced at the machines behind her bed, hoping that maybe he had seen movement and she had taken a turn for the better. But the crimson still bled from the readouts. My mom’s arm, flung sideways in a pool of her own blood, the numbers on her watch pulsing slower and slower . . . I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on Peyton’s face when I opened them again.

  “So where have you been?” Dru asked. “I tried to call you last night.”

  I had decided that I wouldn’t tell Dru about where I’d been. I had gone back and forth with it in my mind. I didn’t know how much of what Luna said was true. Maybe he knew about the business, about Peyton, and was keeping it a secret from me out of embarrassment. Or maybe she was lying and he knew nothing. I had suspicions, but no proof that his mom’s business was directly related to Peyton’s attack. What right did I have to yank his family skeletons out of their closets?

  But then there was the Luna problem. I wondered if Dru knew that she was an escort. A master at imitating people. A drug dealer. I wondered if anyone in the family knew. And I especially wondered if he knew that she had turned him in.

  But, again, no proof. Not yet. Just a hunch, some cryptic information from a john, and a threat that Luna would undoubtedly deny until the day she died if I were to out her. Oh, and my synesthesia. I was not about to open that can of worms. Not with Dru.

  “Nowhere,” I said. “I was tired. I went to bed.”

  Dru cocked his head to one side disbelievingly. “Nikki. You have a black eye and a cut on your cheek. You didn’t get that in bed.”

  I touched my cheek tenderly. It still hurt like hell, and just touching it reminded me of that disgusting slug Stefan. I wanted to jack his nose again, watch the blood spurt, just for fun.

  “Oh,” I said. “The dojang. Sparring got a little out of hand, I guess. No big deal. I’ve been hit harder.”

  He stared at me for a moment longer, and I could see the wheels turning inside his head. Mint-green clouds above us. He was trying to decide if he should believe me. I set my jaw and stared at him until I’d pushed the clouds away. Eventually he turned his eyes back to Peyton.

  There was a rustle of movement in the doorway. “Oh, gosh, what a surprise,” a familiar voice said. I turned just in time to see Luna coming into the room, carrying a giant stuffed bear. “The two lovebirds getting their mating dance on at my sister’s deathbed. How very white-trash romance of you.”

  Dru’s eyes hardened. “Don’t be gross, Luna.”

  She sat the bear in the other visitor’s chair and brushed her hands off, her Cartier bracelets clinking together with the movement. “I’m not the one using Peyton’s hospital room for a motel room. Talk about gross. Ghoul.”

  “What do you want?” Dru asked in a tired voice.

  Luna slipped me a sideways glance. She wanted to send a message that she was watching, I knew. She wanted to ferret out what I had told him. But of course Dru knew none of this. She pinned a brilliant, very whitened, smile to her face.

  “I just want to see how my sister is doing,” she said. She walked over to Peyton and stroked her hair, pushing wisps of it behind Peyton’s ears. She even leaned in and kissed Peyton on the cheek. It might have been tender and sweet had it not been Luna. “She looks god-awful,” she said, and while she said it in a concerned voice, I could hear the cattiness beneath. The playacting. Damn, Luna was one hell of an actress.

  “I should go,” I said, pointing toward the door. “I should get back to school.”

  “Already?” Dru asked, but at the same time, Luna, who was still looking down at her sister, said, “Yes, you should.”

  “What the hell, Luna?” Dru said, but I had turned to leave, and I let it go. Let them have their family squabble. If I got too in the middle of it, I would spill what I knew.

  It was a good time for me to leave anyway. Lunch shift was long over, and already I was late to sixth period. Not that I cared much about Shakespeare or whatever the hell we were learning in that stupid class, and at least I was going back, which was better than I usually managed.

  I hurried through the hospital, my stomach rumbling from missing lunch, and headed toward the parking lot. I unlocked my car, got inside, started to put my key in the ignition, and stopped cold. There was a Post-it note stuck to the ignition.

  I pulled it off.

  Don’t ever doubt where and how I can get to you, it said, the bumpy gray-and-black words undulating on the pink scrap of paper.

  Luna had been in my car. My locked car. How had she done that?

  Clearly, Luna was out to prove to me that her threat was not idle. She could get to me. And she would, if that was what she needed to do to protect herself. Luna did not want to be found out. And she was willing to go to pretty great lengths to keep it that way.

  I balled up the paper and tossed it backward out the window so that it came to a landing out in the center of the parking lot aisle.

  Luna had her messages to send; I had mine.

  22

  LUNA SHOWED UP pretty much everywhere for the rest of the week, which meant she was willing to go way out of her way to make her point.

  One day, I came out of a bathroom stall, and there she was, drawing lipstick on her fragile little mouth—ragemonster red—watching me in the mirror as I washed my hands.

  “Boo,” she said, twisting her half-lipsticked mouth into a grin.

  “Fuck off, Luna,” I said, ripping off a paper towel and pushing back out into the hallway. I tried to look as if I couldn’t care less that she was following me, but on the inside I was a little disturbed. I could kick ass, but there was a difference between Stefan the Slug and Luna Fairchild the ghost.

  The next day, she appeared outside my seventh-period classroom, leaning against a locker, not even bothering to hide the hatred in her eyes.

  “How does it feel to know someone wants you gone?” she asked as I walked by. I ignored her an
d had to restrain myself from peering back over my shoulder to make sure she hadn’t followed me.

  I had gone to my locker and gotten my stuff, and by the time I got to my car, she was already there, sitting on the trunk.

  “Get off,” I said, again trying to be nonchalant, but feeling a little like I was failing.

  “I would love to see you do something about it,” she said. She lay back against my rear window, resting her head in her hands.

  In my mind, I took two steps toward the car and axe-kicked her right in the gut, so hard it dented the trunk lid beneath her. But in reality, I simply got into my car and started the engine.

  She still didn’t move.

  God, the girl had balls.

  I sat for a second in the driver’s seat, unsure what to do. Unsure what war I was willing to wage here. Every day, Luna proved herself to be scarier than the day before. But every day she tempted me to be scary, too.

  I finally decided to put the car into reverse and ease out of the space. Luna felt the roll of the wheels and hopped off the trunk, storming around to my side of the car, muscles bulging on the sides of her neck.

  “You have no idea who you’re messing with!” she screamed, and even though my window was rolled up, I heard her loud and clear.

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, there was a pot of coffee already brewed when I came down for breakfast. Dad must have gotten up early. Thank goodness. The stuff with Luna had me more than a little freaked out. The thought of Dad being up and able to protect me while I slept comforted me.

  I hadn’t talked to Dru since the hospital on Monday afternoon. He’d been in meetings with his lawyers but hoped to be able to get together over the weekend. We had plans to meet up at his apartment like we had before. I tried to wave off the dread of a long school day ahead of me, knowing that the payoff would be to see him again. I could almost smell his skin if I thought about it really hard. I could almost taste the salt of his sweat. I wanted to taste it again, even if part of me was unsure what I was doing with him, and who he really was underneath.

  I’d made up for missing Dru by going to see Peyton every night. Of course, there was no change, except most of the flowers had begun to wilt and had been removed. Someone had given Peyton a bath, had cleaned her up a little. I almost thought I saw some makeup on her face again and wondered if Luna had done it. Maybe the girl had one tiny devoted bone in her body.

  Still, when I left the hospital, I felt followed. Could almost hear footsteps behind me in the parking lot, starting when I started, stopping when I stopped. Stealth wasn’t exactly Luna’s style, though, and there was the little matter of Peyton’s attacker still being out there. I knew Luna was somehow behind it, but there was no way the girl had done it herself. Peyton was small, but Luna was smaller.

  Dad came into the kitchen, smelling like his morning shower, just as I sat down with a muffin and coffee.

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” he said, opening the fridge. He began assembling a green smoothie, his usual. “You’re ready to go early.”

  I took a bite of the muffin. “Want to get this week over with,” I said around the bite. I took a sip of coffee.

  “Hear, hear,” Dad said, capping the blender and starting it up.

  I took another bite, washed it down with the coffee, then dumped some extra sweetener into the cup. Dad must have gotten overexcited with the grounds again—it was bitter. “Listen, I have a shoot in San Diego this weekend. I’m leaving this morning. Will obviously be staying down there. I won’t be back until Tuesday. I trust you will still go to school while I’m gone?”

  “Would you stay home if I said I wouldn’t?”

  He poured the smoothie into a cup and sighed. “Come on, Nikki. You know I can’t.”

  “I know,” I said, disheartened. Dad wouldn’t stay around to parent me even if I desperately needed it. I looked him over—jeans and flip-flops, a V-neck tee that showed off a little tuft of chest hair, tan face with a boyish look to it. He was handsome. Still looked young. Why wouldn’t he just settle down already? “Don’t worry. I’ll go. I want to graduate and get the hell out of there.”

  “Good, that’s the spirit,” he said. He came over and planted a kiss on my head. “You sure you’re okay?”

  I sipped my coffee and took another bite of muffin. I was starting to think neither one of them tasted all that great after all. “Yeah, why?”

  Something felt funny about my mouth. My lips. They were numb. My thoughts were slow. And the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window suddenly seemed very bright, and like it was dripping in through the windows rather than shining through it.

  “Just not like you to be up early enough to make yourself coffee before school,” he said as he disappeared behind me. “I’ll see you Tuesday.” I heard the front door shut, struggling all the while to make sense of his words. I knew what I’d just heard was bad but couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

  “Dad,” I said, or maybe I only thought I said it, because I wasn’t entirely sure that my mouth was working. The room had begun to spin. “Dad,” I tried to say again, but he was gone.

  I tried again to stand up, my hands slipping on the table and knocking the coffee to the floor. The plate that the muffin had been on shattered on the tile, but the sound came to me muted and from far away. Panic set in as I tried to move my legs around the chair, catching the chair leg and sending it clattering backward as well.

  “Oh, God, help,” I said, but my breathing had gotten too shallow to put any effort behind the words.

  My heart pounded and my ears rang, but suddenly I felt so weak, so very weak. I vomited down the front of my shirt, felt my legs give out beneath me, and then everything went black.

  THE NEXT SENSATION I was aware of was something hitting my face. Repeatedly. Hard. But I couldn’t feel any pain. Just the movement, the pressure of being struck.

  “Jesus, wake up already. Why the hell won’t you wake up? I didn’t put that much in it.”

  I tried to open my eyes, but they felt cemented shut. My head ached, too, as if it was being pried open like a cantaloupe. I groaned.

  “It’s about time,” the voice said, and I felt the sensation of being struck again.

  I put all my concentration behind it and finally opened my eyes. Luna Fairchild was bent over me, her blurry face taking up all my vision. Immediately, the panic was back, but my limbs still weren’t working. I needed to be ready to fight, but how could I?

  “Wakey, wakey,” she said, her sweet voice sounding almost shrill as my ears cleared from whatever drugs I’d been given.

  “What—” I started, with no clue of how I was planning to finish that question. I closed my eyes again, swallowed. Thirsty. I was so very thirsty.

  “Shut up,” she said. “You don’t get to talk here.”

  “Where—” The word tumbled out of my mouth. This time the slap hurt, but only in a distant sort of way. I whimpered and brought my hand to my face. It rested against my cheek heavily. Thank God, my arm was working now.

  “I said shut up,” she said. “Of course you don’t know where you are. That’s the point. You are not a Hollis, no matter what you might think.”

  “Who—” I winced before the slap came. In a weird way, the pain was bringing me back to lucidity.

  “If you were truly my sister’s friend, you would know where you are. You would have been here before. Clearly, my brother doesn’t think enough of you to bring you home to meet the family. Which I think is kind of piggish, but whatever floats your skanky little boat.”

  Home? I was in Hollis Mansion? I turned my head and blinked hard. An ornate bookshelf filled my vision, leather-bound books and gold paperweights and little porcelain doodads lining it, but they were undulating, switching places. A dormant fireplace hunched next to it, the brass tools reflecting the lamplight she’d turned on, looking very serpentine. A rainbow floated above me, twisting, surging, bursting, my colors exploding in confusion.

  She slapped me again. I felt the itc
h to slap her back but knew my limbs would never cooperate for such a movement. “Are you listening?” I turned my eyes to her, managed a nod. “Good. So here’s the deal. I’ve been warning you all week to stay out of my family’s business. Have you listened? No. There you are, hanging out at Peyton’s bedside, just like two happy little twins. Did you know that people used to think Peyton and I were twins? We looked so much alike. Don’t you think that’s weird? We’re not even related, right? But we were sisters. Sisters.”

  “Half sisters,” I corrected, my voice croaky and dry.

  Again with the slap, and this time my hands jerked up. I was thinking clearer. I was hearing clearer. I was getting angry. Who the hell was Luna to sneak into my kitchen, drug me, and kidnap me? I’d played along with her game up until now. But I was done letting Luna win.

  “I said shut up!” she yelled. “I spent my whole damn life with my useless father in his disgusting little rental house, knowing I belonged somewhere better. Somewhere that lived up to my lifestyle demands. My mother was here, beautiful and rich and perfect and happy, and raising two kids. They had what I deserved, and I did everything I could to get it.”

  “And now you have it,” I said, shocked to hear a full sentence come out of my mouth. I also felt like I could maybe lift my throbbing head now. I could feel my elbows and heels pressing into the floor. Things were coming back into focus.

  Her eyes, which I’d once thought of as reptilian, narrowed into reddening slits. “And Peyton was taking it all,” she said. “She had to stick her nose into business it didn’t belong in. She knew too much, and I was going to lose everything I’d worked for to some ridiculous half sister.”

  I knew it. Luna wasn’t trying to help Peyton get out of the escort business. She was trying to take over her life. “So you attacked her. Why? Because you’re selfish?”

  Luna’s face split into an evil smile, and she laughed out loud. “Aren’t you listening at all? Or are you really so stupid you think that this is all about me?” She slapped me again. It burned, and the anger seethed inside my chest. I had to wait for just the right time to pounce. “Peyton Hollis, the perfect, knew too much. And now, guess who else knows too much, Nikki Kill?” She leaned in close. “This is your last warning. Get out of my business. Leave my brother alone, leave me alone. Or next time I will kill you.”