by Platt, Sean
Perverts were everywhere, and Noella had more or less learned to ignore the bore of their gazes. But this guy wasn’t a pervert. Or at least just a pervert. This guy was terror on two legs.
Noella’s mind flashed to the recent reports which lit the maudlin smiles of every local TV news anchor for the past several months — 12 murdered or missing girls in the last half year. Unsolved crimes with no suspects or clue what the killer looked like. Another chill shot through her core and something whispered in her mind.
He looks like this guy right here.
Noella scanned the counter looking for anything she could use as a weapon. Her eyes settled on the closed drawer where she’d set the knives they used to slice bagels and sandwiches.
Hurry up, Tony!
Noella was aware of the murders, as it was impossible to live in the town and not be. This was upstate New York, not exactly a hotbed of crime, let alone serial murders, so corpses left in the streets tended to attract attention. Hardly a day went by in the shop where someone wasn’t talking about their connection, no matter how tangential, to one of the victims. But the murders weren’t anything Noella gave particular attention to, or worried about. Until now.
Mets Hat stood silently in front of her, hands in his jacket and anxiety all over his face. The longer he stood there, staring, the more convinced she became that she was staring at the serial killer everyone was looking for.
Where in the hell are you, Tony? It doesn’t take that long to smoke a cigarette!
Noella wanted to flee, turn and run as fast as she could, out the back door without so much as a glance behind. But she felt foolish. Her logical side – the side the pills made stronger – whispered: He’s just weird, not a murderer at all. Also, serial killers aren’t usually cute, are they?
If Noella ran from the store, she may as well draw another bull’s-eye on her head. She didn’t need to give the kids at her school yet another reason to make fun of her. And certainly word would get back to them if she ran out of the shop like a crazy person. So she stayed put, praying to whoever might listen that Tony would return and calm the crumbling walls of resolve around her. She glanced back through the door behind her, and into the storage room where the exit door was propped open.
No sign of Tony, yet.
Come on, man. You smoking the whole pack?
Noella’s leg began to shake. She had to pee.
“Find anything you like?” she asked.
The man’s eyes looked past her, toward the back room. The side of her brain that the pills couldn’t calm began its chatter again.
This is it. He’s got a gun in his pocket.
Mets Hat turned his head in an odd way, as if he’d heard the voices in her head. Their eyes met again, and the hair on her arms went angry and standing. Noella glanced at the closed drawer with the knives, then down at the panic button on the floor, maybe four feet away, trying to decide which she should run to first. The knife would help her immediately, if she were able to defend herself. But the button could bring the police, and their guns, eventually.
He stared at her as though he could read the conversation in her mind and feel the weight of her decision. His eyes went narrow, and Noella felt a sudden tear inside her mind. A violation. She wondered if he was really inside her head, or if it was only the side of her mind that never went quiet or stopped playing tricks.
His eyes lit up in a manic glee, which eerily echoed that in the eyes of the man who killed her father 10 years ago tonight. You don’t forget those details, no matter how hard you try.
This is it.
He pulled the gun from his pocket before Noella could reach the panic button.
She screamed as her foot stomped down on the button, anyway.
“Shut up and give me all the money in your register!” he yelled, pulling a thin canvas bag from inside his jacket, and throwing it into her arms.
Noella stared at the bag, her mind reeling as a fog of terror swallowed her ability to move.
“Open the register!” the man growled, thrusting the gun inches from her face.
Oh God, he’s not even wearing a mask! He’s gonna shoot me so there are no witnesses.
Noella stood, frozen to the spot.
Move, move, move, just do what he says!
But she couldn’t. And she became certain that in her fear of doing anything which would get her shot, he would become frustrated enough to pull the trigger.
“Now!” the man screamed again, and Noella jumped.
Just stay calm, give him what he wants, and hopefully he will leave.
Tony’s voice called from the back, surprising both her and the robber.
“Did you say something?” Tony asked as he stepped from the back room, reeking of smoke, pulling white earbuds from his ears. Tony’s eyes widened in shock, bouncing from the gun to Noella, then back.
He turned, and made it one hastened pace toward the back room before Mets Hat pulled the trigger and shot Tony in the back of the head. The gunshot thundered through the coffee shop and pierced Noella’s ears. She cried out, holding her hands over her ears, staring at Tony as he stumbled a few steps, then made a final sideways shuffle. He dropped, face cracking ceramic in a bloody crunch.
Noella cried out, her voice and breath threatening to leave her.
She stared at Tony’s dead body, and flashed back a decade, seeing her father die in front of her.
No, no, no.
She turned to Mets Hat, tears in her eyes. “Please don’t kill me,” she begged.
He looked more surprised than Noella. She had expected him to pull the trigger since she first saw death in his eyes. He obviously hadn’t been planning to . . . until now.
He opened his mouth but said nothing. The death in his eyes retreated, leaving behind a broken shell of emotion. “Oh my God . . . What did I do?”
His eyes darted back and forth, panicked, trying to figure out what he was going to do now. He just killed a man. And now he had to determine whether to flee or take care of the only witness. Noella was frozen, not daring an inch, for fear of spooking Death to take another shot.
He’s going to kill you.
You saw his face. You saw him kill someone. He can’t let you live.
Their eyes locked, and he looked down at the gun in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, raising the gun to her head.
* * * *
CHAPTER TWO
Yesterday morning…
Thursday, October 25
Noella reluctantly woke to reality.
She far preferred her dream world to this one. In her dreams, her dad was still alive, and she didn’t have to live with her Aunt Josie and Josie’s jerky boyfriend, Randy. At times, her dreams seemed solely designed to remind her how much of a nightmare her reality had become.
She opened her eyes to the sliver of light spilling through her parted curtains, and thought of her father, Thomas.
It had been 10 years today since his eyes closed forever, yet on mornings like this, in the lingering aftermath of the dreams, 10 years ago seemed like yesterday, and the wounds of grief still fresh.
Noella faced the window, trying to work up the courage to start her day. Though she got six hours of sleep, it felt more like four. Her head was throbbing, again, and she was feeling groggy. Today was gonna be a long day. She reached for her bottle of pills, palmed one into her mouth, and then took a sip of water from the water bottle on her nightstand.
A pill a day keeps the voices away.
She lay back down, figuring she had about 10 minutes before she needed to start getting ready. Josie didn’t have to be to work for another hour, so Noella had time to maybe catch a catnap.
She was debating whether or not it was better to just get up, or catch a few more Z’s, and have to go through the whole waking up thing all over again. A knock on the door bolted her upright in bed. She could practically smell the oh gross of Randy’s Old Spice on the other side.
He pounded on the door again, then yelled, �
�You ready yet? I’ve gotta get to work. I’m taking you to school, and we’re outta’ here in five.”
Noella’s feet hit the carpet. What? Nobody told me! She opened the door and poked her head into the hallway where Randy was standing, dressed in his uniform and ready to go.
“I thought Aunt Josie was taking me to school, today. How am I supposed to shower and get ready in five minutes?!”
“Nope, she’s come down with something and is laid up in bed, so now you get to ride with me in the cruiser.”
Great.
Just what she needed: to be driven to school with her aunt’s boyfriend in the police cruiser, again. Last time he dropped her off, she tried to keep her head down and sneak out of the car unnoticed. Randy, being the big jerk he was, waited until she was halfway out of the car and “accidentally” blurted the siren. Right in front of all the kids hanging out in front of the school. They all looked, pointed, and laughed. It was so humiliating! Given her history, and the events from two years earlier, the last thing Noella needed was to be brought to school in a cop car. It reminded people of the things she hoped they’d someday forget if she could manage to fly under the radar long enough.
“I wish someone woulda told me I had to be up early,” she said.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Missy. I’ll tell Josie to try and schedule her sickness in advance from now on so Princess Noella’s not inconvenienced.”
Princess Noella?! She hated when he said crap like that. She was about as far as you could be from a princess, especially given all the rich, stuck-up snobs in her school. Those girls are princesses!
Randy’s voice cracked into a laugh. “Get up, giddy-up, and get in the shower. No one was ever around to wake me and I learned to unbury my head from the covers just fine. Five minutes is more than enough time. It’s not like you’ve got more than four outfits. Pick one, rub some Teen Spirit on your stink patches, and get downstairs before I turn the engine.”
“10 minutes, Randy.” Noella growled. “You’re telling me you couldn’t have given me 10 minutes?”
Anger flashed on his face and his voice went electric. “Excuse me? Is that how you talk to someone offering to do something nice for you? Sheesh, kids today are so ungrateful!”
Noella stared at Randy, holding his eyes and making him gaze into the hate she could never voice. Sometimes, she wished he would just hit her, so maybe Josie would wake up and see what a jerk he was. But Randy had been too cool to ever let his anger get that out of hand. He somehow managed to snow Josie over, balancing his verbal abuse evenly with this charm, but Noella could see, maybe even feel, the monster lurking below, the monster that fed on their misery and drank theirs like a drunk in an alley. Between his erratic mood swings, obsessive compulsive attention to detail, and penchant for ruling the roost like a prison warden, their lives always revolved around not doing anything to set Randy off. It was like constantly walking on a carpet of eggshells. And for some reason this morning, she felt like dancing all over them and cracking them to powder, just to see if she could push him over the edge.
His flash of anger vanished, replaced by a wide, faux smile barely masking his contempt. “Well, you could just take the bus,” he said, his smile a hook, waiting to see what it might catch.
“You know I don’t like to take the bus,” Noella said.
“That’s your fault. You just need to learn how to stand up to those bitches. Problem with you, Noella, other than your questionable wardrobe of funeral attire, is that you let life happen. Girls ain’t gonna pick on you if you do something to change it.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Noella said. “What do you know about what I’ve gotta put up with?”
“Oh, right,” Randy sarcastically nodded. “What do I know? I’m just a deputy. What would I know about handling violent people? Take the bus, and learn to stand up for yourself. Otherwise bullies are gonna be pushing you around forever. Mark my words, Missy.”
Missy... another one of the things he said which had a way of crawling under her skin and burrowing into her brain.
“Fine, I’ll take the bus,” Noella said to the biggest bully she knew.
It was just as well. The girls on the bus were cruel, but at least the trip was short. Going to school with frizzy hair and feeling funky was not an option. She’d rather put up with a few minutes of catty crap than feel like crap all day. Besides, the girls on the bus were in the minor leagues when it came to her list of enemies. Her real enemies were far too popular to ever be caught dead on the bus. They either took new cars their parents got them, or rode with their boyfriends (in cars bought by the his parents). So maybe the bus wasn’t as bad as she remembered.
“Well then, I’m outta here,” Randy said. “Remember, if you kill one of the girls, I’ll have to arrest you, but I promise you won’t get grounded at home. So try and keep it to fists and hair pulling, eh?” Randy winked, then disappeared down the stairs and out the front door.
Noella rolled her eyes and shut her door, his Old Spice still lingering in her nostrils.
**
Noella showered and then texted Mako to let her know she would be joining her on the bus today. They didn’t get to see much of each other this year, since they only shared one class, so that would be cool. Noella checked in on Josie long enough to see her shape buried under the covers, and then raced from the house. The morning air was crisp and cold. Dark clouds hung over the street as if they’d been waiting for her to step outside.
God, it better not rain... or snow.
She considered going back inside to get her umbrella, but sometimes the bus liked to come early, so she locked the door instead. She turned around and stopped cold, surprised to see an extra long green and yellow moving truck blocking the house across the street, the one that had been vacant ever since her best friend Sam,moved a half mile away last summer.
As though she had all the time in the world, Noella trotted across the street, then peeked around the back of the truck. It was locked up tight. By the looks of it, the house was, too. But the “For Sale” sign was gone, so someone was definitely moving into the place. She hoped it would be someone cool, though odds of that happening seemed pretty remote. In fact, other than Sam, fate had a rather dark sense of humor when it came to choosing her neighbors. Her block sometimes seemed like a Who’s Who of Weird, from the old man who liked to walk outside in nothing but his underwear, to the militant nut-job that always gave her the stink-eye and yelled racist comments at people who walked on his lawn, to the “family” that she was pretty sure was running a meth lab, to the creepy guy who seemed waaaay too interested in everyone’s business, she was glad she didn’t have to spend a lot of time outdoors.
And then there were the kids.
Kids around here, with the exception of her two friends, were either popular rich kids who looked down on anyone different than them, or testosterone-pumped steroid cases with raging homophobia. And in some cases, you got the worst of both worlds, steroid-case rich kids. While there were other groups, the artsy hipsters, the rockers, the emos and goths, the nerds, and a few other groups, she didn’t really fit in with any of them. Though most people looked at her and thought goth chick, she never really fit in with them, either.
Noella was truly a unique freak, not belonging or fitting in with any group. Alone, as she’d always been. And most days she liked it. But her birthday was not one of those days.
Noella looked up and saw Mako at the end of the block, tapping her foot impatiently.
“Come on!” she said.
“Sorry!” Noella yelled, throwing her arms around her in a big hug.
Most days felt like a reunion. Noella and Mako rarely saw one another outside school. Randy was a jerk, and yanked the leash whenever he could, but the real problem was that Mako’s parents were ridiculously strict, even for old school Japanese parents. Most days, Mako could only leave the house for school or violin practice. Even though she and Noella lived just one block apart, Noella had only been past her front door
a few times.
Mako was a near slave to her violin, with 12 hours of practice per week, and a quarterly performance to prove the time, and money, was well-spent. She played like an angel, but half the time hated it like the devil, and played like she was trying to prove it. Mako called her style, Violince. Of course, she never dared to play like that for her parents, or they would freak the frick out out.
Violince sounded like its name, violent strings, but there was a desperate, elegant beauty to Mako’s playing that made Noella want to happy cry.
“So how’s it going on your almost birthday,” Mako asked.
“Josie’s sick, and Randy was a jerk this morning.”
“Is your aunt too sick to celebrate tomorrow?”
Noella shook her head. “I dunno, she was under the covers when I left. She never stays home, so I’m guessing she’s feeling super crappy.”
Mako nodded. “Ah, that’s why you’re riding the bus. And here I thought you just wanted my company.”
“Yup, that and I wanted to see if there were new developments in peer humiliation since the last time I took advantage of the district’s transportation.”
Mako laughed. “So are you doing anything tomorrow? Have any plans, other than taking care of your aunt?”
“Probably gonna stare at the wall for a few hours,” Noella said with a grin. “You know how I am on my birthday. And besides, tomorrow is 10 years since …” Noella trailed off, not wanting, or needing, to finish the sentence. Mako knew Noella as well as anyone could.
“What about Sam?” Mako asked. “Maybe the two of you could do something together? Maybe you can finally ask him out. You don’t have to wait for the boy to ask, ya’ know?”
“Shut. Up,” Noella said, shooting daggers at Mako. “I don’t like him like that.”
