by A. E. Rought
Groaning, I lean back in the chair. One step ahead of us again.
The notebook feels lighter when I pull it from the pile, mocking me with how inadequate I am to the situation I’ve created. Especially now that doubt over Paul has crept in. Emma is in danger, and I put her there. The ridiculous urge to see her, to touch her, hear her voice burns through me. I scoop up the phone to call her and see the message light blinking.
One message is from Hailey. Might as well walk through hell first. I tap the screen, and read: The files aren’t my only ammunition. Come back to me and make it easier on yourself, easier on us.
There is no us. I’m not going to dignify her threat with a response. If Mom was alive, she would be proud of me. I’ve followed two of her lessons tonight. First, don’t hit girls. And second, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
Emma’s message holds so much more promise. I click on the thread and read: A tornado couldn’t keep us apart. I meant it when I said I feel better with you, and I’m sorry I never said thank you. I really do love you, Alex.
I want her to love me. I want those words to be real, not the cry in the lab. After tapping in the reply field, I type: Please don’t thank me for something so selfish. I love you too.
After another Hailey confrontation, I need to run, box, beat something the hell up. And I feel like I have less than a week to solve the puzzle of Emma’s mood flip and memory loss. What if we give her the same dose, and charge, and she flips again? What if it’s worse this time? We might not get her back.
What if it’s Paul’s fault?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Late Monday morning of Christmas break, Emma and I have a couple days of near normalcy before the formula and energy spike degrade. Despite a nagging feeling deep in my gut, Em and I have let our guards down a little – she hasn’t had another episode of memory loss or bizarre behavior. Maybe Paul was right, someone was trying to set him up, and Emma’s emotional break was a symptom of her “rebooting”. I can’t quite believe it’s over, but I hope it is.
The winter weather has turned to raging winds, frigid temps, and dumping snow in inches per hour. If this keeps up, we’ll have another “Winter of 1978” as Grandpa calls it, with three feet of snow in three days. Newscasters are predicting ice jams and floods, too. Michigan winters are not for the wimpy.
Sitting in my bedroom, I mull over everything that’s happened, for the hundredth time. So many pieces just don’t fit in this puzzle. Why Hailey showed up at Bree’s, who hurt Emma, why she flipped out. And the damn video in Paul’s email. I pull on a sweatshirt, and knock my phone from the nightstand.
It comes to life on the floor, notifying me of a phone call. The screen throws a familiar name at me:
Trent Landry.
What does he want?
Tapping the phone icon, I answer, “Hello?”
“Hey, Alex.” His voice sounds odd, a fuzzy edge to it. “I wanted to call and apologize for the other day at the gym. I was being an ass.”
“Ya think?”
“Sure, rub it in,” he says. “There’s still time to change your mind and come to the Reindeer Games with Hailey and me.”
“I’m not changing my mind, Trent. And speaking of your dastardly duo, Hailey said you two met up after she made a special appearance at my friend’s party. How was pizza on Christmas Eve?”
“Greasy,” he answers, no hesitation in his response. “It always is there. And better than being home alone while my parents are at the country club party. You should’ve come with. It would’ve been like old times.”
“The old times are old for a reason,” I say. “I’m not the Sadony sap I used to be.”
“So I’ve noticed. You should bring your girl and show her off to your old friends.”
“For the last time, man. The Reindeer Games isn’t going to happen.”
“You don’t want to miss it,” he pauses, “Later, Alex.”
“Bye, Trent.”
I stare at the phone after he disconnects the call. The Reindeer Games is very important to Trent and Hailey. Their agenda only made finding someone to blame for Emma’s accident harder – he corroborated Hailey’s alibi. He could be lying, though. They both could.
I hit the browser button on my phone and find the number for Papa’s Pizza, and press to dial. After the second ring, the owner Mr Carlson answers. “Papa’s Pizza. We’re not open for service until lunch.”
“I know, sir,” I say. “I was wondering if you could answer a question for me.”
“I can try.”
“Were you open Christmas Eve?”
“Yes. Might not be again, though. The Sadony kids didn’t want to leave when I decided to close early.”
“Sounds like them.” I was in that group one New Year’s Eve. Mr Carlson threatened to call the police to get us out. “Did you happen to notice if Hailey Westmore – tall, thin, dark hair – was there?”
“The girl with the black glasses, acts like she owns the place? Yeah, sitting in her normal booth with some boy who looked like he should be selling toothpaste.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr Carlson.”
“Yep,” he says, and disconnects the call.
They really were there. Hailey might lie, Trent might lie, but why would the owner of the pizza shop? The only other person lately, with any taint of doubt, is Paul. Deep-seated denial rears up – a big part of me doesn’t want to believe Paul is trying to finish the job my father started. If he wanted Emma dead, he wouldn’t have helped me revive her.
Too many questions, and the time until Emma’s next injection slips away.
Bree and Emma are at the Ransoms’ having “girl time” on the insistence of her mother – long distance, even. Jason occupies one corner of a ratty sofa in his basement, while I hold down the other, “blowing shit up video game style” as Jason likes to say.
“Seriously?” I ask. A sweep of the controller toward my body displays the irony of us shooting the undead. Something entirely lost on Jason. “Zombies?”
“Hell yes! You have any idea how many hours I had to play to unlock this level?”
“No clue.” And I really don’t want one.
“Red Bull and Doritos for an entire night!”
“Do they make a badge of honor for that?”
“Nope.” He blasts through a group of the undead. “You get to make your own for achievements unlocked on the game, though. Our buddy Mike Miller’s on here, too, his gamer tag is a-chicken-dinner. His badges all have chicken legs. He’s hilarious!”
“If I had a game system, I would add him.”
“So,” Jason says, eyes on the screen, thumbs amazingly functioning at high speed while he talks, “I’ve been thinking.”
“A dangerous pastime.”
“Ha!” Jason shoots my character in the game, so I have to wait to respawn. “That’s for being a smartass.”
“Well, what have you been thinking about?”
“Life.” The irony of me respawning in the game, and Emma and I “respawning” in real life seems lost on him, too. “I’m not sure how long I’ve got before I start to…” His sentence chokes off, and to cover it up he swigs an energy drink. “But I’m glad you and Emma have second chances. Bree and I know, obviously Paul and that Hailey chick do. I know you’re going to hate this idea, but you’ve got to tell her parents.”
“I think I would rather die.”
“Your ex seems capable of arranging that.” He holds out the energy drink can, and I refuse. “Think about it. How are you going to hide that from her mom? That woman is as close to omnipresent as it gets.”
Even when she’s in the tropics.
“You have any suggestion on how to do that?” It was bad enough with Jason in the lab. “Bring them down to Ascension, make it a family event? Her mom can bake lightning-shaped cookies.”
“Don’t be an ass.” He snipes my character in the game again. Apparently, going against Jason in the real world mean
s you get dead in his game world. “They don’t need to know the shady stuff your dad did to you. I’m your best friend and I don’t want to know the shady stuff he did. But they need to know what’s going on with Emma.”
“When did you get so sensible?” In the middle of his zombie kill streak, I shoot his character. Call it retaliation.
“When I realized I had a swiftly depreciating shelf life.”
“Since you brought it up,” I say, and steal a glance at him, “how are you feeling?”
“Today is a better day pain-wise, but the stiffness and aches aren’t gone. And fuck, man,” he lobs a grenade in the game and smiles when it rains zombie parts, “the meds they put me on tear up my gut.”
“Can’t tell the way you’re guzzling that drink,” I tease.
“Very funny.” Blam! I sit and wait while my character respawns after his snipe-attack.
We play another round, me dying numerous spectacular deaths at the business end of Jason’s weapon in the game. “While on the general ‘thinking’ and uncomfortable things topics,” Jason says, “What’s been up with your ex? I haven’t heard you bitch about her lately.”
“She showed up at the lab, demanded I leave Emma or give her half my company.”
“Wow.” He stretches, and then says, “She doesn’t want much, does she?”
“Only my soul.”
“My other question,” Jason continues, “since I know your soul and Emma aren’t going anywhere. Who the hell has pizza on Christmas Eve? Do you think she had something to do with Emma’s accident?”
“With Hailey, anything is possible. She drove the other way when she left, though. You and I both know there are no other ways onto that private drive the car sat on. Someone else was already there.”
“Doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved somehow.” Jason turns from the video game and holds me in a long glance.
Doesn’t mean Paul wasn’t either. If that video was on his computer, he could’ve been in that car. I hate how suspicious I’ve become of him. He’s the only one I can count on for our weekly procedures, and the one in control of my inheritance and company. He’s the one who looked so softly at the picture of my mother, and the one trying to level out my weekly highs and lows.
Outside the wind howls, screeching in the metal edging around the window sill a few feet away. The lights flicker, and Jason swears at the TV. “This is going to go down as the worst winter in history.”
“Nope. My Grandpa told me all about the Winter of ’78, when the plows were caught in snowdrifts and most of Muskegon County shut down for days.”
“Yeah? Did he walk ten miles to school every day, uphill both ways through that snow?”
“I think,” I reply as my phone rings, “that it was only five miles uphill both ways.”
Jason laughs, pauses the game and stretches his hands while I dig my phone out and check the ID screen. Emma Gentry, it reads.
“Hey, Em,” I say, after I flick the icon to answer the call. “How’s Girl’s Day?”
“OK, I guess,” she replies. “This morning we took down Christmas, and after they get home from getting groceries, we’re going to clean the house top to bottom, according to Bree’s mom. Now the power’s flickering and I don’t want to be here alone in the dark.”
“Well, if the power goes out, I will pick you up and take you to my grandparents’. They have wood heat. They can’t argue about me making sure you’re safe and not a victim of frostbite, right?”
“Right,” she agrees.
The power does more than flicker this time. The lights die, plunging the neighborhood into the dim light of an afternoon storm. Jason mutters something colorful about his place in the game, then with a whumping sound, the powers surges back to life.
“Did you see that?” she almost whispers.
“Yeah. It happened here, too.” I walk to the window, it’s at ground level so I’m looking up into Jason’s neighborhood. “The other houses are all lit here. How is it there?”
“I don’t know. But I hear the doorbell.” Muffled sounds come from her side of the phone, like a bunch of fabric getting shoved around. “I can’t see through the snow. Must be the neighbor Mrs Peterson – Bree said she’s a worrier. Hang on a second.”
Emma muffles the phone again. The door hinges creak loud enough for me to hear, then a shriek comes through, and what sounds like the phone clattering to the ground.
“Emma?” I spin and snap my fingers at Jason. His head pops up, and he appears ready to bash me for distracting him, then he focuses on my face and he puts the controller down. I have the phone shoved to my ear to hear what’s going on at the Ransoms’. There’s coughing, and someone talking. “Emma!” I shout into the mouthpiece.
Someone disconnects the call.
“Aw crap,” Jason blurts. “I don’t like that I can read you this well already. I’ll text Bree and grab my coat. Ma!” he shouts up the basement stairs. “We’re headed out!”
Wordlessly he follows me out the slider doors and into the snow behind the house. It’s a short, six step climb to the garage, and the cars. His found–on-road dead Bronco sits, hood open in the back, pieces of its engine spread on a tarp beside it on the concrete floor. “So,” Jason says, “I guess you’re driving.”
“I’ll leave you at Bree’s if we don’t find her there,” I say and remotely unlock the Acura’s doors. “You guys can take care of Em when she gets in if she’s not already there.”
“What? You don’t need a wingman?”
“The shit is going down, and I need someone capable on both fronts.”
He nods, and slides into the passenger seat. The neighborhood streets pass by in a fuzzy white blur, and I hardly see them. The car can’t get there fast enough. My mind is running through scenarios of what could’ve happened to Emma. She might’ve slipped on icy steps and fallen. But then why did someone disconnect the call? Someone may have needed help. Then who screamed? And who was talking?
When we pull up to the Ransoms’ the house is quiet, lights shining through the living room windows. The front door is closed. Stepping out of the car again feels like stepping into a wind tunnel. Jason and I split up, him going around to the garage door and me taking the front entrance.
One set of boot prints leads from the driveway to the door. The same prints trail back to the driveway, followed by sneaker tracks. Emma’s cellphone lies on the mat in front of the door, a light dusting of snow over its screen. Using my scarf, I scoop up the phone and then use the fringe to dust the snow away. A warm breath on the surface brings to life fingerprint smudges all over the screen. If necessary, maybe the police can find something useful on it.
The front door whisks inward, the storm door swings out and Jason confirms my fears. “The house is empty,” he says.
The analytical side of me takes charge, and I nod. “Feed the Ransoms some lie, OK? I want to go look for her first.”
“Will do. Where are you going?”
“Last time she went to Dad’s estate.” I stride back to the Acura. “I’ll start there.”
“And pray that she’s not been kidnapped.”
“I can’t think that.” Even though snow is gathering on the possible evidence on the sidewalk and paved drive. Jason steps back into the Ransoms’ house, then pulls out the living room curtains. He massages his hands as I ease the car into the street.
I idle at the curbside, making sense of which tire tracks belong to which vehicle. The one coming out of the garage and mine both go past the front of the house. The foreign set, the vehicle I’m sure Emma got into, leads the opposite direction, away from the heart of town. And away from the main road toward the lake.
Gut instinct tells me this path leads to darkness and pain. It also leads to Emma.
I creep along the road, headlights on high beams, following the ghostly tire tracks along six city blocks, watching while the houses go dark and then the power returns. The trail turns onto the major street leading toward the mall and industri
al park. Without pausing, I merge into traffic, eyes sweeping both sides of the road, and as many other cars as possible. The rolling blackouts push through town in waves and I ride the crest. Em could be anywhere, in any vehicle. I turn on the radio, dial it into the local news station. I’m both hoping for accident reports and dreading them.
“Weather continues to be a problem for the West Michigan shoreline, with visibility under a mile and snow drifting over outlying roads. We’ll read through closings after Deanna and the local news…”
Tacky music comes on to segue between show segments. Ahead, the glow of the mall and industrial park diffuses into the snowfall off to the left.
“This is Deanna Thayer,” the next DJ says, “here with your up-to-the-minute West Michigan happenings. Calls are flooding the 911 dispatch, dozens of reports of animals on the loose and pedestrians being attacked outside the Lakes Mall.”
What? There’s no zoo, no pet store anywhere near the mall. But Emma could be there; the car’s tire tracks lead off in that direction. What if Emma went this way? She could be one of the injured.
I step down on the gas and weave the Acura in and out of traffic. The backend fishtails when I whip off the expressway and onto the off-ramp. It’s marked as a deceleration lane. To hell with that. I speed up, and horns blare when I edge into the long line of cars headed toward the mall. I don’t bother responding. I’ll cut in front of anyone and everyone necessary to find Emma and make sure she’s safe.
Cars choke every lane, giving me no room to sneak ahead.
Bedlam rules past the Sternberg and Harvey Street intersection. First responder lights punch beams of color into the snowfall. People mill around, and cars pour from the drives. I turn down Harvey, weave through traffic, and gun it into the parking lot closest to the main entrance. Swaths of darkness, and beams of colored light shift in blurs across the plowed asphalt. I throw the Acura into Park, and open the door. Sirens wail, muffling people screams and animals’ savage growls.
