Until that day, sometime last year, when I’d stepped out of my safe, little bubble.
One of my arms now wrapped around a toy rabbit Dad bought me when I was ten, the pink fur stained and discolored, the stuffing flattened. I’d hunted through my closet for half an hour before I found it, cursing softly, worrying that the “new me” had decided she didn’t need stuffed animals anymore. I almost burst into tears when my left hand touched soft, plushy fur behind a stack of shoeboxes. Then I sat on the floor, rocking quietly back and forth, clutching the bunny and hoping that no one would walk into my room.
Almost as if I’d summoned it, my phone buzzed beside me. That thing still gave me the creeps. Every time I touched it, I remembered that flashback and how I had tried and failed to call 9-1-1 when I went missing.
I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, then glanced down at the screen. I had a text from Dylan. I grinned and ran a quick hand through my hair, glad he couldn’t see me sitting on the floor hugging an old, stuffed rabbit.
Hey. Can’t sleep, he said.
Me either, I thumbed back.
Wanna see something funny?
Sure.
He sent a photo of him and me trying to ride a skateboard together, both of us laughing, me about to fall off. It made me crack up.
Where was this? I asked.
Skate Park @ The Block.
My hands were on his waist and he was looking back at me. That grin of his made me wish he was here. It didn’t matter if my hair was messed up or I had on sweatpants. He never cared about stuff like that.
I sat up straight, my eyes widening, the phone almost slipping out of my hand.
I’d just had a flash about what Dylan was like, what he was really like. Not all the surface stuff, like how cute he was or how his eyes could almost hypnotize you. This was the Dylan inside. Somewhere between the poet and the wrestler was a guy who knew how to make me laugh and what to do if I was crying.
Do you remember this? he asked about the photo.
No. Wish I did. Looks like fun.
It’s OK. We can go again. Just don’t knock me off the board like last time.
I didn’t knock you off!
JK. You fell off, he said.
Liar!
LOL. Sure you don’t remember?
I paused for a long moment, then typed in, I remember you.
He didn’t say anything for a beat, long enough for me to worry that I’d said the wrong thing.
I missed you, he wrote.
That one comment gave me a feeling like sunshine bursting from my chest.
Hi, I’m Rachel. It’s nice to meet you.
Same. Except U know, name’s Dylan.
Then my screen filled with about a thousand emojis, laughing, dancing, happy, exactly how I felt.
...
That night, I dreamt about my dad.
He was talking to someone, making plans. We walked along the Santa Monica Pier, somewhere between the Ferris wheel and the roller coaster, the sunset turning the waves orange. I was ten or eleven and clutched a large, pink, stuffed rabbit under one arm, a prize he had won for me earlier in the day. Mom was at work and Kyle was at Magic Mountain with his friends, so this was one of those rare times when Daddy and I went someplace alone together. We’d eaten lunch at the Harbor Grill, strolled along the beach, fed breadcrumbs to seagulls, and took our shoes off to let the Pacific Ocean lick our toes. After that we played games and rode carnival rides, until Daddy glanced at his watch with a determined look on his face.
He took my hand and together we headed toward that part of the pier where people stared down into the water, fishing poles draped over the edge. We approached a man with a scruffy beard and furtive eyes, his hair hidden beneath a Dodgers cap, his clothes rumpled and ill-fitting, as if these weren’t really his clothes but someone else’s. Something about him frightened me and I pulled at Daddy’s hand, trying to convince him to go in a different direction.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry, baby girl,” he said to me, his dark eyes smiling and confident. “You’re safe with me, right?”
“Yes,” I answered. Although I wasn’t sure if he was going to be safe with that strange man.
We moved forward, one step at a time, Daddy nodding at the stranger as we approached. It was one of his barely there nods, the ones he gave people I didn’t know, and it was so subtle I was never sure whether it had happened or not. The smell of fish turned my stomach. My fingers sweated inside Daddy’s hand and I glanced over my shoulder at the carnival lights, wishing I was back there, on the wave jumper or the scrambler. Anywhere but here.
The other man looked down and gave me a smile, the only time he acknowledged I was there. Then he and Daddy stood side by side, talking about fishing and had he caught anything, and what kind of fish swam around here. But in between those casual comments that anyone could make, even one stranger to another, they said other things, their voices lowered, talking in a language I’d never heard before. Daddy nodded from time to time, as if memorizing what he heard, writing things down on that white board in his head, getting all the facts in their proper places.
They said one phrase three times, until I memorized it myself, even though I’d never spoken that language before.
Later, when he was tucking me in bed, Mom still at work, Kyle spending the night at a friend’s house, I repeated those words back to him. I thought he’d be surprised or maybe glad that I’d been able to remember something that made no sense. He just smiled, nodded, and said, “You have a gift for foreign languages, baby girl.”
“I won’t tell anyone else,” I promised him.
“I know.”
We didn’t talk it about it again. I knew that his meeting had been secret and even the words I’d learned were potentially dangerous. His missions were classified and top secret, but they were usually done in Middle Eastern countries, not on the Santa Monica Pier.
I wrote the phrase down, phonetically of course, and spent days trying to translate it. It was Czechoslovak and it said Příští týden v Tel Avivu.
Next week in Tel Aviv.
Daddy left on a mission two days after that meeting. I watched the news every day when he was gone, trying to figure out what his mission might be, but nothing happened. There were no bombings, no terrorist attacks, no kidnappings. It was a surprisingly calm week for that part of Israel.
That was when I figured out what my father really did.
He stopped bad things before they happened.
Chapter Twenty
Morning came like fire, too bright when it poured in my window, beams tracing lines across the carpet, reaching out as if looking for me. I blinked my eyes open and for a minute all was right. I was me. Rachel Evans. Sophomore at Lincoln High. Sure to fail Miss Wallace’s geometry test, but also sure to hang with my best friend Molly McFadden at lunch, and then sure to watch an episode of Vampire Diaries when I got home. I smiled. I even sat up, stretching, ready to do some jazz splits and lunges before heading down to breakfast.
That was when I remembered what had happened yesterday, how Molly and I had gone looking for those girls on my list, how I just about killed one of them and then found out another one was dead. Talking to Dylan last night almost made it feel better. Almost.
Knowing I had a date with Dylan tonight should have taken away the sour feeling coiled in my gut, but it didn’t. I stumbled to the bathroom where I weighed myself. One hundred and nineteen pounds. I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself. I needed to keep my weight down, that was the only way I’d fit in, I couldn’t get over one hundred and twenty-five, ever—
Those were the thoughts that kept going through my mind, although every time one of them would appear, I’d try to shove it aside. I wasn’t bulimic or anorexic. Still the memory of that headache and fever returned and I vowed that I would eat every meal from now on, or at least part of every meal. I wasn’t sure my stomach could handle too much food yet.
Dad and Kyle watched me quietly
when I walked into the kitchen and loaded my plate with scrambled egg whites and turkey bacon. Mom, who knew nothing and it needed to stay that way, just grinned and patted my hand when I sat beside her.
“Is your fever gone?” she asked, a cup of coffee poised at the edge of her lips. She wasn’t going to take a drink until she knew I was okay.
“Yeah. It went away last night, before I went to bed.”
“Good. You sure you feel okay to go to school?”
“Yes,” I answered quickly, fighting the panicked sensation that my chest was filling with ice, my throat tightening. I couldn’t stay home today, I just couldn’t. I glanced up at Dad, hoping to get some support but he stood with his back to me, scrubbing out the pan. Kyle watched me as if trying to learn my methods of manipulation. “I have a test in physics,” I said, which was true but not why I needed to be there. I needed to see Dylan. He hadn’t answered my text this morning and I had to make sure we were still on for our date. I didn’t even know the details of where we were going or when.
I might be going to a rave tonight.
My fork slipped from my fingers and clattered to the table.
“And I—um—I sort of, you know, have a date tonight,” I told them, not looking up, not wanting to see the expressions on their faces while they talked to each other without words. Mom would be raising her eyebrows, Dad would be tightening his lips, one of them would be thinking, no way and the other, well, maybe. But in the end, they always came to some sort of silent agreement. They argued about other things—where to take vacations, what cars to buy, what movies to rent—but they never argued about Kyle or me. At least not in front of us.
“Have we met this boy?” Dad asked.
The fact that he was asking a question was better than hearing no. “I don’t know. I’ve been dating him for a while, but I don’t remember if he’s been here or not.”
“He needs to come inside for a few minutes,” Mom said. “We have to talk to him.”
I swallowed nervously, but nodded. “Sure.”
“Be home by midnight.”
“Eleven thirty is better.”
I frowned. Seriously? Eleven thirty? I wanted to argue, but I knew this wasn’t the time or place. Maybe they’d let me stay out later next time. Or maybe—
I glanced at Kyle, who was trying to keep a low profile. He’d said that I used to sneak out in the middle of the night to get high and drunk. So, obviously there was a way to get back out if I wanted. Maybe he knew how I used to do it.
“Okay,” I said, forcing a smile. “I won’t stay out late.”
...
The rest of the day was a blur. One class flowed into another, faces passed me in the hallway, assignments were given and forgotten almost immediately. Only a few things stood out: Molly meeting me at my locker in the morning, giving me a hug, and then blending in with the crowd, like she didn’t want to blow my cover; Dylan not being in first period, which might have meant that he was sick and we weren’t going on a date after all; Sammy, that head Dragon Girl with the grillwork, trying to get a reaction out of me by ‘accidentally’ slamming into me on the way out of class and knocking my books out of my hand.
Yesterday I would have flattened her, we both would have gotten suspended, and I’d have gotten grounded. But it wasn’t the threat of suspension or being grounded that stopped me. It was the memory of Janie sprawled in the street, me standing over her, alien emotions warring inside me.
I’d been tempted to kill her.
If that was the new me, I hated her. I wasn’t going to let her rule my life.
“Watch it!” I’d said to Sammy, elbowing her out of my way.
She’d glared at me, defiant, chin thrust out, disappointment in her eyes because I didn’t hit her. She’d been expecting a fight. I could feel her girls watching us from the other side of the room, and when I turned to look at them, their gazes shifted from Sammy to me and back again.
I wasn’t sure how or why, but it was obvious that she’d just lost their respect.
...
Dylan still hadn’t shown up by lunch and, despite all my earlier promises to myself, I wasn’t able to eat. I toyed with the pizza on my plate, stabbing it with a fork, moving it around, cutting off a bite but not lifting it to my mouth. Lauren sat beside me, chattering away, asking me if I liked her skirt, her shoes, her new Burberry purse, her eyes glittering as she sought my approval, her laugh nervous and high-pitched. Molly watched me from the edge of the crowd, a thin smile given whenever I glanced in her direction, as if our friendship was supposed to remain secret. Everyone who sat at my lunch table was acting different today, almost as if they were all taking drugs, something that amplified their personalities about a thousand times. The girls laughed, the boys pushed and argued with each other; they all slugged down cans of Red Bull and Coke and ate foods high in sugar and carbs. They seemed excited about something, something they didn’t talk about but it thrummed beneath every look and every word.
It seemed as if they all had something amazing going on later.
I thought I did, too, but since Dylan wasn’t here and I hadn’t heard from him, it looked like I was just going to be staying home. Playing video games with Kyle and his friends. Or worse, watching some RomCom flick with my parents.
“Why so blue?” Lauren finally asked when she’d run out of ways to try to impress me, after she’d bought me a chocolate milk—because I always got one at lunch, every day except today—and after she’d tried to get me to wear her earrings, the brand-new platinum diamond studs that she got for her birthday.
I shrugged. I didn’t feel like talking about it.
“It isn’t Dylan, is it?”
I winced. Was it that obvious?
She grinned. “You don’t think he’s going to stand you up tonight, do you?”
“He must be sick today,” I said, wishing she would shut up. The other girls at the table were starting to look at us and the last thing I needed was for my Big Date Fail to become the topic of school gossip.
“If he asked you out, he totally meant it,” Lauren continued. “Brett’s having a party tonight—his parents are in Aspen for the weekend—and he’s Dylan’s best friend, so that’s probably why he’s not here.”
I frowned. She wasn’t making any sense. I picked up my tray and stood up, ready to leave the cafeteria. There had to be someplace better than this to spend the rest of my lunch hour, someplace where a pack of girls weren’t watching my every move. Lauren grabbed my wrist and started talking even faster.
“He’s gotta be setting up the music for the party. He always does that. We pitch in and pay for it, even though he’d do it for free. But it’s like a part-time job. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Maybe I knew it. Before.”
She grabbed my phone and started thumbing something, her fingers moving fast.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m sending him a text—”
“You’re what?”
“No worries, girl. He just needs to know you’re concerned.”
“I already texted him this morning and he didn’t answer,” I said as I grabbed the phone away from her. “I don’t want him to think I’m one of those girls.” I fumbled for words. “You know, the kind who are insecure and weird and sit around, waiting for some boy to call.”
She gave me a look somewhere between pure innocence and admiration. And yeah, she was kind of giving me the creeps. Like this was some new form of idol worship, but I’d never done anything to deserve it. All I’d done was treat her like crap for ten minutes yesterday and ever since then, she’d been trying to make herself invaluable.
“He’d never think you were like that. Not in a million years. Not ever.” She leaned closer so none of the guys would hear. “But if he did, there are a lot of other guys out there who are dying to get with you.”
I was beginning to wonder if Lauren was really stupid, if maybe she’d been fooling all of us for years. I was trying to figure ou
t how she got straight As, since her reasoning abilities had been seriously impaired, when my phone buzzed.
I had a text.
My upper lip prickled and the back of my neck turned hot.
“Might want to read that,” Lauren said, a grin spreading across her too pretty face.
I stood up and walked away from the others, my right hand holding my cell phone. Back turned, I glanced down at the tiny screen, at the backlit letters that appeared.
We’re still on for tonight, aren’t we?
It was from Dylan and it had that same slightly panicked tone as when he first asked me out, when I had paused and fear had flickered in his eyes as if I might say no.
Of course, I thumbed back, pretending like there had never been any doubt, although until now, doubt was all I had.
Pick you up at seven?
Sure. But, be prepared to come in and say hi to my parents.
There was a long silence, maybe him whispering, shit, and looking for a way to back out. But my parents had made it crystal clear this morning—if I was going out, they were meeting the boy. End of my teenage dating story.
Can’t wait. Should I bring white or red wine?
I laughed, then replied. Both?
K. C U. Gotta go.
I flipped my phone off. When I glanced back at the table, all the girls—Lauren, Stephanie and Zoe—were staring at me, as if something really important had just happened. I lifted my hands, palms up. “What?” I asked.
Lauren grinned. “Told you,” she said. Then she and the other girls got into a long discussion about what to wear to Brett’s party, all of them making tentative suggestions from time to time about what I should wear, too. Even though, as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t certain that I was even going to the party.
“That black and white T-shirt with the sequins and glitter,” Zoe said.
“Your jean jacket. Definitely.” Stephanie nodded, flipping her long, glossy brown hair over her shoulder.
“Black leggings and a miniskirt,” Lauren added.
“And those silver ballet slippers—”
Everything they were talking about sounded like stuff to wear to a rave, not a party. I just quietly nodded, wondering about the jacket and planning my own outfit while they continued to chatter away like a flock of birds fighting over breadcrumbs.
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