“I got an invitation last night,” I say. “It told me to go to this abandoned warehouse tomorrow night. Or I guess it’s tonight now. It said I was invited to play a game.”
“What kind of game?” I hear him yawn through the phone.
“I don’t know, it didn’t say. One sec. I’ll read it to you.” I refresh my computer screen and read the email out loud.
“Weird,” he says when I’m finished.
That’s an understatement. I wait for more, and when nothing else comes, I ask, “So should I go?”
He releases a short laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”
I don’t respond.
“Hope, it’s probably some stupid joke. Forget about it.”
I gnaw on my lip. I hate that he’s brushing me off. I hate that he’s making me feel stupid. And mostly, I hate that he’s probably right.
“Hope, are you still there?”
“My mom’s calling me,” I mutter. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“What’s with the sour face?” Jenny asks as she breezes into the kitchen. She’s wearing an indecently short miniskirt paired with scuffed boots and a baggy T-shirt. Her recent fashion choices are more mature than I am, and she’s thirteen.
“Isn’t that skirt a little short?” I ask.
“What do you care?” She grabs a bowl from the cupboard and sits across from me.
I roll my eyes as she shakes off-brand raisin bran into her bowl. Jenny gets to do pretty much whatever she wants, because Mom’s too busy hovering over me to worry about whatever hijinks her healthy daughter might be up to. More and more, Jenny’s starting to realize that. It worries me.
There’s a honk outside. Jenny looks at the time on her phone. “Shit. Gotta go.”
She wolfs down two more bites before abandoning her bowl; then she simultaneously snags her bag from its spot by the door and snaps the bolt back with a deafening crack. There’s no way to do that gently, but Jenny doesn’t try. The door slams behind her, and I take her bowl to the sink.
“Let me get that,” Mom says as she enters the kitchen. She reaches to take the dish from me.
“I can do it.”
“I would rather you rest.” She gently extricates the dish from my fingers.
I grit my teeth and bite back my response—that I can wash a dish without dying—then march to my bedroom and slam the door. I curl up on the bed under my paisley duvet, plug my earbuds in, and start my French lessons again.
“Je suis perdue,” a monotone female voice says. “I am lost.”
“Je suis perdue,” I repeat.
But my heart is beating too fast, and I can’t concentrate. I pause the lesson and drag my computer into my lap. The page is still open on 291 Schilling Road. The decrepit warehouse fills the screen. Half the windows are bashed out, the whole lower level is tagged with graffiti, and weeds shoot up around the sun-faded brick as though the place has been abandoned for years. A shiver slides down my spine. If it wasn’t Ethan…who wanted to meet me here?
It’s probably some stupid joke.
I frown at the computer. If I had anything interesting going on in my life, I wouldn’t be obsessing over something that’s obviously a prank.
Mom pokes her head into the room, and I snap my computer shut.
“You okay?” she mouths. She’s already got her blue CVS apron around her neck, and the ash-blond hair she gave both Jenny and me is twisted into a bun.
I pull my earbuds out. “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You seem off today.”
I feel a stab of guilt. It’s not like me to flip out on Mom—she was just trying to help.
“I’m really fine. Sorry I got mad at you. I guess I’m tired.”
“Tired?” She tilts her head, looking me over with scientific interest. “Did you not sleep well?”
“No! No, I slept fine.” I know where this is going, and I don’t want her pecking at me all day in her mother hen way.
“Okay…,” she says reluctantly. “I’ll be home at lunch to do your treatment. Do you want me to bring you anything?”
I shake my head.
And here it comes, the elaborate goodbye routine. When Mom isn’t threatening me with death and holding my sickness over my head, she occasionally tries to shelter me from the ugliness of my fate. I don’t know why she bothers. It’s hard to forget I’m dying when she does this all the time—says goodbye like it might be the last time.
She crosses the room and pulls me into a hug, kissing the top of my head and breathing in the scent of my hair. “I love you so much,” she whispers.
“I love you too.”
“So much.”
“I know, Mom. I love you too.”
“You mean the world to me.” She presses me into her chest.
I let her do her thing. There’s no use complaining. It’d just hurt her feelings.
She gives me one last kiss on the temple, and then she’s finally gone.
When I hear the engine rumble to life in the parking lot, I push the computer off my lap and emerge from my bedroom.
The apartment is quiet, dust floating lazily in the streams of light beaming across the Berber carpet.
I’ve spent countless hours, days, weeks holed up in this apartment, but for some reason I see it now with new eyes. The tower of bills stacked on the chipped Formica countertop. The water stains on the ceiling from the storm last summer. The brown plaid couch with the gum stain, where I’ll spend my morning watching annoying talk shows in which middle-aged women compete to yell the loudest about hot topics. The small square window with the broken venetian blinds and a view of the parking lot full of overflowing Dumpsters.
If it isn’t hell, it’s at least purgatory.
I suddenly can’t be in my house for a second longer. I cross quickly to the front door and step outside, sitting on the creaky metal stairs and breathing in the hot, cottony air. My chest feels immediately lighter, as if a heavy weight has been lifted and I can suddenly breathe again.
I tip my head back to the sky, so perfectly blue it looks Photoshopped. Did Jenny notice that? Does anyone who isn’t closing in on their expiration date understand how beautiful this world is, that they have it all at the tips of their fingers if they would just look up from their phones and notice?
I wonder what Jenny would think about the invitation….
I give my head a shake. I’m not thinking about that anymore.
A bird soars into the whipped-cream clouds; I track its trajectory as it sails high, then dives low, wings spread wide, like a piece of performance art. What would it feel like to slice through dewy clouds, to feel the wind on my face like that?
My peace shatters as our downstairs neighbor emerges from her apartment. She’s simultaneously bitching into her cell about her boyfriend and smoking a cigarette. I catch a whiff of smoke and feel my chest tighten. But that’s impossible. She’s too far away, the smoke’s too thin. I’m being paranoid.
If Mom were here, she’d whisk me inside, mutter about the smoke, and then urge me not to come out here again. If Mom knew I was considering a midnight rendezvous at an old, abandoned warehouse, she’d put a padlock on my door. She’d say if a little smoke is enough to make me reach for my inhaler, imagine what’s waiting for me at 291 Schilling Road: dust, chemicals, mold. Or, put another way: death, death, death.
The sad thing is, Mom’s usually right.
I aim a wistful glance at the bird, then tuck my clipped wings and go back into my cage.
By the time the morning talk shows are over, the heavy feeling in my chest is back, worse than before. I’m twitchy, uncomfortable, completely unable to sit still.
I can’t get the invitation off my mind.
It wouldn’t be so hard to get there, to 291 Schilling Road. Mom’s always asleep by ten p.m., Jenny by eleven. The car keys will be by the door, and even if I don’t drive often, I know how. I could just go and see…exactly what a murderer looks like in the dark.
Feeling in
finitely stupid and embarrassed, I get out my computer and bring up the address again. The warehouse looks somehow more decrepit than it did this morning. Even Google Earth thinks this is a bad idea.
If I could just figure out who’s behind this. I find an unused spiral notebook in my desk drawer, crack it open to the first page, and write SUSPECTS at the top in glittery blue gel pen, underlining it twice. I stare at the blank page, racking my brain for a clue—any clue—about who could have sent the invite, but I come up with nothing. I suppose that to have suspects, I’d have to have a life. I snap the notebook shut.
Mom comes home at noon, as always.
She gives me my chest physio, as always.
I dutifully eat my specially prepared high-salt, high-calorie meal, slurp back the meal-replacement shake, and pop the twenty-hundred pills—antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, enzymes, you name it—that I need to make my body work.
As always.
That’s my life. Routines, day in and day out. As little variation as possible. Everything I come into contact with planned, measured, sterilized.
Except that email.
I pull out my school supplies and focus on my English assignment until my eyes start to cross.
Jenny’s bus rumbles up at quarter to four. Mom’s home half an hour later, and we sit down for a dinner of salted roast pork and beans. The whole time my heart beats a staccato rhythm in my chest. Eight p.m. Four hours until midnight. Energy hums through my body.
“How was your day today?” Mom glances up from sawing into her meat. The knife scrapes loudly on china.
“Great,” I say, and hope she doesn’t notice the tension in my voice.
“I had something interesting happen today,” Jenny says.
I tune out their conversation. It’s not that far to the warehouse. I could just go and check it out, except that, no, I really, really can’t. I imagine horrible things happening to me, so I come to my senses. But it doesn’t get the thought off my mind, as it should. The horrible thing is already happening to me. I’m dying. How much worse could it get?
And suddenly I know. I’m not just thinking about it anymore.
When dinner is over, it’s an effort not to run to my room.
I text Ethan, because someone should know what I’m about to do. I’m not that stupid.
I’m going to go.
He responds right away.
Go where?
The warehouse.
My phone rings.
“You’re joking, right?” he says.
“I need to do this,” I answer.
“Hope, don’t be stupid. Do you realize how dangerous this is? What if you get murdered? This is a textbook slasher-movie strategy. Just because these kinds of things make awesome horror movies doesn’t mean they make good life.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” I say, even though the thought has crossed my mind. Many times. “You said it yourself that you think it’s a joke. Why are you so concerned now?”
“Because you’re my best friend and I care about you and I don’t want you to get bludgeoned to death.”
Best friend. Exactly what I don’t want to be anymore.
“How’s Savannah?” I ask.
“Savannah?” There’s a horrible pause, and I regret opening my stupid mouth. Regret texting him at all. “Is that what this is about?”
“No, God—what’s that supposed to mean?” I jump to my feet, pacing nervously to the window and fidgeting with the lock.
“Are you mad at me or something?” he asks.
“No!”
“Okay…,” he says.
Someone calls to him in the background. A young voice. A girl voice. A Savannah voice.
“One sec.” He covers the phone. There’s a murmured exchange. “Sorry,” he says a moment later. “What were you saying?”
“I wasn’t.”
He sighs. “Hope, just promise me you won’t go. If you want to get out of the house that badly, I can ask your mom if I can take you to the movies tomorrow.”
“Oh, you would do that?”
“I’m trying to help.” He says it as if I’m some sort of unreasonable charity case. “This whole thing—it’s stupid, Hope.”
I shake my head. Of course he would think it was stupid. He’s got a million great things to do at any given hour of the day. Adventure comes to him all the time. I’m just the silly little sick girl shut up in her bedroom, feeling jealous and left out, getting excited over nothing.
Well, I’m tired of living life with one foot already in the grave.
That voice is calling him again.
“Have fun at your party tonight.” As I’m ending the call, Ethan cries, “You didn’t promise—”
And then the line is dead.
The house is dark and still. Even the other apartments in our complex are strangely silent, no loud arguments or slamming doors or sirens wailing in the distance, the usual background noise of Iberville Rentals. It makes my racing heart feel like a stampede of elephants by comparison.
After Mom did my chest physio and gave me my truckload of nighttime medications, I changed into a pair of yoga pants and a sweater, then slipped under my covers, completely alert as I watched the time inch agonizingly slowly toward midnight. I couldn’t wait to get out of here. But now that the time has finally arrived, I’m paralyzed with fear. If Mom catches me trying to sneak out, she’ll ground me for a century. Forget my weekly trip to the movies with Ethan. Forget Netflix, forget my cell—forget any form of entertainment whatsoever. It’ll be months locked inside this place, peering out the venetian blinds at people actually living their lives. Hell, she’ll probably chain me to my bed and call in an exorcist for good measure. The thought alone makes me want to climb back into bed and forget I even considered this. Only the lameness of not making it out of my bedroom forces me to crack the door.
Sweat prickles my brow as I pause to see if I’ve woken anyone. But the house is just as peaceful as ever, so I creep out and close the door quietly behind me. I tiptoe down the hall, careful to avoid the part of the floor that always creaks, and pause outside the living room. Mom occasionally falls asleep watching infomercials in the dark, but when I peek inside, it’s empty. I keep moving until I reach the front door.
I lift the car keys from the rack next to the door, palming them so they don’t jangle, then face the dreadful deadbolt. There’s no way to do it quietly—no matter how gentle I am, it pops open with a crack that sounds through the house like a pistol.
My heart hammers as I wait for Mom to come down the hall and bust me. But when a full minute passes and no one comes, I open the door. Orange streetlight spills into the apartment. Even with the sun long gone, the air is thick with a predatory heat I can taste in the back of my throat.
Now or never, Hope.
I slip outside.
Metal rattles as I spiral down the stairs to the parking lot below. When I reach the bottom, I slide against the exposed brick and its thick shadows and scurry toward Mom’s Kia Rio, parked at the end of the row facing the apartment complex. When I’m sure no one’s looking, I dart over to it, feeling as naked and exposed as if I were wearing a hospital gown at school. My fingers shake as I try to fit the key into the lock, and I drop the ring. It clatters loudly on the pavement.
If Ethan could see me now, he’d shake his head and tick off “Heroine drops car keys” on one of our Horror Movie Bingo cards. This is such a bad idea.
I frantically pick up the set and fumble to find the right key. After what feels like hours, I jam the car key into the lock, whip the door open, and fall into the driver’s seat. The leather is cool against my hot back as I blow out a pressurized breath to ease my lungs. My heart races so fast one beat runs into the next.
Holy shit. Holy actual shit.
Mom’s got the seat pushed way back, so I slide it forward, click my seat belt into place, stick the key in the ignition, and start the car. The engine rumbles to life.
I hesitate, peering through the
windshield at the apartment. All the windows are dark.
Oh my God. I’m actually doing this.
I shift into reverse and lurch back, then slam into drive and peel out of the parking lot. I haven’t driven in ages, and I feel more like I’m trying to tame a bucking bronco than a Kia Rio.
“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.” I grip the wheel hard with slick, wet fingers. “You should go back, Callahan. This is stupid. Very, very stupid.”
But I don’t, and after the terrifying experience of navigating the nonsensical one-way roads of the French Quarter, I’m merging onto the freeway. The high-rises of the city shoot up, one on top of another, city lights winking softly in the dark like glittering jewels.
Okay. So just because I took the car doesn’t mean I have to go to the warehouse. I can go somewhere else. I can go to Tucker’s party. Far less dangerous.
I consider the idea. What would Ethan think?
He would definitely be surprised. He might be happy. And then I remember our conversation about Savannah.
My phone intones directions, and I take the exit that leads to the industrial area and Schilling Road.
Rows of uneven brownstones tagged with colorful graffiti line the streets, cardboard and sheets in the windows that aren’t smashed out entirely. Streetlights shine watery light onto sidewalks cracked and overgrown with weeds. I jump at movement in the shadows, but it turns out it’s a homeless person shifting in his sleep.
The houses give way to shuttered businesses, and before long I find Schilling Road. Huge factories with chimneys that belch gray smoke into the night follow one after another. Then the factories thin out and the road turns to gravel, narrowing more and more until bulrushes are pressed against the car. I start to wonder if I took a wrong turn when I see it.
A huge chain-link fence blocks in an imposing hulk of cement that teeters dozens of stories high and leans violently to the left, as though it’s likely to topple over should a strong gust of wind arise. A NO TRESPASSING sign is tacked prominently onto the fence.
I edge the car closer and see that other vehicles are already parked outside: a white BMW, a motorcycle, a silver SUV, and a turquoise car with a pointed nose and rust around the wheel wells. I park next to the motorcycle and scan my surroundings, looking for a sign of the person who asked me here, but I don’t see a soul. The time on the dash reads 12:07. I’m late.
Dead Girls Society Page 2
