by Julie Daines
“Thanks for coming for me,” I whispered.
He dropped his hand and said in a cold, steady tone, “If you run away again, I’ll cut you off from everything. Do you understand?”
I nodded, and he strode out of the den. I watched him walk down the hall until he disappeared into his bedroom. His shoulders slumped as he moved out of sight.
A prisoner again. Why did he care whether I stayed in his house or not? Did he want the control? Or was it the money? Was he mad about what I’d taken from his safe? He didn’t sound mad. He sounded . . . disappointed.
The doorbell rang again, followed by a loud knock. The pizza.
I went in the opposite direction of my father and swung open the heavy front door. I paid the guy, put the food on the kitchen counter, and went up for Scarlett.
She lay on her back, spread eagle. “Comfy bed. How’d it go with your father?”
“Fine.”
“Was he mad?”
“No. He’s never mad,” I said, my voice raw and scratchy.
“You sound like you’ve been in the wars.”
“I guess I kind of feel like it. Pizza’s here. You hungry or not?” Maybe I just needed some food too. Something to get my blood sugar up and my head thinking clearly.
“All right, all right. Don’t get yer knickers in a twist.” She scooted off the bed and held out her hand.
I shook my head. “Okay, now you’re just doing it on purpose.”
“What?”
“Spouting random phrases that you know I’ll never understand.”
“Well, knickers are—”
“No. Don’t explain. I got that one.”
I led Scarlett to the kitchen and found my dad rummaging through the fridge. He had a wineglass on the counter filled with burgundy liquid. If I’d been alone, I’d have turned and walked away. Especially tonight, after the interrogation. But Scarlett was hungry. I sat her in the center of the kitchen at the island bar.
“Hi, Mr. Morris. Want some pizza?” she said out of nowhere.
All activity in the kitchen ceased. Dad was reaching for his drink—no doubt working on his own getaway—when his hand froze. My plates halted halfway to the counter. A perfectly innocent smile played on Scarlett’s face, like an angel with a halo of pink. She didn’t wear her dark glasses. I think she knew I preferred her eyes without the barrier.
I didn’t dare look up. I’d seen enough of him for one day. I just carried on like we always did, pretending the other didn’t exist. I put a slice on a plate and set it front of Scarlett. I placed her hand on the crust edge and said, “Meat Lover Madness. I hope you’re hungry.”
“Starved.”
I put a soda in her other hand. She sipped it then set it down. “Disgusting. What is that?”
Dad leaned back against the counter, watching. My appetite was quickly slipping away, replaced by coils of rope that knotted themselves tighter and tighter the longer he stayed.
“It’s root beer,” my father said.
I almost dropped my food on the floor.
“Never heard of it.” She took another sip and shuddered. “Nasty. And so sweet. Tastes like cough syrup.”
In some ways, Scarlett wasn’t too far off. But when my mom was alive, we used to have pizza night on Fridays, and she always served it with root beer.
“It’s the best drink when you’re having pizza,” Dad said, taking a plate from the cupboard and sliding a slice onto it.
The tip of my pizza drooped, stalled between the plate and my open mouth. A pepperoni slithered toward the edge. Was he eating with us? And chatting? He wouldn’t look at me, but still, this was unprecedented.
He picked up his glass of wine and dumped it down the drain, feeding the sewers about a hundred dollars’ worth of Bordeaux. He twisted a plastic bottle of root beer out of the six-pack. “I’ll just . . . leave you two alone now.”
“Thanks again, Mr. Morris,” Scarlett said. “For everything.”
My dad nodded at her then left the room, meeting my eyes for a split second as he passed. The pepperoni slid off my pizza and slapped onto the floor. Strings of mozzarella dangled after it, reaching out to bring it home.
Scarlett tried to pull another slice from the box. I’d been so distracted by my dad’s strange behavior, I hadn’t noticed her groping for the pizza container.
“Here, let me get that.” I put two more slices on her plate and cleaned up the lost pepperoni. What was he up to? Just being polite to a guest? It’s true he wasn’t the Ice King to everyone. Other people really liked him. He was a huge success at work and one of the best lawyers in the city. He must have some good qualities; he just never shared them with me.
Scarlett and I ate and talked and laughed for a while then went up to turn in. It was almost midnight, and the strain of the day had pushed me over the edge. I showed Scarlett my room down the hall in case she needed anything during the night then crawled into bed.
I dreamed we were eating at Shari’s restaurant. When the waitress asked us for our order, her neck was slit open and blood stained her clothing. Scarlett screamed like a demon possessed. I bolted out of bed.
I heard the scream again; it came from Scarlett’s room.
Dream or bad guys? Hard to tell. What if Connor had found her? If he found us at the cabin, he’d have no trouble tracking us here. But we had a security system, and we weren’t alone. I grabbed a tennis racket—it was all I had—and raced down the hall. She screamed again.
Chapter Nine
Christian vs. The Nightmare
I burst into Scarlett’s room, tennis racket cocked and ready. She tossed and turned in her bed, moaning and crying. Other than Scarlett, the room was empty. Another dream. Did she have them every night?
“Scarlett, wake up.” I shook her gently. “Hey, it’s just a dream, wake up.”
She stopped thrashing, and her eyes popped open. She sat up and asked, “Where’s Christian?”
“I’m right here. I think you’re having a nightmare.”
She sat still for minute, her panting gradually subsiding. “I had another dream.” She leaned her head on my chest.
I stroked her short hair and rubbed her back like I’d seen loving parents do on television. “Was it Katie again?”
She shook her head. “No. It was someone else.” Her voice was softer than a whisper but also strained and sore.
Did that mean she was predicting the death of another person? “Who was it? Do you want to tell me about it?”
Again, she shook her head.
Something creaked in the hall downstairs, like the sound of a person sneaking. “Quiet. There’s someone in the house.” I didn’t need to say it; she’d heard it too.
I tried to rise, but she tightened her grip on my shirt. “Don’t go. They’ll kill you.”
I pressed a finger to my lips. Idiot. Would I never learn? “Shh.” I pried her hand off my shirt and crept toward the door, holding the tennis racket at the perfect angle so that when I smacked the intruder, it would be with the rim and not the sweet spot.
Dim light from the street lamps shone in through the big window in the entryway and cast a long shadow that crept toward Scarlett’s room. I jumped out, yelling like a barbarian.
My dad stood in the hallway, both hands holding a heavy black handgun pointed at my chest. Instantly, his hands dropped to his sides. “Christian,” he said breathlessly. “You startled me.”
“You have a gun?” How did I not know that? Just because we never talked didn’t mean I wasn’t good at snooping. I thought I knew everything about his possessions, but this really surprised me.
“I heard screams. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah. Scarlett has nightmares. I went in to check on her.” I couldn’t take my eyes off his weapon. “Why do you have a gun?”
“Why do you have a tennis racket?”
Did I detect sarcasm in his voice? “In case there’s a bad guy,” I said.
“Exactly.” He turned and went down the
stairs, back to his room.
Did he just joke with me?
I glanced down at the racket by my side and realized I was wearing a T-shirt and boxers. I thought I should put pants on before going back to Scarlett. Then I remembered it didn’t matter. Put some on anyway, I told myself.
“Was it your dad?” she asked from two feet behind me.
I jumped so high I nearly hit the ceiling. “Okay, everyone in this house needs to stop sneaking around.” I took Scarlett’s arm. “You. Back to bed.”
She slipped under her covers. With any luck, she’d make it through the rest of the night without dreaming. I shuffled back to my bedroom, tossing the racket in the closet as I passed. Even though the incident was over now, I pulled on some sweat pants anyway before hopping back in bed.
I lay in the dark, eyes wide, listening to my heart rate slow. I pictured men creeping around outside the house, women with long hair pulled up in a knot performing surgery, a dead waitress lying in the rhododendrons on the other side of the river, my dad with his hand on my chin.
“Are you awake?” It was an almost inaudible whisper at my door.
“Yes.”
Scarlett pushed the door open the rest of the way and tiptoed in. “Where are you?”
“I’m over here.”
She followed my voice until she bumped into my bed. “I’m scared.”
I sat up and flipped on my lamp.
For the first time, I saw something in her eyes. Behind that wall of milk-chocolate brown, she was terrified.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said, pulling her onto the bed beside me. “You don’t have to be scared. You’re safe here. This house has an excellent alarm system, and no one can get in without detection.”
“Then why were you carrying a tennis racket?” She let out a laugh that she obviously didn’t feel. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m scared. I don’t want to go back to sleep.”
Who could blame her? Who wants to dream of people dying and then wake up only to have it all come true? “What happened in your dream? Who did you see?”
“Christian, I was wrong about my first dream. It wasn’t Katie on the operating table.” She broke into a sob. “It was me.”
No way. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t with them anymore. She was with me. How could she still dream about her own death when she was away from the killers? Maybe the dreams weren’t really a prediction of the future. Maybe what happened with her grandma was just a fluke. And the landlord. And his wife. And perhaps others she’d never mentioned. “Are you sure? If you were wrong before, maybe you’re wrong again.”
“I’m sure. I didn’t recognize myself the first time. But now I know. I dreamed it again tonight. It’s me.” Her little body shuddered, and her tears left dark spots on my navy-blue duvet. What could I say? How do you comfort a person who has just seen her own death?
“Listen,” I said. “We can change it. We already have. You got away from them. You’re safe here.”
She said nothing, just rocked back and forth.
“You’ve had the dream twice, right?”
“Yes.” She sniffed.
“And it still hasn’t happened. That’s because it won’t. We fixed it. Your subconscious mind just doesn’t know how to process that. So it sent the dream again.” That made sense. I’d almost convinced myself.
She nodded.
“What about Katie?” I asked. If she wasn’t the girl in the dream, maybe she was safe and sound back in England. “Is she still in danger?”
“She was in my dream, alive. She was in the surgery with us, helping.”
One thing I’d learned about Scarlett in our short time together was that when the truth was hard to swallow, she had a great knack for keeping it out of her mouth. “Helping you? Or helping them?”
“Helping them.” She cried hard now. Her whole face was wet with tears. I went to my bathroom and brought her a roll of toilet paper. She unrolled a few squares and dabbed at the mess.
“Let’s get you back to bed. In the morning, we’ll figure something out, okay?”
“Sure.”
“How would you say, ‘Don’t give up?’”
She snorted then quickly wiped her nose. “Don’t lose your bottle.”
“Don’t lose your bottle? That sounds more like something you’d say to the town drunk.”
She laughed halfheartedly, but the fear in her eyes dissolved, and their color went back to vacant brown.
I escorted her back to her bedroom and stood at the door for a few minutes. “I’ll wait here until you fall asleep, okay?”
“You can sit in the chair,” she offered hopefully. She really didn’t want to be alone.
“Boundaries. Remember?”
“Right. The gentleman.” She rolled onto her side and lay still.
Those dreams must really drain her because it didn’t take long until her breathing organized itself into slow, steady breaths. I tiptoed back to bed and let myself relax, finding at last the sleep my body had been craving.
* * *
“’Bout time,” she said when I walked into the kitchen the next morning, yawning and still in my sweats.
“Why, what time is it?” I asked as I glanced at the clock on the microwave.
“Dunno, do I? No talking clocks here, eh.” She sat on a bar stool and was showered and dressed in another new outfit of varying shades of black. I guess that made it easier to match.
No wonder she went for color in her hair. Who was responsible for the shocking pink though? Did someone say, Scarlett, your wardrobe is bland. Why not color the front sections of your hair something fluorescent?
“Why is your hair pink? You keep telling me you don’t know colors. Who picked pink?”
“I did.” She sounded proud of herself. “My gran used to give me bubble gum. I could blow huge bubbles with it. Bubble gum isn’t so easy to get in the UK, mind, so it was a real treat. She told me a million times to keep that pink gum out of my hair.”
“So you put it in permanently. I guess that’s kind of cool.”
“Yeah, well, the dentist told me not to chew sugary gum, didn’t he? Bad for my teeth. Now get moving. I’m fantastically bored. And hungry.”
“It’s Saturday, and I’m seventeen. I’m supposed to sleep till noon. It’s only ten thirty.” But I went back up to shower and get dressed anyway.
After a breakfast of french toast—which she loved, but not the syrup, too sweet—we called her guy-friend in England again. Still no answer. I wanted Scarlett to be safe, but part of me cheered up knowing she’d be with me a little longer.
I set my laptop up on the kitchen counter. I wanted to see if I could find any more information on the deceased waitress and get answers to some of the other questions that circulated in the back of my mind.
I pulled up the Columbian, the newspaper for Vancouver. There was a short article in yesterday’s news, but it didn’t tell me more about the waitress than the detective had. I Googled “how to trace the location of someone using a cell phone.” It turned out to be pretty easy, and anyone could do it. Note to self: When leaving the house, turn power completely off.
I read everything out loud to Scarlett. She listened with interest, and it hit me again how different her world was from mine. She couldn’t read a computer screen or even tell the time. Things I did a thousand times a day without a second thought. Yet she navigated through the darkness so well that it was easy to forget she couldn’t see.
I decided to take Scarlett to the cemetery to see if she could find her way back to the building she had escaped from, or at least point us in the right direction. I had stopped there on my way out in the late afternoon. Did she walk all night and into the day or hide most of the time, listening and waiting? If we could find something close by, maybe we’d be able to tell the police and get Deepthroat off our backs and clear my murder allegations.
I also found the name of a little store downtown that sold special aids for the vision impaired. I didn’t know how long
Scarlett would be here, but she ought to at least be able to know the time and use the computer. According to the meager website, they carried talking watches and clocks, computer software for screen readers, and some Braille books.
Cemetery first. We drove the short distance up to West Hills Memorial Gardens. On the south end of the cemetery sat a big, rundown mortuary, and the old-growth trees of Forest Park bordered the rest. A light rain fell from dreary gray skies—typical Portland weather. I decided maybe I should rethink my first plan of moving to Canada and find somewhere south to finish up my senior year. Somewhere with sun and sand.
I drove straight to my mother’s grave and parked the car by the big cedar tree. Scarlett waited for me to come around and get her. She looked so tiny again, standing by the car in the rain. I pulled her in close, under the umbrella.
She hooked her hand into the crook of my arm, and we walked among the rows of headstones, our feet mushing in unison in the damp grass, the smell of wet pine heavy in the air. Somewhere along the way, I slid my arm down until I held her hand, our fingers laced.
“This is my mom’s grave,” I told her. A big, flat slab of stone stood about a foot off the ground. Simple but stately.
She crouched down and ran her fingers over the polished granite, reading the words as she went. “Catherine Cooper Morris. That’s a nice name. What was she like?”
“I don’t remember her much. It was a long time ago, and I was young.”
“C’mon. I told you about Gran, didn’t I? Let’s hear it.”
“Well.” I poked around into the depths of my memories. “She loved the cabin at Hood River.” I hadn’t talked about my mother to anyone for a long time. Not because it was painful but because my memories were so vague. Just a few simple moments that came to me like a three-second video clip.
“We went there almost every weekend during the summer,” I said. “She was fascinated by Mount Hood. My dad didn’t work so much then. He was with us on Saturdays and Sundays. He would build a roaring fire, Mom would make popcorn, and we’d sit on the couch and watch a movie. I would wedge myself in between them, and they’d think they were so sneaky, kissing over my head. I always fell asleep before the end.”
