“Among other things.” I stopped to study a poster tacked to the wall that had been signed by Derek Jeter.
“Hang on. Let me see if I can rustle up a jersey or at least a T-shirt.” He crossed the room to a stack of folded clothes. “What size is he? A small?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied absentmindedly. I pressed my hand into the pocket of my zip-up hoodie next to the knife that waited there. But a bag of equipment strewn on the floor caught my eye.
“Hey, cool,” I said, pulling out a bat from the mesh carrier. “Is this what you use?” I flipped the metal bat around in my hands and tested the weight. I tapped it against the floor.
He looked over his shoulder. “Not much of a softball player, huh?”
“What, am I gripping it wrong?”
He set down the pile of clothes and came around to wrap his arms on either side of me. Then, he helped me to adjust my grip. “Like this,” he said.
“That feels good.” And I knew it was left up to interpretation whether I meant the new grip or the feel of his chest pressed up against my spine. I twisted my hands and tightened my hold. “Mind if I take a couple swings?”
“Swing away.”
He was standing in front of me. Instead of turning, I stepped into him and took a pretend swing, halting the bat halfway to his kneecaps. He flinched and held out his hands, instinctively backing up.
“Whoa.” His eyes widened.
“Just kidding,” I said, and winked. He relaxed. “I got you, didn’t I? You thought I was going to hit you in the knees.”
He gave a chuckle. Now he was the one that wasn’t sure he was in on the joke. “Maybe that’s it for batting practice.”
I didn’t lower the bat. I took a step closer. “But I was just warming up.” Then another step closer.
Blood rushed to his cheeks, turning them red. “Are you crazy?” he said.
And another step. I still had yet to lower the bat. It rested on my shoulder. “How’s my grip now?” I asked. He glanced down, and in that split second, I pulled my elbows back and took a hard swing at his head.
The bones above his ears offered more resistance than I’d have thought, and the brains beneath his skull dulled the satisfying firecracker snap I’d been looking forward to. I tried again.
Brody stumbled sideways, clutching his temple. He made a guttural noise but no words. He didn’t even look at me. I swung and this time the bat crunched through his cheekbone and it sounded like a rotisserie chicken leg being snapped from the carcass.
I felt myself grinning like a madwoman, almost cackling as I went in for another swing.
Blood spotted his shirt, dripped down his skin, covered up the beauty mark. The whites of his eyes spun like Chinese marbles in the sockets.
My heart sang with revenge as I watched him come undone. Seek and hide, seek and hide, count the nights until they’ve died.…
On the fourth blow he fell to his knees. Pain rained down on him until he could feel no more and his body lay still. Red crept out from his figure like a halo. It was like I’d made a piece of artwork in reverse.
I stood over him and dropped the bat, now splattered with blood and brains. It made a hollow ker-thunk as it teeter-tottered to the ground. The broken, crumpled silhouette had twisted into a sickening fetal position.
As I watched him lying there, I swiped a dash of blood from my nose and touched it to my tongue. I smiled down at him, even though it kind of was a shame, because he’d had such a pretty face.
SEVENTEEN
Cassidy
The next day, I slept past noon and wallowed in my bed, dozing off and on for several more hours. Mom brought me chili and left it at the foot of my bed like I had a head cold. But I wasn’t hungry, instead waking up to a stomach full of regret.
The effects of the Sunshine had waned over the course of the morning, now leaving me feeling like I’d fallen hard into a mucky pit of despair and making me wish that I didn’t still have another one of the tiny yellow pills stored underneath the lid of my music box. A cruel temptation, it seemed, only left there to mock me and test my self-control before I’d even had time for coffee.
When I felt I was on the verge of developing bedsores, I hauled myself out from under the covers.
The sound of Ava’s leg snapping in half replayed in my mind, the memory of it getting louder and louder, sounding more and more like a gunshot. I might as well be dead.
I glanced around the room, looking for items that might be out of place, signs that pointed to what I’d done last night and where I’d been. But it was almost creepy how normal everything appeared. Like out of a catalogue.
I wandered to the bathroom to relieve myself, where I found a pile of black clothes, wringing-wet and lying on top of the bathtub drain as if they’d been soaked. I lifted them out and when I did, they dripped red water onto the white porcelain. A ring of pink stained the area surrounding the drain.
My insides clenched. I rushed to the toilet and emptied a couple tablespoons of stomach acid into the bowl.
This time there were no images that came unburied like they had with Dr. Crispin. I half contemplated making a return visit to him, but I didn’t have the nerve. Then I considered checking the backyard for … well, for something, but I felt my guts come unglued at the mere thought.
Eventually, I splashed water on my face at the sink. In the mirror was the same face that I’d been used to seeing for the last seventeen years, except I couldn’t help but think that something was different. There was a new hardness to my features. My pupils were pinpoints in my dark brown eyes. My eyebrows were arched at a steeper angle. Lips thinner and tauter. This all seemed impossible. But there was a sort of double vision, like someone had traced me and the lines on the two layers of paper didn’t quite match up.
The second game of the play-offs would be starting soon. I didn’t even know whether we’d won or lost last night. We’d be short a flyer at least.
My phone started buzzing from on top of my nightstand. Three short staccato bursts. I steeled myself for a giant Paisley I-told-you-so, but when I lifted my cell, there was a text message from a number I didn’t recognize. I slid my thumb across the screen.
Thought you should see this, it read.
My forehead wrinkled. I scrolled down to a picture and sucked in a hard breath when I saw that the photograph was of Honor posing before the mirror in my room dressed only in my lingerie. She used her inner arms to squish together her barely-there cleavage and she held a kissy-face for the camera.
A deafening roar started in my ears. My fingers pounded the letters on my cell. Who sent this?
The response was instant and painful. Everyone.
My heart throbbed like someone had smacked it with a hammer. Since when? I scrolled through a number of missed messages and checked one from Paisley, marked with a simple “FYI” and the photographs.
Who sent it first? I asked, returning to the nameless phone number.
That was my little sister in that photograph. That was all that mattered.
An ellipsis dotted the text box. Teddy Marks.
Sophomore. Basketball player. Teddy Marks. I rolled the name over in my mind. So that had been the boy my sister had a crush on, the one she was thinking about when she stood in front of my mirror and posed like she was thirty instead of fifteen. I would ask how she could be so dumb, but I knew it wasn’t that hard. After all, I’d suffered my own brand of stupidity. Besides, it wasn’t her fault that she’d wanted the wrong person to love her. Honor’s taste in boys probably didn’t fall far from the tree.
I went out into the hallway and knocked on her door furiously. No answer. I knocked again. When there was still no answer, I pushed it open. It was empty. There was a deep throb in my joints as I saw the pink satin blanket she’d slept with since she was a kid peeking out from underneath her pillow.
I felt like two people living in one body. I wanted to rage and scream and cry and hide underneath my desk all at once. It hadn’t been m
y sister that night in Dearborn but here she was in our hometown of Hollow Pines and she, too, would be an object for their consumption. And somebody had to pay.
I put on the first clothes I could find and threw my hair into a messy knot on top of my head. The team should be arriving any minute to start warm-ups. I was shaky on the drive over. I kept losing my focus and nearly missing a stop sign or a red light.
My heart beat hard against my ribs. As I was getting out, I noticed a ticket stub in the center cup holder. I pulled it out and read the event details. It was for a baseball game. A baseball game that happened last night.
Of all the things that may or may not have happened in the wee hours of the night, this seemed like the most innocent. I tucked the ticket into the pocket of the driver’s side door.
My chest was already an emotional wasteland and the reminder of yet another missing memory hardly registered. It was like the bruise the hypnotist explained to me, the source of which would never be remembered. It wasn’t important enough. Not right now anyway because the only thing that mattered right now was Honor, and the world and everyone in it could strip away everything I had, but they couldn’t take away the fact that she was my little sister.
As I walked toward the gym of Hollow Pines High, I felt the universe slow down around me. My lungs tightened. I had to force my feet across the parking lot to the double doors where I’d just been the cause of a disaster of unnatural proportions. There was a flyer pinned to the doors that warned of a new county curfew from the Department of Health and Safety. I barely paid attention. The county had done the same thing last year and, as far as I’d been able to tell, it hadn’t kept anyone safe. Maybe there wasn’t even such a thing as safety. After all, nobody had protected me.
The moments ticked by and I could hear only my breath. Then I was inside the gym where the scoreboard was still blank, the bleachers had yet to fill. Liam glanced over at me, did a short double take. He was still dressed in his warm-up sweat suit as was most of the rest of the team.
Paisley’s face was unreadable the moment that she saw me. She’d dashed sparkles on her cheeks and fastened a ribbon to her hair. She nudged Erica and Molly. They both turned. A look of disappointment and sadness flooded out the friendship we’d shared and a gulf opened up between us.
Paisley separated from the group. I wasn’t even interested in her. My eyes searched for Teddy Marks, a do-nothing boy from the sophomore class that I knew only by his mop of black hair, olive skin, and giraffe-like stature.
“I can’t believe you showed up.” Paisley arrived like a bucket of ice water.
“Get over yourself,” I said, trying to move past her.
“No way.” She put her hand to my chest to stop me. “We need to talk.”
“Don’t worry. I’m resigning.” She stared at me as if she didn’t believe me.
“As captain?”
I rolled my eyes. It was the last lame thing I had in my repertoire from my numbered days as an Oilerette. “From the squad,” I said.
“But—then what are you even doing here?”
Deep in the pit of my stomach I knew that this wasn’t all her fault. I hadn’t told her about the night in Dearborn. I’d been the one to clam up, shut down, scared that no one would believe Cassidy the good-time party girl. But maybe it shouldn’t have been up to me. Maybe I should have at least given Paisley the chance.
But there were things in life I’d never know, I was coming to realize. What might have been if Paisley was more of a real friend and less of a partner in popularity was one of them.
She followed the path of my gaze to where it had landed on Teddy Marks, who was emerging from the locker room, pulling a sweatshirt over his head. My palms instantly went slick with sweat. I lost all feeling in my legs. I was worried that my throat would close up.
“Cass…” Paisley started. “He’s not worth it.”
But I was already walking toward him. The closer I got to him, the shorter I felt. When he saw me coming toward him, he glanced away. Just like that. A quick once-over and then he turned his attention from me.
“Hey.” I stopped him as he was picking up a basketball from the rack. My voice squeaked. I didn’t sound like a badass older sister at all. “What—what—” I stuttered. I didn’t want to stutter. “What did you think you were doing?”
He smirked and my cheeks went flaming hot. “What are you talking about?”
I swallowed hard. When I blinked I saw the mean ringleader with the vampire-toothed smile leering at me and the boy with the long hair telling me to relax. No. I pulled myself back to Teddy Marks, who was just a stupid sophomore, I had to remind myself. “You know what I’m talking about.” Whiny, that was how I sounded when I meant to sound tough. “The pictures of my sister.”
He shrugged. “She never told me not to send them to anyone. Relax. It’s not a big deal.”
At this my throat closed up entirely. I tried more than once to speak. It took a monumental effort to unclog it. “Not a big deal? Not a big deal to who?”
He twirled the basketball on his finger. “Honor’s fine. Don’t get all crazy again, Cassidy.” And then Teddy Marks took his mop of black hair and he jogged up to the net for a layup. He made it and never looked back.
I stood alone on the far side of the gym, away from my former squad, away from Liam, away from everyone. Blood roared. My head throbbed. Fingers tingled. Then, all of a sudden, black spots started to crop up on the edges of my vision until I wasn’t sure if I could stand up straight.
Then they were gone. I could see, and a force beyond my understanding or control seemed to drive my legs to action. I left the gymnasium behind without another word. The hallways lay dormant. I walked quickly through them until I found the spot I was looking for—the janitor’s closet. I opened the door. A cloud of dust swirled in the air around me. I swatted it away and closed myself inside.
Using my cell phone as a flashlight, I searched the shelves. Lysol. Paper towels. Sponges. Windex. Ammonia. I ran my finger across the labels. My eyes continued to scan the remainder of the shelves’ contents while my finger stayed put. Bleach. Another promising contender. And lastly, rat poison.
I wavered between the bleach and the poison. Turning both over to read the labels, I studied the horrors of their digestion. Stomach pains, vomiting, skin rash, burning sensation, blurred vision. Then, I replaced the carton of bleach on the shelf and stowed the small can of d-CON rat poison in my jacket pocket.
When I looked down, I was surprised to see that my hands weren’t shaking. I poked my head out of the janitor’s closet and made sure no one was watching.
I waited outside the gymnasium until I heard the telltale signs of the game beginning. There were cheers from the crowd as the teams were announced. The Oilerettes did an opening number without me and without Ava and Ashley. At the concession stand, I purchased a bottle of water then excused myself to the restroom.
I kept expecting the anger to subside, but as I took out the container of d-CON, it remained there, bubbling just below the surface. I shook a few sprinkles of the rat poison into the bottom of the bottle—just enough to make him sick, not kill him, I reasoned. Then, I swished it around to mix.
When I was finished, I entered the gymnasium again at last, taking stock of where the team sat in a row on the benches. I hovered on the sidelines, waiting for my conscience to set in, but my conscience, it seemed, had taken a vacation day. Or maybe it was just as fed up as I was with “boys being boys.” Especially when it involved my little sister, Honor, who still slept with her childhood blanket and watched kitten videos on YouTube.
My eyes narrowed into slits as I homed in on the back of Teddy Marks’s head. He was hunched over on the bench with a towel around his neck.
I had to cut close to the dancing Oilerettes to get to the bench. I walked down the slender aisle between the first row of fans on the bleachers and the bench. When I got close, I leaned in to speak softly into Teddy’s ear. “Mess with my sister agai
n, and I will claw your eyes out.”
His chin jerked in my direction. He swatted me away. In one swift motion, I replaced the water bottle that had been sitting next to him on the bench with my own.
“Hey!” he barked.
“Relax.” I backed away. “It’s not a big deal.”
* * *
I FOUND HONOR an hour later sitting on our back porch, picking blades of grass. Her hair was plaited down her back. Snot slithered down the tip of her nose. I closed the back door gently behind me. We weren’t more than a couple stones’ throws from a boy whom I’d apparently murdered in cold blood.
But Honor could never know that. I still couldn’t believe it myself.
“You’re going to yell at me,” she said, without looking up.
I stood behind her, wishing I could wrap her in my arms and hold her there. I could have sworn I’d deleted the photographs when I’d caught her in my bedroom, but I should have thought to check the sent messages. Maybe then I could have gotten to Teddy before it was too late.
“I’m not,” I said. “I promise.”
I walked around to her other side. My shoes pressed into the space of lawn from which she was picking idly. Her cheeks were streaked with old and new tears; the skin around her eyes was raw and thin as an onion peel. I felt so much older than the two and a half years between us.
“You’ll see, it’s all going to be fine,” I said. “I’m going to help you.”
She sniffled, then looked up at me through watery hazel eyes. “How?” she asked with a hint of defiance. “You’re nobody now.”
EIGHTEEN
Marcy
“You came back for her?” Wren stopped sweeping the broom back and forth across the black-and-white floors of the tattoo parlor. Her healthy bosom heaped over the top of her sweetheart neckline, rippling underneath the storied mural inked onto her skin.
I let the door close behind me. My insides thrummed like I’d been trapped for days and was just now plotting my escape from cabin fever. “Came back for who?”
Teen Hyde Page 15
