Night Sky

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “We could look for Sasha while we’re there.” Garrett gave me another smile. “Let me help. I could also be your running buddy. Coach you, give you some tips. You know, I’d run cross-country if I wasn’t the MVP of the football team.”

  I liked the idea of searching for Sasha down at the beach. Calvin and I hadn’t done much more than drive by. Soft sand and wheelchairs didn’t exactly mix.

  Still, I couldn’t help but think about what Calvin had said, warning me about Garrett’s douche-tastic-ness.

  Douche he might have been, but Garrett was a douche who was asking to help find Sasha.

  I used my key to lock the door. “Okay. Thanks.”

  —

  “I hope you’re ready for some track lessons,” Garrett said. “I’ve been running since I was, like, ten years old, so I can teach you a lot if you let me.”

  There was a double meaning in his words, and he leaned in as if he was going to kiss me.

  So I got out of his car, hoping to avoid the awkwardness by pretending I was clueless. We were here to run, right? So let’s run. I wanted to get this over with so I could get back to looking for Sasha.

  “Usually,” Garrett said as he followed me, “I like to go for a pretty long run. I’ll head all the way down to the wall, which is three miles that way”—he pointed to the right—“and then back again.”

  I’d needed about point five seconds to recognize that getting into Garrett’s car was an enormous mistake. Not only had I been forced to endure another fifteen minutes of really bad, really loud music and lots of engine revving, but I’m pretty sure Garrett checked himself out in the rearview mirror at least twenty times. I’d lost exact count around the third stoplight.

  The icing on the already unappetizing cake was that Garrett had blown past the road leading down to the public beach, instead taking me here to this private strip of sand that abutted his dad’s vacation “cottage,” because it was “prettier and way less crowded out here.” We’d look for Sasha, he promised, after we’d had our run.

  It was true that the view was spectacular. I’d give him that.

  White, immaculate hills of sugary sand coated an empty beach. Ahead, the glistening jewel-toned ocean expanded for miles. Behind us was that towering hulk of a mansion, its stone turrets jutting into the air like a castle. Vacation “cottage,” my ass. Clearly, being pretentious ran in the family.

  “So three and three makes six miles.” Garrett was apparently unaware of my ability to do basic math. “Which is a decent distance for a run.”

  I didn’t wait for him to lead the way. I plunged on ahead, down a set of wooden stairs. Garrett followed as I moved briskly toward the shore, our footsteps awkward in the unpacked sand.

  “Now, since you’re a novice runner,” he continued, “you won’t be able to go that far, or even keep up with me. So if I get way ahead of you, don’t take it personally.”

  Seriously? Calvin was going to love hearing about this. “A douche, indeed,” I said, and then realized I’d spoken aloud. “That’s, um, Botsmanian for great.”

  There was no such place as Botsmania, but Garrett nodded. “Ah,” he said. “Well, then… A-douche-in-dee.”

  I coughed. “That’s actually the feminine version. It’s more accurate for a guy to say, Ama-douche.”

  “Ama-douche,” he repeated obediently.

  I had another coughing fit. Somewhere, Calvin was already laughing his ass off.

  “You ready?” Garrett asked.

  I had never tracked my runs before, so I had no idea if six miles would feel long or short to me. Still, I nodded. “Whenever you are.”

  “Ama-douche!” Garrett took off, his feet pounding the sand as he ran.

  I started running as well, slowed down a bit by another bout of coughing but warming up as I breathed in the beach air. It was salty and damp, and it actually refreshed me. I quickly caught up and set my pace with Garrett, staying at his side.

  I had never tried running with a partner before. It was different. Garrett’s pace was slower than I’d expected, and I really wanted to speed up. For the first few minutes, though, I felt obligated to stay with him, but then I remembered what he’d said… If I get way ahead of you, don’t take it personally. Heart pumping, I began to feel really good for the first time in days.

  So, I decided that if it was okay for Garrett to get way ahead of me, it was equally cool for me to run ahead of him.

  Which is exactly what I did.

  The breeze embraced me as I moved my legs across the solid sand and tilted my face up to the sunlight. Forgetting everything bad, I just ran. My arms pumped by my sides, and I found myself repeating a mantra as my steps multiplied.

  Everything-will-be-okay, everything-will-be-okay…

  And then I looked up, and the wall that Garrett had talked about was right in front of me. I slammed my hand against it and turned around to start back toward where Garrett and I had begun our jog.

  But when I turned, Garrett was nowhere to be found.

  In fact, now that I thought about it, I hadn’t seen him since I’d decided to speed up.

  I couldn’t even see a dot of an outline of him on the beach. And his dad’s vacation cottage? Well, that was far enough away to look about as huge as my pinky.

  Where was Garrett?

  I felt energized. I wasn’t tired at all. I touched the back of my neck and found that the very beginnings of sweat had popped through right around my hairline. Otherwise, I was completely cool and dry.

  “Hey!” someone called from far away, up beyond the rolling hills of the sand dunes.

  I turned to look, and…it was Garrett! He waved at me, one arm slung across the open door of his convertible, pulled to the side of the gravel beach road.

  The road and the dunes were separated by a chain-link fence that had seen better days. I jogged up the hill and then stepped through a hole in the fence to get to Garrett and his car.

  “Where did you go?” I asked, wiping sand off my hands.

  “Where did you go?” Garrett said, and he sounded irritated.

  “I was just running,” I said. Now that I was standing right in front of Garrett, I could see how sweaty he was. His hair, usually spiked in the front, was stuck to his forehead. He had taken his sunglasses off and was wiping the perspiration from his chin.

  Garrett shook his head. “Very funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny,” I replied. “Why did you get in your car?”

  “Because,” he said snippily, “I looked down at the sand for a second, and when I looked up, you were gone.” He shook his head. “There’s no way you ran that.”

  “I totally did.”

  Garrett frowned. “You’re seriously trying to tell me you ran three miles in…” He checked his watch. “…ten minutes?”

  Was that fast, or was he just punking me? He seemed so serious. “I don’t know. I didn’t keep track. I just ran.”

  Garrett’s frown deepened. “Fine. If you really ran that, then show me again. Race me. And this time, no cheating.”

  He was serious. “I didn’t cheat.”

  Garrett made it obvious that he didn’t believe me. He slammed his car door, leaving it parked beside the road, and followed me back through the hole in the fence. When we made it down to the packed sand by the water, he shook his head again and said, “You know the fastest mile ever run was in three minutes and forty three seconds?”

  “Really?” I said. I didn’t know that. I’d never really paid attention to things like the Olympics and world records.

  “Yeah. Some dude from Morocco did it. But you just crushed his record.”

  “Maybe you miscalculated the time,” I offered. I seriously doubted I had broken any world records today, considering I was still a bit crampy. I checked my watch instinctively, but it didn’t provide any answers. I had
no idea when I’d started running, or when I had finished.

  “Maybe you’re playing a joke on me. Did you have that gimp kid follow us and drive you out here to the wall?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Garrett. “Gimp kid?” I repeated. “You mean Calvin? My best friend?”

  Garrett shrugged. “I guess so,” he said. “I’ve never really talked to him, so I wouldn’t know if he was your best friend or not.”

  I’d seen Garrett talking to Calvin in band practice all the time. So with that, Garrett suddenly had officially become both douche-tastic and a bald-faced liar.

  “Let’s just do this,” I said, angrier than ever. The faster we finished the race, the faster I could get away from Garrett. “How far are we racing?”

  “We’ll do a quarter mile. To that pile of seaweed.” He pointed to a large mass of dark green mush, way down the beach.

  “A-douche-in-dee,” I said, wanting him to say it again.

  He did. “Ama-douche.”

  Garrett and I lined up against the wall. I looked over at him, and he looked at me. “Wait a second,” he said, and unpeeled his black tank top from his torso. His abs were six solid indentations—a total work of art that glistened in the sun. Too bad he was a douche.

  I waited impatiently while he carefully rolled up his shirt, left it on the stone wall, and took a moment to stretch. Then he looked down at his watch.

  “Okay. We start in three, two…”

  And before Garrett said one, he sprinted forward, swinging his arms and legs wildly by his sides.

  Double douche!

  Rolling my eyes, I pressed my stopwatch button and took off after him, quickly catching up. As I passed Garrett, I saw the expression of disbelief on his face. And then I was ahead and looking only at the beauty of the ocean and the sky.

  It wasn’t long before I hit the pile of seaweed mush with one foot, hit my stopwatch button, and stopped running. Stretching my arms overhead, I yawned a little bit. The cool breeze felt nice. A single bead of sweat slid down my temple, and I caught it with one finger.

  I turned around.

  Garrett had only made it halfway. He’d stopped and was leaning forward, bending almost in half as he placed his hands on his knees.

  “Garrett?” I called, even though I knew he was too far away to hear me.

  It looked like he was starting to kneel down, right there in the sand.

  “You okay?” I called out, and began to jog back toward him.

  When I got closer, I saw that he was, in fact, kneeling. He then leaned over, bracing himself with his hands in the sand.

  “Garrett?” I said again.

  And that’s when I watched the Coconut Key Academy star quarterback puke his guts out all over the sand.

  “Oh, man,” I said, running over to him. “Do you want me to get you some water?”

  Garrett heaved a little more and then stood up, not looking at me. “Let’s go,” he said, wiping off his chin. “I’m taking you home.”

  I followed along beside him as Garrett trudged back to the car. Curious, I looked down at my watch. I’d run a quarter mile in forty-five seconds. Was that good? It seemed about right to me.

  “Do you want me to run and grab your shirt?” I asked, pointing back down the beach. “You left it by the wall.”

  “Screw my shirt.” Garrett coughed a little into the crook of his elbow. “You know,” he said, “I was out partying pretty hard last night. Too much tequila—you know what that’s like. That plus the heat… And I’m pretty sure I did miscalculate. This watch I use sometimes acts funny in the humidity. No way did you run a four-minute mile.”

  Garrett pressed a button on his keys, and the car beeped its acknowledgment. I glanced up at the otherwise empty road…and that’s when I spotted her.

  She was in the shade of a palm tree, her legs straddling her motorcycle, and she was far enough away so that I couldn’t see more than the pale smudge of her face.

  Motorcycle Girl.

  I knew that she knew I’d seen her, because she shook her head at me, as if in warning.

  “Hey!” I said to Garrett, who was busy making sure he hadn’t thrown up on the front of his shorts. “Do you know that girl?”

  Garrett gave himself one final brush-down before turning to face me. “What girl?” he asked, still breathless. He was drenched in sweat.

  “That…” But when I looked up again, I found myself pointing to an empty expanse of road. The bike, and the girl, were gone.

  Chapter Seven

  I did the math—several times—and I had definitely run sub-four-minute miles.

  And Garrett was definitely a douche.

  As we drove home from the beach, I looked at my phone and realized that service was back, and that Calvin had been calling me off the hook. My mom, however, had not, which was both surprising and awesome.

  “See ya,” Garrett said, still not smiling as he pulled into my driveway.

  “Thanks,” I replied, Mom’s years of training to be polite kicking in as I slammed his car door shut before jogging up my steps.

  Garrett had promised we’d look for Sasha while we were out. And that hadn’t happened. After the puking incident, I figured I wouldn’t even bring it up and just wait until I got home to do some investigating myself.

  Now it was almost four o’clock, and I needed to get my butt in gear.

  As if on cue, my phone rang again. Calvin.

  “Where the Jesus have you been?” Cal said before I could even spit out a hello. Garrett, meanwhile, pulled away with a squeal of tires.

  “I slept late, then went to the beach for a run with Garrett,” I told my friend.

  “Excuse me, who?” Calvin said, even though I knew he’d heard me clearly. This connection was pretty good.

  “He dropped by and said he wanted to help look for Tasha, but we went for a run instead,” I reported. “For the record, you were right.”

  “Right about what?” Cal sounded annoyed.

  “Garrett,” I replied. “He’s a douche.”

  There was a pause, and I heard Calvin sighing into the phone. “Man, Sky, I don’t mean to be a drag, but could you please just shoot me an I’m ok on days like this? Maybe you’ve forgotten, but we almost got our asses shot last night.”

  Cal had a point. And I had almost forgotten. Until Motorcycle Girl appeared at the beach. Assuming, of course, that she wasn’t a hallucination conjured up by my Greater-Than brain, God help us all.

  “Sorry,” I apologized as I opened the door with my house key. My mom wasn’t back yet from shopping, which was good. That meant I could talk freely without fear of her overhearing. I quickly filled Calvin in on the GPS debacle and warned him to keep his texts vague.

  I locked the door behind me after I went inside, remembering that awful sewage smell and the sense of evil it had carried with it.

  Calvin had been appropriately silent for a moment, but now said, “Tasha?” as if what I’d told him about Garrett had just penetrated.

  “That was the first douche-y thing he did.” I laughed. “It wasn’t the last.”

  “Garrett’s douche-y-ness knows no bounds,” Calvin agreed.

  “Get over here,” I commanded him as I went into the kitchen. “I just walked in. And I need to tell you about a trillion different things. I need to show you something too. Are you hungry? I could make some pasta.”

  I could hear Calvin as he shut the creaky door that connected his mudroom to his garage. “I am, but your mom’s treating you to pizza in about forty minutes, so you should wait to eat.”

  I had already stuck my hand into a bag of corn chips. I removed it and licked salt off my fingers. “Wait. And how do you know this?”

  “Saw her just a little while ago. I’ll ’splain when I get there.”

  A few minutes later—time I spent onli
ne googling racing records—Calvin texted me: im here.

  My house, unfortunately, was only partially wheelchair accessible with those steps leading up to the front door. When Calvin came over, he had to text or call when he arrived, so I could let up the garage door. At the back of the garage was a ramp leading to the main floor of the house.

  I now hit the button on the inside of the garage, and there was Calvin waiting patiently. He pressed the little joystick on the right arm of his chair and moved himself forward and up into my house.

  “Okay, lady, I know the topic is how I spent my day, and you’ve got a lot to tell me, but I’m going first. And I need you to sit down for this,” Cal said.

  “Good news or bad news?” I asked, thinking immediately of Sasha.

  Calvin paused, and I could tell he was trying to decide. “Neutral?” he said uncertainly. “But weird. Let’s go to your room.”

  My bedroom was on the second floor. It was a relative pain in the ass for Cal to get up there, but he knew that it was my sanctuary from my otherwise mom-charged house. I got behind the wheelchair and readied myself for the journey.

  Calvin’s chair was one of the best on the market, and it came with all of the newest technology—like the retractable ramp in his car.

  When he’d first started hanging out with me, his parents not only installed the permanent ramp in the garage, but they also requested that I have the stairs up to the second floor measured so that they could install a special banister. Cal’s chair had a retractable clip that attached it to the banister and slid him up and down, kind of like a makeshift escalator.

  When we reached the top of the stairs, Cal pressed a button, and the clip disappeared beneath the arm of his wheelchair. “Take a seat,” he said when we’d made it into my room.

  I wondered what news could possibly be weirder than the things I was planning on telling and showing him. I hopped onto my bed and sat tailor-style next to my massive heap of pillows.

  “So, I’m pretty sure your mom’s bangin’ Mr. Jenkins.”

  I nearly fell off my bed. “What?”

  Calvin nodded somberly. “I’m sorry, Sky. I know that’s really creepy, but I went to the CoffeeBoy this afternoon—the nice one near the mall? That’s where I ran into them.”