My secret fear was that I wasn’t cut out even to be a tart. I didn’t have … it, whatever it was. Mom had it, even if she did her best to suffocate it under her boring clothes and soccer mom hair—I saw how men looked at her. Nana had apparently turned down half a dozen marriage proposals after her first husband died before settling on rich old Doyle Raley. But I suspected I wasn’t half the head turner either of them was.
Maybe that was why I’d told Rachel all about Lincoln Cross, my best friend at Blake. I’d stretched the truth, saying he wasn’t just a friend but my boyfriend. He was a lot more impressive than anyone I’d actually dated, and I told Rachel about how I used to ride behind him on the Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle his dad gave him when he turned sixteen, the music he wrote, the computer room in his dad’s condo with the speakers that cost more than the motorcycle. About his wavy brown hair that came well past his shoulders, and nights up on the roof deck high above their Nob Hill neighborhood. About how Lincoln and I liked to wrap up in a comforter after sex, often falling asleep on the double lounge chair by his dad’s koi pond.
Most of which was true. Except that Lincoln’s father would have never let him touch the Hayabusa. And instead of sex, it was usually Scrabble. And, um, there was the fact that Lincoln was gay. I told myself these were minor omissions, during those first few days when Rachel and I were getting reacquainted and I needed something—anything—to impress her.… And now it was too late to tell her the truth.
Yet. I would tell her the truth, about that and a few other small lies I’d told back when I felt like I was trying to get used to the new life my mother had thrust us into. I just wanted to wait a little longer, cement our friendship, make sure it was really going to last before I took that kind of risk. I couldn’t afford to lose my one sure thing. The few times I’d spoken to Lincoln since we’d moved, I hadn’t told him everything about Rachel and my new life, either. It was like I wasn’t sure the two halves would fit together, but I knew I had to own up soon and be honest with both of them.
After I finished Rachel’s dress, I pressed it and my own outfit, which was pretty tame by my standards—a plain black tank top and an ancient pair of cutoffs whose pockets I’d appliquéd with the logos from antique flour sacks. I’d beaded my flip-flops myself, and I had a necklace I’d made by drilling holes in coins Nana had brought back from a trip to India and stringing them on a silk ribbon along with black glass beads.
Mom still wasn’t home, so I put the casserole in the oven and opened the box of old clothes I stored in my room. I’d bought some of them at a tag sale the week before, and the rest I’d found on the porch. Word had gotten around town about my business, and people had started leaving me old clothes and quilts, even tablecloths and dish towels. Everyone—friends of my mom, kids I’d met through Rachel, neighbors along San Benito Road—thought of me when they had things they didn’t want anymore, and I got some good things that way. But I still went to garage sales and junk sales and flea markets, because I loved old things, vintage pieces full of personality, things you couldn’t find today.
At the top of the box was a plastic bag stuffed with clothes that I’d bought from a dazed-looking woman in a baseball cap. She had been sitting behind a card table in a vacant lot at the edge of town along with half a dozen other vendors. I didn’t know where they had found the things they sold at their hard-luck flea market, but every week their broken-down cars and ancient trucks were loaded with junk—mismatched dishes and tarnished silver and water-stained books, blankets and toys and lamps that had seen better days. I went through piles of clothes without seeing anything special, but then I saw a plastic bag labeled “Odds and Ends $5.” I could see a brown suede garment through the plastic, probably a skirt. I had no doubt that it was either ruined, ripped, stained, or burnt, but I knew I could cut it apart and use it anyway, and that was worth five dollars no matter what else was in the bag.
I dumped the contents onto the carpeted floor, and colorful pieces tumbled out: a paisley polyester blouse and a pair of striped tights with a long run in them.
A denim jacket with a cropped hem and distressed silver buttons caught my eye. It was badly stained and wrinkled, with dirt ground into the seams, and there was a rip in one sleeve. The label read “Ripley Couture,” an expensive brand I’d seen in a San Francisco boutique. The jacket had to have cost several hundred dollars, and I wondered how it had ended up in the flea market, especially in this condition. It was too damaged to be salvaged, but the buttons were pretty, and I knew I’d find a use for them. In the time it took for my hand to reach for the jacket, I’d already decided to try them with a seventies-era jumper I was working on—
A powerful tremor shattered my synapses, jerking my thoughts violently. I cried out. I think I did, anyway. The fabric was alive in my hands, sending silvery sparks rocketing through my body into my mind, exploding with pain.
It had never been this strong before.
I couldn’t let go. My fingers were frozen around the fabric, and my other senses faded away. All that remained were the flashes and the sparks and a sudden burning heat that radiated out from my heart to my fingertips. I waited, struggling to keep breathing, because I knew what would come next.
I held the jacket in my hands, unable to let go, waiting for the painful tremor to run its course. Finally it fell from my trembling fingertips into a heap on the floor. I crawled away from it, forcing myself to calm down. The shortness of breath, the pain behind my eyes—these felt real, but they were illusions too, just like the visions.
It’s not real, I whispered to myself. Technically, it was true—the denim jacket was only a garment, an inanimate thing that was bound by the same physical laws as every other object in the house. Gravity made it fall to the floor; invisible air currents lifted and fluttered the collar. The shade of blue, I knew from my color theory class at Blake, was a product of light refraction, no more real than concepts like virtue or destiny.
“You’re not real,” I told the jacket, but I still felt its tug. I felt like I wouldn’t be able to leave it alone until I understood the vision, what it was trying to tell me.
My bedroom carpet was soft and soothing under my hands and knees. Never had my visions altered the physical world—no garment had ever wrapped itself around my wrist or throat; no zipper had scraped itself against my flesh. The sparkles I felt were not temperature or sensation—they were not of any sense I could name, other than the connection I felt to others’ lives.
But this time had been different. Moments earlier, the tremor had shocked me, rocked me, thrown me from my axis. Left me gasping, as though if I hadn’t let go, it would have consumed me. Taken me.
Ended me.
Stupid, I chided myself at the unbidden words. I was being overly dramatic and ridiculous, the result of anxiety about the evening ahead. I’d been high-strung all afternoon because of the encounter with Hoff, the thrill of selling so many items, the … whatever it was with Jack. And like every Saturday night, I fretted over getting dressed, over what I would say, how much I would drink, how I would hide it from my mom, whether this would finally be the night Rachel realized I was nothing but a liability.
That was all it was. Overreacting by an epic overreactor.
My drama skills, forged at the legendary Blake School, were unmatched in this sleepy town. All I had to do was get ahold of myself. Break it down. Think it through.
What exactly had I felt when I touched the cotton fabric? I closed my eyes and concentrated, teasing apart the emotions until I could identify them individually. Terror, dismay, grief. Okay. I felt milder variations of those every day. Well, every week, anyway. What teenage girl didn’t?
But there had been something else.… I replayed the scene that had fast-forwarded through me along with the jolt, searching for the details among the confusion. The sensation of being thrown sideways, a sharp pain as my knee struck something, a second impact, a lurching stop. A face—wide eyes and grimace, briefly familiar—a quick vein of �
�� could it be relief? And then—
My fingers closed on the fabric again, my arm reaching for the jacket almost of its own accord, and I was rocketed back into the vision, the sucking vortex of a sense-memory stronger than any other, a hole in the earth that opened to a chasm with no bottom, a wicked blade that grew sharper as it cleaved. All these things were true in that moment, and if I knew—somewhere, deep down where my mortal heart still beat and my veins still carried blood—that this wasn’t real, my mind skipped over that knowledge and entered the other surreal place, a place of darkness and fear.
My throat closed up tight, immobilized by the images that had taken hold of me. They were more powerful than my own instincts, stronger than my sense of self-preservation. The urge to resist faded, lost in my swirling battle. I needed to breathe but couldn’t be bothered. Black stars splatted against the silver sparkle like fat raindrops, obliterating, obscuring, making me forget, making me start to not care. My fingers trembled and clenched, and then relaxed, angry no more, barely twitching.
I pulled the jacket closer, using both my hands now, shoving the fabric under my chin. It seemed inexplicably silky and I rubbed it against my skin as though it were infused with precious oils, rare scents. The faraway voice of reason whispered weakly that I should be casting the thing away, disposing of it, burning it—and still I could not stop.
“Youuuuu,” a different, stronger voice said. A voice thick with fury, desperation, anguish. A face, its features blurred, contorted and twisted with pain, and I recoiled from it, but I couldn’t move.… Somewhere, in another place and time, I knew that my fingers clutched the jacket and couldn’t let go. But that reality was fading rapidly as the face regarded me with hatred, barely more than an outline, the details shimmering and fading in a cascade of the silver sparks. I didn’t know why this entity despised me so much.
This was different from other visions I’d had. Usually they were like old-fashioned films, frame after frame from the past whirring by, events in which the wearer had participated, damage he or she had caused, wrongs committed. I’d heard voices before, but it was rare. This one felt more personal. Somewhere, a person’s rage was so strong that it could be transported through the medium of the jacket, had managed to travel the same dark path as the visions, to speak to me this way.
My mind danced between what it knew and these borrowed memories, blurring them together until the terror became my own. My fear was deep and raw, a fear for my very life. Something—someone—wanted to harm me, and unless I did something to stop them, they would succeed. But at the same time I felt … pity. And guilt. I had done something to deserve this; I had played a part in whatever horror had transpired. But what had I done? The memories eluded me with maddening, quicksilver speed, disappearing just as I thought I was about to understand.
The face came closer, snarling and spitting, wailing, taking up the entire screen of my inner eye, brandishing itself across the expanse of my mind. Hands … The face was no longer disembodied; a shadow figure raised its arms toward me, reaching, threatening, longing to hurt me, strike me, strangle me. Agonizing tremors wracked me even while I knew my mortal body was locked in place, immobile, helpless. It felt as though the vision would somehow cross over, as though its rage was strong enough to defeat the thin barrier between the remembered and the real and find a way to hurt me from deep within my mind.
“You know why.”
The voice hissed at me, wrecked and broken, and I could make out teeth and bared lips. And I did know why—or not why, exactly, only that I deserved what was coming.
A fist swung toward me. Sharp pain. Flickering light. Everything rushing away.
Then nothing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I WASN’T OUT LONG. When I came to, I was lying on the carpet in the middle of the room, the sun streaming in at an angle as it slipped lower toward evening. The oven timer was going off, and I vaguely remembered the casserole. The denim jacket lay inches from my outstretched hand, a stray thread trailing from the cuff seam.
It looked perfectly innocent now, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I stuffed all the other clothes back into the box, and then I went to the kitchen. After taking out the casserole and turning off the oven, I dug into the utensil drawer for a pair of tongs and took them back to my room. I stood over the jacket and took a deep breath, feeling ridiculous. But if the thing worked so strongly on me, maybe there was a chance it would work through the metal and plastic of the tongs, and if so, I wanted to be ready to drop them rather than endure the vision again.
Let go, I whispered to myself, just in case. The visions seemed to paralyze me, or at least prevent me from moving on my own; but if I knew in advance—if I was ready—surely I could overcome that.
Slowly, cautiously, I reached the tongs toward the jacket and, holding my breath, prodded the denim fabric. Nothing. I let my breath out in a sigh of relief, gingerly picking up the jacket and dropping it into the cardboard box. When no fabric protruded over the edges, I jammed the top down on the box and then, for good measure, got the tape from the junk drawer and taped it shut.
I sat cross-legged next to it for a moment, trying to figure out what to do next. I could walk outside to the garbage bin, upend the clothes into it, and in two days the trash truck would haul them away and I’d never have to deal with the jacket again. Yes. I could be free of this confusing vision; whatever bad deeds had been done by the person who wore the jacket were in the past, and nothing I could do would change that.
It was an old excuse, one I brought out whenever I didn’t want to act on my visions, which was most of the time. Nana had told me, all those years ago, that I wasn’t required to do anything at all, and that if I didn’t, the visions would slowly disappear. But I hadn’t always let that happen. Occasionally, I stepped in.
When I was thirteen, I touched one of my mom’s clients’ coats and saw a vision of a woman going through a medicine cabinet, stuffing bottles into her purse. It was years before I understood that she was stealing drugs to support a habit, so I hadn’t said anything.
But the next year, when I had a vision of one of the boys in our building shoplifting candy from the little convenience store down the block, I told the proprietor.
When I had a vision of a girl in my chemistry class stealing the exam key, I left an anonymous note for the teacher.
I was learning something about myself—that I could not always resist trying to bring justice to those who might get away undetected.
I had always suspected that was the point of the visions. It was true that our strange gift had been born in the midst of violence and bloodshed; my great-great-grandmother’s death had been avenged when her killer was executed, but now I believed that her descendants were meant to right other wrongs too. Even minor ones. Even the ones that didn’t have obvious victims. The visions seemed to be giving me the chance to change things in the future.
But this time was different. I didn’t want this … communication. Or curse. Or whatever it was. But now it had found me. It wanted something from me. The individual in the denim jacket had done something. Maybe something really bad. The possibilities spun through my mind.…
But that was ridiculous. Winston was a small town, and whatever passed for news made the rounds within hours. When one of Mom’s clients, a patent attorney, got a DWI, everyone knew by the next morning. When the town council voted to approve a second Starbucks, protestors had mobilized by lunchtime.
There had been no new tragedies in Winston since last summer. Whatever the owner of the jacket had done, it hadn’t been bad enough to make the news. The visions must be mistaken, or exaggerated, or I was misinterpreting them, and I could get rid of the thing with a clear conscience.
Except.
I couldn’t forget the face, the terrible expression of pain and fury, the sensations I’d relived. Something bad had happened. And here, in the box, was the evidence. Even if I decided I could ignore all that, I had a feeling the jacket wasn’t about to le
t me.
With a feeling that I would regret it, I carried the box to my room and shoved it into the back of my closet—just as I heard the front door.
I met Mom in the kitchen going through the mail, her big sunglasses pushed up on top of her head.
“Hey, Clare-Bear,” she said absently. I winced at the old nickname, one I thought she’d finally forgotten. “God, what a day. Want to go get a pizza, forget all our troubles for a while?”
“Mom—it’s Saturday. I’m busy tonight.”
She blinked, raising her eyebrows, and really focused on me. “Oh. Are you sure?”
“Uh … yeah.”
“It’s just that … wow. The days have kind of been running together. That MacGregor audit is killing me—and he was in today, brought me that.” She pointed to the leather bag she took with her everywhere; it was overflowing with file folders and binders. “He hasn’t filed his expenses in five years.”
You’d think that after being an accountant for two decades, my mom would be used to clients whose record-keeping left a lot to be desired. And they were her best customers, anyway, the ones who paid extra for overtime, whose accounts clocked the endless hours that paid the bills.
I had thought Mom would be happier as her own boss, but now I wasn’t so sure. She was working even longer hours, meeting with all the firm’s clients to transition them over. So much for her promises to slow down, stress less, reconnect with her old life. And I was getting tired of it.
“Sorry,” I said, without much sympathy. “But I’m going to the beach tonight. Remember?”
Mom wrinkled her nose and frowned. “Don’t you guys ever do anything besides hang out at that beach? When I was in high school, we wouldn’t have been caught dead there at night.”
Hanging by a Thread Page 5
