by Catie Rhodes
Someone behind me imitated the yelp, making it sound like a dog bark.
I stared at the door. Only five feet away. Just a few steps. The best thing to do right here was ignore the shove and leave. Someone knelt next to me. A dark-skinned hand appeared over mine.
“You all right?” Rainey spoke in a low voice right into my ear.
I nodded and took a shuddering breath. “I don’t want to cry in front of them.”
“So don’t.” She gripped my arm and pulled me to my feet. “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t either.”
“Wait a minute,” Chase’s shout rose over the music and the whispers of the other students. “Don’t do that to her.”
Something hit me in the back. Wetness soaked through the cute black dress and ran down my back and legs.
“Look, she’s peeing herself.” Felicia’s malicious roar competed with the band in terms of loudness.
“Let it go.” Rainey tightened her grip on my arm. “You can leave this awful place in two months. Never come back.”
“I wish I was as smart as you.” My hands curled into fists. I pulled my arm away from Rainey and turned around.
Felicia held her sides, her laughter coming out in hoarse shrieks. Chase stood behind her. Shock slackened his features. There may have been pity on his face, but I was too pissed to see it. All I saw was a weak little boy pretending to be a man. My breaking heart gasped one last time and died. We were done. Now it was time to settle things with Felicia.
“Why don’t you throw a drink at me now, you nasty, ugly turd?” I advanced on Felicia, not giving her room to do anything.
“You’re making the mistake of your life, devil girl.” She worked her mouth and spat in my face.
It was enough. All the crap she’d dished out since second grade bubbled to the top of my memory, the fury I felt at each incident burning through the shame and making it not matter. I raised one foot and brought the heel down on Felicia’s foot.
She cried out and shoved me. I grabbed her and dragged her down on the floor with me, ignoring the way the breath whooshed out of me, and the way my teeth clacked painfully together. Felicia’s fingernails dug into my face. I whipped my head to one side and bit down on her forearm. She squealed and used her free hand to pound the side of my head. I ignored the blows and clamped down harder, not lessening my grip until I tasted blood.
She quit hitting and wailed for someone to help her, to get me off her. Nobody did anything. They just watched. I let go of her arm and spat her own blood at her. Felicia scrambled to her feet and threw a kick at me. I grabbed her leg and stood up, making her overbalance and topple to the floor.
Then I started kicking. The first kick hit her in the neck. She rolled away, gagging and coughing. The second kick caught her in the middle of the back. A skinny arm went around my waist and dragged me backward.
“Come on, come on,” Tubby yelled into my ear. “We got to go.” He pulled me out the door and down the concrete steps.
I beat at him with my fists, still dizzy with rage.
He ignored me and kept walking until we reached my car. He set me down on the asphalt. I turned to go back into the gym, planning to beat Felicia until she shit herself and stopped breathing. Tubby caught my arm and shoved me against the car. He held me still with his body. His face came toward mine.
“No. I’m not doing that with you,” I yelled. My voice came out all choked. I touched my cheek and found it wet with tears. How long had I been crying?
Tubby shook his head, whipping it back and forth. “I don’t want…I just…look, you gotta get in your car and drive away from here. Leave the county. Give things a chance to calm down.” He gripped my shoulders and gave me a hard shake.
My teeth rattled together, and my head whipped backward. Somehow, it got my attention. Tubby was right. I’d just put myself in a world of trouble, gotten myself kicked out of school. Memaw would never forgive me.
“Come on.” Tubby squeezed my arms. “Time to go.”
I nodded, found my key, and got the car open. I turned back to Tubby. “Thank you.”
He smiled. For the first time, it wasn’t crafty or mean. It was just a smile. We hugged.
I got in my car and drove away, leaving him there in the parking lot watching me. The city limits sign came up ten minutes later. I flew past without stopping. The yellow stripes rolled past, each one like a bad memory. I drove south until I hit Smith County and stopped at a convenience store to call Memaw on a payphone. She answered on the first ring.
“Where are you?” Her breath came in sharp pants. She must have already heard what happened. Maybe the sheriff had already been out to the house looking for me.
“Just crossed the Smith County line. I’m at a convenience store.” I stood shivering in my ruined dress. Oh, how I wished things were different.
She let out a deep breath. “Okay, okay.”
“You already know what happened, I guess.” I bit my lower lip. The rush of scolding would come any second.
“Tubby Tubman—don’t know why you kids call him that—stopped by to tell me. He was worried you’d do something crazy.” The click of her swallowing came over the phone. “I shouldn’t have let you leave the house. It’s my fault—”
“It’s mine for losing my temper.” The tone came over the payphone, letting me know my time was running out. “I guess I should just come back home.”
“No,” Memaw said. “Don’t. Keep driving south until you hit Nacogdoches. Find a phone and call this number.” She read off the number and had to repeat it a couple of times while I memorized it. “Her name is Reba Skanes. She’ll be waiting for your call.”
The call cut off then, and I rushed to the car, found my purse, and wrote the number in eyeliner pencil on a receipt for oil Eddie’d left in there. Then I drove into the night, my thoughts a jumble of regret and fury and hurt.
Epilogue
Three months later.
I recognized Rainey’s car as soon as I turned onto Reba’s street. The newer black Cadillac stood out in a neighborhood of old, beat-up wrecks trying to die a peaceful death. A quick bolt of excitement sped my heart. I hadn’t seen anybody from Gaslight City, other than Memaw and Wilton Bruce, since the night I fled. My plea of guilty to an assault charge and my sentencing to six months’ community service took place in a judge’s chambers.
I eased into the driveway of Reba’s two-story frame house, careful to leave enough room for Reba when she got off work. Rainey got out of the Cadillac slowly, her face set and solemn. My excitement darkened to dread. What if something happened to Memaw? What if she’d never be back to bring me sugar cookies and tell me she loved me? I climbed out of the Nova and held on the door for support.
“Hey.” I tried to smile but didn’t think it worked.
“You mad at me?” Rainey picked at her cuticles.
“What for?”
“Good.” She grinned. “Daddy’s doing a revival in Lufkin, and I drove down here with him. Your Memaw said you wouldn’t mind me visiting…but adults don’t really know what we think.”
A group of teenage boys on bicycles sped past, hooting and hollering in Spanish. Rainey frowned as she watched them go. I was used to them by now.
“You want to go inside? There’s soft drinks. I can make iced tea.” I started toward the door, freshly painted an evergreen color.
“This house…” Rainey studied the houses around it. “It’s nice for the neighborhood.”
“Me and Reba just finished painting it. The porch too.” I gestured to the sky blue ceiling of the porch, which completely puzzled me since nothing else on the house was blue.
Rainey frowned at it. “Is Reba nice? Do you like living here with her?” She followed me inside. Whatever she thought about Reba’s sheet-covered furniture, she kept it to herself. I was glad not to have to show her what was underneath. It was worse than the sheets.
“She’s been good to me.” I didn’t mention her strict rules about having the lights
out by nine p.m. or her insistence I not stand in front of mirrors. “She works at the dog food factory here in Nacogdoches. From what I can tell, she knew Memaw even before she married my grandfather.”
Rainey grunted an acknowledgment and followed me into the kitchen where I offered her a diet generic brand soft drink. She shook her head and sat at the cheap wood and glass table set.
“Miss Leticia said you planned to go to college in the fall.” Rainey fiddled with a salt and pepper set designed to look like chickens. “SFA? I drove through the campus on my way over here. It’s pretty.”
“I am going to college. Angelina College in Lufkin, though. Maybe SFA later.” I sat at the table. “Matter of fact, I took the GED today. I had to wait until I was eighteen or get a bunch of permission slips filled out.”
Rainey made a face and shifted. “Was it hard?”
“Not at all. Mostly reading comprehension. The math was the only part where I had to really think.” I forced out a laugh. Truth was, sitting in a room of people ranging from my age to their sixties taking a high school equivalency test was far from what I imagined myself doing as an eighteenth birthday present. In my fantasies, I always imagined Chase and me driving to California, crossing the desert, laughing and having fun, finally free of Gaslight City. At least the last part was true.
“You still doing the community service you drew for beating up Felicia?” Rainey kept her gaze trained on the table’s smudged glass.
“Got another three months. It’s not so bad.” I stared at Rainey’s face. Why had she bothered to come to this part of East Texas, two hours from Gaslight City? Both Nacogdoches and Lufkin were huge towns compared to Gaslight City but still Podunk compared to Dallas and Houston where Rainey had already spent considerable time. “How’d graduation go? Did you make valedictorian?”
Rainey smiled for the first time. “I did. I guess that’s why I came here. I wanted you to know our senior project won the competition and got the highest grade. I beat Chad Baxter because of it.”
“Hey, that’s great.” I meant it. “We sure worked hard enough.” And it cost me everything. I let out another fake laugh. “I mean, you probably worked even harder editing it and making Chase score the music.” My cheeks heated at the mention of him. “Did he score the music?”
“Yeah. He did great. Daddy let us use the church’s recording equipment.” She turned the rooster pepper shaker around and around.
“Have y’all already been on the cruise? Wasn’t that the prize for winning?” I didn’t really want to know any of this. For the first time in months, I had that old, nervous Gaslight City feeling back. The one where I felt self-conscious and worried all the time.
Rainey actually laughed, a rich true laugh. “I gave my ticket to my mother. Tubby gave his ticket to my daddy. Chase gave his ticket to his mother. Felicia sold her ticket to Chase’s dad, can you believe that?” She shook her head. “Anyway, they’re going on a couples’ vacation this fall.”
“Did Chase leave town? Head out for California?” The side of me who beat Felicia to a pulp hoped he dumped her like a load of diarrhea. No matter how much Chase hurt me, I wanted good things to happen for him. He had the talent to go all the way.
“Chase spends most evenings at Bullfrog’s, either drinking or playing. Teaches guitar during the day.” She locked her gaze on mine. “Still seeing Felicia. Who, by the way, hasn’t yet introduced him to her record producer cousin.”
A sadness, deeper than I ever expected, tightened my chest. How could Chase just blow off his dream, the one he’d worked so hard on, to knock around Gaslight City like all the losers we made fun of?
The front door banged open. Rainey and I both jumped as though we’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Peri Jean, you in here?” Reba’s iron-rough voice drifted into the kitchen.
“Yes, ma’am. Did I not leave you enough space to park?” I stood from the table, and Rainey followed suit.
“Naw. That’s fine. But don’t leave this door unlocked, honey. There’s a black Caddy parked out front. I bet it belongs to a drug dealer or some other low life.” Reba closed the door. The sound of her turning the deadbolt came back to us.
“It’s not a drug dealer. My friend Rainey Bruce is visiting from Gaslight City.” I walked to the front of the house, Rainey trailing behind me.
We found Reba in the living room taking off her shoes. She smiled at Rainey and gave her a quick nod.
“You girls going out? This is Friday night, after all. Lots of good places to eat.” She let out a tired sigh and flopped into her recliner, immediately putting up her feet.
“Why don’t I take you for coffee?” I asked Rainey. “There’s a coffee shop right near campus. They have all sorts of concoctions, even if you don’t like coffee.”
I took off in my Nova, and Rainey followed in her Cadillac. Soon as we got there, ordered, and sat down, I wondered what I’d been thinking. We’d already talked about everything there was to talk about. Rainey sipped her coffee, taking in the small, fragrant room, studying the kids our age who sat around chatting. It hit me Rainey would have left if she’d said all she had to say. So what did she want to tell me? Sooner I asked, the better.
“What’d you really come see me for?” I took a sip of my coffee, a drink called Snicker’s Bar, and closed my eyes. This was only the second time I’d treated myself to one. It was just as heavenly as the first.
Rainey set aside her coffee and leaned across the table. “All right. When I went through the footage we took, I edited the exterior shots of the carriage house into the interviews, just to break them up.” She glanced around the room. “In the exterior shots of the carriage house, I kept thinking I saw something moving in the window. I enlarged it, did everything I could to see what it was. It was a face.” She bit her bottom lip. “A young guy. He looked like he was screaming. I did some research, found a picture of Chris Leeland, an old mugshot. It was him in the window.”
I didn’t know what response Rainey wanted from me. In my mind, the whole thing was done with. It didn’t matter if Mr. Dowthitt, Chris Leeland, and the Ghost of Christmas Past haunted the carriage house. I hoped to never see the place again.
“Alice—or whatever her name was—was right. Chris Leeland never left that house.” Her leg jittered under the table, making our drinks shake. I grabbed mine before she turned it over. “I went back through the film. All through it I could see Mr. Dowthitt and Chris Leeland lurking in the shadows, passing through open doorways. In one picture, there’s a set of red eyes looking out of the broom closet.”
I watched her, waiting for the punch line. If she wanted me to go do some ghost busting mission there at the carriage house, she was shit out of luck.
Her dark brows knitted at whatever she saw on my face. “It just scared me is all. Freaked me out.” She leaned close. “I had nightmares about it. We were in there with all that stuff.”
Now she knew how I felt all the time. I shrugged.
She pursed her lips. “I came here to say I believe in you. I know you aren’t crazy or a liar or a Satanist.”
“You thought I was?” My voice rose, and several people glanced at us. I lowered my voice. “You thought I was?”
“I knew you weren’t a Satanist. That’s stupid. The other two, well, I didn’t quite know…but I never thought you deserved to get treated the way you were.” She sat back in her chair. “I am sorry we weren’t better friends in high school. I’m not a people person.”
“Gee, I never noticed.” I sipped my drink, lukewarm but still good.
“I enjoyed hanging out with you. And I owe you one. I’d have never made the James Dowthitt connection without you. That was the part the City Council really loved. So I wouldn’t have gotten valedictorian had it not been for your contribution.” She let out a breath, and her shoulders loosened. “Anytime you need me, okay?”
I nodded, throat too tight to speak. I wished we’d been better friends. Maybe high school wouldn’t
have been so lonely and miserable.
She took one last sip of her coffee and stood. A lot of male eyes watched her graceful sway to the door. She never even noticed them. She was too busy being Rainey.
I sat in the coffee shop longer than needed, nursing my cold drink and watching the traffic pass by. My life had changed into something I never imagined. It surprised me, but I looked forward to college in the fall and welcomed the new start more than I thought I would. If anybody deserved a chance to start over in a place where nobody knew they weren’t normal, it was me.
THE END
Thanks for reading Rear View. Keep reading for a sample of Lost Highway, the next book in the Peri Jean Mace Ghost Thriller Series.
Lost Highway Excerpt
The restaurant buzzed around me as early morning patrons filled the space, hungry for a dose of greasy breakfast. The salty tang of frying bacon mixed with the dark smell of brewing coffee made my stomach growl under normal circumstances. Today, sour acid burned my guts.
He’s late. I shoved the thought away and stared out into the parking lot. No new cars had come since the last time I’d looked sixty seconds ago.
Late February chill radiated from the huge window. I cupped my half-full coffee mug between my hands and hunched my shoulders. Sitting alone in a four-person booth in a busy restaurant qualified for a championship medal in loserdom. I checked the clock on my cellphone and squirmed.
My great-uncle Cecil was now fifteen minutes late. My cheeks heated at the idea of being stood up. Cecil had been friendly and welcoming when I’d tracked him down in Livingston, Texas two months earlier. But then he’d proceeded to ignore my phone calls. The only communication I’d had from him consisted of a postcard showing a beach somewhere in Florida. On the back Cecil had written, “Hey, Peri Jean! My favorite place in the world!” in his scratchy old man’s scrawl. It took me almost a week to remember I’d never given Cecil my address.
