Uncertainty

by Abigail Boyd

  The classroom was very dark, and looked like it had been unused for some time. No school supplies or textbooks or personal effects. Black, sooty damage marred the back wall behind the teacher's desk. I realized this must have been one of the places where a fire was set last year.

  "Yeah, you could say that," I agreed. "But we're past it now."

  "We've never been past it," Henry said. "It's always been between us, and it always will, unless I tell you why. I could deal, somewhat, with us being friends. As long as you were talking to me, I could cope. But I can't deal with us cutting each other off."

  "I really don't want to hear this," I said, my heart sputtering. "Really."

  "Please, Ariel," he pleaded. "Last year, after everything that happened, Warwick, and the girls, my father told me that I couldn't date you anymore. I'd told myself that I didn't care what he thought, but he would not take no for an answer. Instead, he told me that Lainey and I had to be together. That it would look good for Thornhill, if we were a couple."

  Could I believe what I was hearing? He was still talking, there was still more.

  "He made an ultimatum, that night after what we found in the basement. He said you were trouble for me. He can be very —" he tugged at his shirt sleeve, where I could see the purple-blue of a bruise healing on his wrist — "persuasive."

  "He did that to you?" I asked, circling my fingers gently around his wrist. Suddenly, all of the bruises I'd seen made a horrible kind of sense. I realized I had been in denial before, not thinking a boy could be abused.

  "I didn't want to, Ariel." His eyes were pleading along with his voice now, and he slid his hand through my fingers so that his were intertwined with mine. "I know I acted like a jerk, but that was all for show. I had to make you believe it. And it never went past kissing, and even that was mostly in public. Lainey is a brat, but she's also got a softer side. But we could never be a couple."

  "My father thought it would be a good match, and I couldn't argue with him, or his temper. I learned a long time ago not to get on his bad side if I could help it."

  It felt strange that an adult would have such a strong opinion of me, when I wasn't fully enough formed to know what I was.

  "So what changed?" I asked. The room was suddenly far too small and dim, the only light that of the sneaky sun through the blinds. I didn't like the abandoned feeling of it, the burn mark on the wall, the faint scent of ash. "What made you dump her now?"

  "I actually ended things the night of the party, before anyone had gotten there. But she begged me to keep up the pretense at school. I just couldn't do it; it didn't feel right. And I couldn't do it to you."

  Our hands were still together. But the whole conversation left me feeling slimy, like everything he was telling me was to manipulate me. I had trusted him before, and gotten burned for it. I hadn't forgotten those feelings of embarrassment and betrayal, and I didn't exactly want to jump back into that. I dislodged my fingers and pulled my hand away.

  "I've wanted to tell you so much," he said, seeming relieved to have unburdened himself. "It was never about you. I'm sorry for what I put you through, I can't tell you enough times to get you to understand. This has been tearing me up for the last year."

  I bit my bottom lip, and grabbed my books off the desk. He looked at me with confusion, his eyebrows puckered.

  "Do you expect me to be happy about it?" I asked evenly. "Jump into your arms and say everything's okay? I just...I don't feel...it doesn't feel right."

  I couldn't even process anything right now. I had the rest of the day to get through, I had class that I was skipping and needed to hurry to. If everything had been built on a lie, then nothing was real, and I couldn't handle sorting out that mess.

  "But I —" Henry started.

  I quietly slid out of the room, and ran to class.

  Madison Taylor was my lab partner in Chemistry, which was my new last class of the day. We ignored each other unless it was absolutely necessary for us to interact, and even when we had a lab together, we barely spoke.

  She kept her ugly Coach purse on her side of the table, brown with a print of horse drawn carriages in pink. She pushed it to the very edge, like I was going to steal it. We would apparently never grow out of childish games.

  I was so used to her silence, that when she spoke to me the day of Henry's revelation, it started me.

  "She thinks you ruined her chances," Madison said quietly.

  "Huh?" I asked, pulling myself away from the worksheet I'd been filling in.

  "That Henry got close to you first. And you ruined her chances."

  "That's not even true. She was all over him the first week of school last year."

  Madison shrugged, playing with a strand of shiny blonde hair. "I'm just saying watch your back. You know how she gets when she's been crossed. Between that and you finding Jenna's necklace in the lake, she's not happy."

  I rubbed my nose at the phantom memory of pain there.

  "Doesn't it make you wonder?" I asked her, but she had gone back to ignoring me, her artificially small nose unconvincingly in her Chemistry book.

  "All little," she said a few seconds later, so quietly I could have imagined it.

  After school, I went to my locker to gather my books. I'd taken great pains to avoid Henry in the halls, in case he wanted to talk more. I wanted to discuss the situation with Theo, but I hadn't gotten the chance. For the only time so far I regretted not taking art class, since she had two this year.

  When I opened the locker door, I noticed immediately that someone had been inside. I went on high alert, looking around to see if anything had been taken. Sitting on top of the shelf, among a bottle of water and extra binders, was a copy of the book Henry had wanted me to read long ago. Assassin's Apprentice. It looked brand new, with a sticker from the book store at the top corner.

  I picked it up, cracking the cover open. Just don't forget about me. was scribbled on the title page. I shoved it in the bottom of my backpack and slammed the locker shut.

  CHAPTER 22

  SO MUCH HAD been going on lately, that I hadn't had a chance to get back to the library to read Other Worlds again. I'd taken notes on what I'd read so far, reading carefully and absorbing every word, every line.

  It was especially important to find out more now, since Jenna was growing more despondent and foggy with each day that passed.

  The spirit might break away, unable to reconcile the reality of their demise, the text had read. Limbo becomes their dream world...although they can't slumber, they are always sleeping...

  Whenever I tried to talk to her, it was as though she had a constant, ethereal version of PMS. She snapped at me, avoiding anything deeper than the most glossy topics. As guilty as I felt, there were only so many times we could rehash the same gossip and memories. I found myself naturally pulling away from her, like a kite from its handle.

  If she got caught in the fog, she might never find her way out. And I could tell by the way she'd sit and flick her lighter, staring off into space, that the invisible fog was indeed starting to creep inside the house. I could almost feel it, like a chill in my bones.

  On Friday, I walked to the library after school. Callie greeted me on the way in.

  "Long time no see, stranger!" she said cheerfully. "I just got in a whole bunch of donations from the woman's resource charity, you should take a look."

  A cart full of untagged books stood behind her, the volumes stacked haphazardly. She was putting fresh barcodes on the spines.

  "In a second. I'll be right back," I assured her.

  When I reached the shelf that was Other World's home, I reached up, not even having to think about where it was. My hand grasped for the familiar shape, but found only smaller books. I couldn't detect it there.

  Dragging over one of the stools for shorter patrons, I stood up so I could get a better look at the top shelf. But there wasn't even a space for Other Worlds anymore; all the other books had been jammed together, as if it had never been a
mong them.

  I looked through all the books, but it was definitely not there. It hadn't been pushed behind them. I had to stop myself from ripping every one out in a frenzy. Forcing my emotions to calm down, I tried to discern other possibilities. Maybe someone else had taken it into the reading area. Maybe it had gotten misplaced after the last time I'd read it.

  Callie was still manning her cart, sorting the new editions into categories. They looked mostly like swoony historical romances, with beefy guys on the covers holding up swooning damsels. Callie was dressed casually, with an orange and green striped scarf over a thin sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders, looking young and quite pretty.

  "Hello again," she said. "Did you find what you needed?"

  "Can you check on a book for me?" I asked.

  "Sure." She pushed herself over to her computer terminal. "What's the title?"

  I gave it to her. She typed it into her computer, and scrolled through the results.

  "You're sure that's the name?" she asked, frowning at the screen.

  "Positive." I was starting to panic a little now. "I've read through it a few times, but it was a reference book, so I couldn't check it out. I need it for a research paper. And I have a deadline coming up."

  I hated how much better I was getting at lying, how much smoother the fibs came out now. I worried that I'd get lost in between them, and not be able to recognize the truth.

  "Oh. Well, according to this, there's no record of a book by that title."

  "None at all?"

  "No. It doesn't look like any of the libraries around here carry it, in fact. Definitely not Hell's."

  "How is that possible? Could it be a mistake?" I said, grasping at straws. "It was an older book, at least from the eighties." But I knew she was telling the truth. The book had vaporized, the only copy, for all I knew, in the world.

  "Well, all of the titles should have been cataloged when they got here, just like I'm doing now. Even the older ones would have switched when they swapped out the new system. It's possible it got lost in the shuffle, though. Sometimes we go through and do fund-raising sales of old books, too."

  I nodded, dejected. Other Worlds was exactly the type of book I could see them clearing out, a space waster.

  "I'm sorry, honey," she said. "What was it about?"

  "Ghost stories," I said quickly.

  "Well, there are quite a few in the horror section," Callie said.

  "I know. This one was just really informative."

  "Are you interested in ghosts yourself?" She sat back in her chair, getting comfortable.

  "Yeah, I always have been. I'm a big scary story buff." That is, until the stories became real.

  "My grandmother and my mother were all about that kind of thing. My Nana was very religious — we couldn't speak the Lord's name in vain and had to go to church every Sunday for hours. She believed in exorcisms and purification and bad spirits. She even kept a vial of holy water around her neck, but that was after she'd gone a little senile, right before she went into the old folks'."

  "What do you think?" I was curious. I hadn't heard many adults talk about that kind of stuff, other than Corinne, who I didn't classify as normal.

  She shrugged, playing with the ends of her scarf. "I don't really know what to think. Like you said, I'm open to the possibility. I was certainly raised with it being a god's honest truth, but then I went off to college and saw the world for myself. I suppose I think there are things we aren't meant to see, that we wouldn't understand."

  That made sense to me, although it frustrated me, too.

  "There are some far-out types that come here, though," she said, smiling as if to some private joke.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Well, sometimes people ask me to help them find information. Most of the time, it's just general stuff, the names of landmarks, or political speeches, whatever. But once or twice a week, we get these people with napkins full of scribbled notes, who think everything is part of a vast conspiracy. They research through all the old books looking for signs."

  "That sounds like fun."

  "It keeps work interesting," Callie said.

  "Are you still coming back to work at school?"

  "I'm already back," she said, smiling. "This is actually one of my last days here at the library until next summer. I'm just helping out until my replacement can take over."

  After I humored her by taking a look through her book cart, I went back to the stacks, and checked out other paranormal books. There were titles covering a wide variety of subjects — hauntings, magic, fairies, metaphysical spirituality. But nothing like the one I'd lost. There were so many books there, and not one was of any use to me.

  At least I knew that I hadn't imagined the book, and I was glad I'd shown it to Theo when I did. Wandering aimlessly for a while, I killed some time, not wanting to go home before I had to. Plus, I stubbornly thought that if I just looked hard enough, it would bring the book back.

  An unfamiliar woman's voice came over a loudspeaker, causing the remaining patrons to pause in irritation. "Attention, everyone. The library is closing early today for an educational conference. Please bring your check out items to the front counter. Thank you for visiting your Hell library."

  I sighed. My hands were empty, but I still took my time getting up to the front. I was one of the last people left in the place. Looking outside the front windows, I saw that the sky had become overcast, like it would probably start raining soon.

  I thought I might ask Callie for a ride. But as I turned around, I only saw unfamiliar women behind the desk, swinging on their coats and chatting amongst themselves. Callie was already gone. I didn't want to text either of my parents; it was bad enough they didn't know I wasn't at Theo's.

  Rain was beginning to sprinkle the sidewalk. I stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked forlornly back at the library, but the lights were shutting off, one by one. Sighing, I started off on foot towards home. I wasn't going to melt, after all.

  The sky was full of gray and purple clouds, making everything much darker than it should have been on a September afternoon. The weather had taken a turn for the worse, and I could tell by the humidity and the speedy clouds that there was probably a tornado watch for our area.

  There had been quite a few people out earlier, strolling and walking their dogs. Now the streets were empty. A toddler was pulling his tricycle up the walk, and his mom scurried out to help him rush inside. The raindrops grew bigger, marbles instead of salt grains.

  As the seconds passed, a funny, paranoid feeling crept over me. I ignored it at first, until it grew so strong that I couldn't anymore. It felt like someone was watching me, the same feeling we'd all felt in the chamber down below Dexter.

  Looking over my shoulder, I couldn't see anyone. Still, the notion remained. In the houses lining the streets, all of the windows were covered by curtains and closed blinds. Traffic had died down, and the neighborhood in which I was walking had almost no cars.

  The heavy canopy of ugly clouds spilled even more rain, driving harder into the ground. The birds around me squawked, taking off angrily into the air and bumping into one another, feathers cascading down like twirly bird seeds.

  I heard footsteps behind me. I knew I did. But I'd just looked back there, and found myself alone. Where was Jenna? She used to appear all the time when I was out. Why did she have to keep to herself? Not like it would stop anyone from pursuing me, but I would feel safer.

  I turned, feeling silly in my paranoia. A figure in a hooded coat was walking several yards back. My heart leaped into my throat. Fear shredded my rationality. I turned and started to jog. The rain began to pour in earnest. I heard the hooded stranger speed up behind me.

  Chancing one more glance, I saw that he or she was definitely sprinting towards me, gaining speed. A ski mask was beneath the hood, obscuring everything but their hate-filled eyes.

  Cutting through the nearest lawn, I dodged to the side of a slide and
childrens' toys, praying I wouldn't trip, like the cliche went. I came out to my street, feeling a second of fleeting safety until I realized that my house was still in the distance

  I could hear the huffing breaths of my pursuer through the drenching rain. I passed all the houses of my neighbors, salvation within just a few more steps. My lungs ached for more air, and I almost choked sucking in moisture as I gasped.

  Flying up our driveway, I felt air push against my back. The person chasing me gave a final burst of speed. I felt the brush of fingers against the back of my shirt.

  Bursting through the front door of my house, I slammed it shut behind me, half-sobbing and half-choking.

  "Ariel! What in god's name are you doing?" Claire squawked. She was drying off a dish with a towel, her mouth a perfect O of surprise.

  I chucked off my soggy shoes, then ran to peer out of the window above the couch, sitting up on my knees and pulling the curtain back.

  "The carpet! You're dripping water...you're going to make a mess on my slipcover." Claire continued to ramble with increasing irritation, but I ignored her.

  I expected my pursuer to start banging on the door. But there was no one on the street. The rain had already begun to let up to a slow drizzle. I looked back and forth down the road, but only a few cars sloshed by.

  Jenna was sitting on the couch beside me, a subdued, dreamy expression on her face.

  "Where were you?" I asked her angrily. She never seemed to be around when anything important was going on.

  "I was here," Claire said, misunderstanding that I meant my invisible friend.

  "Taking a nap, brat," Jenna said in annoyance. "Why do you look like a wet rat? Not your best style." She looked down at my drenched clothes pointedly.

  "Someone just chased me home," I told both of them, standing back up. My heart was beating too hard for me to sit still. I was still worried that whomever had chased me was going to come storming in the house.

  "What are you talking about?" Claire asked incredulously. "I thought Theo was driving you home. You walked?"