The Stranger Inside

by Melanie Marks

  I’m not going to cry.

  I shot up from bed and ripped the poster off my wall. I didn’t tear it up, though. Not like I planned. Once it was in my hands, I couldn’t do it. Gah! Instead, I rolled it up and shoved it in the back of my closet. At least I wouldn’t think of Jeremy every time I looked at my wall now—instead I’d see a gaping hole, emptiness. I tried to ignore the irony, and figured I was making baby steps towards “break-up recovery.” Or more like, “machete-through-my-heart recovery.” Slow, tiny baby-steps. Pathetically slow. Abnormally slow.

  But Jeremy wasn’t normal and what we’d had wasn’t normal. He was my everything when I lived here, my boyfriend, my best friend. His older sister, Erica, had treated me like an intruder when I was forced to move into their house after Mom and Craig got married. She made me feel unwelcome, like a pest. But Jeremy wasn’t like that—not at all, ever. He was the opposite. He’d welcomed me with open arms, into his life, into his heart.

  He’d promised it was forever. He’d bury his face in my hair and whisper, “I love you Jodi. I’ll always love you. Always.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to block out the memory. Normally, I didn’t allow myself to think of Jeremy. It hurt too much.

  I sighed, still left with a half hour of nothing to do but think about the blood in my dream or the fact I was bonkers—even those thoughts were preferable to those of Jeremy. Well, almost. I got my flute out of its case. Playing usually helps calm me down. Usually.

  I had only played a second, though, when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was weird—like a shadow, black and ominous. And quick. It zoomed across my wall, blazingly fast, then it was gone.

  My heart stopped. Froze in my chest. Then it pounded like a jackhammer.

  “What the …?”

  When I could finally move, breathe, I bolted to my window then looked out to see if maybe an airplane had flown by. Hoping. Maybe it had made the shadow? But no. There was nothing in the sky. Nothing in my room. Nothing but me—Miss Nutso.

  ***

  Parker was an awkward, skinny boy with thick glasses. Mom seemed pleased by his appearance. She didn’t even bother to give him the third degree. She just said to be home by nine.

  The ride to Sawyer’s was short and silent. Parker didn’t seem to be much of a talker, not that I minded. I was still kind of freaked about the shadow thing. I mean, what was it? Nothing, I tried reassuring myself. A simple trick of vision.

  I willed myself not to let the word “hallucination” even enter my mind. After all, it wouldn’t have, if I didn’t know about Kenzie. What probably happened was this: I just woke from that scary dream and I wasn’t totally awake. And I wasn’t thinking clearly. And … that was it. All there was to it.

  When we got to Sawyer’s he was sitting out on his front step, messing with his iPhone. When I saw him, I widened my eyes. He was actually pretty hot—really hot—not exactly my type but still yummy attractive. Last night I hadn’t paid that much attention. Learning you are completely nuts is somewhat self-absorbing.

  Sawyer strolled over to the car as we pulled up. He opened the door for me, smiling with a flirty gleam in his eyes. As I got out of the car, his eyes darted from my hair, to my face, to my legs. He raised his eyebrows, and mouthed the word wow, but he didn’t say anything aloud. He just smiled, all you’re-my-shiny-new-toy, eyeing me as though he itched to reach out and play.

  I straightened my skirt and dropped my gaze, feeling shy. I’d gone to an all-girl school practically my entire life. I wasn’t used to guys’ attention anymore and certainly wasn’t used to one giving it so brazenly. But Sawyer watched me even as I straightened my skirt. I could feel his eyes drinking me in. When I finally looked up at him, he made a slight thumping gesture, his hands over his heart.

  “It’s your hair,” he said with a teasing laugh, seeming to know his gaze unsettled me. “It’s Mmmmm,” he put his hands over his heart again, “beautiful. Out here in the sun, it’s red. And shiny. It makes me want to get my hands in it.”

  He flicked his gaze to Parker. “Thanks for giving her a ride.”

  Parker nodded, then without a word, drove away. Sawyer watched him leave with a peculiar smile on his face. “I was kind of worried your mom wouldn’t let you come.”

  “You didn’t act worried,” I said, ‘cause he didn’t. He’d acted like he had The Plan, all confident and sure. Like he totally knew my mom and what it took to push her give-me-what-I-want buttons. Exactly who was this guy? I stared at him, openly scrutinizing. He just stared back, his round blue eyes full of mischief, obviously enjoying the probe. Finally, I relented, “Parker was a good choice.”

  Sawyer grinned. “I thought he would be. I hope you don’t mind, but I kind of hired him to be your boyfriend.”

  I blinked. “You what?”

  “Well, I mean, he’ll be picking you up whenever I want to see you. Your mom can just think he’s your boyfriend.”

  I stared at him, harder still. It was eerie how well he knew my mom. “That might work,” I admitted. Mom thinking I was dating Parker might actually get her off my back.

  “So, why does my mom hate you?”

  “It’s a long story,” Sawyer hedged, practically stuffing me into the passenger seat of his car. “I’ll tell you about it over dinner.”

  “Dinner?” It was only four in the afternoon. I know I said I was like an old person, with the naps and everything, but still, I doubted I could actually get the senior discount for the early-bird-special.

  “Yeah, dinner. You can eat now, can’t you?”

  “I could. But it’s early. Why don’t we eat later? I don’t have to be home until nine.”

  “Nine?!” He staggered. “Your curfew’s nine?”

  “Well, maybe it won’t be after a while if I keep dating Parker,” I said, then went on, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “It’s just that my mom doesn’t trust me. Past history and all that.”

  Sawyer raised his eyebrows. “She’s got you confused with Kenzie.”

  I knew he was only teasing, I could tell by his grin, but still, I felt this need to explain, to make sure he understood. “No. She doesn’t even know about Kenzie. You’re the only person who knows.”

  “Yeah?” He gave me a sidelong look, like he couldn’t manage a full-on gaze, like he was embarrassed for me. “How’d you manage that?”

  “I told you, it hardly ever happens. And when it does, it’s not like it was yesterday. I mean it’s not an all day thing. Usually it’s like a half-hour—at the most. The very most.” I bit the inside of my cheek, my ears burning. “It’s caused from stress. I guess.”

  “Really?” Sawyer glanced at me, then over his shoulder as he backed the car out of the driveway. “Are you under a lot of stress?”

  “Well, yeah. Kind of.” I didn’t really want to tell him about Dad. The subject hurt to talk about. But the thing was, I wanted him to be my friend. He didn’t seem like the most compassionate guy in the world, but he was all I had at the moment. I figured I should toss him a bone. “My dad died recently.” I bit my lip, even having trouble just getting that little bit out. “That’s why I’m here, living with my mom.”

  “Jeez, I’m sorry.” He sounded genuinely sympathetic. He glanced at me as he drove. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do was talk about it.

  He glanced at me again, then back at the road. “Well, we can’t be together that late anyway. My band practices at seven.”

  My eyes lit up, or at least the equivalent of that. “You’re in a band?”

  “Yeah, The Clutch. I play the guitar. I told you that yesterday—oh, I guess I told Kenzie.”

  No. Stop talking about Kenzie, I willed. Forget there is a Kenzie. ‘Cause probably there isn’t. Not anymore. I hope.

  But a band—a sexy, hot band full of guys—that’s what I needed, a distraction. Hanging with them could get my mind off images of blood and Kenzie for a while. Hopefully. �
�Can I come hear you practice?”

  Sawyer winced—I swear, winced. Then he set his jaw, staring straight out at the road. It was a long time before he answered. “No,” he finally said, his voice strained. “I don’t think you should.”

  No? No! He’d been acting so into me—wanting to date me even though he knew I was screwed up—and he’d been looking at me all I’m-incredibly-hungry-can-I-suck-your-face-please-please-please ever since I got here. He had schemed around psychotic Mom, hired Parker so he could see me. And his answer was no?

  I stared at his set jaw, not sure how to react. It was weird. He had gone all rigid, like what I asked was a big deal. But it wasn’t … was it? I didn’t get it.

  He gave a nervous laugh. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Why can’t I come?”

  “Because …” He ran a hand through his hair, like he was uncomfortable with the truth.

  He took a deep breath. “Look, we don’t like to have people around when we’re practicing—not even beautiful girls. Man, especially not beautiful girls. It’s distracting.” He glanced back at the road, then obviously to placate me, added, “Maybe you can come hear us when we play for real sometime.”

  Ugh. Wary glance. “How often is that?” I remembered back to when Jeremy used to be in a band. They practiced a lot, but rarely performed.

  Sawyer didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Almost every weekend.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed at my surprise. “We’re good.”

  Well, great.

  I slunk down in my seat. I didn’t believe his excuse. Whatever was going on in his brain wasn’t what came out of his mouth.

  Still, I tried to be fair. I couldn’t hold his guard against him, not really. He just met me. He didn’t have to spill his guts to me or all of his secrets either. I sure wasn’t spilling mine, and I’d be bugged if he tried weaseling them out of me. Still, I wanted to hear his band, meet his friends, and I definitely didn’t want to be home by seven; left to sit around thinking about Kenzie and blood and shadows.

  We pulled into a restaurant that, by sheer coincidence, used to be my favorite. It’s called “The Pancake House” and just seeing it again brought back a wave of nostalgia. Jeremy and I, we spent a lot of time here, just the two of us. It was “our place.”

  I gulped, almost asking Sawyer if we could go somewhere else instead, but I didn’t. Partly because I was dying to see the place again, but also there’s a part of me that’s apparently really into pain.

  Inside, the place was just as I remembered—dingy but cozy. Nothing seemed to have changed. It’s just a pancake house, I told myself. Get over it. But seeing the tiny booth in the corner tugged at my heart, made me want to be alone, pay it homage.

  I was glad when the hostess came and sat us on the other side of the room, making it so I had to totally turn my head to get a glimpse of the booth. I just won’t turn my head. I can do this.

  “I’ve been thinking.” Sawyer opened his menu, then closed it. He leaned over the table toward me. “It might be a good idea if you got a job.”

  I choked on my water. “Excuse me?”

  “You should get a job. Work. It’d be easier to see you that way.”

  “Yesterday I was looking for a job,” I reminded him, confused.

  His mouth quirked in reply to my job hunting statement, like it was funny. “Yeah. But you were looking in the mall.” He blew his straw wrapper at me. “Everyone wants to work in the mall. You can’t really get a job there unless you know someone already working in one of the stores.”

  Grrr! That was probably true. Bummer. I slumped a little. “I don’t have a friend working anywhere.”

  “You have me,” he said, stretching his arms out on either side of the booth. “I work.” He raised his eyebrows. “I work in the mall.”

  Whoa, hello. “You do?”

  “Yeah, in The Game Shop.”

  I sat up, thinking I seriously don’t know this guy, but also thinking cool. Because The Game Shop would be an awesome place to work. They sold more than just computer and video games; they sold a lot of music too. “And you’ll get me a job there?”

  “Well, no,” he said, totally making my head hurt. “We aren’t hiring. But I have a friend that works in the clothes store next to it. She said they’re hiring. She’ll put in a good word for you.”

  I blinked. When did all this happen?—at work today? The boy had been busy. Making plans. Directing my life. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that—a boy pulling strings on my life. I never let anyone near my strings since Jeremy—not even Grey. Scary!

  I rocked a little in my seat. “But this girl—she doesn’t even know me. Why would she do that?”

  “Because she knows me,” Sawyer said matter-of-factly. “And she likes me. She’ll do it.”

  I sat back, hoping he knew what he was talking about. Working in a clothes store, that’s what I’d wanted in the first place. I figured I could meet a lot of people from school, and get a decent wardrobe at the same time—and yeah, get my mind off blood. Okay, that was mostly what I wanted, the ditching the blood part.

  “See, you’ll be able to leave the house saying you have to go to work,” Sawyer said, “even when you don’t. It’ll just be a good excuse, in case your mom starts thinking you’re spending too much time with Parker or something.”

  “Boy, you really are devious,” I mumbled, realizing it would suck to be on his bad side

  The waitress came and took our order—mine being banana pancakes and a chocolate shake, exactly what I used to have like, every day of the week before I’d moved away.

  I blew my straw wrapper at Sawyer, carefully aiming. It landed in the pocket of his jacket. “Score!”

  Like I was demanding a prize, I finally asked, “So, why does my mom hate you?”

  Sawyer’s mouth quirked again. “Well, I guess hate is a little strong,” he said, fishing the wrapper out of his pocket, then flicked it at me. “I hope it is anyway. She just doesn’t like me very much.” He wadded up another wrapper, absently fingering it into a ball. “See, do you know Erica?”

  “Yeah,” I said, like duh. “She’s my stepsister. Of course I know her.”

  “I used to go out with her. That’s all.”

  I choked out a laugh, amazed. “You went out with Erica?”

  Erica—not to be confused with Sara, Jeremy’s married sister, who now, thanks to me, he was now living with—was a couple of years older than us. I sort of hated her. The weird thing was though, she used to “baby-sit” Jeremy and me when Mom and Craig went out of town on business. Not like, babysitting babysitting, but we would have to ask her permission before we could leave the house. And Sawyer had dated her?

  “So that’s why my mom hates you? Because you went out with Erica?” My mom was psycho, yeah, but I didn’t see how Erica dating a boy two years younger than her could make her mad.

  “Yeah.” Sawyer didn’t look up from the straw wrapper he was mangling. “I just don’t think your mom would like me dating another one of her daughters—not that she ever caught us doing anything.”

  That made me blush, thinking about Mom catching Jeremy and me in bed together. We weren’t doing anything either—nothing—just innocently sleeping. He’d soothed me after I’d had a nightmare—Mom sure hadn’t been around to calm me down. But her anger at seeing us together … Just thinking about it, even now, made me feel sick.

  “You must know Jeremy,” I said, trying to change the subject, yet actually saying his name aloud somehow gave me a perverse sense of release. “He goes to Roosevelt too.”

  “Yeah, I know him.” The way Sawyer said it—somewhat guarded—gave me the feeling they weren’t exactly friends. Maybe even enemies. My interest was instantly piqued, but I tried to stay aloof, like a normal, casual, it’s-all-in-the-past-and-I-don’t-care-very-much, kind of way.

  “He plays the guitar too,” I said, dipping
my sausage link in syrup, swirling it all around. That’s the only way I like sausage. It either has to be covered in syrup or dunked in a chocolate shake.

  Sawyer watched me plop the link in my mouth. His lips parted and his blue eyes glistened. He cleared his throat. But all he said was about Jeremy, “Yeah. I know.”

  I glanced up at him. “Do you not get along?”

  “Well, we don’t hate each other.” He eyed me curiously. “Do you get along with him?”

  “I used to …” Really used to. I swirled another sausage link around, swirled and swirled and swirled, not looking into Sawyer’s avid eyes—he seemed so interested, like he was holding his breath, waiting for my answer. “Back when I lived here before.”

  Ugh. I pushed my plate away, feeling sick. Why were we talking about this? “But no, I guess we don’t get along. Not anymore.”

  Sawyer’s gaze flicked from my abandoned plate to my eyes. He cocked his eyebrows. “Why not?”

  I let out a breath, doubting I could talk about it without crying. Which was pathetic. “There’s a lot of reasons. It’s complicated.”

  The thing was, I hadn’t seen Jeremy in almost three years. I’d come back because I’d been forced to—because Dad had died. So, Mom made Jeremy move out of the house and in with his sister, Sara. Because of me. She didn’t want Jeremy and me living in the same house again—ever. But everything was horrible, right from the start. The first night I moved back I heard a message Jeremy left on the answering machine for my mom—an angry message. It was like… bad.

  Just thinking about Jeremy’s message now made me clutch my stomach. His words had been like a knife twisted into my heart. Hearing his caustic voice had caused me physical pain. I didn’t know the boy on the phone—so angry and bitter. I didn’t want to know him. I wanted my Jeremy back. So bad, I ached. But I knew he was gone—I knew it three years ago when he dumped me, so cruelly. I just had to deal with it, somehow. Get over it.

  I rummaged through my backpack, trying to look casual, unscathed, but mostly just trying to shake the memory. Memories. Not just of the phone call, but of everything—the break up, loving Jeremy. I tried locking it away in the back of my mind, back with all of the other unthinkables in my life—back in the darkness with Dad’s gruesome death and Kenzie. I refused to think about any of it. It all sucked too much.