“Gee, is that all?”
I waited for the shock to wear off.
“I mean, crap, Teagan! It all makes sense now. Wait, never mind. I don’t want to go there. I can’t go there right now.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not getting you into this,” which was the absolute truth. I didn’t want Ryan involved. “This is my problem.” But with those words a strange trembling came over me and I felt like I had been punched in the heart. Those were Garreth’s words yesterday when I asked him who was going to sign his suspension slip. It was surprisingly easy to recount every detail for Ryan. How, by talking about it, I had become strangely detached from it. But hearing those words again was like reliving it and I could hear Garreth’s voice echoing in my head.
We began walking quickly back to our first period hallway when something occurred to me.
“Ryan, what did Brynn mean back there, at my locker?”
Ryan seemed to stiffen the moment I asked that seemingly innocent question. He stared straight ahead and I had to be careful to not run into any open lockers, as I kept stealing glances at his unreadable face. I followed him into the stairwell. He still hadn’t answered me. Then, he pulled my arm when we reached the bottom of the steps, yanking me back to where the storage door stood locked. He kept swallowing and looking away, either to avoid my eyes or to make sure no one was eavesdropping.
“Out with it, Ryan. What did she mean?” I was so afraid he was going to tell me something I didn’t want to know.
He looked down at his feet.
“You know Brynn and her secrets. She takes a little piece of information and bends it.”
He stalled for a minute, then looked at me.
“Maybe we should wait until after school,” he said, shaking his head as if agreeing with himself.
“Okay, if you think that’s best, but are you sure you don’t want to get it off your chest now? You look like you saw a ghost or something and whatever Brynn was talking about is really bothering you.”
“It’s been bothering me for a long time now,” he admitted quietly. “Getting it off my chest isn’t going to take it away.”
I didn’t care that we were late for first period. Whatever was bothering Ryan, I promised myself I would try to understand. To help him. As far as I was concerned, all that happened in the past stays there. It was in the past. I realized at that moment that Ryan was becoming a friend I really needed right now. It wasn’t like I could start over, pick someone out of the blue and go through that whole “get to know you” process. That wasn’t possible anymore. Not with everything that’d happened. Too many secrets … and what kind of friend would that make me?
No, Ryan was perfect. We’d been through the same ordeal. We’d had the same people touch our lives. Minutes ago I opened the flood-gates and told him everything. Unconditionally, he listened. I owed it to my friend to do the same for him.
Chapter Nine
“Were you waiting long?” Ryan called out to me. He shut the door to his blue Toyota Camry and walked over, the gravel crunching beneath his tawny-colored work boots.
I stood up from the bench outside the Dunkin’ Donuts and walked a few paces to meet him. I laughed, “You’re the only kid I know who wears those to school. Are you the one who’s been scuffing the floor?”
“Don’t mess with my shit-kickers,” he said playfully.
Shit-kickers? I rolled my eyes.
“Well, you know. Not you,” Ryan smiled.
I was right. Ryan was going to make a good friend.
“How about taking on Derek Arnold for polluting the school?”
“Gladly,” he chuckled. “Bringing Derek up doesn’t remind you of, you know? Him?”
He held the door open for me and I stepped inside.
“Of course it does, but I’m not going to let it ruin my life.” The determination must have been strong in my voice because Ryan looked at me a little differently then. At least I thought he did. Could’ve been my imagination. The truth was, it was ruining my life. It was eating away at me and I was hating every minute of it. I loved Garreth and was worried about him. I wasn’t prepared for this.
The tall pimply boy behind the counter appraised us. I remembered seeing him around school. He was quiet and his complexion needed some serious TLC.
“Um, I’ll take a Bavarian cream and a medium hazelnut coffee … just cream, no sugar please.”
“And I’ll have a large black coffee and a bear claw,” Ryan chimed in.
He started to dig in his pocket for money when I stopped him.
“Oh, no you don’t, you sprung for breakfast. This is on me. So, speaking of not letting things ruin our lives …” I quickly changed the subject before he could argue with me about treating him to an after-school snack.
Ryan took the tray from the counter and followed me to a table for two in the back.
“What’s ruining yours?” I asked casually.
Ryan sat quietly for a second, took a sip of his coffee, then set it down and played with the plastic flap on the lid.
“You were right about seeing a ghost,” he whispered, not looking up at me.
When he did finally look up, his face showed the strangest array of emotions. I saw anxiety and fear, apprehension, disbelief. It struck me that whatever load he was carrying in his chest had been there for a while, long before Brynn’s crazy statement this morning.
“You can trust me,” I said, reaching out and placing my hand on top of his. No one from school was here to see us, to misconstrue this display of friendly comfort. They were all at Starbucks. Well, the pimply kid behind the counter was here, but he looked too bored to take notice.
Ryan nodded in agreement, “I know I can.”
I took a bite of my donut and was all ears.
“I was driving around Sunday, just bored. I needed to get out of the house. My dad drinks sometimes. He’s not the best company.” He shot a look across the table to test the waters.
“Sorry, I had no idea.”
“So anyway, I’m driving around and before I know it I’m driving past the cemetery. I thought I saw something and slowed down. It looked like a person walking the path, maybe visiting.”
“Wasn’t it pouring buckets Sunday?” I interrupted him.
“Yeah, it was. That’s why I was surprised to see someone in the cemetery. I could barely see her from the road.”
He took a gulp of coffee and paused. I realized his hand was shaking.
“Ryan?”
“It was her.”
I could barely hear his voice, it was so low.
He looked up and I could see now that his eyes were moist.
“It was Claire.”
I let out a nervous snort of disbelief and looked over at the kid behind the counter. He was stacking straws.
“Teagan, I swear it. It was her,” Ryan leaned over, closing the space between us. The space that suddenly seemed five miles wide. He leaned toward me, reining in the distance that was suddenly huge and oppressive, as if keeping his secret from getting loose.
“What does this have to do with Brynn’s comment? About girls falling at your feet? Wait. Oh. My. God.”
My breath came in shallow rasps. I was having a panic attack and Ryan grabbed my arms inconspicuously, keeping hold of me.
“Listen! Listen to me!” his eyes were full of determination as he kept his grip on me.
“You were there,” I breathed.
“Yes, you know I was.”
“You said you were further back. You weren’t near her!”
The boy behind the counter, Mr. Bored-Pimple Kid, was looking over at our table now. We were causing a scene.
Ryan hung his head. “I dared her to stand on the edge. I don’t know why. The whole evening was like a dream from hell.” He had tears trailing down his nose now that he didn’t bother wiping.
I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to call him every name in the book but couldn’t quite think of the right one. Nothing seemed strong enough.
I was able to free my hands from his and leaned back against the seat, folding my arms protectively in front of me. If I wasn’t too stunned to move, I would’ve been out of there in a second. I had been so concerned about this stupid, budding friendship between us, feeling connected to him, feeling sorry for him and all along he was an active participant in Claire’s death.
I couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
Finally able to find my voice, I asked Ryan the question that had been lurking beneath all the other ones.
“Did you push her?” I growled quietly.
He turned away and looked out the window, avoiding me.
Before I could say anything else, he turned back. He was a wreck as he sat shaking his head back and forth.
“I didn’t push her.” His voice was thick. “It was Brynn … but it wasn’t.”
“You’re going to blame it on her because you know we already hate each other.”
“I swear it’s true. I don’t know how to explain this to you …” his voice was cracking. “It’s too … bizarre.”
What a sight we must be making. The poor kid behind the counter turned his back to us now, trying to ignore the agonizing conversation we were having in his donut shop. If he was more assertive, he would have thrown us out, but with all our carrying on, it was probably best to ignore the spectacle and pretend we weren’t here.
“Try,” I demanded.
Ryan wiped his red-rimmed eyes.
“Brynn hates you,” he began.
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“That night, after you left with Garreth … Brynn controlled the whole evening. Claire was convenient. She was there and Brynn knew it would hurt you.
But here’s the thing,” he shook his head again, “this is what I can’t really explain to you, and believe me, I want to tell you, I just don’t know how. It was like someone else was up there on that roof with us making me listen to her and giving her some sort of control. Brynn said some weird mumbo jumbo stuff. I don’t know. She was crazy that night. She kept saying it was you, but the whole time it was Claire.”
Chills broke out all over my arms. I remembered my dream the night Claire died. I was Claire. I looked down at her shoes, I saw the tiny scar, I felt the wind in my face as I fell. In my dream I died, and I knew it before my mother came into my room with the news.
“What is it, Teagan?”
It was my turn to swallow hard and face the uncomfortable.
“That night, I had a dream about Claire falling. I saw it happen. I felt it as if it were real, but it was happening to me.”
I shivered. Why would Hadrian make Brynn do something like that? I thought he was using humans for manipulation, not trying to kill us off.
“Do you think Brynn made your dream seem real simply by believing you were up on that roof with us?” Ryan’s voice broke my thoughts.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I felt water logged. Heavy. Ten years must have passed since we started this conversation. “And why would you all of a sudden see Claire in the cemetery? If it really was Claire?”
“Oh, it was Claire, all right.”
“How … ?”
“Because I was thinking about her. I was wishing I could see her again and …” his voice came to a screeching halt as I picked up the pieces of his sentence and finished it for him.
“And there she was.”
We sat staring at each other in silence. In disbelief. How could someone wish for someone or something and get it, simply by wishing it so? That was impossible. Wasn’t it? I had wished for Garreth to appear in my room this morning and that didn’t happen. So much for that theory.
“You hate me,” Ryan whispered.
I sat thinking. Did I?
“No, I don’t hate you. I wish you could have prevented that night. But I don’t hate you.”
“It all happened so fast, I swear if I could’ve done anything … I wasn’t myself then. You know that.”
“Either was Claire,” I recalled how different she had become in the course of a few days. How each of us had become forever changed by the events that happened last spring.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that I happened to be at your locker at precisely the right time this morning, right before you passed out in front of half the school?”
“Okay. Is it a coincidence?” I narrowed my eyes, unsure where we were headed with this.
“Not really. Think about it,” he leaned forward again, “have you noticed me hanging around a lot lately?”
I leaned forward too. “Come to think of it, I have. What’s going on?”
“I’m trying to make it up to you.”
“How? By being Superman?”
Ryan exhaled a deep sigh, “Brynn’s not done with you yet. I feel it in my gut. Especially since your mom is dating her dad. That’s dangerous territory, Teagan.”
“So what you’re telling me is you feel guilty, you’ve become my guard dog and as always, Brynn is up to something.”
He nodded.
“What’s she up to?”
“Beats me, but all I know is you’re already on her list and you have something she wants. I don’t know what. I live with what happened every day. At least if I help you, I’ll feel like I’ve done something good.”
I let it simmer a bit. If Brynn had been willing to do me harm then … my shoulders slumped. Maybe she had something to do with Garreth’s behavior yesterday?
That had to be it. “I think she’s gotten her claws into Garreth.”
“Why Garreth?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t know.”
Lucky for me, I was sitting across from Ryan when the light bulb went off in his head, flooding him with inspiration. A strange, happy light returned to his bloodshot eyes as he blurted out, “Your pizza dinner! It’s perfect! You can start hanging out with her to try and figure her out!”
“Do I have to remind you? She hates me and there’s no way I’m pretending she’s my new BFF.”
“Then you’ll never know. Besides, if she does have her claws in Garreth, wouldn’t you want to help him?”
I didn’t answer.
“Your mom is trying to throw you two together anyway, it’ll just look like you’re trying to make her happy. Just be careful, something strange is going on with her. I don’t know what. But based on your dream and that night, it’s too weird to ignore.”
Ryan took a swig of his coffee, but I just stared at mine. I always knew Brynn was trouble, I just never realized it might be more than I bargained for.
Chapter Ten
I drove by the cemetery on the way home. I didn’t want to; the car just seemed to go that way, which figures. It used to be Claire’s car.
The conversation with Ryan played over and over in my head. My insides felt funny.
Ryan seeing Claire really threw me for a loop. I knew she was on my mind, why else would I have written the email-to-nowhere? It was too strange that all this would surface the day after sending it. Staying mad at Ryan was hard. He could have helped Claire, but more than anyone, I understood that things were very strange that night. Just as Claire wasn’t Claire, Ryan wasn’t Ryan.
They were all unaware of Hadrian’s existence, that he was responsible for the way they had behaved. I thought about what Ryan had said, about me being the one Brynn wanted to watch fall from the roof. God, she was going to be in my house for dinner and the girl had wanted to kill me?
I couldn’t help wishing Brynn had been on that ledge. As much as I hated her, though, I knew that was wrong. Brynn and her friends had also been victims. Their guardians were corrupted, transforming them into twisted humans who no longer knew right from wrong. But things didn’t go as planned. I shuddered at the thought. Thankfully, Garreth showed up in time to help me. Garreth. I let out a big sigh, and started to wonder if maybe Brynn’s guardian was still corrupted.
I pulled into the cemetery past the black iron gate held open during “visiting hours” by
a thick tattered rope. Claire’s car trailed around the winding loops, past the little shed that stored God knows what and up the incline toward her grave. I never went to her funeral. I couldn’t bear it. I had only visited her grave in a dream and it wasn’t pretty. It certainly wasn’t the way I wanted to remember her.
Sloping around the bend of Japanese maples, I let the car come to a stop and idle. I was tempted to get out and walk through the sodden grass to look for her marker, but I stayed put. It felt colder here. As I reached to turn the heat up something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.
Piles of leaves had been raked, ready to be bagged and taken away. They looked darker than usual, soggy and wet from the never-ending rain we’d been having. Pressing my nose up to the glass for a closer look I tried to make out the colors. The once brilliant foliage was now faded and grayed, reduced to muck. They barely stood out against the crunchy-turned-mushy brown and black … wait. Why were there black leaves? Then I realized they weren’t all leaves. Raked up among the rot were black feathers. I squinted and rubbed my hand across the glass, wiping clean the condensation from my breath.
They were poking out randomly, the black down was clumped, held together by thick quills. Like the feather from the puddle. Like the feather from my locker this morning. There were so many, as if a raven had gotten into a vicious fight with another animal and lost. But there were too many feathers for one bird to lose.
Unless, the bird was huge.
Unless, the bird was the size of a man.
An icy chill spread down my arms and I pulled away from the window. Suddenly I was freezing cold. I cranked the heat dial up to the highest setting but the warmth from the vents wasn’t going deep enough to kill the chill. I drew in a deep breath, closed my eyes for a second and then laughed nervously as I reopened them.
“You’re losing it, Tea,” I muttered to myself uneasily, staring out at the piles once again. Feathers poked out in several spots, but not nearly as many as before. I grabbed the steering wheel and squeezed hard, trying to convince myself it was all in my head. But I found myself putting the car in drive. I was getting out of here.
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