by Hart, Callie
This is the boy’s locker rooms. Everything is flipped, not where it’s supposed to be. Before me lies a solid brick wall.
Jake charges out of the showers, a storm raging on his face as he comes right at me. I pick up the first thing I lay my hands on, and I swing…
The lacrosse stick makes contact with the side of Jake’s skull, cracking him on the side of the head. He roars, his face turning a purple as he presses the heel of his palm to his temple. The blow doesn’t stop him coming. It only makes him angrier as he barrels straight at me.
I lurch backwards, half jumping, half falling over a bench. Jake, in his fury, doesn’t see the bench either and collides with it, the wood smacking him square in the shins.
Left, left, left, Silver. Run!
The voice of reason in my head, somehow still functioning despite the terror and fear pounding out a frantic tattoo against my ear drums, urges me forward, drives me on, desperate that I should make the most out of every single second Jake falters.
Left I go.
Planting my hand against the wall of locker doors beside me, I use what little strength I have to propel myself forward. My legs are going to give out. My heart’s going to explode any second. The burning, needling in my lungs makes it feel like I’ve inhaled a colony of fire ants. Still I manage to run, and I do not look back.
“SILVER!” Jake’s shout bounces around the locker rooms, ricocheting off the walls. “Where are you gonna go, Silver? All the exits are locked!”
The door to the locker room slams closed behind me. A hundred feet away, down the long, narrow hallway that yawns out in front of me, lies the main entrance to the school.
My way out.
Freedom.
Blindly, I race toward the doors, fists pumping, hope coming alive with every forward step I take.
Halfway to the doors, I see that Jacob lied. The door isn’t chained or locked. It’s chocked open with a rock; there’s a crack in the door, revealing a couple of inches of empty parking lot beyond.
If I can just get outside…
If I can just make it through those doors…
If I can just—
I’m floating. My feet are off the ground. I’m flying forward, hurtling even faster, arms stretching out…
The impact steals my last, exhausted breath. Jake hits me from behind, tackling me with the force of a Mac truck. When we go down, he lands on top of me and the synapses in my brain short circuit.
Darkness closes in.
Before me, my open hand reaches for the door, now only five feet away.
Those five feet might as well be five miles.
I should have known.
A five-foot six ex-cheerleader was never going to out-run a high school quarterback.
28
ALEX
What kind of sick fuck takes a knife to a small, defenseless fucking dog?
The hairs on the back of my neck are bristling, sick chills racing down between my shoulder blades as I drift through a right-hand turn. Every time I do this, I’m skating on thin ice. Literally. The night is clear, not a cloud in sight, which means it’s bitterly cold, and the black top is as slick as an ice rink. The car’s wheels fight for traction as I coast through every turn; it’s a miracle that I’ve been able to judge when to spin the steering wheel and lay off the gas each time I’ve hit a junction or a bend in the road. By rights, I should probably be dead in a ditch right now.
I did the right thing giving the Impala to Zander so he could rush Nipper to the emergency vet. Cam took the Parisi’s van, which left me with only one choice: Silver’s Nova. I should have replaced the tires on the Nova; I should have taken a look at the clutch a long fucking time ago, but I was too distracted by all the shit we’ve been dealing with. Now, the vehicle feels like it’s about to rattle apart, and I’m paying the price.
“Salve, Regina, madre di misericordia, vita, dolcezza e speranza nostra, salve. A te ricorriamo, esuli figli di Eva—” I mutter the words under my breath. Sheer desperation forces them up from the annals of buried, childhood memories and sends them tumbling out of my mouth. My mother used to kneel at my bedside every night and fervently whisper the prayer over me, begging the Madonna for mercy and guidance. I’ve never needed either of those things more than I do right now.
“A te sospiriamo, gementi e piangenti in questa valle di lacrime. Orsů dunque, avvocata nostra, rivolgi a noi gli occhi tuoi misericordiosi. E mostraci, dopo questo esilio—”
The car’s engine whines, pushed to its limit as I hit a stretch of straight, open road and gun the gas. If another vehicle turns out on the street, I’m dead. If I hit a patch of ice at the wrong angle, at the wrong fucking moment, I’m dead. Worst of all…if I’m too late, if I don’t get to there in time, then Silver is dead.
“Il frutto benedetto del tuo seno. O clemente, o pia, o dolce Vergine Maria. Amen. Salve, Regina, madre di misericordia, vita—”
I never thought I’d be that person—the kind of person who would suspend their disbelief and embrace superstition or religion in a dire time of need. I wouldn’t do it for myself. I’d never cling to a fairytale in order to make facing my own death a little easier. But Silver? I’ll believe in Big Foot, the Chupacabra and fucking unicorns that shit rainbows if there’s even the slightest chance that believing might help her make it through tonight. Mary of Nazareth did exist. Whoever she was, she gave birth to a son who changed the world. She is worshipped and venerated in every corner of the globe, and that has to count for something. I pray to her, hoping that, through the span of two thousand years, she somehow hears my despair and takes pity on me.
“—Piangenti in questa valle di lacrime. Orsů dunque, avvocata nostra, rivolgi a noi gli occhi tuoi misericordiosi—”
Be okay. Be okay. Please, please, please be fucking okay.
One mile out from Raleigh High, the Nova’s engine begins to groan. The shudder that shakes the car does not bode well.
“Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare,” I growl. “Not yet. Not fucking yet, you piece of shit.”
My threats go unheard. I’m still nowhere near Raleigh when the engine gives one final, last coughing splutter…and cuts out altogether. A shockwave of panic explodes outward from my chest, my arms and legs suddenly very, very cold.
It takes a moment to register that the car’s losing speeding, coasting dangerously without any sort of power pushing it forward. And then I explode. “MOTHERFUCKER! NO!” A jagged bolt of pain chases up my arm as I lay my fist into the car’s dashboard. “You piece of fucking…”
Nope. No time. No fucking time for any of that. I hit the brake, gritting my teeth so hard I can feel the bone judder inside my skull. I’ve opened the door and I’m already out before the car’s even stopped moving.
Huge snowbanks line either side of the narrow road, tall spruce trees punching up toward the sky like an ominous, looming guard. Orion, blazingly bright and perfectly framed in the window of sky overhead, seems to be pointing the way toward my destination.
“Sbrigati, mi amore!” My dead mother’s voice whispers frantically in my ear. I don’t need her to tell me twice.
I set my jaw, suck down a deep breath, and I get to it.
I run.
29
SILVER
I come to, and my immediate response is to scream.
The pain is excruciating.
I can barely breathe around it. My right arm, pulled awkwardly over my head, is dislocated…and Jacob is dragging me by it down the hall. He’s whistling a tuneless, cheery song as he pulls me roughly behind him.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
It’s spread to every cell of my body. There’s no running from it. No escaping. It’s too fucking much…
I try to wrench my arm free from Jacob’s grasp, and it’s the worst possible thing I can do. A hot, white flash momentarily blinds me, and a fractured scream builds at the back of my throat. I can’t keep it
in. The cry bounces off the walls, rattling around inside the row of hollow lockers to my right. Jacob pauses briefly, casts a bored look at me over his shoulder, and laughs. His grip tightens around my wrist as he continues on his way. The whistling starts up again, and I realize, sickened, that I know the song after all. It’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire,’ my favorite Billie Joel song.
Jacob sounds insane as he stumbles through the chorus of the song, trying and failing to hit the correct notes. The rhythm of the song is unmistakable, though.
It’s then that I realize what I’m wearing: a red Raleigh tank, and matching red and white pleated skirt. My pajamas are gone, and I’m decked out in the Siren’s uniform. He did it. He stripped me while I was out cold and changed my clothes. The gasp I let out is a mixture of horror mingled with bitter, frustrated rage.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t take advantage,” Jake says casually. “Your tits are nice, but I’m not into the whole touching-girls-when-they’re-unconscious thing. No point touching you at all if you’re not awake to hate me for it.”
Looking down and seeing the vivid bruises all over my legs, the deep slash on my right thigh, and the blood that’s already seeping into the fabric of the Siren’s tank I’m now wearing, I realize just how bad this is. I look like I’ve been beaten half to death. Panic gets the better of me. “Let me fucking go, Jake. Just…just let me go. We can both walk away and pretend like this never happened.”
The whistling cuts off. “I think we’ve come a little too far for that, don’t you?” He seems to think for a second. The soles of his boots squeak against the linoleum with every step he takes. “No, there’s only one possible outcome here tonight, Silver. You need to die. That’s just the way it’s gotta be. No hard feelings.”
“No hard fe—ARGHHH!” I nearly pass out as a wave of pain fires like a bullet down my arm, burning in my shoulder joint. Jake gives my arm another swift, sharp tug, and a wave of nausea rolls over me.
“Probably best if you just shut the hell up. Bargaining’s pointless. I’m not a particularly merciful person. I feel like I shouldn’t have to tell you that,” he chides.
He’s right, I should have known better. I do know better, but I had to try. I twist, bracing as hard as I can against the pain, trying to use my bare feet to gain some sort of a grip on the floor. Jacob’s fingers are closed tighter than a steel vise around my wrist. My efforts get me absolutely nowhere, as he continues to pull me by my arm. We pass a glass cabinet, full of Raleigh’s awards, commendations and trophies, and I’m able to pin point where we are just as Jacob rounds a corner, jerking me roughly around the bend and we pitch up in front of the set of double doors that lead into the gym.
Instinctively, I know that I’m dead if he manages to get me through those double doors.
With everything I’ve got, I strain against Jake’s hold, desperation forcing me to pull, pull, pull. Towering above me, Jake pauses in front of the gym doors, casting a condescending smile down at me. “Pathetic. You’re so fucking weak. I thought with all the big talk recently you’d put up more of a fight than this. Shame there’s no one here to see you like this. They began to fall for your bullshit, didn’t they? They began to believe that you were better than me. Fucking better than me. Hah. They’d change their minds if they were here right now. They’d see just how fucking useless and scared you are. Come on. Guy Lovell’s having a party. I need to get there by midnight, before people are too fucked up to remember seeing me.”
God, he even has an alibi squared away. I bite back a howl of pain as he shoulders open the gym doors, dragging me along behind him. My panic ramps up to an eleven when I look up ahead and see what awaits us in the middle of the gymnasium; in a beam of silvery moonlight, lancing through the gym’s high windows, I see a chair. And above the chair, hanging ominously from a broad, strong support beam…is a noose.
30
ALEX
My body is on fire. The cold needles at my lungs. I’m a machine, feet pounding against the snow, fists pumping as I sprint along the side of the road. With every step, I’m convinced I can’t go any further, and yet I manage to lift my feet again and push forward.
I won’t stop running until I find her. I have no choice. I’ll ignore the exhaustion and the pain, increasing exponentially every time I draw in a frozen, icy breath, until I have Silver safe in my arms. My body can quit on me after that if it needs to. Until then…
Lights skitter and dance across my vision. In my pocket, my phone begins to ring. I hardly hear the sound over the crashing, slamming rhythm of my thundering heart. I burn, I ache, I hurt, and I seethe. And I run.
My phone doesn’t stop fucking ringing.
I ignore it until I realize that it might be Silver. I pull the phone out of my pocket as quickly as I can, then, making sure not to drop it in the snow. Hope flares inside my chest for a second as I strain to focus on the name lit up on the screen…but then I make out Cam’s name and that hope crashes and burns.
Keep running.
Just keep running.
Don’t fucking stop.
I can feel myself hitting a wall. I’m exhausted. Normally, I can run for hours without stopping, but it’s different when the ground’s covered in ice and snow, and the cold is pulling the heat out of you. You have to use every muscle in your body to stabilize. There’s no way to find a steady rhythm and settle into it. Plus, I’m not just running. I’m sprinting. Uphill.
“Come on, you worthless bastard. Put some effort into it.” This time it isn’t my mother’s voice in my ear. It’s another voice from my past. A voice I’d rather forget. Gary Quincy’s sneering tone has the same effect as a bucket of ice water being dumped over my head. I gasp, gulping down air, not breathing efficiently at all.
“You let your mother down. You were a constant source of disappointment to me. Now you’re going to let this girl down, too?” Gary snarls. “Fucking typical. You’re gonna prove me right tonight, aren’t you, boy? You’re gonna prove just how fucking worthless you really are.”
Fury digs its claws into my back. I hate him. I hate him so fucking much. I wish the monster was still alive so I could fucking kill him all over again. I wait for the surge of energy to hit me, fueled on by Gary’s cruel, vindictive words, but that sweeping wave of adrenalin never arrives. I’m still dog-tired. I’m still on the verge of collapsing. Gary’s vitriolic words have turned my blood into battery acid, though, and I somehow manage to dig deep and go faster.
Gary used to heckle me when I’d run as a kid. He’d follow me in his Pontiac, drinking a beer, his arm hanging out of the window, flicking a cigarette. The car’s engine would rumble at my back as my skinny legs forged forward, feet slapping against the blacktop.
“Forget it. Give up. You’re never gonna be fast enough. You’re never gonna make the cut.”
I hear the same words now and they spur me on, driving me up the frozen, frigid hill toward Raleigh High.
I will be fast enough. I will make it to Silver in time.
I growl with every exhalation, roaring as I power closer to my goal. I am a rabid wolf, chasing down its prey.
The school building is in sight now, little more than five hundred feet away. The windows are in darkness, the building bathed in moonlight. At first, I think the parking lot is empty, but as I draw closer I spot the black Ford F150 that’s tucked out of the way in the back, close to the pathway that leads down to the dell. The same dell where Cillian Dupris learned what it was like to crawl.
Jake drives a Tacoma, but I’m not the only one who can borrow a vehicle. He’s smart. Smart enough not to drive his own truck on a night like tonight. I know I should slash the fucker’s tires before I head inside the school, prevent him from making a run for it if he manages to give me the slip, but that would take precious seconds and I don’t know how many of those I have to spare.
The world is startlingly quiet as I finally reach the last leg of my run, speeding toward the school entrance. I’m surviving on adrenalin, m
y body shaking wildly as I reach the doorway, preparing to drive my clenched fist straight through the glass. I see I don’t need to, though. It isn’t even locked. The door’s been propped open with a rock.
Flying through the entrance, I haven’t planned where I’m going to look for Silver first, but I come to a screeching halt regardless. There, on the floor, a dark mass lays on the linoleum, not five feet away. I’m so hopped up, my nerves jangling, flooded with uncontrolled energy, that I have to fight exploding into a nervous rage. It’s clothes. A pile of mangled, torn clothing. The shreds of navy blue fabric are familiar, dotted with star constellations. They’re Silver’s pajamas, and they’re covered in blood. I take a step forward, my blood singing through my veins, and something crunches beneath my right foot. Something fragile. Something breakable. Something glass.
Gingerly, I lift my foot and find myself looking down at the shattered face of Silver’s Mickey Mouse watch.
31
SILVER
The noose creaks, the thick length of rope complaining as Jake takes hold of it, pulling it taut. His eyes are lit with a sick excitement that chills my blood to sub-zero temperatures. “Get up on the chair,” he commands.
I’ve never been more scared than this. I want to sob and cry, but instead I say, “Suicide? You think you’re gonna sell this as suicide?”
“There’s one way to make sure they can’t pin this on me,” he remarks icily. “I could just burn the entire school down once I’m done with you.”
I laugh. The derisive sound echoes around the gym. “Please. Do you know how long it’d take to rebuild this place? You’d get sent to Bellingham to finish out the school year. You’d have graduated by the time Raleigh opened again. That wouldn’t work for you, Jake. You’re a hero at Raleigh. Everyone worships the ground you walk on inside these walls. You’d never destroy the alter where people kneel to worship you. You’d be no one at Bellingham. No one.”
