by Jack Chaucer
"Me and my Strayed," Nicole said aloud after a long silence and a deep breath. "I must be the finder of lost souls. I wonder if Adam Upton enjoys ..."
She wanted to say "hiking," but the word "hunting" barged onto her tongue instead. Nicole bit down on it before she finished the sentence.
...
"You've been weird this morning, Nikki," Candace observed out of the blue as the girls lumbered steadily from rock to rock up Mount Washington's steep, monotonous summit cone. "Are you mad that I abandoned you to cuddle up with Will in the hut?"
Candace's question stirred Nicole from her trance — one she had mostly maintained since they had ascended out of the easy ridgeline trail of tarns and alpine flowers, and began exerting themselves on their final push toward the summit. The clear skies from the night before had given way to mostly cloudy conditions, allowing only intermittent views of the Presidential Range and beyond.
Nicole’s mood was deteriorating, too, and she could no longer withhold the reason from her friend.
"I'm sorry," she said, abruptly stopping to sit on a smooth rock next to a small pyramid of rocks, or cairn, which marked the trail above the tree line. "I've got to tell you about this dream I had last night, C.C., or I'm going to lose it and roll off the mountain."
"What? OK, you better tell me then," Candace said, sitting across from her friend on a different rock.
Nicole thought about her words as she took a swig of water from her bottle. Candace pulled a water bottle out of her pack and did the same, but she got tired of waiting for her friend to talk.
"So you're not mad at me then?" Candace asked.
"Definitely not," Nicole assured her. "I'm so glad you had fun with Will and I was able to sleep under the stars last night. It was a win-win for both of us, but now I just want to stay on this mountain and never go back to school."
"Whoa, I here you, but what the hell did you dream about that makes you say that, Nikki?" Candace asked, leaning forward to touch her friend's forearm and to hear her better as the wind whistled up the rocky cone.
"This was more like a vision than a dream — it was disturbingly real," Nicole said, searching for words. "Do you know Adam Upton?"
The question caught Candace off guard at first, but she eventually blurted out the two words Nicole predicted she would. "Adam Upton, yeah, sort of ... he's trailer trash, obnoxious ... why?"
"Because this dream I had basically warned me that he's going to do something bad this school year," Nicole said, shivering as her sweat turned cold in the strong winds on this 58-degree day.
"Bad like what?" Candace asked.
"Bad like Newtown," Nicole replied. "He's going to shoot at us and kill us — that kind of bad."
Candace's eyes bugged out, but she was speechless as Nicole recounted most of the details of the dream.
"You had a nightmare, Nikki, that's all," she finally concluded.
"Am I crazy?" Nicole asked.
"Yes," Candace said, hugging her tightly and not letting go as two older male hikers descending from the summit nodded at them.
"Good way to keep warm in this wind, ladies," one of them said a little too flirtatiously for Candace's taste. She suddenly shifted into protective mode for her frazzled friend.
"Glad we could make your day," she said with a little bite in her tone as they drew closer.
"Views were pretty spotty up there," the other climber said with a winded voice as he carefully lumbered down the rocks and moved past them.
"Oh well, thanks for the update," Nicole said, trying to change the subject back to hiking and regain her composure. But then she remembered her mother's note. She pulled it out of her pack and showed it to Candace.
"What's this?" she asked.
"In the dream they told me to bring Adam Upton to 14th & Stardust," Nicole said. "Then I wake up, reach into my pack and find this note from my mother that I didn't know was in there. I swear I never saw the note before the dream."
"So what?" Candace said.
"Look," Nicole said, pointing at the note. "There's a '14th' here and a 'stardust' there. That's a pretty bizarre coincidence, don't you think?"
Candace shook her head and then looked up to the clouds for assistance.
"You do think I'm crazy," Nicole concluded.
"I think I'm never gonna let you sleep alone under the stars ever again," Candace said, refocusing on her friend.
"I'm serious," Nicole said.
"I can see that," Candace replied, suddenly uncomfortable with the whole conversation. "But we came up here to get away and now you're all upset."
"The little girl handed me a note that said '14th & Stardust,' then I wake up and find that note from my mother ..."
"Dreams aren't supposed to make sense, Nikki. What does that even mean? I don't get it," Candace pleaded.
"I don't know," Nicole said, "but I better reach out to this kid and help him before he ..."
"I'll save you the trouble and call the police on him," Candace interrupted. "Will that make you feel better?"
"Based on what?" Nicole asked.
"Exactly my point," Candace said. "Based on a bad dream somewhere above the tree line where the oxygen is thinner. That's all it was, Nikki. Now let's go. We've got a mountain to finish climbing."
Nicole nodded, and they stood and hugged, but Candace studied her friend's face closely and waited for her to have the last word.
"I won't let it happen," Nicole said, looking Candace right in the eyes. "I can't lose you and I won't."
"Why? Did I get shot in your dream? Did you leave that part out?" Candace asked bluntly.
"No," Nicole answered, "but it's not the dream I'm worried about."
CHAPTER 3: BAT-SHIT CRAZY
"They have us in their sights, Lee," Adam blurted out before muffling a laugh in his hands. He snorted in disbelief at what his eyes were seeing five tables away in the busy high school cafeteria.
"Who the hell are you talking about?" said Thomas Harvey, his back to whatever Adam saw as they both wolfed down pizza.
"Well, one is super hot and the other one with the blue hair ain’t bad either. They both keep looking over at us," Adam said before cracking up again.
Long and wiry with spiky blonde hair and huge black gauges in his ears, Thomas "Lee" Harvey turned his whole body around. When he spotted the two girls in question, he leaned toward them aggressively and blatantly stared at them. His creepy, cold blue eyes never blinked. Nicole and Candace both frowned and quickly looked away.
"That should take care of that," Thomas said menacingly, turning back toward Adam and chugging his Coke.
"What the hell did you do that for?" Adam asked, pounding the table with his fist.
"They're rich little whores," Thomas said flatly.
"I'd do them just the same," Adam boasted.
"My ass you would."
"Put your cash where your ass is, dipshit, and I'll make you even poorer."
"You're all talk. Just like with this thing we got planned. I'm doing it. You say you're doing it, but one girl looks at you and you turn into a pathetic school boy. Don't get cock-tracked," Thomas growled.
"Hell no, I'm in 150 percent!" Adam barked right back at him before his eyes watched the hot girl exit the cafeteria and the blue-haired girl start walking toward them. He snorted into his hands again in disbelief.
Thomas glared at him and never looked up as Nicole now hovered over their table.
"May I join you boys for a minute or am I interrupting something?" she asked pleasantly but nervously.
Adam's eyes lingered on her toned thighs covered in tight black leggings for a moment before gazing up and vaguely recognizing her face. Thomas, meanwhile, rubbed his forehead with both of his hands as if he were wishing the female intruder away.
"Yeah sure, sit right down next to me," Adam said, slapping the seat to his left with gusto and shooting Thomas a loaded, defiant grin. "What brings you over to our side of the tracks?"
Thomas resumed
his unnerving stare, but Nicole ignored him and focused on Adam.
"Looking for a prom date?" Adam asked with an obnoxious, slightly uncomfortable laugh as Thomas stewed.
"It's a new school year — our senior year — and I was hoping to reconnect with some of the kids I went to elementary and middle school with, you know, before we all scatter after graduation and enter the real world," Nicole explained in her most disarming voice as she flipped her bi-colored hair over her shoulder.
Adam was blown away. He looked at her with his large mouth open, his brown eyes curious and his brain struggling to recall when exactly they knew each other.
"Who are you?" he finally asked with a laugh.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Adam, you probably don't even remember that far back," she said. "I'm Nicole Janicek and we both had Mrs. Whitney in second grade. We used to hang out during recess sometimes."
"We did? ... Wow. My memory sucks," Adam said with a snort. "Good to meet you again all these years later."
As Adam shook Nicole's hand, Thomas buried his head in his hands and Valerie Moore, a sexy senior with short, edgy brown hair, walked toward their table with a look of horror. Valerie had been friends with Nicole off and on throughout high school. This was definitely an "off" period, and the disgust on her face put an exclamation point on that.
"Really Nicole? What a T.T. train wreck!" she scoffed before quickening her march toward the lunch line.
Nicole rolled her eyes at Valerie's predictable reaction. Then she lost her patience with creepy Thomas.
"What is wrong with you?" she asked him, staring right back at him and trying not to wince at the gauges dragging down his ear lobes.
"Don't mind Lee," Adam said, trying to interrupt the awkward glares, to no avail.
"Well it's pretty clear Lee doesn't want me to sit at this table," Nicole pointed out.
"You're smarter than you look," Thomas shot back. "And don't call me Lee."
"His real name is Thomas ... Thomas Harvey," Adam noted. "I should've told you that."
"Oh," Nicole said, processing his macabre assortment of names. Her enjoyment of Stephen King’s novel “11/22/63” a year ago and her subsequent interest in the topic of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald suddenly came in handy. But right now, she wished she knew far less about the subject. She also wished she weren’t sitting directly across from this dangerous kid. "Lee Harvey. I get it. How ... clever."
"Do you? Do you really get it? What exactly is your purpose here right now?" Thomas snapped.
"Relax Lee," Adam said, putting a hand out toward him as Nicole shrank back and looked annoyed. She thought about getting up to leave, but then she remembered the dream. She looked at the clock on the wall that hovered over the cafeteria. The time was 12:02 p.m.
"I'd like to be friends if that's possible," she said firmly. "That's my purpose."
"Oh yeah, why now — why not when he was in third grade, fourth grade, last year — why the hell now?" Thomas erupted. "Go back to your safe little table with your rich little whore friends and leave us alone."
Adam grimaced during his friend's diatribe while Nicole stood up and glared down at Thomas. She had never felt such hatred cast in her direction before and she didn't know how to react for a moment.
"You're an asshole!" she finally said, pointing at him. "You better watch your mouth!"
"Oh yeah, what the hell are you gonna do about it, little girl?" Thomas barked. "Are you gonna tattle on me like I'm sure you did in first grade?"
Nicole met his unblinking eyes and seethed.
"No, Lee Harvey, I was just trying to Jack Ruby your hatred with a little kindness, that's all. I'm so sorry I ruined your day," she said sharply and walked away.
Adam shook his head and pounded the table with his fist again, but his eyes followed Nicole's ass as she walked out of the cafeteria.
"Who's Jack Ruby?" he finally asked.
"Who cares," Thomas said, getting up to leave. "It's fitting her hair is blue. That's a ‘Dead Girl Walking’ right there. And she'll have plenty of friends to reconnect with in the graveyard very soon."
...
"Why did you take off, Candace?" Nicole asked from outside her stall in the girls' bathroom.
"Because now I’m starting to believe your dream could be right," she said. "So from now on, I'm hiding in the bathroom every day at 12:14."
"So you just left me out there to die then?" Nicole said, noticing the time on her watch had mercifully passed to 12:19.
Candace flushed the toilet, emerged from the stall and looked her friend in the eyes. "You're bat-shit crazy trying to talk to them, Nikki. Did you see the way that one asshole turned around and glared at us? He'll certainly be a serial killer if he isn't one already. He makes the other one look normal, which he isn't. He's ..."
Valerie Moore suddenly sauntered into the bathroom and seemed pleased to have cornered Nicole. She crossed her arms over the two books she had pressed to her chest and moved closer to interrogate her target.
"Are you certifiable, Nicole?" Valerie asked. "You start your senior year getting caught up in a trailer-trash train wreck. Really? Talking to two of the biggest losers ever to walk the halls of this high school?"
"I just told her she's bat-shit crazy," Candace said, surprised to find herself agreeing with Valerie for once.
Nicole stood her ground physically, but mentally even she was beginning to wonder what good could come from reaching out to Adam and, especially, Thomas.
"The scary one's nickname is Lee ... as in Thomas Lee Harvey," Nicole noted.
"And you're telling us this why?" Valerie asked, rolling her eyes.
"As in Lee Harvey Oswald, the guy who killed JFK," Nicole said, trying to wave some oxygen toward Valerie's brain. She just shook her head and checked her hair in the mirror.
"So that's his hero then?" Candace chimed in.
"I find it very troubling, Nikki, that you like making small talk with homicidal maniacs," Valerie said, returning her sharp look toward Nicole.
"Stop being so dramatic, Valerie," Nicole shot back. "I was just trying to be nice. You should try it sometime."
"I am being nice. And I'm about to give you some good advice: get yourself checked out, Nikki," Valerie said, heading for the door but looking back derisively. "I mean that. Find yourself a good shrink ASAP."
When Valerie departed, Candace practically picked up where she had left off.
"Bitch or not, that bitch is sort of right, Nikki," she said. "Keep your distance from both of them. We'll just call the police the moment they say or do anything suspicious."
"It's kind of hard to hear them say anything suspicious if I keep my distance, isn't it?" Nicole countered. "And I think the name Lee Harvey qualifies as a red flag. I wouldn't have learned that if I hadn't walked over and tried to talk to them."
"So call the police and tell them Lee Harvey is gonna shoot up the school," Candace said. "He names himself after a presidential assassin. That's pretty good evidence to start with."
Nicole shook her head and took a deep breath.
"It's too early to call the police," she said. "I'll try to talk to Adam alone, without Lee Harvey."
"So you are gonna to try to be friends with him … because the dream said so?" Candace asked with an incredulous look.
"Yes, I'm going to try," she said firmly.
"Then you'll know where to find me every day at 12:14," Candace said, "and I'll pray very hard to a God I don't believe in that you aren't the first one to get shot."
CHAPTER 4: DRIVING MR. BRODY
"So how was Mount Washington?" Melanie Ferguson asked Nicole as they stood atop the hill and looked down over the practice field. Dozens of boys in gold helmets, white jerseys and gold pants were stretching on the grass before football practice began in earnest.
"We climbed it, but the great views we had along the way up went to shit at the top," Nicole told Melanie, her history classmate and fair-weather friend. "The cloud
s roll in so fast and thick that high up."
Short, petite and mousy with frizzy strawberry-blonde hair, Melanie always seemed to be chewing gum during her endless quests for gossip and information.
"Did Candace really sleep in the tent with you?" she asked in between glances at her iPhone.
"Yes," Nicole lied, preferring not to reveal her best friend's possible new long-distance love interest, Will.
"My parents would never let me do an overnighter up in the mountains like that," Melanie said, chomping and gadget-surfing away.
"What can I say? My Mom is pretty cool about some things. She's taken me hiking up there quite a few times and she trusts that I'll know how to handle myself. Plus Candace is an awesome hiking partner."
"Valerie said you guys were fighting in the bathroom today," Melanie reported.
"Did she? That sounds like the way Valerie would twist a situation she knows nothing about," Nicole snapped. "Candace and I were having a discussion, not a fight, and Valerie had to put her two cents in, of course. Why are you talking to Valerie anyway?"
"We're friends again," Melanie replied happily.
"Have some self-respect, Mel," Nicole said. "She stabbed you in the back how many times junior year?"
"I know, but we're good now. Me and Val hung out a lot this summer. We even went to Cape Cod in July."
"Better you than I," Nicole said, her eyes focused on senior linebacker Derek Schobell limbering up his hamstrings with his back against the grass.
The sound of a car door slamming violently nearby caused both girls to turn their heads back toward the parking lot. They watched Adam Upton punch a smaller boy in the gut and walk away, leaving him there to curl up in the fetal position next to the truck's driver-side tire.
"Did you see that?" Melanie asked with a horrified look.
"Yes and I know who did it," Nicole replied, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and trotting 20 yards across the parking lot to check on the injured boy. In far less of a rush to assist, Melanie walked over.
"What happened?" Nicole asked, squatting next to the boy and quickly realizing his resemblance to Adam.
"I just got punched," he mumbled, struggling to get his wind back as tears filled his brown eyes. He seemed surprised by the attention from Nicole and now Melanie as she finally arrived on scene.
