by Stacey Jay
Still, I pulled and pulled, until the skin on my nose tore and the chain claimed hairs at the back of my neck, until it felt like my face might be cut in half if I didn’t let go and allow the locket to fall back into place, back onto the warm chest it had already scarred twice.
No. No more. Not me!
I cried out and fell to my knees in the muddy grass, crying and shaking, but not giving up. I couldn’t give up. It was going to come off, even if I had to ruin my face to do it. I didn’t care about my face. I didn’t care about anything except being free to be myself again, to make stupid mistakes and deal with them without all this shame and terror.
The locket gave under my pressure, sliding up and over my eyes. My trembling, frozen fingers worked it over my forehead, untangled it from my hair, and, in another breathless second, I was holding it in my palm. Breathing hard, I stared down at the benign-looking hunk of silver.
It was off. It was over.
Another sob shook my entire body. I pressed the back of my hand against my lips, muffling the moan as it escaped, muting the damaged sound just enough for it to be bearable. It was okay. It was all going to be okay. It was off. It really was.
Now I just had to find somewhere to put the locket where no one could ever find it, where even I couldn’t find it. Just in case.
I struggled to my feet. My last beer had been several hours ago and I had never felt more sober in my life. I was fine to drive. I’d just sneak into the house, grab my keys, and go for a drive out to the nearest bridge over the Cumberland. Let the locket get swept away in the current and swallowed by a catfish for all I cared. It belonged at the bottom of the river, where no one would be tempted to use it again.
I spun so fast that my boots slid in the mud, bringing me back to my knees. Suddenly I was face-to-face with the rusty drain near the entrance to the garage, the one with the miniature bars I’d pretended kept a troll under the ground when I was a little girl. Water rushed into the drain and disappeared, never to be seen again. I had no idea where it emptied out—into a stream somewhere or into the Brantley Hills sewer system—but even if I did, there would be no way for me to find the locket once I threw it inside. It would be swept away, out of my life forever.
For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if the river might be better, if maybe there was an even safer place I hadn’t thought of yet, if maybe I should—
The locket burned a little hotter in my hand, making my decision for me. I flung the hateful thing into the drain and watched it slip between the narrow bars without a tinge of regret. The only thing I regretted was picking it up in the first place.
I crept a little closer on my hands and knees, peering into the drain. The glow from the garage light revealed nothing but pipe with some kind of slimy black stuff growing on the edges. It plunged deep into the ground and the storm was supplying plenty of cold, rushing water to carry the locket along through the drainage system to destinations unknown.
It was gone. Forever.
“Thank God,” I whispered, burying my face in my hands, so relieved I felt like crying and laughing at the same time. I pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, a vague notion that I needed to get out of the rain and into a hot shower floating across my mind before I heard the music and tension threaded through my muscles once more.
It was the song. The Kaley song. This time there were no words, just harsh guitar chords fighting a vengeful path through the rain, but I recognized it immediately.
The cold settled deeper into my bones as I turned toward the tree house. There was no moon, no stars, only the slight glow of the Birnbaums’ porch light to illuminate the treetops, but I could still see the vague outline of someone on the platform I’d made.
Mitch.
My heart punched at me from the inside and for a second all those memories swam inside me again. Me and Mitch—talking, laughing, riding bikes, dancing . . . kissing. He’d been a part of my life for so long, a constant I’d taken for granted, a friend who maybe . . . maybe . . . should have been something more. Who could have been something more if I’d made a different call a few hours ago.
But what about now? What were we now? What did I want us to be? Did it matter what I wanted? And was it my fault that he was playing his guitar in the rain? Did he hate me as much as Isaac hated me? Maybe even more?
Whatever the answers, I would deal with them. Just me. I could do this, I could face the mistakes I’d made. I didn’t need supernatural intervention or magic, I just needed to be strong, and honest, and brave. It still wasn’t easy to hear those angry notes or take that first step across the lawn, but I could do it. I would do it.
With one last look at the drain where the locket had disappeared, I started toward Mitch, and all those scary tree house steps that separated him from me.
Chapter Twenty
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11, 12:43 A.M.
It was raining so hard that I could barely see my hands as I wrapped my fingers around the fourth step and started to climb. Even the shelter of the leaves still clinging to the branches didn’t offer much relief from the downpour. I was climbing blind, the lack of visual cues making the swaying of the massive trunk and the groans lurching from deep inside the tree even more disturbing.
It was a horrible storm, worse than it had been the first time around. Freezing wind whipped through the little valley between my and Mitch’s houses, cutting through the tightly woven fabric of my fleece V-neck, plastering it to my skin with another layer of cold and wet.
But still I climbed, shouting Mitch’s name as I went. I had no choice but to go to him. He hadn’t heard me the first or second or third time I’d called from the ground.
Or maybe he was just ignoring me.
“Mitch! Mitch! I’m coming up!” I screamed again, the act of forcing my stiff lips to form words helping keep my mind off the fact that I was six . . . seven . . . ten . . . twelve feet in the air. I shivered, fingers clawing into the damp wood.
This was even worse than the light grid. I could feel the empty space behind me growling, a hungry void that wanted my slick hands to slip, wanted to watch me fall and gobble up my fear as I dropped. I licked my lips, tasting salt and something sticky, thinking for a second I must have bitten myself.
Cramped fingers dared a brush up and down my face, swiping away water and something hotter that rolled down into my mouth. The blood was coming from my nose, from the place where the locket’s chain had scraped away my skin.
Bringing both hands to cling onto the ladder once more, I turned and brushed my face against my shoulder, leaving a spot of black on the gray fabric I could just make out in the dim light from the Birnbaums’ porch.
I peeked at Mitch’s house through the leaves. My parents were long asleep and trusted me so implicitly they’d never get up to check and make sure I was home in bed. Especially just after midnight on my birthday. But maybe Dr. Birnbaum or his new fiancée . . . maybe . . .
The porch remained empty and the house silent and dark. I wondered if Dr. Birnbaum thought Mitch was asleep or assumed his son was still out at the gig where he was supposed to have been booked until midnight.
Ally’s dad had said something about suing Mitch and the band for half the fee he’d paid them, but Ally had assured me he was just drunk and didn’t really care. She’d sworn he would forget the whole thing by tomorrow. She’d hugged me and told me not to worry and promised she’d come over Monday morning to help me do my zombie Little Mermaid makeup for the first day of Undead Disney homecoming week.
Then she’d turned and thrown up in the kitchen sink, right in front of me and Isaac and her football player friend, who was so drunk he didn’t even seemed to realize she was puking. He’d just kept rubbing her back and playing with her hair, grinning at me and Isaac with this scary, empty look in his eyes.
No one at the party had been telling their friends that they’d had enough, no one had been looking out for each other the way Mitch had always looked after me.
The guit
ar strumming stopped for a second. “Mitch!” I screamed again, certain he would hear me.
But he didn’t hear. Or at least he didn’t care to respond. The guitar chords struck up again, this time playing a tune I didn’t recognize at first. It was only when I’d coaxed my shaking arms and roiling stomach up another three steps that I heard Mitch’s voice, soft and slurred beneath the rain and the wind, singing, “Deserves a quiet night . . . sure all these people understand.”
R.E.M. “Nightswimming.” He’d played it on the way back from our last cliff-diving trip the summer of my freshman year, just before school had started and he, Isaac, and I had begun to grow apart. The song had made us all sad, as if we could sense we were at the end of something innocent and wonderful and life was about to get a hell of a lot more complicated.
“Mitch? Mitch, it’s me,” I said, voice trembling as I reached the top step and stared across the platform.
The music stopped and Mitch’s hand reached for a bottle near his hip. He took a swig, hissing before he dropped it back down onto the boards. I couldn’t see the exact shape of the bottle, but the sickly sweet, burning smell of whiskey hung in the air, tattling on the kid who’d stolen it from his dad’s liquor cabinet above the refrigerator.
Mitch was drinking up here. Really drinking, not just unwinding with a beer or two, but slamming back shots of hard alcohol. I’d never seen Mitch drunk before and had no idea how chugging whiskey would affect him. What if he passed out? How in the world would I get him down?
This wasn’t good. Not good at all.
I licked my lips and shook the rain out of my eyes, struggling to get up the courage to climb out onto the platform. “Mitch, I—”
“Go away.” Mitch inched farther away, swinging his feet to dangle over the side like he was sitting on the edge of the swimming dock down at the lake, not hanging thirty feet in the air. Just looking at him made my head spin and my guts threaten to turn themselves inside out.
Guess whiskey had helped cure his fear of heights.
“I’m not going away. You shouldn’t be drinking up here,” I said, shouting to be heard over a sudden gust of wind. The tree rocked back and forth, moaning, while my pulse raced and my hands gripped the ladder step so tightly my knuckles snapped and cracked.
For the first time since that night in Isaac’s truck, I felt the obscene weight of holding the future in my own hands. There would be no more do overs. The locket was gone, every second counted, and I had to get Mitch out of this tree before one of us was seriously hurt.
“Come on,” I called, trying to channel my mom’s bossy voice. “Come down. We can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. I don’t have anything to say to you.” He took another swig from his whiskey, tilting it back to suck down the last few drops before pitching the empty bottle out into the air. “Go away.”
His words hurt, but I deserved them. Still, I couldn’t leave him up here. He was my friend and he was obviously smashed or going to be smashed very soon. I had to get him down on the ground and into his house. “Okay, we don’t have to talk. Just come down.”
“I don’t want to come down.”
“Please, Mitch, I don’t want you to fall.”
He turned to look over his shoulder. His face was in shadow, but for a second, I swore I could see the loathing in his eyes. “Like you care?”
“I do care. You know I care, I—”
“Fuck you, Katie.”
My mouth fell open and my hands spasmed around the wood in my hands. Mitch had never said anything mean to me. Ever. Not in our entire lives. I’d only ever heard him cuss a handful of times, and I’d never heard him tell someone to “eff” themselves. The shock of knowing he hated me enough to say those words stunned me into silence.
“You know, I thought you were so different, that you saw past all the superficial shit,” Mitch said, his words vaguely slurred but still coming through loud and clear. “I thought you cared about people, really cared about them, whether they fit into the stupid Brantley Hills mold or not.”
“I do care.”
“No, you don’t. All you care about is being Isaac’s perfect little girlfriend,” he said, the disgust in his tone making me flinch. “You’re as stupid and shallow as Isaac and all his friends.”
“I thought Isaac was a ‘great guy,’” I said, finally getting the courage to crawl out onto the platform, anger dulling the edge of my fear.
“I said a lot of dumb things Wednesday night.” He laughed. “No matter what you said, I was so sure . . . when we were dancing . . . I thought I could see it . . .” He turned back around. “Just leave me alone.”
“No. You’re the one who sang that song in front of Isaac and everyone,” I said. “You don’t get to tell me to go away. You have to talk to me.”
“Good work on the confrontation skills, Katie, but you’ve got the wrong guy.” He swayed to one side, making my heart lurch until he righted himself again. I had to get him down on the ground. Now. “Go argue with your boyfriend.”
“I’d rather argue with you.” I reached out, grabbing a fistful of his soggy sweater. “Come on. Come down and argue with me.”
He turned, his face caught in sharp silhouette. “I don’t care enough to argue with you. Not anymore.”
Tears filled my eyes, mixing with the rain. “Mitch, please.”
“You aren’t the person I thought you were. Just . . . go away.” He shook his head. “You’re not worth it.”
His words made me shake all over and my throat close up so tight I swore it made a whistling sound when I sucked in a breath of cold, wet air. He didn’t think I was “worth it.” He didn’t respect me, care about me, or even value our friendship enough to put up the energy to argue.
The reality of it hit me hard enough to make my bones ache. I’d lost Mitch. I’d really lost him and it hurt so bad. So, so, so bad. It was like a light had gone out inside of me, like someone had died and I knew they were never, ever coming back—no matter how much I cried, no matter how long I begged. Regret filled up every place inside of me, until I could taste it on my tongue, smell the pain seeping through my skin and drifting in the air.
This was so much worse than breaking up with Isaac. Losing Isaac had broken a piece of my heart, but losing Mitch shook something loose in my soul. Something jagged that knocked around inside me, bruising and screaming and bleeding, until finally my stupid brain got the message my innermost self had been trying to tell me all along.
“But I love you,” I said, bursting into tears as I realized how entirely true the words were. “I love you.”
And I did. I loved Mitch. I’d loved him . . . always. When we were little, it had been the love of a dear friend, but now it was more. So much more. It was insane that I hadn’t seen it, felt it, known it to be true before now.
But then I’d always suspected I wasn’t the smartest person in the world.
“Please, Mitch, I—”
“Go away, Katie,” he said, still not turning to look at me. I grabbed hold of his sweater with both hands, fists clinging tight, willing him to turn around and look at me.
“No, I’m not going away.” I sucked in a deep breath, shouting to be heard over the howling of the wind. “I love you. I don’t love Isaac, I love you.”
“I don’t care.”
I cried harder, angry and hurt and sad and panicked and scared all at once. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be too late. “Please, don’t do this. I know I’m stupid. I know I’ve made mistakes, but I have been a good friend to you. I love—”
“Go away!” Mitch turned around too fast, yanking his sweater out of my hands, angling his body just a little too far to the right.
I knew he was going to fall before he did and dove for him, but it was too late. I screamed as he slid off the side of the platform, chin knocking hard against the edge before he dropped like a stone, long body rolling once in the air on the way down, sending his skull to meet the ground first.
&
nbsp; It was over so fast, the thirty feet from platform to ground snapped away before I could move a muscle. The dull thud of Mitch’s body connecting with mud and leaves came seconds after, a soft, innocuous sound that split something open inside of me, flooding every cell with pure, cold fear.
Suddenly the night went quiet, the rain and the wind and the storm muted by the rage and grief racing each other through my veins, trying to see which one would win, and whether I’d start to scream or cry.
Instead, I called his name.
“Mitch! Mitch!” I leaned over the edge, peering into the darkness, but I couldn’t see anything in the shadows on the ground. There was nothing moving down there. Nothing. Not even leaves blowing across the yard.
“Mitch!” His name ended in a ragged sob as another gust of wind shook the platform.
I clung to the wood as my heart pounded in my ears—so fast and loud I couldn’t hear myself think. I was so afraid, so horribly, terribly afraid. My fear was a giant crushing monster that laughed in my face, taunting me with my absolute stupidity. I’d thought I’d felt terror so many times in the past few weeks, but I hadn’t known the meaning of the word. This was hopeless, mind-numbing fear—knowing Mitch might be hurt, broken, or . . .
“No. No, no, no,” I chanted beneath my breath, the shattered note in my own voice making me bite my numb lip.
I couldn’t lose it now. I had to get down there. I had to get to Mitch. I had to find help. It wasn’t that far to fall. He had to be okay. Maybe he was unconscious, maybe bruised or worse, but okay. Mitch couldn’t be gone because of this. Because of me. Because of the—
The locket. Oh, no, oh, God.
In my mind’s eye I saw it slither between the rusty bars of the drain—a serpent stealing away from the scene of the crime.
The realization made me shake all over, my entire body trembling and twitching with pure, unadulterated fear. I knew in that instant that I was never going to make it down the ladder on my own. I was too afraid of those slick steps, of the vast, hungry darkness, and of the horrible permanence of whatever I’d find lying in the leaves beneath the platform I’d made.
