Hush, Hush

Chapter 10

I was yanked awake by the sound of my phone ringing. Caught with one foot still in a dream, I rugged my pillow over my head and tried to block out the noise. But the phone rang. And rang.

The call went to voice mail. Five seconds later, the ringing started up again.

I reached an arm over the side of the bed, groped around until I found my jeans, and wiggled my cell out of the pocket.

"Yes?" I said with a wide yawn, leaving my eyes shut.

Someone was breathing angrily on the other end. "What happened to you? What happened to bringing back cotton candy? And while you're at it, how about telling me where you are so I can come strangle you-barehanded!"

I knocked the heel of my hand against my forehead a few times.

"I thought you'd been kidnapped!" Vee went on. "I thought you'd been abducted! I thought you were murdered!"

I tried to find the clock in the dark. I bumped a picture frame on the nightstand, and all the frames behind it played dominoes.

"I was sort of delayed," I said. "By the time I made it back to the arcade, you were gone."

"Delayed'? What kind of excuse is delayed?"

The red numbers on the clock swam into focus. It was just after two in the morning.

"I drove around the parking lot for an hour," Vee said. "Elliot walked the park flashing the only photo I had of you on my cell phone. I tried your cell a zillion times. Hang on. Are you at home? How did you get home?"

I rubbed the corners of my eyes. "Patch."

"Stalker Patch?"

"Well, I didn't have much of a choice, did I?" I said tersely. "You left without me."

"You sound worked up. Really worked up. No, that's not it. You sound agitated… flustered… aroused." I could feel her eyes widen. "He kissed you, didn't he?"

No answer.

"He did! I knew it! I've seen the way he looks at you. I knew this was coming. I saw it from a mile away."

I didn't want to think about it.

"What was it like?" Vee pressed. "A peach kiss? A plum kiss? Or maybe an al-fal-fa kiss?"

"What?"

"Was it a peck, did mouths part, or was there tongue? Never mind. You don't have to answer that. Patch isn't the kind of guy to deal with preliminaries. There was tongue involved. Guaranteed."

I covered my face with my hands, hiding behind them. Patch probably thought I didn't have any self-control. I'd fallen apart in his arms. I'd melted like butter. Right before I told him he should go, I was pretty sure I'd made a sound that was a cross between a sigh of sheer bliss and a moan of ecstasy.

That would explain his arrogant grin.

"Can we talk about this later?" I asked, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"No way."

I sighed. "I'm dead tired."

"I can't believe you're thinking about keeping me in suspense."

"I'm hoping you'll forget about it."

"Fat chance."

I tried to envision the muscles along my neck relaxing, forestalling the headache I felt creeping on. "Are we still on for shopping?"

"I'll pick you up at four."

"I thought we weren't meeting until five."

"Circumstances have changed. I'll be there even earlier if I can get out of family time. My mom's having a nervous breakdown. She blames my bad grades on her parenting skills. Apparently spending time together is the solution. Wish me luck."

I snapped my phone shut and slid deep into my bed. I pictured Patch's unprincipled grin and his glittering black eyes. After thrashing around in bed for several minutes, I gave up trying to get comfortable. The truth was, as long as Patch was on my mind, comfort was out of the question.

When I was little, Dorothea's godson Lionel shattered one of the kitchen glasses. He swept up all the shards of glass except one, and he dared me to lick it. I imagined falling for Patch was a little like licking that shard. I knew it was stupid. I knew I'd get cut. After all these years one thing hadn't changed: I was still lured by danger.

Suddenly I sat up straight in bed and reached for my cell. I switched on the lamp.

The battery showed fully charged.

My spine tingled ominously. My cell was supposed to be dead. So how had my mom and Vee gotten through?

Rain battered the colorful awnings of the shops along the pier and spilled to the sidewalk below. The antique gas lamps that were staggered down both sides of the street glowed to life. With our umbrellas bumping together, Vee and I hustled down the sidewalk and under the pink-and-white-striped awning of Victoria's Secret. We shook out our umbrellas in unison and propped them just outside the entrance.

A boom of thunder sent us flying through the doors.

I stamped rain from my shoes and shuddered off the cold. Several oil diffusers burned on a display at the center of the store, surrounding us with an exotic, lusty smell.

A woman in black slacks and a stretchy black tee stepped forward. She had a measuring tape snaked around her neck, and she started to reach for it. "Would you girls like a free measuring-"

"Put the damn measuring tape away," Vee ordered. "I already know my size. I don't need reminding."

I gave the woman a smile that was part apology as I trailed after Vee, who was heading toward the clearance bins at the back.

"A D cup is nothing to be ashamed of," I told Vee. I picked up a blue satin bra and hunted for the price tag.

"Who said anything about being ashamed?" Vee said. "I'm not ashamed. Why would I be ashamed? The only other sixteen-year-olds with boobs as big as mine are suffused with silicone-and everyone knows it. Why would / have reason to be ashamed?" She rummaged through a bin. "Think they have any bras in here that can get my babies to lie flat?"

"They're called sports bras, and they have a nasty side effect called the uniboob," I said, my eyes picking out a lacy black bra from the pile.

I shouldn't have been looking at lingerie. It naturally made me think about sexy things. Like kissing. Like Patch.

I closed my eyes and replayed our night together. The touch of Patch's hand on my thigh, his lips tasting my neck…

Vee caught me off guard with a pair of turquoise leopard print undies slung at my chest. "These would look nice on you," she said. "All you need is a booty like mine to fill them."

What had I been thinking? I'd come this close to kissing Patch. The same Patch who just might be invading my mind. The same Patch who saved me from plunging to my death on the Archangel- because that's what I was sure had happened, although I had zero logical explanations. I wondered if he had somehow suspended time and caught me during the fall. If he was capable of talking to my thoughts, maybe, just maybe, he was capable of other things.

Or maybe, I thought with a chill, I could no longer trust my mind.

I still had the scrap of paper Patch had tucked inside my pocket, but there was no way I was going to the party tonight. I secretly enjoyed the attraction between us, but the mystery and eeriness outweighed it. From now on, I was going to flush Patch out of my system-and this time, I meant it. It would be like a cleansing diet. The problem was, the only diet I'd ever been on backfired. Once I tried to go an entire month without chocolate. Not one bite. At the end of two weeks, I broke down and binged on more chocolate than I would have eaten in three months.

I hoped my chocolate-free diet didn't foreshadow what would happen if I tried to avoid Patch.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my attention drawn to Vee.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm peeling the clearance price stickers off these clearance bras and sticking them on the not-on-sale bras. That way I can get sexy bras at trashy bra prices."

"You can't do that. She'll scan the bar codes when you checkout. She'll know what you're up to."

"Bar codes? They don't scan bar codes." She didn't sound too sure.

"They do. I swear. Cross my heart." I figured lying was better than watching Vee get hauled off to jail.

"Well, it seemed like a good idea…"

"You have to get these," I told Vee, tossing a scrap of silk at her, hoping to distract her.

She held up the panties. Tiny red crabs embroidered the fabric. "That is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. I like that black bra you're holding, on the other hand. I think you should get it. You go pay and I'll keep looking."

I paid. Then, thinking it would be easier to forget about Patch if I was looking at something more benign, I wandered over to the wall of lotions. I was sniffing a bottle of Dream Angels when I felt a familiar presence nearby. It was like someone had dropped a scoop of ice cream down the back of my shirt. It was the same shiver) jolt I experienced whenever Patch approached.

Vee and I were still the only two customers in the shop, but on the other side of the plate-glass window, I saw a hooded figure step back under a shadowed awning across the street. Freshly unsettled, I stood immobile for a whole minute before I pulled myself together and went to find Vee.

"Time to go," I told her.

She was flipping through a rack of nightgowns. "Wow. Look at this-flannel pajamas, fifty percent off. I need a pair of flannel pj's."

I kept one eye glued to the window. "I think I'm being followed."

Vee's head jerked up. "Patch?"

"No. Look across the street."

Vee squinted. "I don't see anyone."

Neither did I anymore. A car had driven past, interrupting my line of vision. "I think they went inside the shop."

"How do you know they're following you?"

"A bad feeling."

"Did they look like anyone we know? For example… a cross between Pippi Longstocking and the Wicked Witch of the West would obviously give us Marcie Millar."

"It wasn't Marcie," I said, eyes still trained across the street. "When I left the arcade last night to buy cotton candy, I saw someone watching me. I think the same person is here now."

"Are you serious? Why are you just telling me this now? Who is it?"

I didn't know. And that scared me more than anything.

I directed my voice at the saleslady. "Is there a back door to the shop?"

She looked up from tidying a drawer. "Employees only."

"Is the person male or female?" Vee wanted to know.

"I can't tell."

"Well, why do you think they're following you? What do they want?"

"To scare me." It seemed reasonable enough.

"Why would they want to scare you?"

Again, I didn't know.

"We need a diversion," I told Vee.

"Exactly what I was thinking," she said. "And we know I'm really good at diversions. Give me your jean jacket."

I stared at her. "No way. We know nothing about this person. I'm not letting you go out there dressed like me. What if they're armed?"

"Sometimes your imagination scares me," Vee said.

I had to admit, the idea that they were armed and out to kill was a little far-fetched. But with all the creepy things happening lately, I didn't blame myself for feeling on edge and assuming the worst.

"I'll go out first," said Vee. "If they follow me, you follow them. I'll head up the hill toward the cemetery, and then we'll bookend them and set some answers."

A minute later Vee left the store wearing my jean jacket. She picked up my red umbrella, holding it low on her head. Other than the fact that she was a few inches too tall, and a few pounds too voluptuous, she passed as me. From where I crouched behind the rack of nightgowns, I watched the hooded figure step out of the store across the street and follow after Vee. I crept closer to the window. Though the figure's baggy sweatshirt and jeans were meant to look androgynous, the walk was feminine. Definitely feminine.

Vee and the girl turned the corner and disappeared, and I jogged to the door. Outside, the rain had turned into a downpour.

Grabbing Vee's umbrella, I picked up my pace, keeping under the awnings, steering clear of the pelting rain. I could feel the bottoms of my jeans dampening. I wished I'd worn boots.

Behind me the pier extended out to the cement-gray ocean. In front of me, the strip of shops ended at the base of a steep, grassy hill. At the top of the hill, I could just make out the high cast-iron fence of the local cemetery.

I unlocked the Neon, cranked the defroster to high, and set the windshield wipers to full power. I drove out of the lot and turned left, accelerating up the winding hill. The trees of the cemetery loomed ahead, their branches deceptively coming to life through the mad chop of the wipers. The white marble headstones seemed to stab up from the darkness. The gray headstones dissolved into the atmosphere.

Out of nowhere, a red object hurtled into the windshield. It smacked the glass directly in my line of vision, then flew up and over the car. I stomped on the brakes and the Neon skidded to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

I opened the door and got out. I jogged to the back of the car, searching for what had hit me.

There was a moment of confusion as my mind processed what I was seeing. My red umbrella was tangled in the weeds. It was broken; one side was collapsed in the exact way I might expect if it had been hurled with force against another, harder object.

Through the onslaught of rain I heard a choked sob.

"Vee?" I said. I jogged across the road, shielding my eyes from the rain as I swept my gaze over the landscape. A body lay crumpled just ahead. I started running.

"Vee!" I dropped to my knees beside her. She was on her side, her legs drawn up to her chest. She groaned.

"What happened? Are you okay? Can you move?" I threw my head back, blinking rain. Think! I told myself. My cell phone. Back in the car. I had to call 911.

"I'm going to get help," I told Vee.

She moaned and clutched my hand.

I lowered myself down on her, holding her tightly. Tears burned behind my eyes. "What happened? Was it the person who followed you? Did they do this to you? What did they do?"

Vee murmured something unintelligible that might have been "handbag." Sure enough, her handbag was missing.

"You're going to be all right." I worked to hold my voice steady. I had a dark feeling stirring inside me, and I was trying to keep it at bay. I was certain the same person who'd watched me at Delphic and followed me shopping today was responsible, but I blamed myself for putting Vee in harm's way. I ran back to the Neon and punched 911 into my cell.

Trying to keep the hysteria out of my voice, I said, "I need an ambulance. My friend was attacked and robbed."