Silence

CHAPTER 6

AT THE HIGH SCHOOL, I FOUND A PARKING SPACE at the back of the student lot and hiked across the lawn to a side entrance. I was running late, thanks to the fight with my mom. After peeling away from the farmhouse, I’d had to pull to the side of the road for fifteen minutes just to calm down. Dating Hank Millar. Was she sadistic? Out to ruin my life? Both?

One glance at my mom’s pilfered BlackBerry proved I’d missed all but the tail end of first period. The dismissal bell would ring in ten minutes.

Intending to leave a message, I dialed Vee’s cell.

“Hellooo. That you, angel?” she promptly answered in her best temptress’s voice. She was trying to be funny, but I nearly tripped.

Angel.

The mere sound of the word caused heat to lick up my skin. Once again, the color black raced furiously around me like a hot ribbon, but this time there was more. A physical touch so real I stopped in my tracks. I felt an enticing brush along my cheekbone, as if an invisible hand caressed me, followed by a soft, utterly seductive pressure against my lips….

You’re mine, Angel. And I’m yours. Nothing can change it.

“This is crazy,” I muttered out loud. Seeing the color black was one thing, but making out with it was taking it to a whole ’nother level. I had to stop haunting myself this way. If I kept it up any longer, I was genuinely going to doubt my sanity.

“Come again?” Vee said.

“Uh, parking,” I covered up quickly. “All the good spots are taken.”

“Guess who has PE first hour? This is so unfair. I start the day off perspiring like an elephant in heat. Don’t the people who make up our schedules understand body odor? Don’t they understand frizzy hair?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Scott Parnell?” I asked evenly. We’d start there and work our way forward.

Vee’s silence hung sharp between us, only confirming my suspicions: She hadn’t given me the whole story. Intentionally.

“Oh, yeah, Scott,” she faltered at last. “About that.”

“The night I disappeared, he dropped an old Volkswagen off at my house. That detail slipped your mind last night, did it? Or maybe you didn’t think it qualified as interesting or suspicious? You’re the last person I would have expected to give me a watered-down version of what led to my kidnapping, Vee.”

I heard her chewing her lip. “I might have omitted a few things.”

“Like the fact that I was shot?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” she said in a rush. “What you went through was traumatic. More than traumatic. A million times worse. What kind of friend am I if I just heap it on higher?”

“And?”

“Okay, okay. I heard Scott gave you the car. Probably to apologize for being a chauvinistic pig.”

“Explain.”

“Remember in middle school how our moms always taught us that if a boy teases you, it means he likes you? Well, when it came to relationships, Scott never outgrew seventh grade.”

“He liked me.” I sounded doubtful. I didn’t think she’d lie to me again, not when I’d just confronted her, but clearly my mom had gotten to her first and brainwashed her into thinking I was too fragile for the truth. This sounded like a beat-around-the-bush answer if I’d ever heard one.

“Enough to buy you a car, yeah.”

“Did I have any contact with Scott the week before I was kidnapped?”

“The night before you disappeared, you snooped around in his bedroom. But you didn’t find anything more interesting than a wilted marijuana plant.”

Finally we were getting somewhere. “What was I looking for?”

“I never asked. You told me Scott was a whack job. That was all the evidence I needed to help you bust in.”

I didn’t doubt it. Vee never needed a reason to do something stupid. Sad thing was, most of the time I didn’t either.

“That’s all I know,” Vee insisted. “I swear it, up and down.”

“Don’t hold out on me again.”

“Does this mean you forgive me?”

I was irritated, but much to my dismay, I could see Vee’s point in wanting to protect me. It’s what best friends do, I reasoned. Under other circumstances, I might even have admired her for it. And in her shoes, I probably would have been tempted to do the same. “We’re square.”

Inside the main office, I expected to have to talk myself out of a tardy slip, so I was surprised when the secretary saw me approaching and, after completing a double take, said, “Oh! Nora. How are you?”

Ignoring the buttery sympathy in her tone, I said, “I’m here to pick up my class schedule.”

“Oh. Oh, my. So soon? Nobody expects you to jump right back into things, you know, hon. Some of the staff and I were just talking this morning about how we thought you should take a couple of weeks to—” She struggled for an acceptable word, since there was no right word for what I had ahead of me. Recover? Adapt? Hardly. “Acclimate.” She was practically flashing a neon sign that read, What a pity! Poor girl! I’d better use my kid gloves with this one.

I propped an elbow on the counter and leaned close. “I’m ready to be back. And that’s what matters, right?” Because I was already in a bad mood, I tacked on, “I’m so glad this school has taught me not to value any other opinion but my own.”

She opened her mouth, closed it. Then she went to work paging through several manila folders on her desk. “Let me see, I know I’ve got you in here somewhere…. Ah! Here we are.” She pulled a sheet of paper from one of the folders and passed it over to me. “Everything look okay?”

I scanned my schedule. AP U.S. history, honors English, health, journalism, anatomy and physiology, orchestra, and trig. Clearly I’d had a death wish for my future self when I’d registered for classes last year.

“Looks good,” I said, throwing my backpack over my shoulder and pushing through the office door.

The hall outside was dim, the overhead fluorescent lights casting a dull gleam on the waxed floors. In my head, I told myself this was my school. I belonged here. And even though it was jarring every time I reminded myself I was now a junior, despite the fact that I couldn’t remember finishing sophomore year, eventually the strangeness would wear off. It had to.

The bell rang. In an instant doors everywhere opened and the hall flooded with the student body. I fell into step with the current of students fighting their way to the restrooms, locker bays, and soda machines. I kept my chin tilted slightly up and leveled my gaze straight ahead. But I felt the eyes of my classmates when they looked my way. Everyone took a surprised second look. They had to know I was back by now — my story was the highlight of local news. But I supposed seeing me in the flesh cemented the fact. Their questions danced front and center in their curious stares. Where was she? Who kidnapped her? What kinds of icky, unspeakable things happened to her?

And the biggest speculation by far: Is it true she can’t remember any of it? I bet she’s faking. Who just forgets months of their life?

I fingered through the notebook I’d been hugging to my chest, pretending to search for something highly important. I don’t even notice you, the gesture implied. Then I threw back my shoulders and faked a look of indifference. Maybe even aloofness. But under it all, my legs were shaking. I hurried down the hall with only one goal driving me forward.

Pushing my way inside the girls’ bathroom, I locked myself in the last stall. I dragged my back down the wall until I was sitting on my bottom. I could taste bile rising in my throat. My arms and legs felt numb. My lips felt numb. Tears dripped off my chin, but I couldn’t move my hand to wipe them away.

No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, no matter how dark I forced my vision, I could still see their leering, judgmental faces. I wasn’t one of them anymore. Somehow, without any effort on my own, I’d become an outsider.

I sat in the stall several minutes longer, until my breathing calmed and the urge to cry faded. I didn’t want to go to class, and I didn’t want to go home. What I really wanted was the impossible. To travel back in time and get a second chance. A do-over, starting with the night I disappeared.

I’d just climbed to my feet when I heard a voice whisper past my ear like a cold current of air.

Help me.

The voice was so small, I almost didn’t hear it. I even considered the possibility that I’d invented it. After all, imagining things was all I was good for lately.

Help me, Nora.

At my name, goose bumps popped out on my arms. Holding still, I strained to hear the voice again. The sound hadn’t come from inside the stall — I was alone in here — but it didn’t appear to have come from the larger area of the bathroom either.

When he finishes with me, it will be like I’m dead. I’ll never go home again.

This time the voice sounded much stronger and more urgent. I looked up. It seemed to have floated down from the ceiling vent.

“Who’s there?” I called up warily.

At the lack of a reply, I knew this had to be the start of another hallucination. Dr. Howlett had predicted it. My thoughts turned anxious. I needed to remove myself from the setting. I had to distract my current train of thought and break the spell before it overtook me.

I reached for the door lock, when a sudden image burst across my mind, eclipsing my sight. In a terrifying twist of scenery, I could no longer see the bathroom. Instead of tiles, the floor under my feet became concrete. Overhead, metal rafters crisscrossed the ceiling like giant spider legs. A row of truck bay doors ran along one wall.

I’d hallucinated myself inside a—

Warehouse.

He sawed off my wings. I can’t fly home, the voice whimpered.

I couldn’t see who the voice belonged to. There was a stripped lightbulb overhead, illuminating a conveyer belt at the center of the warehouse. Aside from it, the building was empty.

A drone reverberated all around as the conveyor belt turned on. A clanging, mechanical noise carried out of the darkness at the end of the belt. It was carrying something toward me.

“No,” I said, because it was the only thing I could think to say. I swept my hands in front of me, trying to feel the bathroom stall door. This was a hallucination, just like my mom had warned. I had to push through it and find a way back to the real world. All the while, the awful metallic scraping grew louder.

I backed away from the conveyor belt until I was pressed up against a cement wall.

With nowhere to run, I watched as a metal cage rattled and clanged out of the shadows, moving to the edge of the light. The bars glowed a ghostly electric blue, but that wasn’t what seized my attention. A person was hunched inside. A girl, bent to fit the confines of the cage, her hands grasping the bars, her blue-black hair tangled in front of her face. Her eyes peered through the screen of hair, and they were colorless orbs. There was a length of rope emitting the same eerie blue light tied around her neck.

Help me, Nora.

I wanted to run for an exit. I was afraid to try the bay doors, fearing they’d only lead me deeper into the hallucination. What I needed was my own door. One I created right now that I could escape through to the inside of the school bathroom.

Don’t give him the necklace! The girl shook the bars of the cage fiercely. He thinks you have it. If he gets the necklace, he can’t be stopped. I won’t have a choice. I’ll have to tell him everything!

My skin was damp at my lower back and my underarms. Necklace? What necklace?

There is no necklace, I told myself. Both the girl and the necklace are wild concoctions of your imagination. Force them out. Force. Them. Out!

A bell shrilled.

Just like that, I was jolted out of the hallucination. The keyed-up door of the bathroom stall was inches from my nose. MR. SARRAF SUCKS. B.L. + J.F. = LOVE. JAZZ BAND ROCKS. I reached a hand out, tracing the deep grooves. The door was real. I slumped in relief.

Voices carried into the bathroom. I flinched, but they were normal, happy, chatty. Through the door crack, I watched three girls line up in front of the mirrors. They fluffed their hair and touched up their lip gloss.

“We should order pizza and watch movies tonight,” one of them said.

“No can do, girls. It’s just me and Susanna tonight.” I recognized the voice as belonging to Marcie Millar. She was in the middle of the lineup, tidying her strawberry blond side ponytail, pinning it in place with a pink plastic flower.

“You’re ditching us for your mom? Um, ouch?”

“Um, yes. Deal with it,” Marcie said.

The two girls on either side of Marcie made a big show of pouting. Odds were they were Addyson Hales and Cassie Sweeney. Addyson was a cheerleader like Marcie, but I’d once overheard Marcie confess that the only reason she was friends with Cassie was because they lived in the same neighborhood. Their bond was due to the simple fact that they could afford the same lifestyle. Peas in a pod — a very affluent pod.

“Don’t even start,” Marcie said, but the smile in her voice clearly stated she was flattered by their disappointment. “My mom needs me. Girls’ night out.”

“Is she … you know … depressed?” the girl I believed to be Addyson asked.

“Seriously?” Marcie laughed. “She got to keep the house. She’s still a member of the yacht club. Plus she made my dad buy her a Lexus SC10. It’s sooo cute! And I swear half the single guys in town have already called or stopped by.” Marcie ticked each item off on her fingers so fluidly it made me think she’d been rehearsing this speech.

“She’s so beautiful.” Cassie sighed.

“Exactly. Whoever my dad hooks up with will be a major downgrade.”

“Is he seeing anybody?”

“Not yet. My mom has friends all over. Somebody would have seen something. So,” she transitioned with a gossipy voice, “did you guys see the news? About Nora Grey?”

My knees went a little soft at the mention of my name, and I flattened a hand to the wall for support.

“They found her in the cemetery, and they’re saying she can’t remember anything,” Marcie went on. “I guess she’s so messed up she even ran from the police. She thought they were trying to hurt her.”

“My mom said she was probably brainwashed by her kidnapper,” Cassie said. “Like some skeezy guy could have made her think they were married.”

“Ew!” they all said in unison.

“Whatever happened, she’s damaged goods now,” Marcie said. “Even if she says she can’t remember anything, she knows what happened subconsciously. She’s going to be dragging around that baggage for the rest of her life. She might as well wrap herself in yellow tape that says, ‘Stay out and do not cross.’”

They giggled. Then Marcie said, “Back to class, girlies. I’m clean out of late passes. The secretaries keep locking them in their drawers. Whores.”

I waited long after they had filed out, just to be sure the bathroom and halls would be empty. Then I hustled through the door. I speed-walked all the way to the end of the hall, shoved through the outside exit, and broke into a jog toward the student parking lot.

I flung myself inside the Volkswagen, wondering why I’d ever believed I could waltz back into my life and expect to pick up right where things had left off.

Because that was exactly it. Things hadn’t left off.

They’d moved on without me.