A Night at the Asylum (8 page)

The mood in the car turned particularly sober
as Cole reminded me why he despised Ead so much. Around town, the
deputy’s smarmy manner was widely mocked behind his back. Coupled
with his daddy’s position of power, it was easy to consider him a
joke…to discount the truly dangerous vibes rolling off him in
waves. “He used to follow Jenny around constantly,” Cole explained
sourly, anger at the edges of his voice. “It really used to creep
her out.”

Jamie picked up on what we were talking about
immediately. “Your sister is the girl in the posters,” she
acknowledged gently, glancing at me with regret. Those posters that
were plastered up all over town – that infectious, silly smile
identical to Cole’s – how could anyone miss them? “Oh, God. I’m so
sorry. She’s been gone for so long. What happened, if you don’t
mind me asking?”

The muscles in Cole’s arms tensed as he
gripped the steering wheel. “She went to the store to pick up a
cake for my mom’s birthday. She never came home. They found her car
on the side of the highway with her purse inside…there was no sign
of her.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowed.
“They said she ran away. She never would have done that.”

“It was right around this time of year when
she disappeared, wasn’t it?” Jamie asked. I vaguely pondered how
often she’d looked at those posters. Maybe the date was just
something she’d banked in her memory, floating on a gauzy cloud of
town gossip. “In fact…” she trailed off, unwilling to finish the
sentence.

“Yeah.” Cole caught onto what Jamie was
trying to say, and his eyes widened in surprise. “It was exactly
five years ago. As of midnight…” he looked down at his watch,
assessing the date. “Yeah. Five years ago
today
.”

The coincidence touched each of us like the
icy fingers of a cold breeze.

Jamie glanced at me, her eyes full of
unspoken secrets. I wondered what was going on in her mind. I
wondered how much she knew without anyone telling her. She turned
back to Cole, her voice unnaturally quiet. “So…you think…Ead…”

Cole nodded, again finishing her half-spoken
question. “When she didn’t come back…he was the first person I
thought of. The first person we all thought of.”

Jamie sighed. “How awful. They never found
any evidence to connect him to her disappearance?”

“Nothing,” Cole answered darkly. “But I’m not
sure they even looked. Jon…he tried so hard to connect the dots,
but there was nothing.” Raymond’s brother had been dating Jenny
when she disappeared. He’d been half-crazed in his pursuit to find
her. “Ead’s father being the police commissioner…he’s never had to
answer for anything he’s ever done. And my parents got tired of
fighting a losing battle, and…that’s when we left this shit hole
for good.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course,
though, I had to come back to see the ball drop on the looney
bin.”

“Of course.” Jamie grinned at him.

“What can I say, I’m a nostalgic guy.”

Jamie turned around in the seat. “Do you
think it could have been Ead who chased us?” she asked. The passage
of time had numbed us to the terror of the whole ordeal.

I shrugged, but the thought did give me some
pause. At the same time, I was almost too tired to care. We’d told
Cole about the chase, but kept the part about Bonita to ourselves.
It would be embarrassing enough to have to tell Raymond we were
spying on her, let alone anyone else. Jamie had known without words
what I was thinking, of course, and had kept her mouth shut too…
just like a good little stray.

We pulled over at the Gas N’ Go, and I
groaned as its bright lights invaded the car. I really didn’t want
to be back here again. Technically, though, history wasn’t
repeating itself: this was the West Side station, meaning it was on
the west side of town, the twin of the building I’d first seen
Emmett in tonight. “You coming in?” Cole asked me as he hopped
out.

“No way,” I grumbled.

“Need anything?” Jamie asked.

“Definitely not.”

She nodded, skipping cheerfully inside after
Cole. “Jeez,” I muttered under my breath. “Play a
little
hard to get.”

A noise sounded in my pocket…my phone battery
was going dead. I’d have to remember to charge it at home. Perfect
– another thing that would keep me from collapsing into bed
immediately. That was just what I needed.

My eyes scanned the parking lot worriedly. I
was still a bit paranoid about Ead. If he had been the one chasing
us, had he done it just to mess with me? I thought of our
non-exchange after my questioning, deciding that was too
farfetched. He was probably just ten kinds of crazy and didn’t
hesitate to use it on whoever was in the wrong place at the wrong
time.

Apparently I was a hit with the Sutter boys
tonight.

Huddling in the backseat, my teeth
chattering, I cursed myself for forgetting my jacket yet again in
Jamie’s car. The same cold breeze that blew through me when we were
all talking about Jenny traced an icy path up my back. I reached
over to roll up my window and saw that it was already closed. They
all were.

There was a sudden static, an electric
crackle in the air, as if someone had just turned on a TV. The
entire atmosphere changed almost immediately, like invisible
shadows coating everything even remotely within reach. I looked
left, right, pulling my legs up to my chest. There was the distinct
feeling that someone was watching me here in this car, their eyes
boring into my face.

I could hear my own breathing, quiet and
steady. In. Out. In. Out.

The hair on the back of my neck stood at
attention, my skin prickling with fear.

My heartbeat thudded. Quick. Consistent.

Someone was watching me. I sensed it the way
I had sensed Ead’s disgusting gaze in the hallway at the police
station. There were eyes staring right at me.

Eyes that were not so far away.

There was a whoosh of cold air near my ear,
an exhalation from an unseen mouth. I swallowed a scream, unable to
deny the feeling that someone was here. In this car. Sitting right
next to me.

Someone I could not see.

The Gas N’ Go’s sliding doors parted just
then, and Jamie and Cole came out, giggling at each other and
carrying armfuls of convenience store acquisitions. The presence
I’d felt immediately dissipated, either into the night or back into
my imagination. Jamie climbed into the passenger seat, and when she
turned to look at me, her eyes widened. “Are you okay?” she asked
me. “You look like –”

“Don’t say it,” I interrupted.
Like you’ve
seen a ghost.
“Just please. Get me home. I need sleep.”

Cole got in and started the car. Jamie handed
me a paper sack. We left the bright lights of the Gas N’ Go, easing
back out onto the dark streets.

I peered into the bag. “What’s this?” Inside
was a pack of donuts, a soda, and a small square object in sturdy
plastic. “Great, more caffeine,” I mumbled sarcastically, pushing
aside the soda and tearing open the donuts with the sudden
realization that I was famished.

Nothing like an encounter with the paranormal
to get the stomach going.

Though my heart was still convulsing
erratically, it was easy to tell myself the whole thing had been a
product of my overworked mind. Obviously I was a fatigued,
stressed-out mess. As giggling erupted in the front seat and the
banter of my two friends restored a somewhat fractured normalcy to
the car, I began to shake off my irrational fear. Digging further
into the sack, I pulled out the tiny square package and saw that it
was a cell phone battery.

“Thought you might need that,” Jamie called
back to me without turning around. I said nothing. What was there
to say? She had
bought
a spare cell phone battery in a
gas station
. Could she have heard the little noise my phone
made when it was dying? Studied my phone to know exactly which
battery it took? It was so ridiculous, I couldn’t even ask. I
tossed the package back into the sack in resignation, too tired to
unravel any more mysteries tonight.

A long moment passed, the dark streets
swishing by in silence. “That whole story you told me about Emmett
is crazy,” Cole piped up suddenly, his eyes meeting mine in the
rearview mirror. “That kid is strange, I’ve always thought so.”

My pulse quickened almost imperceptibly at
the mention of Emmett’s name. “
You
think
he’s
strange?” I teased, forcing a laugh. “That’s rich.”

“What?” Cole chuckled. “I do think it’s
possible he went off the deep end. I mean, look at his insane
family. He’s way too quiet. He’s like one of those people that just
tools along and then all of the sudden…
snap
.”

“Oh, come on,” Jamie protested, shoving him
playfully in the arm.

“No, I’m serious. He’s that guy that just one
day goes up on a roof and starts picking people off with a sniper
rifle, and everyone is shocked about it.”

“Shut up,” I giggled, but I was grateful that
my face was hidden in the black shadows crisscrossing the backseat.
Because deep down, in that sinking pit in the center of my stomach,
I was still afraid it was true…that Cole was right.

“What?” Cole teased. “I didn’t really think
he was your type, Sara.”

Jamie laughed. “Leave her alone,” she
said.

My face flushed, and again I was thankful for
the dark. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I rolled my
eyes.

“You know, I kind of did think you two were
secretly in love with each other in school.”

“That is a boldface lie, and you know it,” I
accused, giving him a slap on the shoulder. I snatched a cookie out
of his hand just as he was about to take a bite from it.

“So…let me get this straight,” Jamie said,
turning halfway in the seat. “Raymond’s older brother Jon and your
older sister Jenny were together,” she said to Cole, “and your
brother Tommy and Bonita Taylor?” she asked me.

“That was after Bonita and everyone else,” I
interjected cattily, mid-chew.

“Burn,” Cole commented.

“And Tommy and Jon were best friends, and
Jenny and Bonita were best friends,” Jamie continued.

“Yes.”

“And now it’s…Bonita and…Raymond?”

“What?!” Cole exclaimed. His eyes were wide
in the rearview mirror.

I shrugged. “Seems that way.” I was
downplaying it. It was absolutely that way.

“He didn’t tell me that,” Cole
complained.

“He didn’t tell me either,” I pointed
out.

“It has been a while since we’ve hung out. I
don’t think she’s his type, though.” He pondered. “Come to think of
it, I don’t really know what girl is. Well, besides you, I
mean.”

I blinked, shaking my head at him. “What does
that even mean?” I asked, flicking him in the back of the head.

Jamie frowned deeply. “This is why everyone
in a small town has the same STDs.”

“What?!” Cole and I both stared at her,
laughing.

“That sort of makes me glad it’s over with
us,” I joked, but there was nothing funny about the pain behind
those words. It was impossible to hide that I missed Raymond. Now
that my safe haven was gone – my tall, dark,
built-like-a-linebacker safe haven – I was being ran down by crazed
cops and chased by guys with knives.

Well, technically just one guy with a knife,
and I still wasn’t sure how to process that.

So much for putting away the mysteries for
the night.

Emmett Sutter really
was
a mystery to
me. Despite struggling against it, my thoughts kept drifting back
to him. Ridiculous, Cole saying what he’d said about him and me.
Wasn’t it? Honestly, I was more bothered by the realization that I
wasn’t the only one afraid Emmett had suddenly stepped off the
edge. But why? Besides the earlier near-miss and the obvious danger
to the rest of society, what difference did it make to me?

What was it about Emmett that made me cling
to that shred of hope that he wasn’t a latecomer to lunacy? So he
was gorgeous under those tangles of dark-reddish hair. He was also
practically anti-social. I wasn’t sure how he made it through high
school, drifting in and out of the hallways in silence. He was like
a ghost. He spent his days reading and painting and otherwise being
introverted while I spent mine being the center of my boyfriend’s
attention. The sunlight of Raymond’s personality barely kept me
from slipping into the dark after Tommy died.

I recalled then things I had fought all night
to avoid remembering...Emmett’s round olive eyes, that rust-colored
hair always hanging down to his chin, how self-conscious I felt
under his gaze. He was shy, but those green eyes always found me,
at times even seemed to search me out from across the room. And my
skin prickled, my blood pounded in my veins, my breath caught in my
throat, just because he was looking at me. I would walk by his
table in the library and my train of thought would derail. These
memories I’d denied for the last four hours shook me. I thought of
how he always walked with his head lowered, sleeves pulled down
over his hands, dressed in the layered wardrobe of a person who was
perpetually cold. How the one time I’d seen him laugh, the moment
stuck in my mind because of the way my knees had gone weak; I'd
never forget such a heart-stopping smile, the deep dimples on
either side of his mouth, longing to know what had made a person
usually so reticent so momentarily happy.

How even in school I shoved these feelings to
the back of my mind…I had a boyfriend, and he was funny and
friendly and charismatic and popular, and I had loved him and then
he’d dumped me. Such a sick, twisted life I lived…such a screwed up
night to bring it all to light. I swallowed hard to force the tears
back down past the massive lump in my throat.

It was a strangely lengthy drive across town
to my house. As I lapsed into silence again, Jamie and Cole
laughing quietly up front, I gradually and regrettably lost the
battle with my consciousness.