Another Little Piece (26 page)

TIME

PRAYER TO SAINT JUDE

Saint Jude, glorious apostle, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the church invokes you universally as the patron of hopeless cases, of things almost despaired of.

Pray for me, for I am so helpless and alone. Please help to bring me visible and speedy assistance. Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive the consolation and help of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly (state your request) and that I may praise God with you always.

Amen.

TAPE

Like a tornado, the past had grabbed me again, and when it spit me back out, I was left dizzy. In the span of thirty minutes I lost my mother twice. But there was no time to fall apart. I was still in the shadow of the house, and any moment now Mom would be out looking for me.

I stood on shaky legs, and then rubbed my eyes, trying to bring them back into focus. That was when I caught sight of a man running across the front yard. I leaned back into the shadows, not wanting to be seen. But he didn’t look left or right, just ran straight toward his car parked at the side of the road.

Straining to see against the glare of the sun, I took a step forward.

It was Logan’s car, still in the same place as where I’d last seen it when he dropped me off. And it was Logan now jumping into the driver’s seat and peeling away from the curb. As the car flashed past, I saw someone in the passenger side. A boy with red hair. Eric.

Drawing an imaginary line, I traced back across the diagonal Logan had been moving along. It led straight back to Dex’s house. My stomach clenched with fear as I sped across the grass.

Both storm doors were flung wide open.

“Dex?” I called, taking the stairs in two leaps.

A clanging from inside one of the metal cabinets answered me. I yanked the doors open. Dex and a river of videotapes came spilling out at my feet. White masking tape bound his wrists and ankles and was wound over his face and hair, creating a sticky hood covering his whole head, except for a small gap at the base of his nose for him to breathe through. It was like some kind of terrible locker-room prank calculated to ensure the maximum amount of discomfort and embarrassment without causing too much real physical harm.

“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.” I kept up the steady mantra as my fingers picked away at the tape. Finally, a long layer peeled free, and there was his mouth.

His perfect crooked smiling mouth that I could’ve kissed, except he croaked out, “Hands. Scissors. Desk.”

“Right, right.” I retrieved the scissors and carefully cut through the tape that was keeping his arms twisted behind his back, then I moved down to his ankles, while he flexed his long arms with a low groan. After freeing his legs, I set the scissors down and moved back toward his face, where Dex’s long fingers scratched blindly at the tape, trying to find the seams.

I wrapped my hands around his. “It’s okay, Dex. I got this. Just let me do it, all right?”

“No.” He shook free, and if I’d thought I was beyond absorbing hurt, I quickly realized how wrong I was. Because his rejection hurt. Badly.

“Sorry,” I said, shrinking back.

His hands flew out, reaching for me, and I moved toward him, letting him find me. Needing to be found. He pulled me close into a hug and rested his mummified head against my chest. “Anna, no. I didn’t mean . . . I just, I need you to get the car. It’s Logan, he’s—”

I interrupted Dex with a kiss. The kiss I’d been wanting, no matter how terribly timed it might be. “I don’t care about Logan. He did this, he can deal with the consequences. I just want to get you free right now.”

Dex faced me straight on, as if he could see me even through all those layers of tape. “I saw him cut Eric’s heart out.”

I shook my head in denial even as I felt the truth of it spread through my body.

“I saw Eric turn to dust, and I saw Logan die and then get up and walk away.”

“No! No no no.” The words finally tumbled loose and I sobbed them into Dex’s shirt, as he reached for me and drew me close once more. It was only a flash flood, and ended as rapidly as it had begun. The drumbeat of danger pounded inside me, dragging me back to the present.

“Can we stop it?” I asked.

Dex nodded. “We can try.”

STUN

The last time we’d been in the car together had been after we’d seen Jess. Our hands had been entwined for most of the ride home. Now we sat on our separate sides, hands to ourselves as if an invisible line divided us. Funny, because we needed the comfort now more than ever. Maybe it was this thought that made me reach out toward Dex, placing my hand on his jiggling knee.

“You okay?”

He went still, and I retracted my hand, hoping he would grab it back. He didn’t.

“I should’ve been better prepared,” Dex said in a low voice. “I knew he was coming, and all I did was make sure I’d have lots of soft places to land.”

“You mean Logan? You knew he was coming?”

Dex stared straight ahead. “A while back, I saw it. In a vision. Logan attacking me in the basement. We struggled, and then I hit my head on the corner of the desk.”

“Saw,” I repeated, as I put it together and realized what this meant. “You saw it because he killed you. You died when you hit your desk?” I gripped my hands tight to keep from reaching for him again, this time to feel that he was alive, that his vision hadn’t come true.

Dex shrugged. “Freak thing, I guess.”

“When did you see this?”

“I don’t know, a while ago.” He stared straight ahead, concentrating extra hard on watching the road. I had a suspicion as to why he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“That day I first came down to the basement, when you disappeared? That’s when you saw it, wasn’t it? We decided to be friends, and then you saw yourself die.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Dex protested.

I didn’t believe him. “Why didn’t you stay away from me, and tell me to stay away from you?”

Dex shook his head. “I didn’t want to, okay? It seemed like an acceptable risk to take.”

“Dying? That seemed like an acceptable risk?”

“I took precautions. You saw them. I thought it was enough. I knew Logan didn’t want to kill me, it would’ve been an accident. The only problem was that I didn’t know what he did want. Turns out it was my tapes. He took four of them. It was like he knew which ones would be the most damning. The one you saw today with the girl. Another I had of a car accident. A couple of others too, all of them bad.”

“He did know. The Physician gave the information to Eric, and then Eric told Logan. He’s like me, except instead of the perfect love, he sells the perfect revenge,” I said.

“Shit,” Dex said, slumping in his seat.

Gathering my courage, I reached across the divide once more, took hold of his hand, and squeezed it tight. He could try to pull back, but I wasn’t letting go. It was the only way I had to communicate how everything inside me could feel so happy and so sad at the same time, because he had stayed with me . . . and because I couldn’t stay with him.

Dex didn’t fight me, though, and our hands remained clasped together until we pulled up in front of a well-kept house in an otherwise run-down neighborhood.

Dex reached for his door. “Wait,” I said. He turned to me, raising what was left of his eyebrows. “I think I should go in alone. If I tell Eric that I’m planning to go along with things the way they always were, he might leave Logan alone.”

“I’m not letting you face him by yourself. Either of them. Look, I understand that twice now you’ve rescued me after I’ve been beaten up pretty badly, and that might lead you to think that I’m pretty fucking useless protectionwise. Maybe I am, but I don’t care. I’m going with you, and that’s it.”

I took in Dex’s face, proud and desperate and sticky with tape residue. Even if I lived the lives of a million girls, I was certain that I would never meet another guy like him.

But all I said was “Okay then, let’s go. I lead.”

He nodded tightly, and we climbed out of the car and started up the neat little brick-lined walkway. At the front door, I rang the bell, feeling faintly ridiculous.

Dex and I exchanged glances as we heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

“I’m scared,” I whispered to Dex, staring straight ahead.

“Me too.”

There was the grinding sound of a lock being turned. “I’m glad you’re here.”

He took a step closer, so that our bodies were just barely touching. “Me too.”

The door swung open soundlessly.

“Hello again, my girl,” Logan said. The slightest hint of an Irish brogue lingered below each word.

I flew at him, fists pounding his chest. “You bastard. Why? Why? Why?” He retreated a few steps, drawing us farther into the house, and then when I could no longer feel the sunlight at my back, he grabbed my wrists and threw me against a wall.

“I think you forgot that I’m bigger than you now.” He smiled and leaned in close.

“Why?” I asked once more. “If I become Lacey, you’ll just have to move again. Why take him?”

“Why not? You did such a good job setting him up for me. He wanted so badly to make things right, and you wouldn’t let him. I can’t remember the last time one of them was this ripe for the picking. He wanted you and couldn’t have you. The next best thing was to take Dex out, and all I did was tell him to steal a few incriminating tapes. It was almost too easy. And so what if it’s only for a month, or a week, or just a day—it feels good to be in this skin that fits so well.”

I spit into his face, aiming for the spot right between his stolen eyes.

His hands tightened on my wrists. “That reminds me. I owe you a trip to the bathroom, so we can even things out between us.” He smiled. “Or I could forgive everything for a kiss.”

We were so close, I could smell the blood on his breath. The thought of having his lips on mine, much less his tongue pressing inside my mouth, was more than I could take. I turned my face away.

He laughed. “Fine by me. We’ll find out how long you can hold your breath.”

His punishing grip transferred to the soft part of my upper arm. I cried out, and at the same time heard an electrical buzzing sound. Logan’s body shuddered and then locked tight.

Dex stood behind him, pressing what looked like an electric razor into the base of Logan’s skull. Pulling my arm out of his no-longer-solid grip, I watched as Logan went into rigor mortis mode once more. The whole time his eyes were on me. It was easy enough to read the message in them—I would pay for this too.

I think he sometimes underestimated me. As Dex buzzed him a third time, muttering something about, “Supposed to knock him out,” I kicked his feet out from under him. Stiff and straight, he tipped backward as if in the midst of a trust fall. But nothing was there to catch him . . . except the tiled floor. His head cracked loudly against it, and his body finally went limp.

I stared at Logan’s unconscious body, the only thing that was left of him. The slack face was once again his own. I knelt down, and gently laid my hand against the cheek that had once belonged to Rice Sixteen. His skin was warm and the pulse in his throat was steady, proof that his heart was still beating. Proof that he was alive. Except he wasn’t. But only I knew that. With Franky walking around in Logan’s body, no one would remember the real Logan; instead they would know a strange and lesser version.

If I had any courage, I might’ve taken the razor from my pocket and slit his throat right there, letting the last bit of his life bleed away before it could be tainted. Instead, I patted him down. Three of Dex’s DV tapes were tucked into one pants pocket, the other held one more tape, car keys, and his prayer card. The prayer Logan had been saying for Annaliese. The one he should’ve been saying for himself.

“He could wake up any second. We need to go.” The sound of Dex’s voice snapped me back to the present.

“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t move. Instead I bowed my head and prayed the words on the card, trying to believe that Logan’s gran was right—that there could be hope even for the hopeless. And then I picked up Logan’s limp hand and placed the card into his palm. Gently, I laid his hand back down and pressed each finger, curling them inward until they enclosed the prayer.

Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I shoved the tapes and car keys into my own pockets and then, for one last time, looked at Logan, trying to fix this image of him in my mind. The day folded in on itself like origami, as I bent forward and kissed his cheek in the exact spot I had earlier. Once again it was the only way I had to say that I was sorry. And then I stood and marched out the front door with Dex right behind me.

“What now?” I knew he was asking if I’d changed my mind and my plan.

Having no good answer to give him, I simply said, “Thanks, Dex. If you weren’t here . . .” I shrugged, not having to say the rest.

Dex shook his head in this sad way. I think he was wondering if he should’ve saved me at all.

“Stun gun” was all he said, looking down at the object in his hand as if he was surprised to see it still there. “I bought it after that night with the failed letter delivery. I didn’t have time to grab it when Logan came in, but I thought maybe I should bring it along here. Thought it might come in handy.” He opened the passenger-side door for me.

“Can I see it?” I asked. With a shrug, he handed it over.

It was only as my fingers brushed against Dex’s and the stun gun slipped from his hand to mine that the thought of what I needed to do next entered my mind. If I’d second-guessed or hesitated, I wouldn’t have done it, but staring down at the boy who had once been Logan, something inside me had slid as easily as that stun gun did from one hand into another, changing ownership.

As I pressed the stun gun to Dex’s chest, the smooth plastic handle was still warm from his hand. I purposely avoided his eyes, not wanting to see the betrayal there, knowing he wouldn’t appreciate that I was doing this for his own good, especially when he knew it was for my own good too.

I had to pull Dex’s limp body into the car, and the whole time I couldn’t meet his eyes.

I drove us to the closest McDonald’s and parked in the back near the drive-through speakers.

“Anna,” he croaked as I put the car into park. I zapped him once more, holding the stun gun to his skin until his eyes rolled up into his head. I was protecting him. I couldn’t take the chance that he might follow me. It was cold comfort.

As I stepped onto the pavement, hunger gripped me so hard that I actually groaned aloud. It wasn’t a Big Mac and french fries that I was craving either.

I breathed through it as I walked to the back of the car and opened the trunk. For once luck was on my side. A camera bag sat in the middle of the otherwise empty and perfectly clean trunk. Rifling through it, I found a sweatshirt similar to the one Logan had given me, except this one was smaller and more worn. And it was Dex’s. That made all the difference. I pulled it on, keeping the hood pulled up to cover my head.