Blood on My Hands (27 page)

Realgurl4013 said …
I know just how you feel. Popular kids suuuck.

Ru22cool? said …
Did it ever occur to you to try and improve your looks instead of just being a crybaby complainer?

Str-S-d said …
Go read Str-S-d #4, Ru22.

IaMnEmEsIs said …
Perhaps your wish will come true.

ApRilzDay said …
I’m sorry, but I think this is REALLY wrong. I know they were really nasty mean to you the other day, but you have to realize that it’s just because THEY’RE the stupid and immature ones. But wishing someone would die is really wrong. Really.

Chapter
1

Sunday 3:09
A.M.

THE RED TAILLIGHTS of Tyler Starling’s ugly purple car disappeared into the dark. It was just after three
A.M.
, chilly and quiet. Lucy Cunningham stepped off her front walk and strolled down the dark tree-lined street. The last thing she needed was for her father to look through the bedroom window and see her smoking.

Lucy hugged herself, her thin jacket not warm enough in the crisp November air. Except for a few lights above front doors, the houses on her block were dark. In the sky above, stars sparkled through the bare tree branches. It was almost eerily silent, but Lucy was too busy thinking about the fight she’d just had with Adam to notice.

On the surface, the argument had been about the future. She wanted to apply to Stanford. But Adam was dead set on Harvard. Being both an excellent lacrosse goalie and a straight-A student with 2300 boards, he had a very good chance of being accepted. But why couldn’t he also apply to Stanford? Their lacrosse team was better than Harvard’s.

She took a drag. The cigarette glowed red-hot as tobacco
turned to ash and smoke filled her lungs in that strangely soothing way she seemed to crave more and more lately. Just as she had begun to look forward to drinking every Friday and Saturday night. Yes, she’d been warned not to drink while on her meds. Yes, she’d been told a thousand times that smoking kills. But after a fight like the one she’d just had with Adam, how could she not?

Lucy shivered.
Don’t pretend
, she told herself. The real issue between Adam and her wasn’t college. It was about Adam ending their relationship. She’d been losing him for months and, distracted by school and SATs and college garbage, hadn’t even noticed. But there was no doubt in her mind that tonight he’d begun to lay the groundwork for a breakup. How? By making sure she saw what she’d failed to see before—that there was someone else.

Lucy cursed herself for being so blind. Why hadn’t she figured it out sooner? Adam had lost interest. Even being extra sweet and attentive tonight, and touching him in all the right places hadn’t worked. So it was time to switch to damage-control mode. No boy had ever dumped her before, and it wasn’t going to happen now. She would simply have to dump him first … right now. As soon as she went inside she would post it on Facebook so that the evidence of it … the
timing
of it … would be there for everyone to see. And then she would apply to Stanford. She wouldn’t give in to Adam. She had always
been
a winner, would always
be
a winner. And winners did whatever it took not to lose. So good-bye, Adam Pinter.

Lucy crushed the butt of the cigarette with her shoe. No matter what her problems, she could overcome them. It was a matter of will. If you worked hard enough, you could do anything. Whatever Lucy was, she’d willed herself to become.
She’d worked for it, suffered for it, agonized, and fought for it. If it meant cheating on a test to get the highest grade, she did it. If it meant stealing someone’s boyfriend because he was the hottest guy in the class, she did that, too. And this is just the start. After all, high school was nothing more than potty training for life.

Lost in thought, Lucy turned back through the dark silence toward her house. The tall trees cast skeletal night shadows. The quiet hung in the air around her like mist. Despite the solitude of the late hour, it never occurred to Lucy to feel nervous. This was Soundview, the best of neighborhoods, the place where she’d grown up and had always felt safe.

As she passed a wide tree that cast a thick, spidery shadow across the street, a figure quietly stepped out. Lucy never saw or heard a thing. The presence moved up behind her, barely disturbing the still air. From out of nowhere, a damp rag smelling strongly chemical was jammed hard against her nose and mouth. Alarm instantly raced from Lucy’s core to her extremities. Her hands flew to her face and tried to tear the rag away, but that first breath of chemicals brought a fog to her brain, making her reactions sluggish. She flailed feebly at the strong gloved hands holding the rag, but her fingers seemed unable to grip. By the time she tried to scream, she’d taken a second breath, and the cry that left her throat, muffled by the rag, was so weak and faint that it sounded like the bleating of some distant forlorn animal.

The heavy fog was like a trapdoor pressing down on her consciousness.

Her knees gave out.

She went limp.

Her body would have collapsed in a heap were it not for the arms that went around her chest. Her attacker began to drag her around the corner to a parked car.

Lucy Cunningham’s heels scraped along the dark, quiet street … and all her worries about the future became a thing of the past.

Chapter
2

Sunday 3:02
A.M
. (7 minutes earlier)

“RICH BITCH,” TYLER Starling muttered as he steered with one hand and turned up the music with the other. It was something he called hard-style techno, which, he claimed, was very popular in Germany and the Netherlands.

Next to him in the dark car, I winced. The loud thumping music was raw electronic and difficult to follow. An assault on the ears, especially given the late hour, it only added to the discomfort I was already feeling. All week I’d looked forward to spending tonight with this new, interesting guy who’d suddenly shown up at Soundview High almost a month after school began. He was tall, wiry, handsome, and, I thought, seriously sexy, with a slightly crooked nose that must have been the result of being broken.

But now, as the final moments of our night together approached, my plans were slipping away into disappointment. Tyler’s “rich bitch” comment just made it worse. If he didn’t like rich people, I was in serious trouble.

There were other reasons to feel discomfort. By dropping Lucy Cunningham off in front of her house and driving away, we’d broken an important Safe Rides rule—making sure “the client”
was safely inside before we left. But it was nearly three
A.M.
, and Lucy was being a complete pain, standing in the street and refusing to go into her house. What were we supposed to do? Take her by the hand and lead her to the front door?

“She’s not like that most of the time,” I said.

“Why are you making excuses for her?” Tyler asked as he drove.

“Because I’ve known her for a long time. In fact, in middle school, we were best friends.”

“That doesn’t give her the right to dump on us.” Tyler craned his neck for the street signs that would lead us out of Lucy’s neighborhood.

Twenty minutes earlier, we’d picked her up at Cassandra Quinn’s house. It was just after two thirty, and through the brightly lit windows we could see that the party was still going strong. The front door had opened and Lucy stumbled across the lawn with the unsteady gait of someone who’d been intimate with Jell-O shots. I was surprised by that, considering the medications she was taking. And why had she called Safe Rides instead of rolling with Adam?

She opened the back door and got in. “Take me home,” she grumbled. “And make it snappy.”

Tyler started to drive, the hard-style techno blaring.

“Would you turn that crap off?” Lucy demanded.

Tyler turned the music down, but not off. I heard a telltale rustle from the backseat. Lucy had placed a cigarette in her lips.

“No smoking, Lucy,” I said.

“Drop dead,” she grumbled, and searched her bag for a light.

Tyler looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Keep smoking and you’ll beat us to it.”

Lucy harrumphed as she pulled out a green plastic lighter and thumbed it. A flame shot up. She lit the cigarette, rolled the window halfway down, and exhaled. Cold November air rushed into the car. I tightened my red cashmere scarf around my neck.

“Could anything be more pathetic than this?” Lucy muttered. “Why are you chauffeuring people around on a Saturday night?”

“It’s my community-service requirement,” I said. “How was the party anyway?”

“Beside the huge fight I had with Adam?” Lucy said. “It sucked. Same old, same old, except for some FCC creeps. I so cannot wait for high school to end.”

We rode in silence until Lucy looked into the rearview mirror and caught Tyler’s eye. “I know you. You’re the one who wears that black trench coat and always sits by yourself at lunch. A regular social butterfly.”

Tyler stared back at her for what seemed longer than necessary. I felt an unexpected stab of jealousy. Like a starlet in one of those old black-and-white movies, Lucy was the beautiful blonde sitting in the shadows, smoking. The one who always got the hero. And knew what to do with him, too. Meanwhile, all I’d wanted all night was for Tyler to look at me the way he’d just looked at Lucy.

“Tyler, please watch where you’re going,” I said.

“You heard her, Tyler,” Lucy added from the back. “Be a good little boy; eyes on the road.”

A few moments later we stopped in front of Lucy’s house, a large white colonial rising up behind a broad swath of carefully
manicured lawn, speckled with orange, yellow, and brown leaves.

Lucy got out without a “thank you” and banged the car door closed. She took a few steps up the path, then stopped and turned with an annoyed frown on her face.

I opened my window. “We’re supposed to make sure everyone goes inside.”

For no apparent reason other than pure orneriness, Lucy held up the lighter and lit a second cigarette, crossed her arms, and gazed up at the stars while she exhaled.

I closed the window and turned to Tyler. “Maybe we should go.”

“You sure?” he asked.

It was almost three in the morning and hard to imagine that Lucy was going anywhere except inside. I was tired and disappointed that nothing had developed with Tyler. Now I just wanted to get into bed. “She’s just being obstinate. I bet she’ll go inside the second we leave.”

We drove away, leaving Lucy standing in front of her house. Tyler turned the bad music back up. In no time it was giving me a headache.

“Tyler, I’m sorry to say this. Maybe it’s the time of night, and I’m just really drained, but that music is so hard to take,” I said. “Is it totally obnoxious of me to ask if you’d turn it down?”

“Not at all.” He turned it off. Not just down the way he had for Lucy. So maybe that was a hopeful sign and the evening wasn’t a total loss after all. I glanced at his profile and thought about his personality—independent, confident, and more worldly than most guys his age. He’d told me earlier that it had taken him two years of working after school to save up for his car. It was hard
to think of anyone else I knew who’d bought his or her own car. In Soundview most of the kids got one from their parents the moment they passed their driver’s test.

“Make a right here,” I said with a yawn when we got to Bayside Way. Tyler turned onto the narrow road, passing driveways that disappeared into dark woods. I thought again about his “rich bitch” comment and wasn’t surprised that his forehead furrowed when we stopped at a small white guardhouse with a gate. With a cautious squint, the guard inside slid open the window and leaned forward, peering at the unfamiliar car. When he saw me in the passenger seat, a smile of relief appeared on his lips. “Oh, good evening, Miss Archer.”

“Hi, Joe,” I said.

The guard slid the window closed and raised the gate. Tyler drove through. “Miss Archer?” he repeated.

“It’s just a formality.”

“That’s his moonlighting job when he’s not being a cop?”

Surprised, I said, “How did you know he was a policeman?”

“I can smell ’em.”

“Sounds like you don’t like the police.”

Tyler didn’t respond. We were on Premium Point now, a gated community on a thin strip of land that jutted out into the Sound, lined with what could only be described as estates. Tyler drove slowly, peering at the dark silhouettes of vast lawns and large houses.

“I’m down at the end,” I said.

A moment later he stopped in the circular driveway and stared through the windshield at the vast stone facade of the place I called
home. I had a feeling that he, too, was thinking back to his “rich bitch” comment. I felt bad. I’d had high hopes for us connecting this evening, even going so far as to fantasize ending it with a kiss. But maybe I’d hoped for too much. All we’d done was share a car for Safe Rides, which didn’t exactly qualify as a hot date.

“Thanks for driving me home.” I reached for my backpack.

“Wait.” Tyler turned to me. I looked back at him in the dark and felt a shiver of anticipation. Was he going to say that he liked me? That he had also been looking forward all week to this evening?

But all he said was, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He didn’t have to explain what he was sorry about. We both knew.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” I said. “It’s just … Things aren’t always what they seem, okay? Maybe not everyone who’s rich is a bitch.”

“I didn’t say they were,” Tyler said. “I only said Lucy was. I … I don’t think you’re a bitch at all. In fact, I think you’re pretty nice.”

“Thank you, Tyler,” I said, and thought,
Maybe the night wasn’t a total loss after all
.

I got out of the car and let myself through the heavy wooden door into the house, temporarily disabling the alarm system to give me time to get up to my room. Upstairs, even though I could barely keep my eyes open, it was impossible to go to bed without first checking my messages, and that was where I found the latest from PBleeker, my cyberstalker: