Charming (3 page)

Dad grabbed Haley’s upper arm and hauled her to her feet, shoved her against the wall and drew back his fist, his body odor assaulting her senses.

Now? Now Haley would
have
to defend herself. No more. No more bruises. No more pain. She closed her eyes, and everything she’d learned slipped from memory. All thoughts focused on the pain he’d brought, the air whooshing from her lungs, the tears that stung her eyes, the isolation, being all alone in the world, no one to love her.
No one to love her.

Haley panicked and gasped for breath, shoulders quaking as all her indifference showed itself for what it really was: fear.
Help
.
Someone, please, help me
.

But his fist had yet to make contact. Why?

“Daddy?” Jocelyn spoke so quietly, her voice squeaked out a hair above a whisper, then her feet pounded the wooden floorboards. “Oh my God. What are you two arguing about now?”

Dad released Haley, and Joce’s shoulders sagged, mirroring her father. So alike. “Look at my face, Jocey. Your sister threw
water
on me.”

Jocelyn wrapped an arm around Dad’s shoulder, the stench of stale alcohol not skeeving Joce out at all, and led him to the bathroom. She looked back at Haley and mouthed, “What the hell?” Then, Joce said louder, “Why couldn’t you just wake him up nicely, bring him coffee maybe? All you ever do is think of yourself. You’re always in a hurry.”

“Yeah, coffee would have been nice,” Dad muttered. “Would you mind making me some? I would hate to inconvenience Ha-ley.”

Jocelyn headed to the kitchen, to not only make coffee but also a gigantic mess, and Haley stomped to her room, careful not to rattle the door closed.

“Why does she always defend him? She’s so fucking naïve—thank God—but he was going to punch me,
punch
me, and she ran off to make him coffee?” How could Joce not see that? How could she ignore the truth that danced naked on a pole right before her eyes?

“Who you talking to in there?” Dad yelled, banging on the door.

“No one. Just practicing to read in front of the class today.” Not planning that at all.

“Hurry up. You wouldn’t want to be late.” Dad huffed out a laugh, then doubled over coughing, but Haley couldn’t mistake the underlying threat in his tone. “Might have to throw water on you.”

Or drown me in it
.

Haley collected all her useless papers from the floor, some even from under the bed, shoved them into a haphazard ball at the bottom of her backpack, then threw on some mismatched clothes: black leggings, a hot pink tutu, a jean jacket with heather gray sleeves, and a pair of silver chucks. She pulled her jagged, uneven blonde hair into a low ponytail and spread concealer under her blue eyes to hide the growing dark circles. Very few things remained of the life she lived while Mom was still alive, but no one took Haley’s clothes. If Dad threw any of these things out—like he had all the pictures of Mom, her furniture, her perfumes, jewelry and clothes—the charade of mourning family would exist no more. Someone would know that too many things had changed in the course of two years. The Tremaines should be healing now and moving on, not getting worse.

He’d threatened, though. He’d threatened to chuck everything while Haley was at school. How could anyone dress this slutty unless she spread her legs for every boy while she should have been learning?

Joce knocked lightly, then opened the door and poked her head around the only barrier between a world of stress and a slight reprieve from it. “Come on, Hales. We’re gonna miss the first bell.”

“Coming.” Haley took one last look in the mirror, sucked in a deep breath, then turned and headed for the door.

The girls took off down the hall, grabbing breakfast bars from the pantry on their way out. They tore through the wrappers and scarfed the strawberry-flavored breakfast before they’d even passed two houses. Christine met up with the pair but stayed back a few feet, the distance an unspoken requirement created by Jocelyn, who wouldn’t rank Christine with the scum on the bottom of a shoe.

“You shouldn’t have done that to Dad this morning. He’ll have a tough day at work and be crankier tonight.” Joce poked a finger at Haley’s tricep. “And it’ll be your fault.”

Christine snorted, drawing Haley’s attention back, and rolled her bloodshot eyes.
Just before seven, and she’s already high
.
Bet her parents yelled at her about something this morning
.

“Let me guess: you couldn’t wake him and had to use extreme measures?”

“Our family matters don’t have anything to do with you.” Jocelyn growled and leaned closer to Haley’s ear, close enough to make potential snoops strain harder to hear, but not Christine. She wouldn’t eavesdrop because she didn’t have to; Haley would never keep her life’s gossip from her only friend. “You haven’t told her about Dad’s little issue, have you?”

Haley tensed and withheld an urge to shove Jocelyn away. “Anyone who has their eyes open can see Dad’s
little
issue, Joce. Most of
us
don’t pretend problems don’t exist. Maybe you should open your eyes, too?”

Jocelyn flinched. The words were too harsh. Harsher than she deserved, but words, once spoken, don’t have a delete option.

“Whatever. Have fun hanging out with your stoner friends.” Jocelyn clutched her books to her chest and ran off. The morning sun slipped through the fiery red and orange leaves of the tall oak and maple trees lining the road, illuminating Joce’s long blonde waves. She ran and ran until she arrived at school and stood before the two-story redbrick building, never once glancing back.

“You ever think that your mother was wrong about keeping her in the dark?” Christine asked as they passed an idling police car—Deerfield’s idea of beefed-up security due to the recent murder, no doubt—and entered the double-glass doors of Frontier Regional.

Haley looked at Christine, with her short, choppy brown hair and tattered blue jeans, then back at her sister as she joined her small group of well-dressed friends, all skinny jeans and leather boots. These friends would spend the day plotting their way to popularity, wondering why straight-A students enrolled in nearly every club didn’t immediately qualify. Jocelyn was the spitting image of Haley’s younger self. Pre-Fucked-Up Haley. “No. If she knew, she’d look at him differently. And if she looked at him differently—”

“He’d treat her differently.” Christine slammed her locker and took off down the hall. “See ya later, trouble.”

Right. Why is it they didn’t have a single class together?

Haley grabbed her books and tried to make some semblance of the torn and crinkled papers at the bottom of her locker. She floated aimlessly through the school day as teachers droned on and on about things she’d already learned while enrolled at the Academy, about things she’d aced and didn’t feel like acing again. How did Haley’s entire life fall apart in those short moments, those short moments while stuck in the car with Mom, watching her die?

“Mom. Mom, open your eyes. Please.” You said you’d fix this. You said we were done with him.

Mom blinked, blood running from her nose, tears draining from her eyes, blonde hair floating above her head while they sat upside down. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Be good, sweetheart.”

“No. Don’t give up. Not now. Not now. Not now. I
need
you.”

Someone tugged on Haley’s arm, someone warm and strong, someone she couldn’t make out through the tears. Mom gave up. She
gave up
. “I’m going to release your belt, then I need you to run. Can you run?”

Haley grabbed Mom’s hand, trembling. “Can you help my mom? Can you get her? I’ll run, but just tell me you can get her.”

“I’m the only one here.”

“Miss Tremaine?” Mr. Thompson called, perched atop his desk at the front of the class. “You with us?”

Ignoring the quiet laughter from just about every kid in class, Haley nodded, still lost in the past, in the past where she’d been a promising freshman, dreaming up big life ideas, planning for college, for a career in business, for special dates with her boyfriend Niles. Self-destruct mode hurt, but this was all she could do. Niles wouldn’t understand Dad’s alcoholism. He wouldn’t understand Haley taking the abuse—no one would—that’s why she broke up with him nearly a year ago, when she couldn’t look at him without feeling like a liar, like a fake.

Every Internet search she did said she should tell someone,
anyone
, but further research revealed she and Jocelyn would probably wind up in foster care, or with a relative. And the only relative they had was Gran, and Mom didn’t want her knowing about her failed marriage. Haley couldn’t do that. She just couldn’t tarnish her mother’s name or destroy her sister’s life.

The bell rang, and Haley slipped into the rush of students trying to escape the building at the end of a long day, all of them tossing whispered accusations about which evil teacher doubled as a murderer.

“I bet it was Mrs. Hollins,” Richard Harvey, star-of-all-things Deerfield and royal pain in the ass, said, bumping into Haley as he and some other jock jogged down the hall with their books hitched under one arm. “Math teachers are the worst.”

“You shouldn’t go around slandering your teachers, Mr. Harvey. They keep you on the football team. Lord knows your grades don’t,” Mr. Thompson shouted as he chased them out the front doors. He turned around with a large smug smile on his face, then frowned at Haley. “Ahh. Miss Tremaine. May I have a word?”

She shouldn’t have made eye contact. “Sure.”

A few kids snickered, but she did as told, shuffling back to his classroom and toward his desk with her backpack dragging the ground, a weight too heavy to carry at the moment. Guilt talks were the worst.

“Have a seat.”

She took residence in the blue, plastic chair next to his sterile gray desk, picking at the frayed stitching on the hook of her backpack.

Mr. Thompson sat, his thick black glasses sliding down his nose. He removed them, then clasped his hands and leaned forward. “When you first arrived here, Haley, you came with a glowing recommendation from your teachers at the Academy. We don’t generally have transfer students from such a prestigious facility, but I have to admit, I’d kind of expected more, especially from you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not finished.”

They never are
.

Mr. Thompson pulled a file with Haley’s name on it out of his top drawer. “I took the liberty of arranging a meeting with some of your teachers, and they provided me with your writing papers for a class such as mine. The difference in work is astounding. As a freshman, you were writing professional quality pieces. Your command of the English language was impressive. So that leads me to believe something more must be going on with you, something deeper and far more concerning than you working late hours—as your father feels is your issue—”

“My father? If you have an issue with me, you need to take it up with me, sir.” Haley’s heart raced out of control, and each breath fought to fill her lungs but failed. She was at risk of hyperventilating about her father right here in front of a teacher.

Get it together. Focus on the whiteboard, the stupid words scribbled in illegible handwriting
.

Maybe Mr. Thompson needed to pay attention to other things instead of glaring as if he’d just realized Haley’s problem and was ready to report.

Oh, God. Deep breath
. “I’m sorry.”

“Mm-hmm.” Mr. Thompson replaced the file in his drawer and stared, hard. “Are you on drugs, or are you in any kind of trouble?”

“No. I swear. Things are fine. I just… I just miss my mother. She’s all I think about.”

Softness replaced the stern, will-get-to-the-bottom-of-this look he’d worn seconds ago. “I hate watching you waste your intelligence, but I can understand your sense of loss. You and your mother must have been very close.”

Nodding, Haley wiped away tears falling from her eyes.

“All right. Promise not to fall asleep in my class again, or get lost in outer space, and I promise to go easy on you with a simple extra credit assignment to pull up your homework grade. But, break that promise, and I’ll call your dad and make that assignment as difficult as possible. Fair?”

“Fair.”

Damn nosy teachers
.

She fled the building without waiting for Christine and walked home to change for work, occasionally glancing over her shoulder. No one was here, but the feeling of being watched, being followed, stuck with Haley always. Dad probably did follow her. Maybe he even had other people follow her and report to him; he always seemed to know what she was doing, when, and with who. Or maybe the crazy murderer needed an easy victim and was following her.

Pull it together, Haley. Why would a killer come after someone no one would miss?

Her shift at Berkshires didn’t start for another hour, but she’d need that much time to get ready and walk the mile or so to get there.

Other kids drove past in their old beat up pickup trucks, or their fancy compact sedans Mom and Dad bought them, blasting music, laughing, enjoying the bright blue skies and radiant sunshine that were lost on Haley. They were all probably heading to a friend’s house to play video games or flag football or head out of town to go shopping, normal things.

A faded red car pulled up next to her, and the driver laid on the horn.

Haley kept walking. This interaction wouldn’t end well.

“Hey, Haley.” Chris
freaking
Charming in his fancy, dancy classic Porsche 911, his lapdog Richard Harvey—two guys from different worlds; word had it their fathers were great friends growing up, and these two were just repeating the pattern—hanging out the window, hooting her name to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s
Cecilia
.

Niles’s song for her when she’d left him. Doubt he realized what the words implied.

Haley’d moved schools, not towns, and sometimes her old life tried catching up, the people she would have gladly given up the world for popping up where she worked, where she shopped. But Chris was never part of that life, not the way Niles and Josh and Anna had been. Chris suffered the intolerable issue of missing reality altogether, and Haley did her best to avoid contact. He hung out with street racers, partied all night, every night. Broke most of Deerfield Academy’s rules from the moment he stepped foot onto the well-manicured lawns. Sure, he aced every test he took, never got in a lick of trouble, but Haley heard every story, never heard him deny them.