Crescendo (17 page)

Vee smacked her other ear. Marcie staggered backward, eyes dazed but quickly narrowing. “You little—,” she began.

“Stop!” I shouted, wedging myself between them and holding my arms out. We’d drawn the attention of the crowd, and people were shuffling closer, their interest piqued by the prospect of a cat
fight. I didn’t care what happened to Marcie, but Vee was a different matter. Chances were, if she got in a fight, Detective Basso would haul her down to the station. Combined with sneaking out of the house, I didn’t think jail time would go over well with her parents. “Let’s all just back away. Vee, go get the Neon. I’ll meet you outside.”

“She called me fat. She deserves to die. You said so yourself.” Vee’s breathing was ragged.

“How do you plan on killing me?” Marcie sneered. “By sitting on me?”

And that was when everything broke loose. Vee snatched her own Coke off the bar and raised her arm, aiming to throw. Marcie turned to run, but in her hurry, tripped backward over her fallen bar stool and toppled to the floor. I swiveled to Vee, hoping to defuse any further violence, when my knee was kicked out from behind. I went down, and the next thing I knew, Marcie was on top, straddling me.

“This is for stealing Tod Bérot from me in fifth grade,” she said, punching me in the eye.

I yowled and grabbed my eye. “Tod Bérot?” I shouted. “What are you talking about? That was the
fifth grade
!”

“And this is for sticking that picture of me with a giant zit on my chin on the front page of the eZine last year!”

“That wasn’t me!”

Okay, maybe I’d had a little say in the photo selection, but it wasn’t like I was the only one. And anyway, Marcie was holding
that
over my head? Wasn’t a year a little long to be clinging to a grudge?

Marcie shouted, “And this is for your whore of a—”

“You’re crazy!” This time I blocked the hit and managed to grab the leg of the nearest bar stool and overturn it on her.

Marcie shoved the bar stool away. Before I could get my feet under me, she swiped a drink from a passerby and doused me with it.

“An eye for an eye,” she said. “You humiliate me, I humiliate you.”

I wiped Coke out of my eyes. My right eye flowered with pain where Marcie had punched me. I felt the bruise spreading under my skin, tattooing me blue and purple. My hair was dripping Coke, my best camisole was torn, and I felt demoralized, beaten … and rejected. Patch had moved on to Marcie Millar. And Marcie had just punctuated the fact.

My feelings were no excuse for what I did next, but they were definitely a catalyst. I had no clue how to fight, but I closed my hands into fists and clipped Marcie in the jaw. For a moment her expression was frozen in surprise. She scooted off me, two-handing her jaw, gaping at me. Buoyed by my small victory, I lunged for her, but came up short because someone had me under the armpits, hauling me upright.

“Get out of here now,” Patch said in my ear, dragging me toward the doors.

“I’m going to kill her!” I said, fighting to get around him.

A gathering crowd enveloped us, chanting, “Fight! fight! fight!” Patch brushed them out of the way and dragged me through. Behind Patch, Marcie got to her feet and flipped me her middle finger. Her grin was smug, her eyebrows high. The message was clear: Bring it on.

Patch handed me off to Vee, then went back and clamped a hand around Marcie’s upper arm. Before I could see where he took her, Vee wrestled me toward the nearest exit. We came out in the alley.

“Fun as seeing you fight Marcie was, I figured it probably wasn’t worth the cost of you spending the night in jail,” Vee said.

“I
hate
her!” My voice still sounded hysterical.

“Detective Basso was plowing through the crowd when Patch lifted you off her. I figured that was my cue to step in.”

“Where did he take Marcie? I saw Patch grab her.”

“Does it matter? Hopefully they both get hauled downtown.”

Our shoes crunched through the gravel as we ran down the alley toward where Vee had parked. The blue and red lights of a patrol car sliced past the opening of the alley, and Vee and I pressed back against the warehouse.

“Well, that was exciting,” Vee said, once we were locked inside the Neon.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I said through my teeth.

Vee licked my arm. “You taste pretty good. You’re making me thirsty, smelling like cherry Coke and all.”

“This is all your fault!” I said. “You’re the one who threw my
Coke at Marcie! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten in a fight.”

“Fight? You laid there and took it. You should have had Patch teach you some moves before you broke up with him.”

My cell phone was ringing, and I yanked it out of my purse. “What?” I snapped. When no one answered, I realized I was so worked up that I’d confused the text message chirp with an actual call.

One unread message was waiting for me from an unknown number.
STAY HOME TONIGHT
.

“That’s scary,” Vee said, bending sideways to read. “Who have you been giving your number to?”

“It’s probably a mistype. It’s probably meant for someone else.” Of course, I was thinking about the townhouse, my dad, and the vision I’d had of him cutting open my arm.

I tossed the cell into my open purse at my feet and bowed my head into my hands. My eye throbbed. I was scared, alone, confused, and on the verge of crying uncontrollably.

“Maybe it’s from Patch,” Vee said.

“His number has never shown up as unknown before. It’s a prank.” If only I could force myself to believe it. “Can we go? I need Tylenol.”

“I think we should call Detective Basso. Police love this kind of scary stalker crap.”

“You just want to call him so you can flirt with him.”

Vee put the Neon in gear. “Just trying to be helpful.”

“Maybe you should have tried being helpful ten minutes ago when you threw my drink on Marcie.”

“At least I had the guts to.”

I turned in my seat, giving her the full weight of my stare. “Are you accusing me of not standing up to Marcie?”

“She stole your boyfriend, didn’t she? Granted, he scares the candy out of me, but if Marcie stole my boyfriend, there’d be hell to pay.”

I pointed a stiff finger at the street. “Drive!”

“You know what? You
really
need a new boyfriend. You need a good old-fashioned make-out session to mellow you out.”

Why did everyone think I needed a new boyfriend? I didn’t need a new boyfriend. I’d had enough of boyfriends to last a lifetime. The only thing a boyfriend was good for was a shattered heart.

A
N HOUR LATER, I’D FIXED AND EATEN A LATE SNACK
of cream cheese frosting spread on graham crackers, tidied up the kitchen, and watched a little TV. In a shadowy corner of my mind, I hadn’t managed to forget the text message warning me to stay home. It had been easier to brush off as a miscall or prank when I was safe and sound inside Vee’s car, but now that I was alone, I wasn’t feeling anywhere near as confident. I considered turning on some Chopin to break the silence,
but I didn’t want to handicap my hearing. The last thing I needed was someone sneaking up behind me….

Pull it together!
I ordered myself.
Nobody’s sneaking up on you.

After a while, when nothing good was left on TV, I climbed upstairs to my bedroom. My room was, for all intents and purposes, clean, so I color-coded my closet, trying to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t be tempted to fall asleep. Nothing would make me as vulnerable as dozing off, and I wanted to delay it as long as possible. I dusted the top of the bureau, then alphabetized my hardcovers. I reassured myself that nothing bad was going to happen. Most likely, I’d wake tomorrow realizing how ridiculously paranoid I’d been.

Then again, maybe the text was from someone who wanted to slit my throat while I slept. On an eerie night like this, nothing was too far-fetched to believe.

Sometime later, I woke in the dark. The drapes on the far side of the room billowed as the electric fan oscillated toward them. The air temperature was overly warm, and my stretchy tank and boy briefs clung to my skin, but I was too caught up in envisioning worst-case scenarios to even think about cracking the window. Looking sideways, I blinked at the numbers on my clock. Just shy of three.

An angry pounding reverberated through the right side of my skull, and my eye was swollen shut. Turning on every light in the house, I padded barefoot to the freezer and assembled an ice pack out of ice cubes and a Ziploc bag. I braved a look in the bathroom
mirror and groaned. A violent purple and red bruise flowered from my eyebrow down to my cheekbone.

“How could you have let this happen?” I asked my reflection. “How could you have let Marcie beat you up?”

I shook the last two Tylenol gelcaps out of the bottle in the mirrored cabinet, swallowed them, then curled into bed. The ice stung the skin around my eye and sent a shiver through me. While I waited for the Tylenol to kick in, I wrestled with the mental picture of Marcie climbing inside Patch’s Jeep. The image played, rewound, and replayed. I tossed and turned, and even folded my pillow over my head to smother the image, but it danced just out of reach, taunting me.

What must have been an hour later, my brain wore itself out thinking of all the inventive ways I’d like to kill both Marcie and Patch, and I slipped back into sleep.

I woke to the sound of a lock rolling over.

I opened my eyes, but found my vision muddled by the same poor-quality black and white as when I’d dreamed my way into England, hundreds of years ago. I tried to blink it away and bring my normal vision back, but my world stayed the color of smoke and ice.

Downstairs, the front door eased open with a low-pitched creak.

I wasn’t expecting my mom home until Saturday morning, which meant it was someone else. Someone who didn’t belong inside.

I stole a look around the room for something I could use as a
weapon. A few small picture frames were arranged on the night-stand, along with a cheap drugstore lamp.

Footsteps trod softly over the hardwood floors of the foyer. Seconds later, they were on the stairs. The intruder didn’t pause, listening for signs that they’d been heard. They knew exactly where they were going. Rolling silently out of bed, I snatched my discarded tights off the floor. I tightened them between my hands and pressed my back to the wall just inside my bedroom door, a clammy sweat beading my skin. It was so quiet I could hear myself breathe.

He stepped through the doorway, and I roped a leg of the tights around his neck, tugging back with all my strength. There was a moment of struggle before my weight jerked forward and I found myself face-to-face with Patch.

He looked from the tights he’d confiscated to me. “Want to explain?”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my breathing elevated. I put two and two together. “Was that your text earlier? The one telling me to stay put tonight? Since when do you have an unlisted number?”

“I had to get a new line. Something more secure.”

I didn’t want to know. What kind of person needed all that secrecy? Who was Patch afraid would be eavesdropping on his calls? The archangels?

“Did it ever occur to you to knock?” I said, my pulse still hammering. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Expecting someone else?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!” A psychopath who sent anonymous text messages telling me to make myself accessible.

“It’s after three,” Patch said. “Whoever you’re waiting for can’t be that exciting—you fell asleep.” He smiled. “You’re still sleeping.” As he said it, he looked satisfied. Maybe even reassured, as if something he’d been puzzling over had finally worked itself out.

I blinked. Still sleeping? What was he talking about? Wait. Of course. That explained why all color was drained, and I was still seeing in black and white. Patch wasn’t really in my bedroom—he was in my
dream
.

But was I dreaming
about
him, or did he actually know he was here? Were we sharing the same dream?

“For your information, I fell asleep waiting for—Scott.” I had no idea why I’d said it, other than my mouth got in the way of my brain.

“Scott,” he repeated.

“Don’t start. I saw Marcie climb inside your Jeep.”

“She needed a ride.”

I adopted a hands-on-hips pose. “What kind of ride?”

“Not that kind of ride,” he said slowly.

“Oh, sure! What color was her thong?” It was a test, and I really hoped he failed.

He didn’t answer, but one look at his eyes told me he hadn’t failed.

I marched to the bed, grabbed a pillow, and hurled it at him. He sidestepped, and it flopped against the wall. “You lied to me,” I said. “You told me there was nothing going on between you and Marcie, but when two people have nothing between them, they don’t swap wardrobes, and they don’t get inside each other’s cars late at night dressed in what could pass as lingerie!” I was suddenly aware of my own clothes, or lack thereof. I stood feet away from Patch in nothing more than a spaghetti-strap tank and boy briefs. Well, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it now, was there?

“Swap wardrobes?”

“She was wearing your hat!”

“She was having a bad hair day.”

My jaw dropped. “Is that what she told you? And you
fell
for it?” “She’s not as bad as you’re making her out to be.”

He did
not
just say that.

I thrust a finger at my eye. “Not that bad? See this? She gave it to me! What are you doing here?” I demanded again, my rage boiling to an all-time high.

Patch leaned back against the bureau and folded his arms. “I came by to see how you’re doing.”

“Again, I have a black eye, thanks for asking,” I snapped.

“Need ice?”

“I need you to get out of my dream!” I ripped a second pillow off the bed and heaved it violently at him. This time he caught it.

“The Devil’s Handbag, black eye. Comes with the territory.” He
shoved the pillow back at me, as if to punctuate his opinion.

“Are you
defending
Marcie?”