Experiment in Terror 04 Lying Season (3 page)

I shook my head and tried to wipe off the look on my face, which probably looked pained. I certainly felt pained. My heart ached in a different way than it had just minutes before, when it was suffering from cardio onslaught.

“
No, don’t be sorry,” I said, trying to smile.

“
You have a boyfriend, of course,” he said.

My smile fell slightly. “No. No I don’t.”

Because, of course, Dex was just my partner. Sure I was in love with him, sure he told me some things on that island that melted my heart, sure I still had tingly images of him with his head between my legs and felt his grip on my hips. But there was always Jennifer Rodriguez, his stupid fucking girlfriend who never seemed to be going anywhere. I had hoped that perhaps after her pregnancy scare, after Dex confronted the fact that he wasn’t ready to be a dad, and after, well, he kinda (perhaps regretfully) cheated on her with me, that she’d be on her way out. I still held out for that hope – it’s not like that’s the kind of thing we’d discuss on the phone anyway – but as far as I knew, she was still in the picture.

“
Oh,” Brock said, and I realized how awkward I had just made it for him. What was wrong with me, anyway? A cute, buff meathead was asking me out for dinner and all it was doing was making my head spin and my soul hurt. That wasn’t right.

Without thinking, I reached over and grabbed his beefy forearm.

“
I’d love to go for dinner with you,” I said. This wasn’t true, but I said it anyway.

He must have seen that on my face because he hesitated and then said, “Really, I can handle rejection, I-”

“
I mean it,” I said quickly and started feeling like maybe I
did
mean it. “You just caught me off-guard. I’m not used to being asked out.”

He gave me a disbelieving look. “Oh, please, I have a hard time with that.”

I shrugged, not wanting to get into it. “It’s true but anyway, thank you, I’d love to. Just promise me you’ll stop with the nicknames.”

He agreed. I already had one nickname and that was enough.

~~

“
Hey, kiddo.”

It was Dex on the phone. We had gone from texting and emailing each other whenever we had something to say, to calling each other every now and then, sometimes just to talk. At least our relationship had progressed in that way.

After I had arrived home from the boot camp and took a hot shower to wash the mud off and ease my aches and pains, I roamed the house looking for my sister, Ada. For once, I was miffed that she wasn’t at home. Not that she was home all that often, especially since she started dating this guy Layton, who was two grades older than her (my sister is 15), but I needed to talk to her. I know this sounds stupid coming from a 23-year old, but I wanted her advice on boys. What happened with Brock had simultaneously torn me up and excited me and I needed to vent to someone about it. I had become more and more dependent on Ada as a friend instead of viewing her as just a sister.

Which was great, but on this night it left me feeling fidgety. And talking to Dex wouldn’t help either. Though Dex was my friend in every sense of the word, and I trusted my life to him, he was the last person I could vent about this to.

Regardless…

“
Hey Dex,” I said, cradling my phone against my ear. I didn’t just say it though, I
smiled
it. I was sitting cross-legged on my bed, thumbing through an old issue of
Guitar World
magazine, looking for inspiration and an excuse to use my electric guitar that sat forlornly in the corner of my room.

“
How was
The Biggest Loser
?” he asked, the amusement flitting along the trough of his deep voice. It was his nickname for the bootcamp, despite the number of times I told him there were no real fat people in the group.

“
It was…interesting,” I said and suddenly didn’t want to say anymore about it.

“
That guy still riding you hard?”

I snickered. I couldn’t help myself.

“
What?” he asked, never one to like being left out of a joke.

“
Nothing,” I said, trying to hide the smirk in my tone. “Only one more class, then I’ll be buff enough to kick anyone’s ass.”

“
You already were buff enough to kick anyone’s ass. I don’t think my nose will ever be the same.”

Oh, that’s right. I ended up punching Dex right in the nose while we were on the leper island. I could barely remember what it had been about; there were a lot of things about the island that I had tried to block out (not his head between my legs and his grip on my hips however), but all I knew was that it had been a long time coming. I still felt bad about it, in a vague way, but it wasn’t keeping me up at night. Dex liked to bring it up occasionally, just to keep me on my toes.

“
What can I say, you’re an easy shot. But I don’t think the rest will be like you.”

“
The rest? You’re planning on going around and punching more people in the face?”

“
People…ghosts.”

“
From Ghostbusters to Facebusters?”

“
Something like that. Anyway, I feel better and that’s the point.”

He was quiet for a second. Then, softly, he said, “I know, kiddo. Don’t think I wasn’t thinking about it myself. If you hadn’t done it, I would have suggested it. You’re right, about what you said before, that we won’t always be so lucky.”

I didn’t like getting into touchy subjects like this on the phone. It made me want him too much.

“
Well, perhaps you oughta be taking some sort of self-defense class or something,” I suggested lightly.

“
I don’t need self-defense. I have you,” he said. I could almost hear him grinning over the phone. “Anyhoo, I have some good news.”

I didn’t spend much time wondering what it was before he announced, “We got it.”

“
Got…it?”

“
Permission. From the mental hospital. Riverside. They said next week, Tuesday and possibly Thursday, they’ll let us in to film.”

Since returning from D’Arcy Island, Dex had been trying nonstop to get one of Seattle’s oldest mental institutes to open their doors to us. The Riverside mental hospital was reputed to be one of the most haunted places in Washington State. So far, many ghost hunters, including some with bigwig TV shows, had tried to film the hospital and were turned down. Understandably, considering that the hospital was at least 30% operational. It was a dying, costly breed but it still housed some people who needed the strictest mental care.

“
How did you do that?” I asked.

“
I can be pretty persuasive,” he said. Yeah. Persuasive or pushy and annoying.

“
Uh huh.”

“
And, again, I think because we’re small and on the internet we’re kind of reputable. They know this isn’t the Hollywood treatment; we aren’t sensationalists. I’m still not sure what exactly we are allowed to film but it’s still great news. I’ve been going fucking mental over here over this.”

It sounded like he was making a pun, but I knew he wasn’t. It was a spooky slip of the tongue. Not only was Dex on medication for his so-called mental condition (which I was starting to call “Deximia”), but I recently learned he had been in a mental hospital himself. Ever since he brought up this mission of his to secure us a chance to film in Riverside, I had wanted to bring up the whole mental institute thing. You know, how is this a good idea considering your past (and present) and all that, but I couldn’t find the right way to say it. And again, something I didn’t want to get into over the phone with him.

But if digging up his past bothered him, for once he wasn’t showing it. Perhaps he felt a need to prove something to me, or himself. That he was over it. That it was in the past. I just hoped he knew what we were getting into.

Still, I repeated, “Mental?”

“
Yeah,” he said without missing a beat. “Fucking mad as fucking madness. Jimmy has been breathing down my neck about what our next plans were but I just felt – no, I just
knew
– that eventually the people at Riverside would cave in and let us. That’s why I didn’t want to book us anywhere else. Fuck, I didn’t look anywhere else.”

Jimmy was his boss. Well, our boss. And he was very good at breathing down Dex’s neck. Luckily, I never had to deal with the jerk, only through Dex.

“
Well, gamble paid off then.”

“
Paid in spades and worked out perfectly. Next Friday is the Shownet Christmas party and I figured you’d come up to Seattle for that anyway.”

That was presumptuous of Dex, as usual. Granted, I still didn’t have a full-time job, so it wasn’t like I wouldn’t be able to take time off or anything. It’s just assuming I’d go all the way to Seattle for a Christmas party, one that I hadn’t been officially invited to. I still didn’t feel part of this whole company, even though they were the ones playing my meager salary.

“
Perry?”

“
Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking,” I said, scrunching up my forehead with my hand. “Are you sure I’m invited?”

“
To the party? Don’t be a tard, kiddo. Of course you are. I just invited you.”

“
Yeah, I know. But I don’t know, I just don’t feel like I belong to your whole work thing. And I haven’t gotten an invitation in the mail or anything.”

“
Ah, jeez. Come on. You do belong to the whole work thing, and if there’s any reason that you feel like you don’t, it’s because you haven’t met anyone else but me. And Jimmy that one time. And I swear, the rest of the crew is so much nicer than Jimmy and I put together. We’re the rats of the whole bunch.”

That was probably true. “But…”

“
Also, everyone knew I would be the one inviting you. Everyone expects you. Everyone wants to finally meet the famous Perry Palomino, the reason I have a broken nose.”

“
Oh, Dex, you didn’t,” I stammered, feeling my heart drop.

“
Didn’t tell them you punched me in the nose? I told
everyone
you punched me in the nose. It’s a good story.”

Oh fuck. My face flushed red with heat. I had already been worried what people at Shownet thought of me and now they thought of me as a partner puncher.

“
I bet Jenn wants to kill me,” I whispered.

“
Uh. Well, no. She laughed and said I must have deserved it. And I did. And everyone is really, really jealous of you, Jimmy especially. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up getting some special plaque for it.”

I shook my head, despite the fact that he couldn’t see it over the phone.

“
So, it doesn’t matter. You’re coming. And it would be better if you could come a few days earlier too. Say, Sunday night.”

“
Well, how long is Shownet going to cover the motel costs, cuz I can’t afford anything right now.”

“
Motel? No, you’ll be staying with us.”

My breath froze somewhere in my throat. I had to cough to get it out.

“
Us?”

“
Yeah. Forget about a motel. We have the spare room. You’ll stay with me, Jenn and Fat Rabbit.”

“
Who the fuck is Fat Rabbit?”

“
Fat Rabbit is our dog.”

This was all too much. I wasn’t sure what to focus on, the fact that I would be staying with Jenn and Dex, or the fact that they had a dog. A dog called Fat Rabbit.