Following Christopher Creed (24 page)

He groaned and said nothing, which was a smart idea. He might find her amusing, but I wondered how many days it would be—how many months or years—before I stopped spitting the woman's froth out of my mouth.

After a while, he asked softly, "Where we going?"

I dialed RayAnn's phone number, and this time somebody answered. Somebody not RayAnn. A guy's voice.

"Where's RayAnn?" I asked.

"Oh! Um. She's not here.
Ha-ha
"

My skin started to crawl and my arm grew weak to the point where the paper towel flopped down off my bleeding temple. "Where the hell is she? Who is this?"

I could hear people laughing in the background, and he was trying not to. "She left us, but she forgot her cell phone."

"Lydee, is this you?" I didn't wait for him to answer. "She never forgets her cell phone. You'd better hope to God nobody did anything to her."

I heard a click and her cell went dead. They might be dumb-ass kids who needed a job, but they were strong and, as RayAnn had observed this afternoon, mysteriously edgy. Her background was different from theirs.
Differences can make packs of animals attack each other.
I wondered, as my gut spiraled even further, if the same was true for people.

I imagined my own cell phone, the one time I heard from somebody I dreaded, tumbling through the air and plopping into a duck pond. I imagined hers tumbling through air somewhere, then being bitten through by the jaws of a water moccasin.

"This place is a nightmare," I said. "My worst nightmares are coming out of the woodwork. Take me to the motel. You better hope she's there and in one piece, or I'm going to set this town on fire and laugh while everyone in it burns to death."

W
E GOT TO THE
T
WILIGHT
I
NN,
and I was running, which makes me totally blind, but I held on to Justin's shoulder with one hand.

"She's there," he said. "Or at least the door's wide open."

I stopped to catch my breath until the orange glow of the room came clear through the open door. A man was standing in the doorway. I recognized him—the owner, whom we'd gotten out of bed to check in last night.

I could see RayAnn behind him for a brief second as she moved from the bed deeper into the room, and her suitcase was up by the lamp. It lay open.

We entered and Justin muttered, "Bloody hell..."

"What's up?" I pushed him aside, stepping past the owner.

He said in too nice a voice, "Your friend has had some problems. I've been standing here until you got here—just giving her a little company. Looks like she got in a cat fight."

I found RayAnn's eyes popping as she stared at the man in disbelief. "I was
not
in a cat fight. Great. Is this what school was like, Mike? One kid hits another and they both end up in detention? Something like that?"

I'd been in
lots
of detentions, and that explained just about every one of them.

Her lip was puffy, had been bleeding, I thought.

"Tell me what happened," I begged, making my way over to her. There was stuff on the floor, and I stumbled past her empty laptop case.

She didn't move toward me. She shook her head, her swollen lip trembling. "Mike, I am not prepared for this story. This place looks sweet, until you get into the middle of it." She burst past me, flopping the laptop onto the bed and shoving printouts in her suitcase. "These kids are mean."

"What'd they do?" Justin tried. "Who hit you?"

"My lip is thanks to the car door, which I slammed on myself trying to get away fast—after Kobe Lydee had me by the throat, threatening me for a good two minutes.
Au mon Dieu.
"

Justin decided it was appropriate to lecture her on how to defend herself against a bully, but although I waved my arm to shut him up, he didn't pay me any mind. His mother's leap out of the dark seemed to have triggered a burst of energy. He didn't shut his mouth until I found his jacket and half shoved him off the bed.

RayAnn jammed things into her suitcase. "Six of them had ridden on bikes and handlebars to get out to the Lightning Field, and the ones who didn't bring bikes all piled into our borrowed car without asking. I figured, fine, I'd just drop them off where they wanted, even though they stank. Pot and beer breath. They were okay at first ... as sweet as people can be when they've got a gang-up vibe and a we-hate-you tone."

"Why'd they hate you?" Justin asked. "Were you talking French at them?"

RayAnn nodded hard with mock understanding. "Gee, that's a great reason to steal somebody's car—even if I did. It's what I do when I'm nervous, and your friends were whispering and glaring—while I was giving them a ride and had answered all their background-check types of questions in the nicest of ways."

"What set them off?" I asked.

"They had a lot of questions ... found out I didn't go to high school and that I was their age. That didn't sit very well, I guess. That's when they went from curious to frosty. I should have figured they'd 'get even' with me for being a little different. They talked me into taking them to Dairy Queen before dropping them at Mary Ellen's. We were eating ice cream in the car. I hadn't been to the bathroom since around noon, so I really had to go. They asked me to leave the keys so they could keep listening to the radio. I came back out..." She trailed off, rearranging a couple pairs of socks, as if she'd forgotten how to fold.

"Oh my God," I said.

"Yeah. No car. And in the car was my cell phone, my three-thousand-dollar laptop, and your priceless dog."

I glanced around until I saw her laptop on the bed.
Lanz...

"They ... probably only took it for a ten-minute joy ride," Justin guessed, and we both turned to glare at him.

"I don't know how long it was, because I use my cell phone to tell time. I think it was more like fifteen. I was two seconds from calling the cops when they came back, all laughing. They'd done at least one donut. There's gravel all over the back of the car, and there's a tremble when you drive it, like one of the tires isn't aligned anymore."

"Oh, great," I said.
Drunk stoners, joy riding in a borrowed car.
I was afraid to ask about Lanz.

"Kobe Lydee was driving. They got back all laughing, and couldn't understand why I was so pissed. That's when I was screaming French.
Obtenir un emploi, vous stupides, paresseux imbeciles!
"

Get a job, you stupid, lazy morons.

"I guess Kobe Lydee got scared I would tell the cops. So he threatened me—with everything from gang rape to being thrown in the snake pit out at the Lightning Field ... the one in the house foundation."

My anger roared and mixed with guilt. I could see she was really shaken up, even though she was trying to hide it.
After everything that happened to me in high school, how could I not have guessed that something like this would happen to her?

"I already called Glenda up at Rowan and told her what happened with her car. She's rightfully pissed, but not at me. She's driving down here with her boyfriend to get it. We'll have to pay for the damages if—"

"
I'll
pay for the damages," Justin said quickly, and I wondered if he was suddenly manic enough to imagine himself a millionaire, though he added, "I'll find Lydee, and we'll make
him
pay for the damages. I got the goods on him in so many ways. I'll blackmail his spoiled ass—"

We could think of that later. "Where's Lanz?" I finally got the nerve to ask.

"Still in the car, but he puked all over the back seat. Probably scared."

More guilt.

"I cleaned it up already ... Mr. Stillman gave me a bucket, Lysol, and some rags." She pointed to the door, where the motel owner stood looking outside, pretending he wasn't listening to this.

"Better get him out if you're staying. If you're coming, my dad got me on the red-eye out of Atlantic City. It's a seven-hundred-dollar plane ticket, but he did it, no questions asked. That was the deal—if I felt uncomfortable, he would get me out, NQA. He says he'll loan you the ticket money if you're coming with me."

I wanted to run to Lanz, but I went to her first, trying to hug her. But she ducked under my arm and kept talking.

Justin's voice finally sounded a little contrite. "Just so you know, that was all talk, RayAnn. Kobe Lydee is a hot-air bag, and okay, he's a morbid loser, but he's not a rapist. Kobe Lydee is not going to do anything to you."

She dropped to her knees in front of him and stared up at the ceiling. I followed her eyes at first, and then, realizing nothing was up there, I saw her neck. Bruises were forming where Lydee had grabbed her. The bruise on one side was the size of a thumb. There were four small bruises on the other side.

"Just let me kill him," I said. I was dead serious. My insides were on fire, leaving me swaying.

A car pulled up outside with music booming out the window. A car door opened, and a shadow crossed our door
way. A kid who looked vaguely familiar stood on the other side of the motel owner. Someone from the Lightning Field, and from RayAnn's gasp, I gathered he'd been in the car.

"Here," he said, and tossed something. RayAnn's cell phone landed in the middle of the bed. He ran off into the parking lot, laughing. A couple of other voices laughed, and the car gunned away.

"See?" Justin said in disgust, as if kids returning her phone instead of throwing it out the window or selling it made all of this okay. Bad frequency is subtle sometimes. Still on fire, I couldn't believe it when Justin continued on with a shrug. "You got no sense of humor, that's your problem—"

"Justin, shut up!" I exploded. "You talk too much. He tried to strangle her!"

"She bruises easily," he said, which I'd known almost since I'd known RayAnn, but I didn't need to hear him defending Lydee and mean kids, and it was the last thing I'd wanted RayAnn to experience.

She yelled, "If their sense of humor ends up costing us eight hundred bucks to have Glenda's car repaired, are we supposed to think that's funny?" She turned to me with a sigh, more of disgust than fear. "They know where we're staying. I don't think they're going to ax murder us in our sleep. But they might spend half the night trying to make us
think
they would ax murder me ... for what? For not going to high school and for starting college early? For not seeing the humor when they took off in our car for fifteen minutes and popping a three-sixty? Why am I not surprised they'd pick on me? I mean, this is the home of Christopher Creed, one
truly
different guy..."

Justin went mute for once. He plopped down on the bed, staring off into space. His jaw bobbed a few times before he settled on "RayAnn, if you can believe this, I promise you, this is a pretty nice place. I don't know what's come over them lately."

She zipped her bag shut, pushed on it for effect, then stood straight, hands on her hips.

"You know what? Torey Adams would not have been at that party tonight, Justin.
Your
little party. Do you realize that?"

Justin stayed quiet. Torey Adams had been really popular, in other words, and yet he wasn't this wild. He wasn't
mean—

"Are you coming?" she asked me. "I'm not missing this flight."

I moved to my bag to pack up what few things I'd left lying around between last night and today. But I felt numb, like a person who's been kicked in the ribs but is still waiting for the pain sensations to run upstairs to the brain. RayAnn needed me right now. And I needed her. I couldn't stay without her as a guide.

The old man in the doorway had his arms crossed and was looking out over the parking lot. I didn't know what to say to RayAnn, and my frustration was backing up, so I unloaded on the man.

"You ought to be embarrassed, living in a town like this." I plopped my suitcase down on the mattress with a bounce, and I heard him say only, "Lately, I'd say I am..."

Nothing further. I just shook my head in disgust. What had Adams walked back into? I thought of my lost interview with my main man, and I wanted to heave. Justin started to babble, following on my heels.

"Mike. You don't have to leave. I can take you around. I can deliver you to the airport."

An underage driver suffering from manic-depression—
yuh- huh.
And his word had been so good about his mother being painless. I walked away from him, rescuing yesterday's jeans and socks from the armchair.

"Mike ... Say you'll stay. Don't go now. Stay with me until the funeral Monday!"

RayAnn ignored him, full of her own power to the point where she probably didn't feel an argument was necessary. She finally noticed the side of my head. A laugh blew out her mouth as she came up close beside me.

"Who got
you?
"

I shut my eyes, trying not to swallow my own spit. I spat into a wastepaper basket I knew was near the desk. "The Mother Creed."

"You gotta be kidding me!"

The mattress crunched as Justin sat back down. He said, "She was just ... she was just ... she was just..."

"She was drunk," I finished. RayAnn's eyes darted from my temple scratches to my eyes, to my scratches to my eyes. They finally stayed on my eyes.

"Pack up," she said. "You're coming with me. I will help you pack."

"I don't need help," I said, on autopilot. It's what I always said at Randolph when people tried to help me.

"Fine. Just get moving. We'll miss the plane."

RayAnn's thinking was right, but her tone was all wrong. She was out of form—shaken up, scared, and desperate—so she was doing the one thing she probably would have guessed under normal circumstances would propel me away from her. She was dictating my movements. She was telling me what to do and saying to
get moving
about it. You don't do that to a matraphobic who has just been scratched in the face by an evil troll mother. You don't say that to a guy who left his mom to prove that he could make it on his own.

I didn't freak out on her—it just changed the direction of my thoughts.
You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the next step. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.