Fury (20 page)

Em stopped breathing. She blinked and shook her head. And when she opened her eyes, the face was gone. Nothing was there.

Em lay back down, her breath coming fast. Was she going crazy? First the anonymous note left in her winter coat, and now this.

She snuggled a teeny bit closer to where JD was lying, without waking him. She could hear the clock ticking in the hall, the wind blowing branches outside, the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. She lay there like that for the rest of the night, twitching at every sound, unable to fall back to sleep.

Tonight was going to be good, Chase could feel it. Ever since Ty had called him early that morning and he’d asked if he could take her out on a real dinner date, his pulse had been racing. She suggested a French place in a beach town about twenty minutes up the highway. He’d briefly panicked—the place, Lumière de la Mer, had a reputation of being one of Southern Maine’s most upscale restaurants, with prices to match—but he’d kept his vocal reaction cool. He’d find some way to swing it. He had to. They would kiss again, more than before, and he would ask her to come to the Football Feast. There were only a few days left before the main event, and now that things with Zach and the other guys had gotten so screwed up, he needed Ty more than ever.

He distracted himself for much of the day by reading
back issues of
National Geographic
, pulling out the huge map inserts, smoothing them out on his bedroom floor. Maybe he would see the world with Ty. He took a long, hot shower, partly because it was a special occasion, partly to give his white-and-blue-striped shirt a few extra moments in the steam. He shaved and patted his chin and neck with the same spicy aftershave his dad had long ago kept in a black bag under the sink, and put a sport coat on over his shirt at the last minute. This, too, had been his father’s. He’d found it a few years ago in the back of his mom’s tiny closet, taking up space. Apparently it was the jacket his dad had worn for his parents’ justice-of-the-peace wedding seventeen years ago. With dark jeans, dress shoes, and his shoulders set straight, he could easily pass for a college dude. He felt good, like he did at the start of a game against a school with a good reputation. His muscles flexed instinctively in his excitement.

It had snowed a bit overnight, not so much to accumulate in drifts, but enough to leave a half-inch layer of ice over pretty much everything. Chase worked up a sweat scraping it off the windshield. He considered changing his shirt but realized he didn’t have time to steam another one.

Chase picked up a bouquet of flowers from the grocery store, one with lots of bright red flowers, like the one Ty had given him the first night they’d met. The next stop was the one Chase was dreading, but there was no avoiding it. He pulled
into the Kwik Mart parking lot, took a deep breath, and strode inside, trying to look natural.

“Chase, honey!” His mom looked up from the magazine rack, where she was restocking the
National Enquirer
and other tabloids. She had been pretty when she was younger, but now she looked kind of faded: too many tanning booths, too many cigarettes. She still tried as hard as she could to look put together—too hard, probably.

“Hi, Mom,” Chase said, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“What’s up, sweetie? Where are you going all spiffed up? I thought the Football Feast was in few days.”

“I’m going out to dinner,” he said, aware of how ridiculous the words sounded. “On a date.”

“Who are you taking out on a date?” She dropped a
Daily Sun
and bent to grab it off the dirty floor.

“Just a girl I know from around here.” He looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “And I was wondering if I could borrow the credit card,” he said in a rush. “Just for the night.”

His mom frowned. “I don’t know, honey. We just finished paying it down. You know it’s only for emergencies.”

“Well, this is kind of an emergency. I want to . . . impress her.” He said the last part shyly. He never talked about this stuff with his mom.

She stopped arranging the magazines and faced him full-on,
her hands on her hips. “Whoever this girl is, she should be impressed with
you
, not the kind of dinner you take her to.”

“Mom, please. Can I have it, or what?” He hated asking. But he had to. In his mind, there was no other option. He would do anything to make it work with Ty.

“Okay,” she said, letting out a breath. “Yes.” She even smiled. “Just promise me you won’t do anything you’ll regret. Just think with that smart head you have up here,” she said, swatting him lightly with a rolled up
Us Weekly
.

“I promise, I promise,” he answered, hopping ever so slightly from one foot to the other. He didn’t want to be late to the restaurant—Ty had asked if they could meet there because she had some family stuff to do first.

Chase’s mom walked slowly to the register, pulled her bag from behind the counter, and took out the hardly used card. They’d both learned the dangers of debt when creditors formal and informal had started calling in the weeks after Chase’s dad’s death.

“Just be careful, Chase. I love you.” She leaned over the counter to squeeze his cheek. He jerked away a bit, and then felt guilty.

“I love you, too, Mom. Thanks.” He gave her a quick smile, so she would know that he meant it.

He walked quickly back to the car. Across the street, the lights were still on in a crappy little pet store that somehow
stayed open in a practically abandoned shopping center. One of the empty store windows next door was boarded up, and the board rattled in the wind, a rhythmic thumping.

He could make out a figure standing right in the front display window of the pet store. The person’s face was illuminated by the flickering sign: Man and Beast, the store was called. Chase squinted—was that a girl? Moving closer, he saw that it was. It was Drea Feiffer—and she was holding a giant snake. She was standing with a friend of hers, some guy with bleached-blond hair who had dropped out of school last year and who, as far as Chase knew, went only by the name Crow.

Chase was too far away to tell for sure, but it seemed like Drea was staring right at him through the glass. Chase shook his head and looked away quickly, jogging the rest of the way to his car. What freaks.

Lumière de la Mer was right off Route 1, and easy to find. Chase was early; Ty had not yet arrived. The place was crowded with holiday revelers, including several other people from Ascension—a few with their families, plus a group of senior girls.

“Hi, Chaaaaaase,” two of them (Becky something and Jamie St. Louis) drawled. Becky had a lopsided birthday party hat on her head. A few weeks ago, Chase would have been plotting how to hit that, but tonight he just waved and smiled as
the hostess sat him at a table for two. Wait until they saw who he was meeting here.

“Our Eve of the Eve tasting menu is quite popular tonight,” the waiter—dressed in a stuffy, gold-buttoned uniform—told him as he settled in. He remembered to unfold his napkin and put it on his lap. “Would you care for something to drink? A glass of wine while you wait?”

This guy wasn’t going to card him? No wonder this place was so popular.

“Yeah, I’d love a whiskey on the rocks,” he said with as much cool as he could muster.

“What type of whiskey, sir?”

“Uh . . .” He didn’t think “whatever’s cheapest” would cut it here. “Maker’s Mark, if you have it,” he said, saying a silent thank-you to Ascension’s parents and their well-stocked bars.

The drink came, and he sipped it as he waited. Every time the door opened, letting in a blast of cold air, Chase craned his neck to see if it was her. Ty was late, but not too late. Ten minutes. Whatever. Fashionably late was still a thing, right? When fifteen minutes rolled around, he ordered another drink, this time a bit sheepishly. “My friend is running late,” he told the waiter, speaking loudly in the hopes that others would hear. Chase pulled out his phone and tried, discreetly, dialing Ty’s number. Straight to voice mail.

The waiter came back when Chase had been waiting for
twenty-five minutes. Chase debated getting one more drink. On one hand, he couldn’t afford three top-shelf whiskeys plus a fancy “tasting dinner” for two. On the other, this was getting a little embarrassing. The senior girls were definitely whispering about him; he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d already posted it on Facebook:
Chase Singer has been sitting alone for half an hour at Lumiere
de la Mer. Who’s standing him up?
Yeah, he’d get the drink. Just one more.

The first sip of his third whiskey in less than an hour put him over the edge. He hadn’t eaten very much all day and he was feeling warm and woozy. The breadsticks at the next table were looking extremely appealing. Maybe he could ask for some, just to tide himself over. Instead, he caught the waiter’s attention and signaled for the check.

But shit, wait, who was that coming through the door? Chase’s chair made a terrible sound as he stood, shoving it back violently. Sasha Bowlder had just walked into the restaurant.

She was walking toward him. And there was blood flowing from her head, around her face.

What. The. Fuck.

Chase lurched forward, steadying himself on the table, swiping the tablecloth in the process so all the glasses tipped precariously. She was coming toward him. And there was all that blood. He let out a mangled half cry. He was going to be sick. He tried to move away from the table, pushing the chair
back farther, and then there was a loud, thunderous crash.

Every head in Lumière de la Mer swiveled toward him. Or, more accurately, toward the fancy dessert cart he’d just overturned. Chocolate mousse smeared the floor; pink-red plums oozed from a shattered tart. Delicate, lacy cookies were shattered next to actual shards of china plates.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Sasha ran toward him, but all of a sudden she looked nothing like Sasha and there was no blood. It was just some random girl.

Chase wanted to crawl under the table and stay there for good. He couldn’t believe how badly this evening had gone.

Under a veil of repeated, mortified apologies, Chase scrawled his signature on the credit card slip. Thirty dollars
plus
tax, just to humiliate himself, to sit in a bullshit restaurant for forty-five minutes waiting for someone who never came, and then to have a hallucination and ruin a lot of fucking pastries.

This was it. He was done with Ty.

Chase drove fast to the mall with the radio blaring, trying to drown out his anger, pounding his hands against the steering wheel in time with the beats. He was buzzing from the whiskeys and from anger, embarrassment. He didn’t care how hot Ty was, how amazing she made him feel. She was going to get a piece of his mind. No one pulled this on Chase Singer.

But when he arrived at the Behemoth parking lot, he
realized it was dark except for a few construction lights, and he didn’t remember exactly how to get through the woods to Ty’s house. He got out and walked a couple of paces, and as the cold air knocked away some of his confidence, he realized that this mission was hopeless. He was never going to find that path, and even if he did, how would he stay on it without a flashlight? He wasn’t about to go traipsing through the woods alone at night . . . especially not the Haunted Woods, even if he didn’t believe those stories were true. Damn. This was getting worse by the minute.

But then he thought he noticed a tiny opening in the brush, snow that looked like it was tamped down by crusty footprints. He took a few steps, trying to let his eyes adjust to the dark. Yes, this was a path. It had to be the same one. He grew more confident as the narrow clearing widened, revealing what was certainly the same winding trail they’d walked down the other day. He followed it to where he was sure the clearing, and Ty’s house, had been. The moonlight shone brighter here—there weren’t as many trees around. He was positive he’d arrived at the spot where he’d caught the first glimpse of Ty’s rickety home. But nothing was there, only some trees licked with black, as though there’d been a bonfire here recently.

Chase stumbled back the way he came, cursing Ty and his poor sense of direction. As he emerged into the parking area and started striding back toward his car, he recoiled. There,
lying in the gravel lot between him and his car, was some nasty dead animal. Roadkill. Possibly something that had gotten in the way of one of those giant construction cranes. A possum, maybe? Surrounding it were three feral cats, playing with it, poking it, picking at it. They’d approached silently, in seconds.

“Beat it!” he shouted at the cats, picking up a rock and tossing it in their general direction. Their eyes shone bright and green and glassy under the moon. They looked at him calmly, then resumed their task. “I said get out of here!” Chase yelled again even louder, his fury with Ty mixing with repulsion at the skinny creatures in front of him.

Instead of leaving, one of the cats tugged at a piece of the corpse until it separated from the rest of the body. It slinked toward him, the bloody meat dangling from its mouth like an offering.

“Get the fuck away from me,” Chase said, kicking at it, walking a wide semicircle around the nauseating spectacle and getting back into his car. His hands were shaking.

Everything good ends in shit. He knew this. He
knew
this. He should never have gotten in this deep.

And then he got her texts, several in a row, like a deluge breaking through cracks in a dam. The first:
Chase? Are you there? I’m so so so so sorry.
And the second:
Please answer, Chase? I’m so sorry I’m so late. A family thing came up. I couldn’t get away.
And then:
Please let
me explain. I couldn’t get out of it. I really wanted to. Please, I really care about you. I’m sorry.

He tried to stay mad, but he could feel himself softening immediately. As soon as her name popped up on the screen, he felt the familiar driving need to see her, to be around her, to inhale the smell of her skin and float away on the sound of her laugh. The force of it made his head spin. He pulled over, and then typed:
Don’t be silly. It’s okay. Things happen. Let’s just reschedule.