Fury (22 page)

“You okay?” JD had to bend his knees to peer searchingly into her eyes. “You looked like you were being chased.”

For a moment she considered telling him about the girl, the dreams, the visions. But it was New Year’s Eve—she didn’t want him to think she was crazy. She would deal with her own psycho ghost hallucinations without dragging JD into it. She shook her head. What the hell was wrong with her?

“I’m okay. Just a little jumpy today, I guess.”

“Yeah. It’s wild out here tonight.” JD slung his arm around her shoulders, and Em leaned into him without thinking about it. “Sophie told me that the best place to watch the fireworks is
from this bridge down here—come on. I’ll show you.”

Em gratefully let him grab her hand and lead her through the crowd. She snuck one glance behind her.

“You sure you’re not on the run, James Bond?” JD squeezed her hand, watching her eyes as they scanned the people behind them.

“I thought I saw someone I knew,” Em said vaguely.

“Don’t worry. If we run into someone from Ascension, I’ll drop your hand like it’s diseased.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” Em whacked him with her purse, watching with satisfaction as one of the new orchid’s petals fell to the salt-pocked sidewalk. Slowly, her heartbeat was returning to normal.

The view from the John W. Weeks Bridge was lovely and expansive, and JD wrangled them into a spot right up against the railing, with nothing between them and the water but a few inches of carved concrete. As the fireworks began—slowly at first, then expanding in color and magnitude—Em forgot all about the events of the past week and the creepy girl with her weirdo smile. For the first time in a long time, she felt totally safe and secure. Like nothing could go wrong. She let herself lean back into JD, let her ear touch his cheek. The fireworks boomed and exploded and wrote themselves across the sky, while music and laughter drifted through the crowd, across the water.

Even through several layers of thick winter clothing, Em thought she could feel JD’s heartbeat. It was solid and steady, like it was creating a rhythm with her own. For one crazy moment, she felt the wild urge to run her fingers through his hair, to kiss him. She was acutely aware of every place on their bodies that was touching. She wanted to grab him, right there, on the bridge, in front of everyone. She wondered what his mouth felt like, how his lips would move if they touched hers. A sense of rightness washed through her.

And then it was the fireworks finale—a great spectacle of blues and reds and whites, right as the clock struck twelve. Em wondered how many times they’d had to practice to get the timing just right. JD squeezed her shoulders, bent down to shout “Happy New Year!” in her ear. They hugged—a lingering hug. But the moment passed, and he ruffled her hair as they pulled away.

“Pretty awesome, right?” She didn’t even need to look at him to know that he’d be looking at her like he always did—like an old, old friend.

“Yeah, it was. It was beautiful,” Em said, gazing toward the city skyline as though it contained an answer to a question she had yet to ask.

By the time they reached North Station, Em was exhausted. Her fingers were frozen even beneath her mittens, and she was sick of lugging around her bag—every time she looked at it, a shiver
went through her as she remembered the girl on the train.

“I’m gonna get some hot chocolate,” she told JD, motioning toward a cart in the corner.

“I’ll buy our tickets,” he responded. “Meet me by the kiosk over there.”

She nodded and went off into the crowd, bumping into people and being bumped, secretly praying that she wouldn’t see that girl’s vacant eyes and wan smile staring out of the mass of people. Since she’d used all her cash, she paid for the drinks on her mom’s credit card: The whole
day
had been one big emergency, as far as she was concerned. The hot chocolate was thick and steamy, and she took a big gulp, not caring that it scalded the back of her throat as it went down.

She fought her way back over to the platform, holding the hot chocolates carefully and craning her neck to see JD’s bright scarf.

There he was, over by the ticket window. Was he talking to someone? Em squinted to see. Yes, he was talking to a girl.

Her heart dropped all the way to her toes. JD was talking to
the
girl, who was twirling a piece of her pale blond hair around her pointer finger.

No
.
No no no no no.

Em started moving faster, as fast as she could in the packed mass of people. The hot chocolate sloshed on her hands and wrists, burning at first and then becoming ice-cold. She tried
to keep them in her view, but it was impossible, and by the time she got to JD, the girl was gone.

“Who were you just talking to?” Em asked, breathless and wide-eyed. “Who was that?”

“That girl?” JD looked at her quizzically and grabbed a cup of the cocoa. “Nice job keeping it all in the cup, dude.”

“Do you know her?”

“Hey, hey, hey,” JD said with mock defiance. “You’re the one who didn’t want to be seen with me in public. She was just asking for directions.”

“JD, I’m serious. You’ve never seen her before?”

“Only in my dreams, babe. . . . Kidding! Kidding!” JD backpedaled and Em knew her face had gone white. “I’ve never seen her, and she was just asking if this train goes to Providence. I told her it didn’t. That was that.”

“Okay. Okay.” Em exhaled. “I’m sorry about the hot chocolate.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t want all of it anyway. Jeez. I’ll have to remember—no talking to other females, or risk the wrath of the Emerly.”

“Very funny.”

As they boarded the train, JD handed Em her return ticket and she slid it into her bag, next to the petals of tissue paper and the stuff she’d bought for Gabby. She’d blown her Christmas savings, but it was worth it. Gabby was coming home
tomorrow, and Em vowed to come clean as soon as possible. It would be painful, she knew that. More than painful. It was going to be ugly. But they’d get through it. They had to—they’d been friends forever. Right? Friends understood that other friends made mistakes.

JD had given Em the window seat, but rather than lean on the cold glass, she bent toward him. Right now, the comforting, familiar smell of that weird sailor’s coat—like a woodstove, old and piney—was the only thing keeping her from totally collapsing. As she started to drift off on his shoulder, a whisper ran through her dreams:
You forgot something . . . You forgot something . . . You forgot something.

There were snakes, golden, glowing snakes, and they were writhing, morphing from beast to human and back again. The snake faces started to look like Ty and her cousins. They were laughing, the way the girls did—high, silvery, with abandon. Ty was moving closer, holding out a white feather. “Fly away,” she whispered. Chase took the feather, turning it and spinning it between his fingers. And then it was in his mouth, scratching against his tongue and lips. It was in his throat. It was choking him. He gasped for breath; the plumes stuck together, blocking the air, catching his saliva. He coughed and coughed and . . .

Chase woke thrashing and hacking. He struggled to make his breath come naturally. He shuddered, recalling with vivid postdream clarity how Ty had seemed to step from the snake’s skin, the same way she’d stepped out of her clothes that day at
her house. He lay there for a moment, stretching his feet, yawning, and scratching his stomach.

Bang.
As usual, he stubbed his toe on the bedframe. For once, it came as a relief. But even away from his dreams, he felt strangled—today was the Football Feast, and he had no one to go with. He cleared his throat. He couldn’t get rid of the little tickle at the back of it.

It was six fifteen a.m., and he had half an hour to get to school. Their first day back. Zach had called an early-morning meeting to take care of last-minute Football Feast preparations. Coach wanted to go over some talking points, in case the media or any college scouts were in attendance. Chase didn’t even want to go to the damn dinner anymore, but skipping it was not really an option. As he threw his legs over the side of the bed, Chase vowed to make the best of the day and night. He and Zach might be fighting, and his life might be in shambles, but he was the star quarterback of Ascension, and this was his night to shine.

Chase knew no matter how screwed up stuff was between them, Zach would never let it interfere with tonight’s event. There was some small comfort in that, in Zach’s public-relations finesse. None of the invited guests, no one outside the small circle of witnesses at the pond, would have the slightest inkling that the best friends were fighting. He wouldn’t have to worry about watching his back, at least not while there were TV cameras around.

He looked in the mirror to see if his eye looked any better. That cream Emily had rubbed on helped a little: The stormy blue it had been the day before had morphed into a still visible but less sprawling bruise, tinged in yellow and black. He touched it delicately. Still hurt like hell, though. He’d have to steal a little of his mother’s makeup later to try to cover it. He couldn’t have reporters asking questions about this. For now he’d wear sunglasses.

In the car, he cranked up the music—loud. He drummed along on the steering wheel as he drove through the dim morning streets. He took some deep, rib-filling breaths and talked to himself a little.
It’s a new year. Fresh start. Here we go.

But when he pulled into the Ascension parking lot—past the banners heralding the team and tonight’s event, past the pep squadders already wearing their uniforms—he immediately felt that something was off. And it was more than the fact that Coach Baldwin had foregone his gleaming silver whistle for a classy red and blue tie. Yeah, he was a few minutes late to the meeting, but not enough to warrant the complete lack of eye contact, the palpable discomfort when he entered the room. None of the guys even looked at him as they began discussing who would sit where and who would give what speech. Had Zach talked shit about him after all?

“The thing to emphasize is teamwork,” Coach was saying. “We work as a team, supporting Singer—” Here, he was cut
off by random snickers from around the room. “Something funny, gentlemen? Brewer?” Coach glared at Tom Brewer, who was sitting in the front of the room, trying in vain to keep a straight face.

“No, sir. We’re all here to support Singer, that’s for sure.” More muffled laughter.

Chase shifted uncomfortably in his seat. What was going on? He stared at Zach, willing him to look up, but Zach was studying the floor with undistracted focus, his hair hanging in front of his eyes. Chase could see that his top lip was still a bit swollen.

When the meeting let out, the halls were full of students hugging, loading up lockers, eating bagels, and checking their second-semester schedules. As he walked toward the cafeteria—he
really
needed coffee, and luckily the AHS caf starting serving it a couple of years ago, though it tasted worse than the stuff from the Kwik Mart—Chase felt the strange sensation of eyes following him, and not in a good way. He waved to a group of girls but they only smiled awkwardly back at him before pretending to be deep in conversation.
What the . . . ?

Chase felt cold all over. This was literally his worst nightmare—one he used to have as a child, all the way through middle school: In the dream, he would show up at school and suddenly realize that his clothes were ripped, tattered, and covered in stains, and his friends would make fun of him. But this was worse—his clothes were clean. The dirt was invisible.

And then he walked into the cafeteria. That’s when he saw them, and it all became clear. Pictures of him were everywhere: naked, exposed, blown up to life-size and plastered above the cash register. Words from Emily’s poems in a speech bubble coming from his mouth, like a cartoon.

There in the Gazebo was one of him standing awkwardly below the dim lightbulb in Ty’s living room. And another of him lying down on the floor, the red wall pulsing behind him even on film, his pale thighs like they had a spotlight on them. So close you could almost see the goose pimples.

The room got hushed as he walked in. Everyone looked at him expectantly, waiting to see his reaction. He stood there shaking. His mind was full of flashes of light and sound, miniature explosions. He couldn’t hold on to a single thought. He was going to have a stroke or something. A janitor was circulating too slowly—removing the pictures one by one.

“They’ve been up all morning,” he heard Drea Feiffer say with a hint of sympathy in her voice as she brushed by him. “The janitor’s cleared most of them from the hall already.” He turned to watch her walk down the hall, her Doc Martens and black jeans like a life raft floating away after a shipwreck. And then she was gone, and he was alone again.

He took a couple of unsteady steps backward. He felt like the biggest freak Ascension had ever seen.

Then, racing down the hall, he thought only of where he
could go, where he could hide. He ducked into the boys’ bathroom by the science wing, only to run into Wagner and Barton. They were laughing hysterically as he walked in, examining a different picture of him that hung above the sink.

“Wow, you’re a real queer, huh, Singer?”

Chase was speechless. It felt, now, as though the feather from his dream had expanded in his throat; he really was choking.

Wagner banged into him as he walked by. “When did you turn into such a freak, dude?”

“Maybe we should show these to the TV cameras tonight, huh? Then everyone will know that Ascension’s star quarterback is a faggot.”

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said weakly.

“We know exactly what we’re talking about. Who do you think you are, some Calvin Klein model?” Wagner looked pleased with himself.

“Nice poems,” Barton muttered. “What is it that you’re ‘so scared to tell’? That you’re totally gay?”

With the line from Emily’s poem echoing in his head—
Some truths you just can’t tell
—Chase wheeled around and stumbled out, back into the hallway, which felt hot and narrow and crowded. Like a scene from a horror movie, where he could see everything that was going wrong but wasn’t able to do anything about it.