Secrets (14 page)

Rae’s hand shook as she started on the next name, and a blob of ink smeared across the paper. She ripped the
page off her sketchbook, tore it in half, tore it in half again, and again, and again.

Then she froze, a chill washing up her back except for the large numb spot that had formed at the base of her
spine after going fingertip to fingertip with Aiden yesterday. She’d heard a car pull into the driveway, and her dad
wasn’t due home for another hour at least. Rae hurried to the window and took a cautious peek out. “Anthony,” she
breathed when she spotted the Hyundai in the driveway.

She let the pieces of paper fall to the floor like confetti, not bothering to move over to the wastebasket, then ran to
the front door. God, she was glad he was here. Yeah, she was pissed off at him. But even if all he did was talk about
how amazing he was at football practice, he’d be in the house with her. She wouldn’t be alone. And she’d feel safe.

She always did around Anthony.

Rae pulled open the door just as Anthony was about to knock. He stood there, one hand raised, and stared at her
in surprise.

“Were you expecting someone else?” Rae asked.

“No, I wanted to see you,” Anthony said quickly. “I needed to tell you about Jackie.”

Jackie. Jackie again? Rae was willing to listen tostories of football glories or how annoying Anthony’s brothers
and sister were or pretty much anything else. But every time he brought up Jackie, she wanted to scream. How
could he be so worried about Jackie when he knew Rae was in danger practically every second? “What about her?

” Rae snapped.

“She’s in the hospital,” Anthony answered. “She overdosed on aspirin.”

Rae closed her eyes.
I am the most selfish person in the universe,
she thought.
I knew something bad was going

on with Jackie, and I was too worried about how she’d treat me to try and talk to her. That and too pissed off at

Anthony. Let’s be honest here.

“I thought maybe you would-” Anthony began.

“Just let me get my jacket,” Rae answered.

Anthony tried to keep his attention on the road, but he couldn’t stop himself from shooting little glances at Rae.

There’d been lots of other times that they’d been in the car together without talking, but this time felt different. It was
like Anthony’s throat was drying out, like pretty soon he wouldn’t be able to talk even if he wanted to. Man, how had
things gotten like this between him and Rae?

How? Let’s see. You started going to her school, and suddenly she couldn’t stand your presence for whatever

bizarre reason.

Rae cleared her throat. Did she have that dry gritty feeling, too? Anthony rolled down the window. Maybe all they
needed was some fresh air.

Rae cleared her throat again. “After we talked yesterday, I did do a fingerprint sweep of something of Jackie’s,”

she said. She twisted her hands tightly together. “I should have done something right then. Her thoughts were all
about no one caring and secrets, things she can’t mention.” Rae dropped her head back on the seat. “God, she
might as well have thought, ‘I’m going to commit suicide tomorrow.’ ”

“No. If it came across that strongly, you would have done something. I know you.” Anthony reached over and
touched her arm quickly, so quickly, he didn’t know if she’d even felt it.

“Thanks,” she said softly as they pulled into the hospital’s parking lot. “Maybe there’s still something of use we
can do.”

Anthony found a parking place, and they got out and headed up to the building. “So, uh, have you and Jackie,
have you gotten close?” Rae asked.

“She pretty much thinks I’m a loser,” Anthony answered.

“Then why-” Rae began.

“Same reason you’re here,” Anthony answered. “No one else is bothering to pay attention.”

“I hate the smell of hospitals,” Rae muttered asthe electronic door slid open and they stepped inside.

“Smells sort of like Oakvale,” Anthony commented.

“Exactly,” Rae said. “They all use the same industrial-strength cleaner. Just smelling it makes my heart start
beating faster.”

Being here is bringing back a lot of painful crap for her,
Anthony realized. His gut reaction was to put his arm
around Rae and pull her close to his side. But that wasn’t their deal. Really, it never had been, except that in a few of
their more extreme situations, they’d-

Jackie. Focus on Jackie,
Anthony ordered himself.
That’s why we’re here.
He veered toward the reception counter.

“We wanted to see Jackie Kane. She would have been checked in a couple of hours ago.” It had taken Anthony a
couple of hours to get himself over to Rae’s.

The guy on duty tapped on his computer keyboard. “Fourth floor. Room 4010. She’s allowed visitors, but don’t
stay more than twenty minutes.”

“We won’t,” Rae answered. “We just want to make sure she’s okay.” She led the way over to the elevator, and they
rode up in silence. Anthony wished he could think of something to say-his throat was drying out again-but what
exactly he wanted to say to Rae Voight was way too complicated to figure out right now.

“It’s this way,” Rae said when the elevator doors slid open. She pointed to a sign on the wall that had an arrow
indicating that rooms 4000 to 4020 were to the left. In less than a minute they’d found Jackie’s room. The door was a
quarter of the way open.

“Do we just, uh, walk in?” Anthony asked. He raked his fingers through his hair, his scalp suddenly itchy.

“Um, I don’t…” Rae tapped lightly on the door. “Jackie?” she called softly. There was no answer.

Anthony gave the door a light push. His eyes went immediately to the bed. Jackie lay there, pale and still. The walls
were bright yellow-so bright, her face looked even whiter in contrast.

“I don’t want to wake her up,” Rae whispered.

“I don’t know… Do you think she’s conscious?” Anthony asked.

Rae let her breath out with a hiss, then stepped up to the end of the bed, studying Jackie more closely. “You’re
right. I don’t think she is.” She reached down and pulled open Jackie’s chart, then swept her fingers back and forth
across the doctor’s notations. “They’re feeling like her chances are good, though,” she said, glancing back up at
Anthony.

“Unless she does something stupid the second she gets out,” Anthony muttered. He should have put a leash on
her the night of the party and neverlet her off. His gut was telling him she was going to self-destruct, and he’d done
the minimum he had to do.

“Let me see what else I can find out. If we know why she did this, that’s the first step to stopping her from doing it
again,” Rae said.

Anthony watched her intently as she began to run her hands along the railing of the bed. Emotions that he knew
weren’t hers flickered across her face-condescension, worry, irritation, love, frustration, impatience.

Rae gently removed her fingers.

“Get anything?” Anthony asked.

She tilted her head from side to side, stretching out her neck muscles. “A little,” she answered. “Mostly from her
parents, I think. They’re worried about her…”

“But-” Anthony prodded.

“But there were a bunch of thoughts about Phillip,” Rae said. She sat down in the plastic-covered chair next to
Jackie’s bed. “That’s Jackie’s older brother. I got stuff like, ‘Don’t we have enough to deal with already with Phillip?’

”

“What’s his deal, do you know?” Anthony asked, batting one of the balloons away from his head.

“I met him once at Jackie’s, that’s it. He’s in boarding school now,” Rae told him.

“Why? Was he getting out of control?” Anthony asked.

“No gossip about anything like that,” Rae answered. “Phillip, from what Jackie said, was obsessed with getting
into Yale. And that’s the toughest school there is. I figured he just went to some outrageously exclusive prep school
to get himself on the path.”

“The path,” Anthony repeated. “Right. And Sanderson Prep
isn’t
the path to all that Ivy League bull.”

“It can be,” Rae said. “But you know, there’s always a better school.” She turned away from him and stared down
at Jackie. “She would not be happy with people seeing her sans makeup.”

“So, back to Phillip. It doesn’t sound like he could be the thing pushing Jackie over the edge,” Anthony said.

Rae frowned. “Except I did get all that stuff about secrets from Jackie’s sketchbook. If something is wrong with
Phillip, it could be something the Kanes don’t want to get out. Some political aspirations there.” Rae reached over
and picked up Jackie’s limp hand. “I’m going to see what I can get fingertip to fingertip.”

She gently matched up her fingertips to Jackie’s. Then Rae’s head snapped back. Her eyes closed, and in an
instant her body was heading straight for the floor.

Rae tried to open her eyes, but she couldn’t. If she could open her eyes, she knew she could stop them. But she
couldn’t. And they were coming for her, moving almost silently but with enough whispery, rustly sounds to signal
their approach. Maybe she could pry her eyelids open with her fingers. All it would take was a slit, and they’d be
gone.

But her arms wouldn’t move. She couldn’t get her hands close enough to her face. And they were coming. They
were coming. They were here.

Rae would have shrieked if her lips could open, if her lungs could pull in air. Instead she had to submit, silent,
motionless, powerless, as the… the…creatures-even without seeing them she knew they weren’t human-gathered
around her, pushing in closer and closer until they were like a second skin around her body and she could smell the
sour breath they breathed out, the breath she was forced to breathe in.

“What do you want?” she cried. No. Tried to cry. The sound was only in her head.

Their hands-are they hands? Rae thought. She felt fingers, but they were thick and bristly. Their hands, or
whatever they were, took hold of her, and she was suddenly aloft.

Open your eyes,
she screamed, the words ricocheting through her head. But her eyelids seemed to be made of
stone.

“Rae,” a voice called in the distance. She knew the voice from somewhere. Somewhere a long time ago.

The voice rang out again. “Rae!”

Anthony,
she realized.
It’s Anthony.

If she answered him, he would come, no matter where they were taking her. But her tongue was stone, too. And
her lips. And the inside of her throat.

“Rae-”

Anthony’s voice got fainter. She knew he was trying to tell her something, something important, something she
could use to save herself. But the creatures were running, stealing her away from him, andhis instructions reached
her as random sounds that meant nothing
The creatures ran faster, Rae held aloft by dozens of hands, if that’s what they were. She could tell from the way
her body tilted that they were moving uphill. Then the creatures stopped in unison. Rae was passed forward along
the row of hands, then hurled away. And she was falling. Endlessly falling.

Her body gave a jerk. Her eyes flew open. The first thing she saw was Anthony’s face. “Wha-where?” she
mumbled.

“We’re in the hospital,” Anthony answered. “In Jackie’s room, remember?”

Saliva flooded Rae’s mouth, and she swallowed. The simple reflex motion felt so good. Her body was her own
again. She struggled to sit up, realizing she was lying on the floor cradled in Anthony’s arms.

He tightened his grip on her. “Stay down for a minute,” he ordered. “You were-I don’t know what. It wasn’t a
seizure, but-”

“There were monsters,” Rae mumbled, the words coming out garbled because her tongue and lips had somehow
lost coordination. She waggled her jaw back and forth, stretched and pursed her lips, flexed her tongue, then tried
again. “Monsters,” she repeated, much more clearly.

“Monsters, huh?” Anthony brushed her hair offher forehead. Her sweaty hair. How gross. She didn’t want him
touching it when it was like that. “What were the monsters doing?”

When he said the word
monsters,
Rae was hit by how ridiculous it was. She glanced around, her eyes taking in the
sterile hospital room and Jackie’s bed. Jackie. The last thing she could remember was touching Jackie’s fingertips
with her own.

“Maybe because Jackie was unconscious,” she murmured as the realization sank in. “Could I have connected
with her unconscious somehow? Except that wouldn’t mean monsters. Maybe she was dreaming, and I got into it.

Or-”

“Shut up for a minute, will you?” Anthony asked, his voice gentle. “Just shut up and keep still until you’re sure
you’re okay.”

Rae stared up at Anthony, trying to do what he said. But now that she wasn’t in babble mode, she was hyperaware
of how close their bodies were. Her head was resting on his thigh, and even through the denim of his jeans she
could feel the warmth from his skin soaking into her cheek. His arms around her were like new ribs, a part of her
own body. And she could feel his breath fluttering her hair. She was probably even breathing in a little of the air he
breathed out. Rae sprang to her feet, overwhelmed by the unexpected intimacy.