Sticks and Stones (4 page)

“It was fine.” Sandra shrugged again and felt her bruises sting – felt her
eyes
sting, too, and she blinked hard and stared at the patch of yellowed grass.

A long silence, and she assumed the boys were having one of those quiet, no-word conversations where entire universes were examined and conquered. The silences that normally didn’t bother her, didn’t vex her. Today, it rubbed her raw. She inhaled, long and wavering, and the air sludged into her lungs, sticking along the muscle and cartilage. With one last moment of silence, she turned and started off down the sidewalk. One step and her arm was caught, right on her bruise, and she couldn’t keep from gasping. Then she was free again, two sets of narrowed eyes right on her, and Sandra really considered running.

She should’ve walked out of town.

Jack grabbed her sleeve in one fast move, pushing the fabric up, wrist held firmly even as she tugged. He stilled, immovable as stone, as the deeply bruised skin was revealed, just above the joint of her elbow. It looked worse than it had that morning, darker in the bright sunlight, purple-black in the shape of one perfectly captured hand. The fingers had dug in deeper, darker, and Jack’s face was a mask of rage.

“Fuck him,” he breathed. “Fuck. Fuck! Fucker! I’m gonna—”

Daniel grabbed him before he could get more than a step. “Calm down.”

“No, Danny. What the hell? Did you see? Do you see what he-?!”

“I saw.” Daniel’s calm seemed to help and Sandra stared, wide-eyed.

“That’s why I didn’t want to say,” she said, voice quivering and shrugging helplessly at the two of them. “You’re both…” She didn’t know how to end it delicately.

“You get crazy, Jack,” Daniel said, blunt, to the point.

“I do not!” His face burned for a fight. “And this isn’t something you hide! No one
hurts
you. That isn’t-!”

He took off again and this time Sandra caught him. “No,” she whispered, nose pressed tight to his chest, almost to his neck. She wrapped her arms tight and felt him shake –
shake
. “No.” He wasn’t listening, still glaring over her shoulder like he couldn’t trust himself not to lash out at the next person he looked at. But he didn’t push her away to keep moving. “They’re not worth it,” she said.

“You are.” Danny’s hands briefly touched her back.

“Damn right you are,” Jack growled, voice extra rough and low and his arms came up to catch her hard.

“Don’t do something stupid,” she said. “Promise me. He’ll call the police. You know he will. And he’s just a stupid old man that hasn’t been my father in years. He isn’t worth it.”

“You are,” Jack said, repeating Daniel’s words.

And, for once, Sandra believed them.

“You are.”

Sandra squeezed him back just as hard.

~

They didn’t knock her dad down, though not for a lack of wanting on their part. They couldn’t get her convinced it was for the best, and Sandra had heard her dad muttering enough about the new neighbors to not want to press her luck.

The last thing the Sloans needed were charges brought against them, especially with how Lem eyed the cops every time they passed by. Sandra wasn’t spending the rest of her years in this town without them in her life. She was stuck in that house until she came of age and hell if she was going to let Jack and Daniel ruin that for her.

Heck, even Lem took some convincing once he saw her arm.

And then all he said was, “They ever check in on you?” Her incomprehension must have shown. “At night?”

“No.”

“Good. Pack up a bag. You’re staying here from here on out.”

“What?”

“I don’t like having to repeat myself.” He’d given her one of
those
looks and Sandra snapped to attention.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

And that was how Sandra found herself sleeping in Daniel’s room. He was tucked in with Jack and she woke up each morning to a fistfight crashing against the wall, Jack’s voice raised high with teenage angst and irritation.

She had to be really careful to not laugh at them.

It couldn’t be fun for those two tall boys to be sleeping in that tiny little room. She was sure they had some sleeping bags spread out on the floor, but they always complained anyway.

They always stopped when she felt guilty and talked about going home, or taking the couch instead.

“Shut up and eat your breakfast,” Lem would say, downing his fifth cup of coffee for the morning and glaring enough to finally stop the bickering. He always looked like he could use another three hours of rest, dark circles under his eyes, and face lined from lack of sleep.

Jack and Daniel would poke each other behind his back.

Sandra always thought he knew – he’d get this little smile over at the corner of his lips that only she ever saw – but he never stopped them either.

She didn’t think her parents noticed her coming home less and less, her belongings slowly disappearing into the Sloan house. And if they did, they didn’t care.

Her dad never talked to Lem again.

And Lem didn’t talk to him.

And Sandra’s bruises faded. She didn’t grow any taller, but those boys helped her grow up, and then the whole year had gone by, school was over, summer had come hot and damp, and had gone cool and windy, school had started up again, and Sandra Daron was fifteen years old.

Then girls started going missing.

Chapter Four

“I
can’t
believe it about Nikki Trite.”

Amanda blew across her newly polished nails, a shining, searing pink. The bottle sat on the corner of her desk.

“What?” Sandra frowned at her, pretending to listen as Mr. Murray turned to the class, voice such a steady drone that she’d nearly fallen asleep three times in the past fifteen minutes.

“Nikki Trite? How can you not know? What, do you live under a rock or something?”

Sandra sent her a look and Amanda at least had the grace to blush. “Oh, right. Sorry.” Former gossip-mongrel of the school’s now head-honcho Lucy Myers, Amanda finished spinning the cap back onto the bottle of polish. “Didn’t you notice how she hasn’t shown up for class in over a week?”

Sandra glanced around the room, shrugged, and Amanda rolled her eyes.

Amanda wasn’t so bad to hang out with, even if she was only a class friend, and even if she still gossiped like she was back at Lucy Myers’ side. Sandra supposed someone couldn’t change all that fast and all at once. And it was better than having no one now that Jack was across the street with his brother.

Heaving a massive sigh, Amanda said, “Apparently she and Dun Brackerly had some fight and she said she was going to leave town. And now she’s gone. I mean, everyone was just waiting for her to show back up at school, licking her wounds – she’d been caught making out with over half of the volleyball team; I don’t know what she thought would happen. But they said she really did it. She ran away. Can you imagine?” Amanda snapped her mouth shut as Mr. Murray turned again, frowning as all the whispers immediately morphed into dead silence. He turned back around. “I give her another week before the cops bring her back.”

“Huh.”

Amanda rolled her eyes again, so hard they were about to fall out of her head. “You’re hopeless.”

Sandra’s whole page was doodled full of names. Two names in particular. She turned it quickly and ripped it clean. “I guess I am.”

Amanda sighed again. “You’re no fun.”

Sandra shrugged again, opened her mouth to speak, but closed it immediately when Mr. Murray’s dark eyes landed on her. She kept her eyes wide and held her pen as though she was studiously taking notes. Amanda snickered.

“I hate Social Studies,” she said.

“I’m not even sure what Social Studies are.”

Amanda grinned again. By then Mr. Murray finally had it and spun around, catching Edmund Rasui and Zachariah Inger throwing spit balls at Dale Brackerly (Dun’s twin brother) and booted them both out into the hall. The rest of the class was spent in silence, saliva gathering at the corner of Sandra’s mouth when she accidentally fell asleep for the last five minutes of class.

She was sure Mr. Murray glared her all the way out the door.

After school, she climbed into the truck between Jack and Daniel – both who, she swore, had gotten even bigger and bulkier over the summer (she hadn’t).

“Fuck, Dad, we need a bigger truck!”

“Watch your mouth!”

Sandra smiled all the way home.

~

On November twentieth, fourteen-year-old Lydia Barsowich went missing.

This time, no one could say she ran away. She didn’t fight with her parents, she didn’t have a boyfriend, and she seemed happy with her quiet, normal life.

That was when Sandra became worried.

Because maybe Nikki Trite hadn’t run away either.

Maybe everything she had seen last year was coming true.

Maybe there was just nothing left of those girls to find.

It seemed like the world should’ve changed. But classes were the same. The same kids with the same lax attitudes and whispers and gossip and hidden laughs. No one thought about Nikki Trite, and after a while not many thought about Lydia Barsowich either. Sandra guessed it was easier to think she’d also run away; better than believing there was something dark and sinister out there. Someone with a knife and greedy hands and—

Sandra didn’t remember much from her vision anymore.

But she remembered that there were three girls.

She hoped he didn’t still have them, in that dark pit somewhere, bleeding and scared.

He was still going to take one more and she didn’t know who it was.

“Miss Daron, please stay after class.”

Amanda gave her a commiserating look as she gathered her books, grabbing up her bag on her way out of the room with the rest of the class.

“Don’t forget to hand in your papers!” Mr. Murray shouted after them, looking even surlier than normal and Sandra marched slowly up to the desk, dread pooling low in her stomach.

“That’s the third time this week, Miss Daron,” he said, as he shuffled the pile of papers into some semblance of order. “You have to start paying attention. This can’t continue any longer.”

“I know,” she said, swallowing fast. “And I’m sorry, Mr. Murray. I don’t mean to. I just…”

He paused in settling the papers into his briefcase. “What has you so distracted?”

Sandra mumbled an inaudible reply, shrugging, and Mr. Murray sighed. “Times have been hard, Miss Daron. I understand that. I’m not quite the ogre everyone makes me out to be.” Sandra stared wide-eyed as he actually smiled – a small one, granted, but a smile nonetheless. “You were friends with Miss Barsowich.”

Sandra just nodded her head, because it was easier than saying she hadn’t really known her at all, but thought that maybe she’d seen her die.

“I’ve been assured that the police are doing everything they can to locate Miss Barsowich. They’ll find her.” His grin was reassuring, and Sandra fought down a sudden surge of bile.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Off to your next class, Miss Daron.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Sandra slowly left the room, wishing she had someone other than the boys she could confide in to say:
those girls aren’t coming home
.

Lydia Barsowich hadn’t run away.

Most of all, she hoped she was wrong and Nikki Trite
had
run away from this town. That fourteen-year-old Lydia was safe somewhere, maybe not happy, but certainly not dead. That there was no third girl that was going to disappear.

Jack and Daniel’s worried eyes met her after school, her fears followed her, and for the first time in over half a year Sandra dreamed of worn jeans and a dusty cotton skirt and a hole in her neck as she gasped and
gasped
until she woke herself up, breathing hard, heady with the heavy pounding thud of her own heart.

She kept remembering being this girl and that girl and the other girl, with
his
knife in
her
throat, and their dirty clothing rasping across her aching, wounded skin. She saw it in her dreams at night, but Sandra felt his hands during the day. Sometimes, during class, she’d undergo a crippling blow, hear a toneless voice murmuring in her ears, feel clawing fingers and cold metal and the ropes that tried to hold her down.

Sometimes she’d come to shaking, hands gripping the edge of her desk or her chair so hard she had lost all feeling in her fingers, the rest of the class unaware and Amanda giving her strange looks. Her schoolwork suffered and, no matter how hard Lem and the boys tried, they couldn’t help her.

They didn’t have horrible images running through their heads.

They had no idea.

“Miss Daron?”

Sandra sighed and shuffled around, eyes sore and burning. Mr. Murray struggled down the hall, his packed briefcase in one hand and a box in the other with several books balanced on top.

“Do you need some help, sir?”

He looked surprised for a moment, and then he said, “Ah yes, Miss Daron, that would be appreciated.” He let her take the box, gathering the books to himself and staring around at the empty hallways.

“Making it out late today, Miss Daron?” he asked.

Sandra half-shrugged, just one shoulder, and held the box close to her chest. She was so
tired
, so ready for this to be over, no matter how horrible that made her feel. She just wanted it done.

“Hmm,” Mr. Murray said, looking at her sideways as he led her to the side door. “Still having a hard time of it?”

A little startled, Sandra looked up at him, almost walking sideways into the wall.

“Are you still worrying over Miss Barsowich?”

Sandra formed a sad half-smile and a half-nod.

“You need to keep up hope, Miss Daron. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.” He paused with his hand on the bar latch. His eyes seemed a lot darker in the lighting of the hallway. Stern. “Your grades are dropping. You’ve become much more withdrawn in and out of the classroom. I can tell you aren’t sleeping well.” Mr. Murray was showing her concern. He was
concerned
. God, that was so very wrong. The ogre was worried about her.
Again
. “I have to ask … are you sure this is only about Miss Barsowich?”

“Sir?”

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me about, Miss Daron? Are you having trouble at home?”

A startled laugh escaped her.
Are you kidding me?
When was the last time a teacher had asked her that? “I’m fine.”

“As unaware of teenage trials as I am, Miss Daron, I am quite capable of spotting a lie.” His dry tone was accompanied by quirked lips and, finally, he pushed open the metal door to the parking lot. Sandra followed him to his silver car, one of the newer ones in the yard. The lot was already mostly empty, teachers leaving as quickly as the students — further proof that school was, in fact, the instrument of some kind of worldly torture device.

He popped open the trunk. “You need to take better care of yourself.” And then Sandra placed the box down and his hands plowed into her back.

The last thing Sandra saw was Mr. Murray’s smile before the trunk lid closed.

~

Time flashed. Like one of her vision-dreams. Except, this time Sandra didn’t wake up. The world went dark. Then there were faded lights, like old lamps, warm smudges peering out from behind lingering shadows. Sandra moved her head weakly, head full of spider webs, aching, with a funny taste in her nose and mouth. Nausea curled in her belly as Mr. Murray leaned low over her, saying, “
Shhhh
.” Fingers petted over her hair and he was a shadow, too, large and mean like in her dreams. “Shh,” he said. “You’re alright.” He held a glass to her lips but Sandra turned away, a whimper in her throat.

He gave her head another pat, chuckling low. And then his fingers forced a wad of fabric into her mouth, tying it tight behind her head, the knot catching in her hair. The light shifted, flared behind his back, and then he was moving up and away and Sandra heard the deep thump of shoes on wooden stairs. A door creaked, a latch closed, darkness fell into place.

Sandra couldn’t sit. She couldn’t stand, either. Her arms were tied to something behind her head, pulling them taught. Her ankles were bound together as well, so tight that her ankles ached. She bucked and writhed, but there was nowhere to go.

Her skin felt raw already.

The cement beneath her was cold and Sandra thought she smelled blood.

She was lying where they had lain. She was—

Sandra’s chest heaved. The air was thick and she couldn’t get it in. The girl in her vision had been wearing a brown sweater.

She was wearing that same brown sweater.

She tried to scream.