The Girl in Acid Park (11 page)

"Implied it," I said. "Strongly."

"Did I also mention I love my truck?"

"Not recently."

He smiled, cold and evil. "Let's see how they like 385 horsepower."

Hiroki's eyes nearly doubled in size, and he gazed at Jamie in abject wonder. "That was beautiful. I think it was the most American thing I have ever heard."

Jamie moved the shifter, his eyes narrow and cool. I put my hand over my heart.

"O'er the land of the free!" I sang. "And the home of the-"

Jamie gunned it. The roar of the engine sent them scampering into the drainage ditch alongside the road

We accelerated past them, wind howling. I snatched at the Oh-shit-grip to keep myself from jolting sideways as we swerved around the van. Hiroki and I screamed out the final word of the national anthem, and even Jamie was grinning, the whisker-like crinkles scrunching along his cheekbones. Whooping, we rolled down the windows, flipped the bird at the dudes now choking on our dust. Hiroki was practically crying with laughter.

"I think I just got naturalized..." he wheezed.

It was a fifteen minute drive to Acid Park. We passed by it a few times in both directions, making sure no police cars hid out in the trees before pulling down the long driveway. Jamie pulled right up next to the farmhouse. We left the headlights off as Hiroki and Jamie snuck around, trying windows. If we got arrested, at least I wouldn't have to go back to school.

"You sure you're alright with this?" I asked Jamie. "Oxford might not like it."

"I'm legacy at Oxford. They'd overlook it." His glance at me was smug.

"How do you even exist?"

Hiroki joined us. "The door's got a deadbolt," he said. "But I think I could fit through one of those windows." He pointed above us, where a set of six-paned windows sat propped open on the second story.

"Oh no." I pointed at him. "We did the window thing last time. I know how this ends, and I'm not anxious to get another concussion."

"You're not tall enough anyway," Hiroki said. Jamie, on the other hand, was squinting up at the frame.

"Who leaves their windows open?" I said. "They're really not even trying, are they?"

Jamie cracked his knuckles and grabbed the tailgate of his truck. "How fortunate for us." He climbed into the back. "For Satou's sake, I hope the floorboards are sound."

I stood back, lips pressed as the boys prepared to Mission Impossible their way into the farmhouse. Hiroki gritted his teeth as he grabbed onto Jamie's shoulders and was hoisted aloft. He grabbed the eve and pulled. A moment of curses and grunts followed with very little progress. Even with Jamie pushing on the bottom of his chucks, Hiroki couldn't get himself over the edge.

"Can you--not do--even a single--pull-up?" Jamie grunted.

"Nope," I confirmed.

"You can't even do enough to--Jesus!" Jamie just barely managed to dodge a foot-flail.

"I
can
do enough to Jesus!" Soon, however, it became evident he could not. Jamie and I were able to grab Hiroki's legs and move him back into the bed of the truck, where he rubbed at the red lines in his hands. "Plan B?"

"Bulldozer?" I said.

"No," Jamie said, looking at the window. "I think I can get up there"

"How could I forget," Hiroki drawled. "With the rigorous physical demands of chess, you must have the upper body strength of a titan."

Jamie's smile was knife-thin and cold. "Some of us actually attend P.E."

Hiroki scowled. "I have asthma."

Sensing the imminent posturing, I pointed back up at the window. "Well,
I'm
not fitting through that, so when y'all are done measuring your dicks, can we get on with the trespassing?"

Hiroki stepped back, sweeping his hand dramatically toward the window with a slight bow. "All yours, Grant."

Jamie smirked and clambered onto the truck's cab. It looked like he'd be tall enough to reach the window on his own, but it would be precarious, since the cab's roof didn't extend quite as far over as the bed. He had about two feet of distance to compensate for.

God, he was going to break his neck. And then it would be my fault. And then I would probably just lay in the road in front of the reporters and let them bury me in nasty articles. I bit my lips and let him jump.

He caught the sill with a grunt and got his feet against the wall. As promised, he was fairly quick about pulling himself up.

"Lucky me," he called down. "It smells like old people and asparag-AGH!" Hiroki and I both tensed, but an instant later, a hissing, skulking possum scampered from the window and across the roof.

Jamie, hand over heart, leaned back out the window. All of us locked eyes, and laughed. "I'll meet you at the door," he said.

My heartbeat raced as I snatched up our things from the truck. When Jamie opened the door, he raised his eyebrows at me in a way that, had it been a different sort of moment, might have been flirty. But it was not that sort of moment because we were about to trespass on a very haunted crime scene.

The place was dark, and the light from our cell phones made shadow-creatures of the refrigerator and kitchen island. Occupying a full third of the dining room was the half-rebuilt whirligig, its large green flower of a pinwheel glinting in the light of our three LED screens.

Hiroki shrugged off his bag, which landed on the linoleum floor with a metallic slush.

"That was a lot easier than I thought," he said. Jamie just opened his hands and looked at the ceiling.

"Considering a life of crime?" I asked Hiroki.

"It's more lucrative than journalism."

"That's fair. So..." I looked around the room. "See anything?"

Hiroki's mouth squished to one side, but his quick gaze darted around without seeming to latch on anything. "We might have to coax her out," he said.

"Hopefully she's ready to move on," Jamie said. He glanced at me. "Do we know why she stayed behind in the first place?"

"I don't think spirits even know half the time," Hiroki said. "Especially the longer they've been around. Death is weird and confusing."

Jamie's chuckle did not sound at all amused.

"We should try anyway," Hiroki said, shooting a glare at Jamie. "Luckily, I brought something to help us summon the spirits, so to speak." He crouched next to his messenger bag. "Sometimes vibrations help. Something about rarefactions and frequency--I don't really know how it works."

Jamie frowned. Knowing him, he probably wanted a clearer explanation. I was focused on the fact that Hiroki was digging in his bag and I had absolutely no idea what he would pull out.

"So...what did you bring to create these...vibrations?" I asked. Jamie eyed me, his mouth twitching.

"They have to be within a certain range or frequencies. This is going to be a little weird, but..." From his messenger bag, he extracted a large orange electric drill.

"Oh, thank Christ," Jamie said. "I had no idea what you were about to-"

"-whip out." I finished.

Hiroki blank-faced, which only made it funnier. While Jamie and I fought for composure, Hiroki flipped the switch on the drill.

Almost at once, there was a series of scrapes and thuds from above. Jamie whirled, arms out, gaze going up.

"False alarm," I said. "It's probably the god damned possums of regret!"

Hiroki extended the drill, waving it around as he traversed the kitchen and living room like he was blessing a house with a stick of incense.

"Anything?" I called.

"Nada. Maybe it's not loud enough."

"You know!" Jamie yelled over the noise. "If the amplitude is a factor, you're going to need a bigger drill!"

"Yeah!" I yelled. "Size matters!"

Hiroki turned off the drill. "This is all I brought." He waved the orange drill.

"There's got to be a bigger drill in the workshop. Or, wait. Maybe in the kitchen," Jamie said, walking over to the table. His phone illuminated a set of razor teeth on a wheel. "Think a hand saw would be in the right range?"

"I think we should avoid turning on a saw completely," I said. "I just don't like the idea of ghosts and whirling blades in the same room. Call me crazy."

Jamie held up a finger and pointed at me. He stepped away from the saw. Behind me, Hiroki was muttering to himself, so I made my way across a drop-cloth to a sliding glass door to a tiled sunroom filled with building supplies.

About half of it was paint, labeled and categorized according to which part of the whirligig it was meant to decorate. The other half was a jumble of scrap and...

I reached out, running my fingertips along the crumbly, rough surface of an old brick. It was caked on one side with some light-hued paint, and the edges had been weathered away by time and rough treatment. It was much smaller than the bricks at Millroad Academy.

My gut grew heavy, and I noticed rather objectively that my hands had started shaking and my legs were starting to go stiff.

"Georgia," Hiroki said, his voice a whisper some ten to fifteen feet away. I inhaled a shuddering breath and forced myself to turn around, the brick cradled in my hand.

The boys were illuminated from below by their cellphones, standing side-by-side. They looked a little ridiculous, because Hiroki barely cleared Jamie's shoulder. I extended the brick toward them, fighting through the sudden fog in my brain for something to say.

That's when I felt the press of something cold and very real against my spine. Don't ask me how I knew what it was, because I have never been in this kind of situation before. Perhaps it's something I've just imagined after so many years of action-movie brainwashing, but there was no mistaking the thing jabbing against my vertebrae for anything but a gun.

"Y'all shoulda listened when I said there won't no ghost." Said the familiar drawl of the guy with the Bill Nye tee shirt. "Now y'all got y'allselves in trouble."

CHAPTER TEN

Zippity Boo Da

The zip ties around my wrists made it real. Not the gun--that was too far from my everyday reality to understand--but I don't know anyone who hasn't used a zip tie. There were about six guys, clearly part of the same gang as the guy who nearly found Jamie and me before. Bill's bro seemed to be the only one with enough of a grasp of English to give us commands.

They dragged us into the kitchen, where a light revealed quaint country wallpaper at least a decade past needing replacement. The pictures on the walls were of a family I didn't know. All except one person--April.

A part of my brain wondered how I'd write about this if I made it out alive--they clearly weren't
all
Hispanic, at least Bill Nye Guy wasn't, though that's what the police had told me. I'd have to correct them.

They tied Jamie's wrists first. He refused to flinch when the burliest gang member wrenched his arms back, but his bravado wasn't comforting. Hiroki struggled until a jab at my back elicited a yelp. I didn't resist at all, shaking beneath the callused grip pulling my arms back.

Bill Nye Guy smiled at me, patting my cheek with one hand. His fingers were rough, stained with green paint.
 

"We're gonna need you to help us out with somethin', hun," he said. "I ain't heard of no one that can do what you do, but I sure hope you told the truth. Otherwise, you get to choose which one of you boyfriends you like less."

"I d-didn't lie," I said. My voice came out a rasp.

"We know this one." He paced over to Hiroki. "I known about him for a while now, before I even known about you."

He swung around, work boots scraping over what I could now see was blood-splattered linoleum. The streaks of it went from the fridge all the way to the side door, where we'd come in.

God. They'd kept the body in the fridge. In the farmhouse, right under the police's nose.

Bill Nye Guy swaggered over to Jamie, bony face splitting into a grin that revealed a gold tooth. "You're prob'ly gonna be first, kid--less you can tell me why you'd be more useful than the chink."

My stomach heaved, and I jerked forward against the rough hands on my arms. Only a jerk of Hiroki's chin told me to stop, and it wasn't until I met his eyes that I remembered our lives were at stake. This dude was getting a swift kick in the nuts at first opportunity.

Jamie looked down at Bill Nye Guy and snorted. Likely the dumbest thing he's ever done. Bill's bro just smiled, then drew back and punched Hiroki in the face.

Hiroki went down in one, fingers splayed on the bloody linoleum. I had a horrible flashback to the white, milky eyes of Aaron Nguyen, when he'd been inhabiting Hiroki's body. Hiro had been bleeding like this then as well.

Jamie had gone pale, which Bill's bro had apparently anticipated. A gang member dragged Hiroki to his feet, ignoring the mess of blood sliding over his lip. My best friend breathed in rasps.

"Hiro?"

He opened his eyes a crack, but said nothing, just continued rasping.

"Asthma?"

He swallowed.

"Where's Hiro's bag?" My whisper was shrill. "He needs his inhaler."

Hiroki shook his head, but coughed when he opened his mouth to speak. Panic washed over me. We were being kidnapped by a gang, and my best friend was struggling to breathe.

They pushed us toward the door, Hiroki first, Jamie in front of me. I wished I'd never dragged him into this. He didn't have a stake in my reputation. I'd just wanted him along, because I liked him, because I thought it would distract him and make him feel better.

I really needed to stop trying to be helpful.

I'd decided on a name for Bill Nye Guy. I couldn't call him Bill, because that was a total insult to the TV science personality of my childhood, so I'd settled on Willy. Thinking of him as a talking penis gave me a slim slice of comfort in the larger pie chart of abject fear. Very slim. But it was there.

The men marched us through the trees, past the whirligig where Jamie and I had hidden, and into the pasture behind the trees. There were a good number of holes in the ground where the larger structures had been uprooted and transported downtown. I had a hard time controlling my knees all of a sudden--those holes would be perfect open graves.