The Vanishing Game (16 page)

“There.” He put the cap back on the jar. “You'll be okay.”

I sat up. “Will I, Noah? All these years I've worked so hard to convince myself that the crazy stuff at Seale House was nothing. Maybe just my overactive imagination. I grew up and started living in the real world where logic rules everything. Logic sets boundaries, and I like that. But now it's like I'm twelve years old again and have no control in my life. Things are happening that I can't explain.”

I grabbed my sleeve, yanked it up, and showed him the bite mark. “Courtesy of the Seale House cellar.”

Noah peered at it with a concerned expression.

I said, “Tell me something. Do you think there's a chance Corner Boy is still alive?”

“No. How could he be?”

“I don't know. But it makes me wonder if whoever attacked me in the cellar was the same guy who came here tonight.”

Noah said nothing at first, only stared at the bite mark. “Why didn't you show that to me before now?”

I shrugged, pushing my sleeve back down.

“Jocey, it seems like that guy got burned worse than you. Is there any way you might have sent that heat at him to protect yourself?”

“You mean like superpowers or something? That'd be nice. Think I'll develop x-ray vision next?”

“Okay, so it was a dumb question. I guess if you could do that kind of thing, you would've done it to me in the garage.”

“Considering how weird this all is, it's not that stupid to ask. But in my life before and after Seale House, I've never seen stuff like this. So how could it be me?”

Pausing, I thought over the strange dream I'd had before being attacked. Noah must have noticed something in my expression. “What is it?”

“Probably nothing … except that right before that guy attacked me, I heard Jack's voice. He told me to wake up.”

“You can't really believe Jack came to you in a dream.”

“It's not as lame as your superpower theory, is it?”

“Guess not.”

“Is there any chance tonight's visitor was one of the kids who rocked your windshield?”

He shook his head. “I just identified them at the police station. They'll be having a little vacation downtown until their parents bail them out.”

“Then I'm running out of ideas. Why did that guy keep asking where ‘it' was? I don't have any idea what ‘it' is.”

“There are a lot of lunatics in this world.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. “Yeah, and I've already met my quota. Besides, this isn't just one more random weird thing. I think it's all tied together.”

“Me too.”

I opened my eyes to study his concerned face. We sat together, listening to the ticking clock, the gentle creaks as the house settled, and the wind anxiously tapping its fingernails against the panes.

“Noah, I'm scared.”

“Then maybe you should forget about the Jason December clues and go home.”

“How can I? Abandoning Jack isn't an option.”

“He wouldn't want you to be in danger.”

“No, but what happened tonight proves I need to find him. The fact that things are getting scary means we're getting close.”

Noah retrieved my pillow and gave me an extra blanket so I could sleep on the couch—both of us were reluctant for me to spend the rest of the night in the other room. Despite my protests he also sacked out on the nearby recliner. Except for a lamp in the corner, the rest of the lights in the living room were off. It was dark enough to sleep but light enough to still see.

More than once the frightening image of the intruder invaded my sleep and jerked me awake. Each time I glanced over at Noah, asleep in the recliner, and felt a little calmer. He rested beneath a crazy quilt sewn in shades of brown and faded gold. I remembered it from Seale House, and when he first pulled it out I was a bit surprised that he'd somehow gotten hold of it.

Eventually, after many starts and stops, exhaustion forced me to sleep. Sometime later Noah touched my face
and said my name, waking me. His blurry image was leaning over me, and as I blinked and looked up at him, he asked if I was all right. He brushed my cheek and there was wetness on the back of his fingers. “You're crying.”

“I don't know why.” I wiped the tears from my face, embarrassed. Although I'd been in a deep, dreamless sleep, a heavy sense of sadness still lingered over me. I felt vulnerable that he'd seen it, but Noah's expression was only concerned.

Sitting up, I looked at the clock next to the mirror. It was nearly four. “I didn't mean to wake you.”

“You didn't. I've been up.”

I rubbed my neck, slowly moved my head to the side, and then winced.

“What's the matter?”

“That guy pulled my hair so hard he hurt my neck.”

Noah sat down next to me. “Let me give it a try.” His fingers began to slowly massage the painful kinks.

“Have you been awake long?”

“A while, yes. It's the early morning hours like this, when I can't sleep, that I miss Jack the most.”

“I miss him all the time.” I said it so softly I wasn't sure he heard me.

“Being around you sure brings up a lot of memories from when the three of us were kids.”

The tension in my neck began to ease. I let out a slow breath, now wide awake even though it was still dark outside. “Yeah, I know. It's strange the way life takes its twists
and turns. Think it was fate that brought the three of us together?”

“Chance, maybe. I don't believe in fate.”

His thumbs moved in circles on the knots, slowly releasing the pain. His touch did more to me than he knew, and I couldn't help but respond to the warmth of his hands. “Guess you're right. It wasn't destiny that threw us into the foster care program. Just worthless parents who never should've been allowed to bring their babies home from the hospital.”

Noah chuckled, but the sound was mirthless. “You got that right. From what Jack was telling me about your mother, I'm kind of surprised she didn't abandon you at the first chance.”

“There were probably times she wanted to. But I think she was more afraid of living without Jack than being stuck with us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Melody's life was a cycle of dating, mating, and breaking up. All her relationships were doomed because she was so wacked. Once the guys she got with saw what was hiding under her pretty looks, it scared them off. Even the decent ones couldn't make it last. She dragged us with her on that never-ending quest for men because she was dependent on Jack. He helped guide her through depression about her unhappy childhood.”

“I don't have sympathy for people who blame their lousy behavior on what happened when they were kids.”

“Me either. But Melody did have a hideous childhood. She grew up in poverty and abuse on a dirt farm in Nebraska.”

I didn't say anything else. Melody's escape had come when she was fifteen and met her cousin's friend, Calvert. He was fresh out of jail, only a few years older than she was, and involved in a lot of bad stuff. They ended up running away together, and Melody often talked about how he'd been the one true love of her life. He eventually abandoned her at a truck stop and took off with a woman in a red convertible. It broke her heart. That happened three years before we were born, and though she never talked to us about our own father, the relationship with Calvert was the one Melody could never let go of. She would retell the story when depression swept her down to its darkest place, and Jack was the only one who knew how to talk her out of it.

These days, whenever I thought about my mother, which was almost never, there'd always be this little knot of loathing wrapped up in relief that she was dead and forever out of my life.

“One time I asked Jack why you were so touchy about swearing,” Noah said. “He told me it was because of all your mother's low-life boyfriends. You hated their bad language. That true?”

“Yes. I despised the brainless jerks Melody always fell for. I despised her, too, and everything she did. My main goal in life was to make sure I never ended up like her.”

“So you're still a virgin?”

I moved away from his hands. “Thanks. My neck is okay now.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I didn't mean it as an insult.”

“I'm a virgin, yes, though I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be ashamed of that. Those slobs who dated my mother only cared about one thing. After I grew up and saw the same pathetic reaction from guys, it was a big turnoff.”

“Not all of us are like that.”

“Not all, no. I've dated a few nice boys. Though if things got serious, I ended it. I didn't want to involve some poor guy in all the stuff I was carrying around.”

“Excess baggage, you mean?”

“More like three suitcases, a couple of steamer trunks, and a carry-on.”

He smiled when I said that.

“What about you, Noah? It's not like you have anyone, either. You live here by yourself. You don't even own a pet.”

“I've had a few girlfriends, but it never lasted. I get bored.”

“That's the problem with trying to fit into normal society, isn't it? After you've walked a crazy high-wire like the one we were on, the rest of the world with its safety net seems so unexciting. I don't like pretending I'm the same as everyone else. And I hate lying about my past to whatever guy I start liking.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I'm ashamed, of course. Admitting my mother was the world's biggest tramp and that I never knew my dad is humiliating. It wouldn't exactly inspire any of the boys at my high school to ask me on a second date.”

“Then you're dating the wrong kind of guys, Jocey. Your mother's choices don't have anything to do with who you really are. Do you despise me because my mother was a cold-hearted drug addict knocked up by her dealer?”

“No, of course not.”

“Was it Angry Beth's fault her older brothers molested her? Or Dixon's, because his mother left him alone in a filthy apartment for days?”

An image of Beth slipping a knife under her pillow came to mind, and for the first time it seemed more sad than warped. Then there was little Dixon who followed me around, clinging to anyone who would be kind to him. How many nights had he sat on my lap while I read him his favorite story? I'd nearly forgotten that ragged old book,
The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat
. He'd begged me to read it to him all the time. We'd done that for so many nights he'd ended up memorizing the words. The sad feelings returned and I pulled the blanket closer.

“Noah, how'd you learn that stuff about them?”

“I was the only one Hazel trusted to clean her office, remember? When I was in there I looked at the files. Just so I'd know what to watch for.”

“Did you look at mine and Jack's?”

“No. After that first night in the cellar, when we became friends, it didn't seem right. We'd built a little trust then.
You two listened to my vampire stories, and Jack talked about his Artemis Fowl books. Besides, I could see you didn't have any weird behaviors that might be dangerous.”

“Always the caretaker, weren't you?”

“Someone had to be, in that place.”

He was right. We'd lived in a world that spun on an alternate axis, where everyone's life was off-balance and nothing was predictable. During the last few years I'd tried to forget what it had been like when life took a group of frightened children through the looking glass, into a world of lunacy. Noah had been our strength.

“‘The time has come to talk of many things,'” I murmured. “‘Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings.'”

“‘And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings,'” he finished with a smile in his voice.

I sat listening to the quiet, comfortable in the intimacy of the early morning hours and understanding why it was easier to share thoughts now than in the daylight.

Noah stretched and asked, “Are you hungry?”

Surprisingly, I was. I nodded and he said, “How about I fix us an early breakfast?”

After taking more pain medication, I went to the kitchen and helped him. He fried ham and made pancakes. While we were eating, the glow of early dawn slowly began to lighten the windows. I studied the pearly, overcast sky.

“You don't eat enough,” Noah said when I turned down a second pancake.

“It's so early. I never eat breakfast until after nine. Let's
just get ready so we can be at the library when it opens, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed around a mouthful of ham, then plopped another pancake on my plate. “All I'm saying is that you could use an extra five pounds.”

“Stop mothering me. It's creepy.”

“Fine! I'm going outside to grab yesterday's mail.”

He left the kitchen and I poured syrup on the pancake, taking a big bite. Then I heard Noah call my name. I found him standing by the open front door, staring out at the driveway. Leaning around his shoulder to see what he was looking at, I gasped.

“Is that your car?” he asked.

I stared at my tan Civic. The car sat innocently in the driveway, and I could hardly believe it. I looked around the quiet neighborhood. It was deserted except for an elderly man dragging a garbage can out to the curb. We walked over to my car. Peering through the window, I saw my backpack on the floor of the passenger side. My makeup bag and net-book were still on the backseat where I'd left them three days ago.

I took the key out of my jeans pocket and headed for the trunk. Noah held out his hand. “Let me do that.”

“Why?”

“We don't know what's in there, do we?”

Something grisly inside my trunk came to mind. Still, no way I'd let him think I was chicken. I ignored his upturned palm and shoved the key in the trunk lock, opening it. There was nothing in there but my suitcase. Noah lifted it out
while I grabbed my stuff from inside the car. We went into his house and he locked the door. I looked through my backpack; nothing had been stolen.