Blue Is for Nightmares (25 page)

I comply.

He squats down beside Drea, but keeps one eye on me. He touches the side of her face, the blade brushing against her cheek, and lifts her chin so she'll look at him. "It's okay now. Everything's going to be okay."

Drea shakes her head.

"I had to do this." He rubs her bound wrists. "Don't you understand?" He crouches down even further to study her--her red, runny eyes, the dried-up veins of black mascara that bleed down her cheeks, the bits of dirt that surround her pasty, white mouth, the way she's rocking back and forth, crying, gasping for breath. "I had to tie you up like this; you said you wanted to leave. I had to make you listen; I had to make you understand."

There's a long, forklike branch lying just beyond reach. Focusing on Donovan, I sit up tall, rengthening my spine, trying to inch myself toward it.

"I love you, Drea," Donovan continues. "That's why I planned all this. The house, the picnic, the lilies." He smiles,

as though the explanation will give her pleasure. "I only hid you because I didn't want anyone to find you. Don't you understand how that would have ruined everything? If you come back to the house with me again I can show you all I've planned. I'll show you the place where I dug out your name, where I've planted lily bulbs that will spell out the letters."

Drea's breathing is getting worse, wheezing, the more he talks to her.

"Donovan," I say, "I know you want what's best for her. But she's freezing. She's having trouble breathing. She needs a doctor."

"No!" Donovan shouts. He points the blade toward my face and his hand shakes with rage. "Not until she understands." He focuses back on her but keeps the blade pointed at me, midair. "I'll take care of her. I'm the only one who knows how"

I stretch my leg out and try to reach the branch with my foot.

"I love you, Drea." He pats the side of her face. 'And I know you love me too. I know you used to love talking to me... on the phone--our long conversations." His eyes, teary and desperate, await her response, her affirmation.

Drea's crying gets louder, more forceful with each breath. She huddles deeper into her crouch and continues to rock back and forth.

"What's the matter with you?" Donovan shouts. "Why won't you say anything? Why won't she say anything?" He turns to glare at me over the blade.

"You killed Veronica," I say. "You called her and sent her notes and lilies, just like Drea."

Donovan shakes his head. "It was an accident. She took my idea for a surprise and twisted it all around for her own needs." Donovan stabs the knife into the earth repeatedly. "She wanted to scare you, Drea. She wanted to pretend that she was getting stalked and then disappear, so you'd think something really bad happened to her. She thought that if you got scared enough, you'd leave campus and she'd be able to have Chad."

I watch the knife plunge into the dirt over and over again, watch his shoulders; wonder if I'd be able to lunge at him, hold his arm down. I inch myself to the left, closer to the branch.

His eyes remain focused on Drea, on trying to convince her. had to stop her, Drea," he continues.

"I didn't want to do what I did. You have to believe me. I'm not like that. You know I'm not like that. She wanted to scare you into leaving school. Don't you understand? I couldn't let her do that."

He continues to stab at the ground, the blade getting closer and closer to his knee. It's almost like he really does love her. Or at least he thinks he does. So maybe that's what my nightmares were trying to tell me. Maybe love really is funny--funny strange. Maybe even bizarre. I glance at Drea, still rocking back and forth, her eyes still blank.

Donovan takes a breath and plunges the blade down into his knee, penetrating the skin, drawing a gash of blood. He removes the knife with a slight flinch but continues stabbing the ground, like it doesn't matter, like he

doesn't feel it. He wants Drea to answer him, to tell him that everything will be happily ever after. I'm not even sure she's listening.

Using the ball of my foot, I slowly guide the branch inward, bending my knee just slightly to get it closer, the blood sopping through my sock now.

"She was no good, Drea," Donovan pleads. "She said you were a slut."

I break my hands from the clasp behind my back. The branch is now within reach. I grab it and Donovan notices. "What are you doing?" he shouts.

I stand up and swing the branch at Donovan's knife-holding hand. But instead of dropping it, he intercepts the swing and nabs the branch from me.

He gets up, breaks the branch over his knee in two places, and throws the pieces to the side.

I look around for something else to protect myself. A rock, over to the right. I move toward it but Donovan grabs me, shoves my back up against a tree. He clasps my wrists together in his hand, holds them over my head, and presses the knife against my cheek. "You think you're smarter than I am, don't you? Don't you?"

I shake my head.

He draws a line with the blade down my cheek, over my chin, and then points the tip into my throat.

"No!" Drea screams.

I look over Donovan's shoulder. Drea is standing, her fingers tightly woven together, wrapped around the protection bottle.

Donovan takes a step back to look at her. "Drea?"

"No!" she cries, shaking her head.

Donovan's grip on my hands loosens. "Drea?" His hips angle in her direction. He releases my hands but keeps me pinned with the knife.

I let my arms fall gradually, grab his knife-holding hand, and bite it--hard, through the skin. He lets out a deep, throaty wail and drops the knife.

"Drea!" I shout.

She grapples for the knife and gets it, holds it tightly in her hands with the protection bottle.

"Give it to me, Drea," I say.

Instead she points the blade at him.

Donovan extends his arms toward her, like he wants to calm her down, take the knife. "Drea," he says. "Be careful with that. You don't know what you're doing."

"No!" Drea breathes, the knife shaking in her grip. "Down. Sit down."

Donovan motions to sit, but then lurches at her, grabs her wrist, and squeezes the knife right out of her hands.

His back facing me, I take a step toward him, position myself sideways to kick out with my sneakered foot, and plunge my heel with all my strength into the back of his leg. The knife jumps from his grip. He falls to his knees. I move to grab the knife, just before his fingers snatch it up.

"Hold it." These are the words that flash across my mind, but it isn't me who says them. I look up.

It's Officer Tate. She emerges from a nest of trees opposite us and leads a few other officers in our direction. She walks straight toward me. "Drop the knife and step back," she says.

I do, knowing that finally we're safe.

Officer Tate wraps a pair of silver cuffs around Donovan's wrists and reads him his rights.

Another officer removes his own jacket and wraps it around Drea's shoulders. He motions to grab the protection bottle from her grip, but she pulls away. Instead he just unwinds the tape from her wrists.

I kind of just stand there, taking it all in, relieved I don't have to fight anymore.

Donovan takes one last look at Drea before Officer Tate escorts him away.

It's the same kind of look he always gives her--intense and longing, like he really believes he loves her. Like he'll be back one day to prove how much.

I walk over to Drea and hug her.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"I'm sorry too."

I close my eyes and press her into me, feel her fingers touch my back, then press against me to return the hug. For just a moment, I imagine Maura in my arms.

"Thank you," I whisper into her ear.

"Thank
you,"
she whispers back.

I shake my head, grateful that Drea is safe, but also grateful that my real nightmare has finally ended.

thirty-fiv-e

Three months later--just before February vacation and just after the trial. Drea has come back to campus to testify She ended up going home immediately after Donovan's arrest and spent the time getting herself back together and trying to make sense of what doesn't seem possible.

Now that she's back and things have somewhat settled, Amber, Chad, PJ, and I have planned a sort of get-together at the Hangman Cafe.

No one seems surprised that it was Donovan stalking Drea. Everyone knew how crazy he was for her--literally. The only surprising part for most is that Veronica really was involved, that a ridiculous plan to get some guy could result in her own death.

It turns out I was right to be suspicious of Veronica's stalker story. Like Donovan said, Veronica wasn't getting stalked at all. But she heard Drea was and wanted to scare her. Basically, she was supposed to be leaving campus to go on a two-week safari with her parents, a trip she conveniently failed to tell Drea or anyone about. Not so coincidentally, she was supposed to be leaving for the trip the morning after she said the stalker was coming for her. In a nutshell, she wanted Drea to go completely freakazoid and either flip out or leave campus when she thought Veronica was taken--a foreshadowing, basically, of what would happen to her.

Totally and completely sad.

But just as sad is that Donovan got completely pissed when the scuttlebutt about Veronica and Drea getting stalked by the same person got to him. He was the one who stuffed the MIND

YOUR OWN BUSINESS note, along with Drea's handkerchief, into Veronica's mailbox. It turns out Donovan included Drea's hanky with the note as a sort of signature token--so Veronica would know it was from Drea's stalker, so she'd take it seriously and drop her whole stalker story. Giving Veronica the hanky also put Drea's possession into Veronica's room. So, as the prosecuting attorney suggested, if something happened to Drea, Donovan would have someone to pin it on.

Twistedly clever, I suppose.

The note and hanky did work in freaking Veronica out, which is why she told us she no longer wanted anything to do with the whole stalking business. But, unfortunately, the scuttlebutt didn't die. Which only pissed Donovan off even more. Using Chad's e-mail account, just like he used it to send Drea -The House that Jack Built- e-mail, he lured Veronica into the school to confront her about her stalking tales, but ended up killing her by accident, he swore.

And the jury believed him.

They also believed him when he said he never intended to physically harm Drea. The stalking, as he and his lawyer asserted, was a way for him to get close to Drea. And, when Drea seemed okay to talk to his mysterious phone-caller persona, Donovan started to confuse their relationship and got all possessive about it, including getting angry and jealous when she made plans with Chad.

He was the one who took Chad's hockey jersey from our window that night, who stuffed it into Chad's mailbox along with the STAY AWAY FROM HER. I'M WATCHING YOU note. He was also the one who stole our laundry from the washroom. When he saw Drea's hanky and bra sitting atop the heap, he just collected it all, in hopes of finding more Drea relics to add to his collection.

On the night that Drea was taken, after the hospital, when Amber and PJ dropped her off in front of the dorm, Donovan was waiting for her. He told her he needed to talk about something and so they went for a walk. Basically, he brought her to the construction site, his idea of a romantic place, and professed his undying love for her. She got weirded out and ended up telling him she wanted to go back to the dorm.

Donovan said no, nabbed her, but then freaked and didn't know what to do when she didn't seem pleased with his plans for happily-ever-after--hence the defense that his actions weren't premeditated.

The lilies, ironically, were chosen simply because Donovan liked them and thought their charm and elegance best represented Drea. And "The House that Jack Built" e-mail was just a little riddle, a foreshadowing basically of the romantic rendezvous he had planned for them.

When he saw me in the woods the next night in search of Drea, he panicked and made up that bogus story about someone following us and not being able to get his cell phone to work. Afraid that I might spot Drea at the construction site, he told me to stay put, made up that excuse about checking things out, and then went and hid Drea in the porta-john.

In the end, he was charged with involuntary manslaughter, labeled temporarily insane, and sent to a juvenile detention center for mentally disturbed boys. Still, freedom only five years away, on his twenty-first birthday, just doesn't seem fitting. Veronica will be dead forever.

A-*1 After the arrest, Officer Tate gave me this big, long lecture about getting involved where I have no business, how dangerous it was that I went into the forest by myself, and how I could have jeopardized everything, including the case. But then she also thanked me, told me how brave I am, and promised she'd never underestimate natural human instinct again.

Neither will I.

So now, after the trial, the school has agreed to accommodate us by allowing the Hangman to be closed for our private farewell, and supplying us with unlimited cafe fare.

280

We've decorated the room as cheerfully as possible. Chad and PJ have hung pink and yellow streamers around the perimeter while Amber and I have layered, bunched, and twisted pieces of crepe paper together to make roses as centerpiece decorations. The school is even letting us borrow the helium machine to fill balloons that we've tied to everyone's chair.

It isn't a surprise party; it's just an opportunity for all of us to get together before Drea goes back.

She's going to spend the rest of the school year at home, with private tutors and in family counseling, then come back for senior year.

I know I'm going to miss her more than anything, but at least I won't have to room by myself.

Madame Discharge has agreed to let Amber move in. That is, Amber says, if I stop my nasty bedwetting. But I haven't had an accident, or a nightmare, since the day before Veronica's death.

"Did we get her a parting gift?" PJ asks, his voice all high on helium.