Deadly Little Games (15 page)

A
FTER KIMMIE SLIPS
into something a bit more
her
(a long taffeta skirt paired with a T-shirt and boots), we hop into Wes’s car, and he drives us over to Adam’s apartment. “Do you think I should call and tell him we’re here?” I ask, looking up at his building.

“No way,” Kimmie says. “You’ll get way more accomplished with an unannounced visit, which is precisely what I plan to do this weekend. Picture this: me, dropping by my dad’s place around eleven p.m. on a Friday night, probably just after he and that child get back from dinner. Any wagers as to what they’ll be up to?”

“Why are you trying to punish yourself?” Wes asks.

“It’s
him
I’m trying to punish. Can you imagine how pissed he’ll be when I tell him I want to spend the night?”

“Let’s go,” Wes says, grabbing a screwdriver, a rag, and some wire from his glove compartment.

“What, no power drill?” Kimmie asks.

“Are you kidding?” He winks. “My power drill comes with me wherever I go.” He pulls on some black leather gloves, and we head up to Adam’s floor.

I shake my head at the sight of his door, still stunned that Adam would wash the message away.

Wes tries to pick up any lingering inky residue with his rag, but it comes away pretty clean. “I should’ve brought along my UV light.”

“Because it’s superimportant for us to know if the psycho in question peed, drooled, or bled on his door,” Kimmie says.

“I guess I can sort of understand why he washed it,” Wes continues. “I wouldn’t want the world to know that I deserved to die, either.”

“Right, but it makes showing the police a whole lot harder,” I say.

Wes knocks a couple of times, but Adam doesn’t answer. “Jackpot,” he says, kneeling down to examine the lock. He takes the bundle of wire from his pocket and proceeds to make a key of sorts.

“You’re not going to break in, are you?” I ask.

“Well, um,
yeah
.” Kimmie rolls her eyes, as if the answer’s completely obvious.

Wes sticks his key into the lock and starts to jiggle it back and forth. A moment later, the doorknob turns.

Only, Wes isn’t the one turning it.

Piper then whips the door open. “Oh, my God,” she says, smacking her chest like we’ve scared her, too.

“We were looking for Adam.” I peek past her into the apartment.

“He isn’t here,” she says, glaring at Wes, no doubt annoyed that he’s attempting to pick the lock.

“Would you believe that I dropped a contact?” he asks, before finally getting up.

“Not likely, since you’re wearing glasses.” Kimmie bops him on the head with her Tupperware purse.

“Wait, did you and Adam have a date?” Piper asks me. “Because I totally don’t want to be in the way.”

“Adam and I are just friends,” I tell her.

“Oh, I just thought…” She shrugs. “I mean, he doesn’t normally blow me off, especially when we’re working on a project together.”

“He didn’t blow you off. We just had some important stuff to discuss.”

“Like what?” she asks with a fold of her arms, reminding me of an overprotective parent.

I blink hard, surprised at her attempt to pry.

“Is that why you’re here now?” she asks when I don’t say a thing.

“Why are
you
here?” I ask.

Piper’s face softens, and she unfolds her arms. “My com- puter’s being fixed, so Adam said I could use his. I have a major philosophy paper to finish by tomorrow morning. Does anyone know anything about existentialism?”

“Just that people who practice it think that death is absurd.” Kimmie pushes past Piper to step inside the apartment.

“Pretty wacked-out theory, right?” Piper laughs. She nods toward the wire in Wes’s hands and then twists the knob back and forth. “No need to try and break in, by the way. It was never even locked. Adam hardly ever locks his door.”

“Excuse me?” I ask. My mouth falls open.

“It’s true,” she says, stepping aside as Wes enters the apartment. “And it’s so totally stupid. I’ve told Adam, like, a
kagillion
times. Tray’s place got broken into just a few months back, and he
always
locks up.”

I take a deep breath, wondering what else Adam’s failed to tell me.

“Yeah, Adam’s definitely not the brightest bulb in the socket when it comes to practicality,” she continues. “But he’s totally sweet. I mean, who else would let me take over his computer for the entire night, right? Certainly not Melissa. Talk about a bad mood. That girl has had her panties in butt-cracker territory for
way
longer than I’d ever have imagined. Ohmygosh, did that just sound totally bitchy?” She covers her mouth. “I’m telling you, I can be
such
a major meanie at times.”

“Does she also hang out here when Adam’s not home?” I ask.

“We all do,” she says, scrunching up her bobbed black hair with her hands. “Adam’s supergenerous with his place, which is extra good for me, seeing as I still live at home.”

I shake my head, completely confused. I mean, how are we supposed to figure all of this out if Adam isn’t taking it seriously enough to lock up? “Did you happen to see the writing on his door?”

“What writing?” She cocks her head to one side.

“Forget it.” I sigh.

“Better to ask Tray, maybe. He and Janet were here just before I arrived. And you should totally have seen them, too.
So
supercute. I wish he’d just ask her out.”

“Why doesn’t he?” Wes asks.

“Stupidity?” She giggles. “Seriously, boys don’t know what they want.”

“Amen to that,” Kimmie says, rifling through Adam’s kitchen cabinets.

“Are you thirsty?” Piper asks, watching as Kimmie pretends to search for a glass.

Meanwhile, Wes is drawing something on Adam’s dry-erase board. It’s a hangman puzzle, complete with a stick figure hanging from a noose. Wes fills in the message over the dashed letter spaces: IDIOT, LOCK YOUR DOOR!

A
FTER OUR IMPROMPTU
visit to Adam’s apartment, Wes takes me back to Kimmie’s house so I can get my mom’s car and drive home. “Looks like you’ll make it just in time for your curfew,” he says, checking the clock.

Kimmie breathes a heart-shaped cloud onto the passenger-side window. “I can’t even remember the last time a curfew meant anything in my house.”

“I have a curfew,” Wes chirps, “but my dad respects me more when I blow it.”

“Which is why you’re going to help me with my precalc homework tonight,” Kimmie says, turning to him.

“Sadly, that would have to be the sexiest offer I’ve gotten in a long time.”

“Even sexier than Helga the cleaning lady?” I joke.

“Of course, you’re so full of fungus,” Kimmie tells him. “Rumor has it that Tiffany Bunkin has
major
hot pants for you.”

“Well, I suppose that’s better than granny pants,” he says. “But you seem to be forgetting that Tiffany Bunkin smells like dirt and looks like a dandelion.”

“That’s her charm,” Kimmie sings. “She’s one of those earthy-crunchy tree-hugging girls.”

“An earthy-crunchy tree-hugging girl who dyes her hair yellow and spikes it up to look like petals,” he adds.

“Tiffany is totally cute,” I tell him.

“And you should totally ask her out,” Kimmie says.

“She’s already asked
me
out,” he says.

“Aren’t we one for secrets? So, what did you tell her?” I ask.

“Just that I’d have to check my schedule.”

“Why?” Kimmie glares at him. “Because you might have a
CSI
marathon to catch or some ugly shoes to shop for?”

“I just don’t think that Tiffany’s my type.”

“Well, then, who
is
your type?”

“Maybe we should let Wes make his own dating decisions,” I suggest.

“Yeah, but what fun would that be?” Kimmie says. “Especially since I haven’t gotten any of my own offers in, like, even longer than Wes’s hair.” She attempts to run her hand through his lengthy layers, but her fingers get caught up in the gel.

“Good night,” I tell them, rechecking the clock. I have less than nine minutes to get home before my parents start to panic.

* * *

Exactly seven minutes later, I pull into my driveway, and the motion detector goes on right away.

Illuminating Ben.

The light shines on his perfectly chiseled features, his broad chest, and a sudden sprinkling of snow as it falls all around him.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, stepping out of the car.

“Waiting for you.” He closes the car door behind me. “I called you earlier and your mom said you’d be home around nine. You’re two minutes early.”

“Should I go away and come back?”

“What do
you
think?” he asks, encircling my waist with his arms. Snowflakes land on his face, making his skin glisten.

“You know, you could always ring the doorbell. My parents would let you wait inside.”

“Next time.” He kisses my lips; his mouth is wet with snow. “So, how was your day?”

“It’s a long story,” I say, taking his hand and leading him toward my bedroom window. “Wait here.”

“What happened to being honest with your parents?”

I clench my teeth, still bitter that my mom wouldn’t tell me about Aunt Alexia earlier. While Ben waits for me to let him in, I enter through the front door. My dad’s doing bills at the living room table, and my mother’s making banana pops in the kitchen.

“Have a nice time, sweetie?” she asks.

“It was fine,” I say, almost eager for her to ask about Wes—to see how plugged in to my world she actually is.

“Well, that’s good,” she says instead.

“Did you talk to Aunt Alexia tonight?”

She shakes her head and dips a pop into a bowl filled with carob and nuts. “I’m going to freeze these overnight. They should be good and ready by tomorrow morning.”

“Sounds great,” I say, deciding to remain secretive, too. I move into the living room and ask Dad if I can take a rain check on our heart-to-heart.

“Are you sure?” he asks, removing his glasses. His eyes look tired and strained.

“Tomorrow,” I promise. “I kind of just want to go to bed.”

He nods and kisses me good night, confessing that he, too, is beyond exhausted.

In my room, I close and lock my door, then open my window wide to let Ben in. He shakes the snow from his hair, but he’s completely covered.

“Here,” I say, helping him off with his coat and his sweatshirt, until there’s only a thin layer of T-shirt covering his chest. “You must be freezing.” I use the corner of my blanket to wipe his face dry.

“Quite the contrary.” He takes my hands and pulls me onto the bed, into his lap, still expecting me to fill him in on all the details.

And so I do.

But Wes couldn’t have been more right.

“I really don’t like the idea of someone having the potential to break in to Adam’s place,” he says. “It definitely makes this all the more dangerous.”

“Not if Adam failed to lock his door, and if he promises to keep it locked from now on.” I look down at our hands, clasped together, feeling sure that there’s something he’s not telling me. “Are you sensing something right now?”

“About Adam?” He smirks. “Not exactly.”

“Then about me?” I swallow hard.

Instead of answering, Ben opens my hand and runs his thumb along the center of my palm, sending tingles straight down my spine. “What do you think would happen if we combined forces?”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Any chance your parents are in bed yet?” He peers out my window at the snow flurries. “It’s not like I’d be able to ride home in this weather anyway.”

We wait for my parents to turn in and shut their bedroom door, and then we sneak downstairs to the basement. I click on my worktable lamp but keep the overhead lights turned off. Instead, I light a vanilla bean candle. The flame’s shadow dances against the wall, making the snowflakes that land against the window appear almost shimmery.

“Will your aunt be wondering where you are?” I ask.

Ben shakes his head and rolls up his sleeves, exposing his scar. “She pretty much gives me free rein.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I don’t know.” A lock of hair falls over his eye. “Sometimes it’s nice to have someone waiting up for you.”

“Did your parents used to wait up?”

“My mom did. My dad was always too busy.”

“Do you still talk to them much?”

“At least a couple times a month. I talk to my mother, mostly. My dad and I have always had our issues.” He looks down at his scar, perhaps suddenly self-conscious. “What happened with Julie only made things worse.”

“Because he blamed you?”

He shrugs. “He never really said either way, but he was definitely disappointed.”

“That must have been hard,” I say, wishing I could’ve been there for him.

“Yeah, I was pretty messed up about it. I started meeting with a therapist, but it was only for a short period of time, because even she didn’t support me.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching out to touch his scar, and feeling how truly wounded he still is.

“So, shall we get down to business?” he asks, nodding toward my worktable.

I lift the pieces of tarp to show him my crossword tiles, and how I’ve etched in some of the clues.

Ben looks at Adam’s most recent crossword puzzle—the one that says
I WANT TO SEE YOU BLEED
lying open on my work board. He picks it up and presses it between his palms. I watch as he closes his eyes and concentrates hard. His hands quiver slightly, and the paper crinkles up.

“What do you sense?” I ask.

“You,” he whispers.

“Because it was with my pottery stuff?”

“I guess…. I’m not really sure.”

“So, let’s get started,” I say.

Ben stands just behind me, and we begin to wedge out a fresh piece of clay. I try my best to concentrate, to ignore the fact that my heart is beating at five times its normal speed. I watch his arms as he kneads the clay—almost a little too hard—and as the muscles in his forearms flex. “That’s good,” I say, in an effort to stay focused. I dip a sponge into a bowl of water and squeeze the droplets down over his hands to keep things moist.

After several minutes, Ben lets me take the lead. I place my palms over the clay mound and close my eyes. Meanwhile Ben’s chest grazes my shoulders, and his clay-soaked fingers stroke the length of my arms.

“You’re doing great,” he whispers in my ear.

We continue to sculpt for another hour, working the mound down into a flattened surface—until we have a total of four tiles.

And until I can no longer hold myself back.

I turn around to face him.

“Camelia?” He squints slightly.

I bite my lip, wishing that he could read my mind, and that he would kiss me until my lips ache. “What are you thinking?” I ask, slipping my hand inside the waistband of his jeans and pulling him closer.

His mouth trembles, but he doesn’t answer, and so I turn back to our work. A jumble of emotion swims inside me—need, disappointment, embarrassment, frustration—and my eyes suddenly sting. Still, I glide my fingers over the surfaces of the tiles, confident about the word that fits inside. It plays in my mind’s ear. I can see it in my mind’s eye. It’s like a flashing neon sign that makes my head throb.

“Soon,” I whisper, writing the letters using the tip of my finger. I look at my clay replica of the crossword puzzle, somehow confident about where the word fits. I remove the four tiles at the lower left—the horizontally placed ones that help make up the capital
L
shape—and replace them with these tiles. Then I turn back to Ben, eager for his response.

“Stay out of it,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“Stay out of what’s going on with Adam, I mean. It isn’t safe.”

“How can you say that?” I ask. “I mean, you, of all people, should understand what I’m feeling.”

“I
do
understand.”

“So, then, where is all of this coming from? Why does the word
soon
suddenly change things? This person still wants to see Adam bleed; he still thinks that Adam deserves to die….”

“I know.”

“Then, what?” I ask; my voice gets louder. “Because I feel like you’re not telling me everything.” I look up at the door that leads to the kitchen, hoping I haven’t awakened my parents.

Ben studies my face for five full seconds, noticing maybe how red my eyes are, how flushed my face is. “Just trust me on this,” he says.

“On what?” I snap, keeping my voice low.

“On the fact that I’m trying to protect you. That I’m trying to protect us and our relationship.”

“You can’t do this,” I insist. “You can’t go on leaving me out. This is my relationship, too.”

“It’s
our
relationship.”

“So how come lately I feel like you’re the only one in it—calling all the shots, playing with my head?” I think of all the times he’s shown up on a whim—at my house, at my bedroom window, in the parking lot at school, and when I was on my way back from Detroit—only to pull away, leaving me confused.

“I’m sorry,” he says, nearly choking on the words. “But believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt you. That’s what I’ve been trying to avoid all along.” He reaches out to take my hand, but it’s way too little and far too late.

And so, for once, it’s me who pulls away.

“I really think you should go,” I tell him. There’s a crumbling sensation inside my heart.

Ben’s eyes are red, too, now, but he still doesn’t argue. Instead he gives me a paltry peck on the cheek, and then heads out the bulkhead door.