Deadly Pink (10 page)

“I'll try it again,” I said.

Chapter 10

In the Woods

W
E'LL WORK
on that pain filter,” Adam told me, once we were back in the total immersion room—which might have been more reassuring if they hadn't already explained about that buffer where any changes had a seventy-two-hour lag before going into effect.

With my newfound bossiness, I took control of the one thing I could. I screwed up my assertiveness and announced, “I am not counting backwards from a hundred by sevens.”

Turns out, this was a big deal only to me. “Fine,” Ms Bennett said as Adam attached the leads to my temples.

Prepared for an argument, I said. “Oh. Okay.” Then I said, “What should I count back by?”

“Whatever you want,” Ms. Bennett said. “Or nothing at all.”

Lying there staring at the insides of my eyelids, I found that time crawled by. I suddenly realized that the mathematics was to keep my mind from spinning off in alarming directions. “One hundred,” I said. “Ninety-three...” What with my slow start, that was pretty much all I had time for.

I felt the shift in the quality of the air and opened my eyes.

I had gotten so used to the Victorian house, the garden, and the lake, I'd lost track of that path of crushed sparkly stones that led into the woods. But I was in the woods now.

Specifically, I was lying down in a tent in the woods. And by
tent
I do not mean anything like what the Boy Scouts of America camp out in. This was a pavilion, its sides of white silk billowing prettily in the breeze, which was how I could see the trees beyond. Several sets of wind chimes—some silver-belled, some made with brass tubes, and one of dried bamboo—struck random musical notes that would have been soothing if they didn't remind me of the sprites.

The pavilion was about as big as our living room. No furnishings that I could see, at least not from my current position. But there was a treasure chest, overflowing with both jewels and jewelry. That made me suspect that the tent poles—which looked like gold—probably really
were
gold. From the umbrella-like scaffolding that held up the ceiling hung a large wicker cage, which housed a happy little songbird that was chirping away. Satin pillows were strewn about the ground for sitting on; I myself was lying on a hammock with its own pillows, so it was very comfortable, and it swayed gently, a very relaxing motion.

The only bit of unpleasantness was a sour, musty smell, like old sweat. Oh, wait. That was me.

Now that I was back in this world, my head once again ached from where the stone had hit me. Time had passed in the game since the events of the night before, so the computer program assumed that I would have begun healing. But only a little. I touched my forehead and found a bump, but it was no longer so big that it felt as though a full-grown squirrel were about to burst out of there. So that was
some
progress.

I suspected the headache wouldn't get better from sitting up. My head, the breeze, the wind chimes, the twittering of the bird, the swaying of the hammock, all conspired to make me reluctant to move, though I knew I'd have to, and that sooner would be better than later for Emily, if not for my head.

Knowing there's a way to get out of a hammock, but not knowing what that way is, I managed to sit up, bracing my elbows on the rope edges. While I sat there for a moment, wondering what my next move should be, a glittery butterfly landed on the back of my right hand with a faint, not unpleasant tickle.

Afraid to lose my balance by moving too much, I simply flipped my hand over. Obligingly, the butterfly shifted to my palm, and I closed my fingers, where I felt it turn, solid and cold, into a coin.

I really need to get moving,
I thought.
I really need to look for Emily.

The memory of how uninterested she had been in seeing me, much less in being rescued by me, added to my distrust of my ability to get out of the hammock without seriously injuring myself.

Until I noticed an extra limb.

Well, an extra hand, to be exact.

Not attached to me, which was good no matter how you look at it, but, still, holding on to the edge of the hammock. Gently tugging on the hammock, which explained the swaying motion. Given that I wasn't on a boat, I should have realized that
needed
explaining.

The hand was attached to an arm; the arm was attached to a handsome young man; the handsome young man was kneeling beside the hammock, about level with my head, smiling tenderly at me.

A smile just like those of the guys last night. Before they threw me out of the dance and tossed the gondolier to his death from the balcony window.

I yelped. And half fell out of the hammock trying to get away from him, except that he deftly caught me.

“Get away from me!” I cried, swatting at his hands.

He did, once my feet were firmly settled on the ground.

The moving I had done and the sound of my own voice got my head throbbing again. I shoved the butterfly coin into the pocket of my by-now-badly-bedraggled dress as I glanced around for something with which to defend myself. I had pretty much seen all there was to see from the hammock. I could beat the guy with a pillow or with the birdcage, or I could try strangling him with a pearl necklace from the treasure chest, maybe stab him with a brooch.

But except for the fact that he was smiling so kindly it made my skin crawl, the guy wasn't doing anything. He remained on his knees, as though ready to rock me in the hammock for as long as the game lasted.

“Stay,” I ordered him.

And fortunately, he stayed.

I backed away, outside.

The guy remained, waiting for someone—anyone, apparently—to come in to be rocked in the hammock.

The tent was in a clearing from which two sparkle-stoned paths led in two different directions. Neither one seemed any better than the other, so I pulled the coin out of my pocket and told myself,
Butterfly side, I’ll go to the left; Rasmussem logo, I’ll go right.
I flipped the coin and headed left.

Presumably, Emily was in the area. Or had been, when Adam and Ms. Bennett had made their calculations. I walked and walked and walked—which, trust me, was no fun with one bare foot. I was just wondering whether the Rasmussem people would pull me back to headquarters if I wandered too far from where Emily was, when I saw that I was coming to another clearing. The trees were thinning, and I could see a block of color—pinkish-purple—that indicated a building up ahead.

But a few more steps and I realized that what I was seeing was the back of the Victorian house.

I stopped. Sighed loudly. But of course there was nobody nearby to hear my exasperation.

Obviously, if Emily had been at the house or on the lake, I would have been set down in the gazebo, as I had been the other times. All the other times.

And then I remembered that Emily probably wouldn't be on the lake—not unless she was willing to paddle the gondola herself. Though, maybe, with her stash of butterfly coins and the sprites granting her wishes, she could just whip herself up a new gondolier.

I wasn't curious enough to go around to the other side to see; I turned and headed back down the path I'd just come along. Down the path, down the path, past (eventually) the pavilion, where I took the right-hand path.

It was only a few more minutes before I could hear music being played. Not like the chamber music at the dance the night before, but a single instrument, played calm and slow and sweet.
Lute,
I found myself thinking, though I wasn't sure, not really, what a lute sounded like. This was sort of like a cross between a guitar and a harp.

A few more steps, and I was at another clearing.

This one had a guy in it, sitting on a stool, playing a musical instrument. Seeing the actual instrument, I was no closer than before to knowing what it was. Something with strings and a long skinny neck—the instrument, not the guy.

The guy was dressed in tunic and tights, clothing that made me think we were several centuries earlier than the night before, with its seventeen-hundreds-type finery. He more closely resembled the hammock-rocking man, though I'd been too afraid of him to take much note of his clothing.

It was only after taking in and thinking all those things that I noticed Emily was there, too. She was sitting on the ground, beneath a tree at the opposite end of the clearing.

And lying there, with its head on her lap, was a unicorn.

Emily was wearing a white dress asparkle with silver threads, and she had a Renaissance-Faire-type flowers-and-ribbons wreath on her head. Her eyes were closed and she was stroking the unicorn's head, both of them wearing looks that said
This is contentment. I could do this forever.

But then the unicorn looked up as my feet took me actually into the clearing. It made a noise, not exactly a horse's whinny, but what I guess must have been the unicorn equivalent: softer, gentler than a horse, maybe with the hint of a kitten's purr to it.

Emily opened her eyes and groaned. “Can't you stop following me?” she asked. “Isn't it enough that you ruined the house for me?”

I was somewhat relieved to hear that the gondolier's messy death
had
ruined her enjoyment of the house. Maybe her heart hadn't turned to stone after all.

She just acted that way toward me.

While we'd been talking, lute-guy continued strumming, but the unicorn gracefully got to its feet and came toward me. It put its head down, almost a bow. The way things were going, I half suspected its intent was to impale me, but all it did was nudge me. Again, sort of like a cat, demanding to be petted. I put my hand on its forelock, and immediately my headache—in fact, all my aches and pains—disappeared, healed by its touch.

Too bad,
I thought,
it evidently can’t heal what’s ailing Emily.

I said, “Ms. Bennett talked to Frank.”

“Frank,” Emily said, “is a pimple on the butt of humanity.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

“You don't know anything about it.”

It seemed she was in the mood to argue about everything.

Be like that,
I thought. What I said was “If you don't want to talk to me, do you want me to bring one of your friends? I'm sure any one of them would be willing to come here—”

“I don't have any friends,” Emily interrupted.

“Of course you do.”

“Don't make me get mean to you,” she warned.

“Get
mean?” I started to laugh. I couldn't help it. Maybe—ever so slightly—I was veering toward hysteria. Emily stood. Emily raised her hands to the sky.

Emily turned into a dragon.

The dragon shot a blast of flame at me.

A moment before the flame hit, I thought,
I bet that unicorn won't be able to heal this.

Chapter 11

Friends

I
AM GETTING SICK
and tired of this,” I announced, even before my eyes opened. On the other hand, death by dragon must have been something the Rasmussem people
had
anticipated might happen: very fortunately I had immediately gone into the fizziness that's the Rasmussem equivalent of dying rather than actually experiencing what it's like to be flame-roasted by a dragon.

“What happened?” Mom asked.

I spared her the specifics. Well, no. To be honest: I spared
myself
the specifics. You know you've put yourself in a bad situation when you can say:
Thank goodness all that happened was I died.

“Emily doesn't have any friends,” I told her, told Ms. Bennett and Adam.

“Of course she does,” Mom said, just what I'd tried to tell Emily before ... before...

With those wonky pain filters not up to full speed, the thought of what I
might
have felt—a human campfire marshmallow—was not one on which my mind wanted to linger.

Adam said, “The people we've been reaching on her phone—they've all identified themselves as being friends from high school. Nobody from college.”

“Nobody?” Mom sounded as incredulous as I felt. Adam didn't bother repeating. He finished, “And most of them haven't heard from her since summer.”

“That's...” Mom started, but she didn't know how to finish her thought any better than I did.

I said, “What about what's-her-name? Her roommate?” I wasn't trying to be cute—I was honestly blanking out. We had met Emily's assigned roommate that first day. Our family/her family: we kept getting in one another's way unloading cars, trying to cram about twice as much into the dorm room as it was physically capable of holding. The girl had muddy-blond hair and an accent my dad had immediately recognized from his travels—What was it? Rhode Island? Connecticut?—despite the fact...“Ooo,” I said, “I remember: She was named after one of those western states. Dakota?”

My mother gave me a how-did-I-ever-come-to-spawn-you look. “Georgia,” she corrected me. She asked Ms. Bennett, “Are you sure that equipment of yours isn't damaging Grace's brain?”

“Nope,” Ms. Bennett said. “That would be the New York State educational system.”

I took that to mean that either Dakota or Georgia wasn't one of those western states.

In any case, I was realizing that on her visits home, Emily hadn't talked much about her roommate. Now that I thought about it, she hadn't talked much about anybody at all. She'd just say “the girls in the dorm” or “someone from my sociology class.”

Adam pressed a couple of buttons on his hand-held, then shook his head. “Your mother gave us a few names before we picked you up from school. Georgia Chappell was one of them. She hasn't returned our call.”

Ms. Bennett said, “Tell Sybella she should switch to the land line and give all the no-answers on Emily's contact list a second try, just in case.”

Just in case.
I knew she meant that Frank Lupiano might not be the only supposed friend who was screening his calls to avoid Emily.

I asked, “What about Danielle Gardner?” Danielle was Emily's best friend—had been since middle school. As good as Emily was with computers, that's how good Danielle was with artsy things like textile design. They had planned to go to RIT together. And even though they would have been in different programs, they were going to apply to be roommates. But Danielle hadn't been accepted at RIT. She'd been put on the waiting list and told to reapply in January. I remembered Emily explaining to Mom and Dad that a lot of students would drop out after the first semester, and that Danielle was sure to get in and should take some of the basic requirements at MCC, the community college, so that the two of them could still graduate together in four years. I remembered Dad asking, “So is that what Danielle's going to do?” and Emily answering, “I guess.”