“Please,” I whispered, feeling the first prickle of tears at the corners of my eyes, “please, I just want to get home.”
Suddenly he stiffened and his gaze intensified. “You’re afraid of me.”
It was a statement, not a question. I knew I was doomed then. Wasn’t it true that if a victim revealed to her attacker just how terrified she was, then she had already lost the game? Sure, he had chased off those dogs, but maybe only to keep me whole so he could take me off to some bomb shelter somewhere to torture me slowly. I shivered both from the return of the autumn cold and from the knowledge that I was completely at his mercy at this point.
The man merely sighed deeply and said, “I fouled this up completely, but I’ll make it up to you somehow. Right now, however, I think it is best if you forget most of this.”
He held up his right arm, palm out, as if he was planning to hit me with some kung fu move.
“What are you doing?” The panic in my voice matched the racing of my heart.
“Tomorrow, this will seem like a dream, but in a week’s time I will send Fergus to you. Follow him, and I will introduce myself properly, at a more reasonable time of day. Then I’ll explain everything.”
I stared at his hand as he moved closer, wondering if I should try and fight him off if he reached for me. My mind seemed to grow fuzzy, my vision blurred.
Just before I passed out, I managed a barely audible, “Who are you?”
“You can call me Cade, but you won’t remember this, so it doesn’t matter.”
And then I was swallowed by darkness.
Evidence
Sunday morning brought with it a pounding headache and the restless feeling of leaving a bad dream behind. I blinked around my room as soon as I woke up. Everything was in its place; my old TV with the crack in the corner of the screen, my neon purple lava lamp, my posters featuring the paintings of various artists and musicians I liked. And the old desk my mother and I had found while browsing a local thrift shop, the top, as usual, littered with the contents of my backpack.
The sun was streaming in through the sliding glass door, reflecting off of the small droplets of dew sprinkled over the lawn. For once it wasn’t a foggy morning. Despite the normalcy of the day, something didn’t feel right, as if my mind were trying to recall the dream I’d had last night. That wasn’t unusual for me, but something didn’t add up in my mind.
I turned my head to the side, slowly so the headache wouldn’t escalate. A large blue and white speckled bowl holding the remains of a few bags of popcorn sat on the floor, next to several other dishes containing a variety of candy. Just the leftovers of a typical night of overdosing on junk food and scary movies. Nothing out of the ordinary really.
After struggling with the strange, uneasy feeling for several more seconds, I gave up. It was pointless to try and remember a dream that wished to stay hidden. It would come to me eventually, as all my dreams did.
I got myself ready for the day, flipping my radio on to the local classic rock station and slipping into my bathroom to brush my hair and wash my face.
I was halfway through my routine before I noticed the scrapes and cuts. I stopped and glanced at the scratches down my arms. In the mirror, my eyes peered back at me, looking more green than hazel just then. As usual, I wondered why. They weren’t like a mood ring where each color corresponds with what mood you’re in. Blue means relaxed, red means excited . . . Nope, mine just change color as my moods do, or even when I’m not aware my mood has changed. More likely than not, the change in color triggered my response.
I decided that my current mood was a mixture of curiosity and dread. How did I get those scrapes? I thought back to the week before, and then it dawned upon me. I had gotten into a confrontation with Michaela on the field behind school. On Halloween. On my birthday. She had wanted to show me a list. I had tried to get away from her. Only problem was, I hadn’t noticed the chain that acted as a fence separating the track from the football field. I had walked right into it and fallen over, my books sprawling everywhere. I had obviously used my hands and arms to break my fall.
I rubbed the scrapes now, my face reddening from the memory. But there was something odd about it, as if it were a memory from several years ago and not a few days. An old memory.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to forget about the incident. I really hated Michaela and I made a special point not to hate anyone. But that mantra was kind of hard to stick to when you had people like Adam Peders, Josh Turner, Michaela West, and all their shallow friends to deal with. They had been making my life a living hell since my first day at school when we were freshmen. And in Adam’s case, even before then.
A noise grabbed my attention and I turned to find Aiden standing in the doorway of my bathroom, gazing up at me with those bright blue eyes of his. He startled me but I relaxed when I realized it was him. My brothers were always trying to break into my room, but they were always too noisy to be successful. Aiden was the only one I never heard climb down the stairs.
“Aiden? What are you doing down here?”
“Cartoo,” was all he said.
I smiled. The medication for his autism seemed to be helping, but he still had a hard time communicating. For some reason, he had fixated on me as the most important person in his life and there was no way I was going to let him down.
“Alright buddy, is no one awake upstairs?”
He didn’t answer. Sometimes he’d go a whole day without saying anything to us. I was used to it, though. I carried him back upstairs and plopped him down onto the great stuffed couch in our living room and fished the remote out from between the cushions. I tried to convince myself that the sticky residue gluing my fingers together wasn’t something the twins might have dropped in there the week before.
I surfed around until I found the station playing Aiden’s favorite cartoon. His eyes lit up and he was hooked. When I thought it was safe to return to my room, I dropped a kiss on the top of his head and crossed back to the spiral staircase leading downstairs, passing Logan and Bradley on the way.
“Don’t change the channel. Aiden wants to watch cartoons,” I called over my shoulder to them.
They zipped past me, still dressed in their pajamas, their blond hair tousled and their eyes still droopy.
“What else is new?” Logan piped.
Luckily, his tone was cheerful and not spiteful. It was hard having Aiden in our family, especially since everyone was so normal. Well, everyone but me of course. I think my brothers were pretty well adjusted, though. I glanced once more over the kitchen counter to find Logan and Bradley on either side of Aiden, all three of them singing the theme song to the cartoon at the top of their lungs.
I smiled widely, knowing that it wouldn’t be long until my parents and the twins were up.
I descended my staircase to the sound of an electric guitar solo blaring from my stereo. I glanced at the clock. Just after eight. Why had I woken up so early on a Sunday morning? Oh yeah, the unremarkable dream that wouldn’t leave me alone.
Sighing, I found a pair of semi-clean jeans among the pile of clothes on my floor. I grabbed an old T-shirt from my drawer and pulled that over my head. I promised Tully last week that I would help her with her English paper, but only if she would help me with science. We had a system, Tully and I. She helped me with my trouble subjects and I helped her. You see, I was a dreamer, head in the clouds, big imagination. I had an ‘analyze poetry’ type of personality. Tully was very scientifically minded; thought mostly in black and white. Of course, we both appreciated each other’s talents, but I probably couldn’t tell the difference between a DNA sequence and the number of chromosomes I had if my life depended on it.
By the time I made it back upstairs with my backpack and my books, the rest of my family had joined the fray on the couch.
“Where are you going so early?” Mom asked, a towel thrown over her shoulder as she mixed pancake batter in a bowl.
“Tully’s,” I said, grabbing an apple and a muffin. “Science test on Tuesday and English paper due Thursday.”
My mom merely raised her eyebrows and nodded. She knew our system as well.
“Hey Dad,” I said as I walked past his favorite recliner. How he could read his magazine while the boys watched unrealistic cartoon characters bash each other to bits was beyond me.
“Mornin’ Meggy,” he answered, his eyes never leaving the story he was reading.
I glanced at the article on my way to the front door. It was an exclusive on Stonehenge. My dad had a penchant for scientific and archaeological magazines.
“Well, see you around lunch time I guess,” I said as I pulled the door open.
As the front door snapped closed, shutting off the sound of arguing boys and the clang of Mom moving dishes around in the kitchen, I threw my head back and took in a deep breath. The sickle-shaped, silvery leaves of the eucalyptus trees rustled in the breeze. For a minute, I thought I heard voices again:
dreams, full moon, memory . . .
they seemed to whisper.
I shivered, despite the warm autumn morning. That was the thing about the Central Coast; our best weather was in the fall. Sure, we had our fair share of foggy mornings, but on many occasions I had even walked on the beach in shorts and a tank top as late in the season as Christmas Day.
A heftier gust of wind pushed through the branches above my head, parting them like a curtain, and just as quickly as I thought I’d heard them, the voices were gone. Shaking off the weird chill and pushing the voices to the back of my mind, I hiked my backpack further up my shoulder and made my way down the road. I passed our neighbors’ houses, their sprawling front lawns either enjoying a shower of morning sprinklers or lazing in the shadow of the tall shade trees. I loved our street.
I rounded the final curve in the road and headed towards the blue, tidy two-storey house on the corner. Bypassing the front door, I stepped right onto the front lawn, shading my eyes against the sun as I glanced up at Tully’s window. I smiled to myself, and then took out the tennis ball I kept in my backpack for just this purpose. I wound back my arm, took aim, and launched the neon green ball right through her open window. Less than a minute later, the tennis ball came whizzing back at me. I caught it and stowed it back in my backpack just as Tully poked her blond head through the window.
“I’ll let you in through the back,” she said as loudly as she dared, “Mom and Dad are still in bed and they want to sleep in.”
Both her parents were professors at the local college. On Saturday nights they often ventured into San Luis Obispo to have a night on the town. Tully had once said that they were in denial about growing old. Of course, the fact that they had to sleep in until noon the next day did more to point out their advanced age than going to bars did to enhance their formative years.
Once Tully unlocked the door and led me upstairs, we started pulling out our books and notes. We chatted a little bit about the latest school gossip, but neither of us decided anything was all that new or important. Besides, we weren’t privy to the good gossip anyway. Yet, it still baffled me that for a high school consisting of just under six hundred students, we sure had a lot of drama that took place.
Sighing, I grabbed my notes on the latest English tragedy novella we were reading in our literature class and made myself comfortable as Tully grabbed her desk chair and moved it closer to me.
Only after I sat down on Tully’s bed did it occur to me just how tired I was. I tended to be an early riser, so it wasn’t like my schedule was any different than usual. But today I felt as if I’d joined Mr. and Mrs. Gordon on their club fest last night.
“Meg, what happened to your arms?” Tully asked, grabbing my hands and pulling my arms out to examine them.
“Oh,” I said as I blinked away my sudden weariness, “the thing that happened with Michaela the other day, remember? When I tripped over the guard chain?”
Tully gave me a look. I knew that look. It was the same look I always got from the other adults right before my parents decided it was time to take me to a new psychiatrist.
“You didn’t trip over anything.”
“Yes I did, you were there, remember?” Why did I always have to be the crazy one? “She wanted to show me the list of girls Adam Peders would never date in a million years? She hinted that you were on the list as well, or don’t you remember that either?”
I was suddenly angry for some reason and it wasn’t even at the insult the list had caused. I was angry because I suspected Tully was right. The argument had been real, I know that for a fact, but something about tripping over the chain wasn’t quite right. Yes, it surfaced along with the memory of Michaela’s pinched face but it seemed misplaced, contrived even. Like when you were a toddler and you were trying to figure out how to piece together a jigsaw puzzle for the first time in your life. Although the pieces don’t quite fit, you tried to force them together anyway.
Tully glanced at me with her clear green eyes. I normally towered over her, but at that moment she made me feel as small as my twin brothers.
“I remember you tripping over a chain fence,” she whispered, “but that was in third grade when Marissa Campos told us she knew how to make our freckles multiply.”