I Am Number Four (10 page)

He looks at me, seething. With the crowd around there is nothing he can do without causing a scene—and I don’t think he would do anything anyway.

“All in due time,” Mark says.

“You think?”

“Yours is coming,” he says.

“That might be true,” I say. “But it won’t be coming from you.”

“Stop it!” Sarah yells. She works her way in between us, pushing us away from each other. People are watching. She glances around as though embarrassed by the attention, then scowls at Mark first, then at me.

“Fine, then. You guys fight if that’s what you want to do. Good luck with it,” Sarah says, and turns and walks away. I watch her go. Mark doesn’t.

“Sarah,” I call, but she keeps walking and disappears past the pavilion.

“Soon,” Mark says.

I look back to him. “I doubt it.”

He retreats to his group of friends. Henri walks up to me.

“I don’t suppose he was inquiring about yesterday’s math homework?”

“Not quite,” I say.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” Henri says. “He looks to be all talk.”

“I’m not,” I say, and then glance at the spot where Sarah disappeared. “Should I go after her?” I ask, and look at him, pleading to the part of him that was once married and in love, that part that still misses his wife every day, and not the part of him that wants to keep me safe and hidden.

He nods his head. “Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “As much as I hate to admit it, you should probably go after her.”

KIDS RUNNING, SCREAMING, ON SLIDES AND
jungle gyms. Every kid with a bag of candy in his or her hand, with a mouth stuffed full of sweets. Kids dressed as cartoon characters, monsters, ghouls and ghosts. Every resident of Paradise must be at the park right now. And in the midst of all the madness I see Sarah, sitting alone, gently pushing herself on the swing.

I weave my way through the screams and shrieks. When Sarah sees me she smiles, those big blue eyes of hers like a beacon.

“Need a push?” I ask.

She nods to the swing that has just opened beside her and I sit.

“Doing okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m fine. He just wears me down. He always has to act so tough and he’s downright mean when he’s around friends.”

She twists herself on the swing until the rope becomes taut, then she lifts her feet and it spins her around, slowly at first, then gaining speed. She laughs the whole time, her blond hair a trail behind her. I do the same thing. When the swing finally stops the world keeps spinning.

“Where is Bernie Kosar?”

“I left him with Henri,” I say.

“Your dad?”

“Yes, my dad.” I am constantly doing that, calling Henri by his name when I should be saying “Dad.”

The temperature is quickly dropping, and my hands are white knuckled on the rope chain, becoming cold. We watch the kids run amok around us. Sarah looks at me and her eyes seem bluer than ever in the coming dusk. Our gaze stays locked, each of us just staring at the other, no words being said but much passing between us. The children seem to fade into the background. Then she smiles shyly and looks away.

“So what are you going to do?” I ask.

“About what?”

“Mark.”

She shrugs. “What can I do? I’ve already broken up with him. I keep telling him I have no interest in getting back together.”

I nod. I’m not sure how to respond to that.

“But anyway, I should probably try to sell the rest of these tickets. Only an hour before the raffle.”

“Do you want any help?”

“No, that’s okay. You should go have fun. Bernie Kosar is probably missing you right now. But you should definitely stick around for the hayride. Maybe we can go on it together?”

“I will,” I say. A happiness blooms inside of me, but I try to keep it hidden.

“I’ll see you in a little while, then.”

“Good luck with the tickets.”

She reaches over and grabs my hand and holds it for a good three seconds. Then she lets go, jumps off the swing, and hurries away. I sit there, gently swinging, enjoying the brisk wind that I haven’t felt in a very long time because we spent the last winter in Florida, and the one before that in south Texas. When I head back to the pavilion Henri is sitting at a picnic table eating a slice of pie with Bernie Kosar lying at his feet.

“How’d it go?”

“Good,” I say with a smile.

From somewhere an orange and blue firework shoots up and explodes in the sky. It makes me think of Lorien and of the fireworks I saw on the day of the invasion.

“Have you thought any more about the second ship I saw?”

Henri looks around to make sure there’s nobody within earshot. We have the picnic table to ourselves, positioned in the far corner away from the crowd.

“A little. I still have no idea what it means, though.”

“Do you think it could have traveled here?”

“No. It wouldn’t be possible. If it ran on fuel, like you say, it wouldn’t have been able to travel far without refueling.”

I sit for a moment.

“I wish it could have.”

“Could have what?”

“Traveled here, with us.”

“It’s a nice thought,” says Henri.

An hour or so passes and I see all the football players, Mark in front, walk across the grass. They are dressed up as mummies, zombies, ghosts, twenty-five of them in total. They sit in the bleachers of the nearest baseball field and the cheerleaders who were drawing on the children begin applying makeup to complete the costumes of Mark and his friends. It’s only then that I realize the football players will be the ones doing the scaring on the haunted hayride, the ones waiting for us in the woods.

“See that?” I ask Henri.

Henri looks at them all and nods, then picks up his coffee and takes a long drink.

“Think you should still go on the ride?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “But I’m going to anyway.”

“I figured you would.”

Mark is dressed as a zombie of sorts, wearing dark tattered clothes, with black and gray makeup on his face, splotches of red in random places to simulate blood. When his costume is complete Sarah walks up to him and says something. His voice becomes raised but I can’t hear what he’s saying. His movements are animated and he talks so fast that I can tell he’s stumbling over his words. Sarah crosses her arms and shakes her head at him. His body tenses. I move to stand, but Henri grabs my arm.

“Don’t,” he says. “He’s only pushing her further away.”

I look at them and wish with everything that I could hear what is being said, but there are too many screaming kids around to focus in. When the yelling stops they both stand looking at each other, a hurtful scowl on Mark’s face, an incredulous grin on Sarah’s. Then she shakes her head and walks away.

I look at Henri. “What should I do now?”

“Not a thing,” he says. “Not a thing.”

Mark walks back to his friends, head hung, scowling. A few of them look in my direction. Smirks appear. Then they start walking towards the forest. A slow methodical march, twenty-five guys in costume receding in the distance.

To kill time I walk back to the center of town with Henri and we eat dinner at the Hungry Bear. When we walk back the sun has set and the first trailer piled with hay and pulled by a green tractor takes off for the woods. The crowd has thinned considerably and those left are mostly high schoolers and free-spirited adults who total a hundred or so people. I look for Sarah among them but I don’t see her. The next trailer leaves in ten minutes. According to the pamphlet the whole ride is half an hour long, the tractor going through the woods slowly, the anticipation building, and then it stops and the riders are to get off and follow a different trail on foot, at which point the scares begin.

Henri and I stand beneath the pavilion and I again scan the long line of people waiting their turn. I still don’t see her. Just then my phone vibrates in my pocket. I can’t remember the last time my phone rang when it wasn’t Henri calling. The caller ID reads
SARAH HART
. Excitement rushes through me. She must have entered my number into her phone the same day she entered hers into mine.

“Hello?” I say.

“John?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, it’s Sarah. Are you still at the park?” she says. She sounds as though her calling me is normal, that
I shouldn’t think twice about her already having my number despite my never having given it to her.

“Yes.”

“Great! I’m going to be back there in about five minutes. Have the rides started?”

“Yeah, a couple minutes ago.”

“You haven’t gone yet, have you?”

“No.”

“Oh, good! Wait so we can ride together.”

“Yeah, definitely,” I say. “The second one is about to leave now.”

“Perfect. I’ll be there in time for the third.”

“See you then.”

I hang up, a huge smile on my face.

“Be careful out there,” Henri says.

“I will.” Then I pause and try to bring lightness to my voice. “You don’t have to stick around. I’m sure I can get a ride home.”

“I’m willing to stay and live in this town, John. Even when it’s probably smarter for us to leave given the events that have already happened. But you’re going to have to meet me halfway on things. And this is one of them. I don’t like the looks those guys gave you earlier one bit.”

I nod. “I’ll be fine,” I say.

“I’m sure you will. But just in case I’m going to be right here waiting.”

I sigh. “Fine.”

Sarah pulls up five minutes later with a pretty friend who I’ve seen before but have never been introduced to. She has changed into jeans, a wool sweater, and a black jacket. She has wiped away the painted ghost that was on her right cheek and her hair is down, falling past her shoulders.

“Hey, you,” she says.

“Hi.”

She wraps her arms around me in a tentative hug. I can smell the perfume wafting up from her neck. Then she pulls away.

“Hi, John’s dad,” she says to Henri. “This is my friend Emily.”

“Pleased to meet you both,” Henri says. “So you guys are off into the unknown terror?”

“You bet,” Sarah says. “Will this one be okay out there? I don’t want him getting too scared on me,” Sarah says to Henri, motioning to me with a smile.

Henri grins and I can tell he already likes Sarah. “You better stay close just in case.”

She looks over her shoulder. The third trailer is a quarter full. “I’ll keep him safe,” she says. “We better get going.”

“Have a great time,” Henri says.

Sarah surprises me by taking my hand and the three of us rush off towards the hay wagon a hundred yards away from the pavilion. There is a line about thirty
people long. We get to the back of it and start talking, though I’m feeling a little shy and mostly just listen to the two girls talk. As we’re waiting I see Sam hovering off to the side as though contemplating whether or not to approach us.

“Sam!” I yell with more enthusiasm than I intended. He stumbles over. “You coming on the ride with us?”

He shrugs. “Do you mind?”

“Come on,” Sarah says, and motions him in. He stands next to Emily, who smiles at him. He immediately starts blushing and I’m ecstatic he’s along for the ride. Suddenly a kid holding a walkie-talkie comes over. I recognize him from the football team.

“Hi, Tommy,” Sarah says to him.

“Hey,” he says. “There are four spots left on this wagon. You guys want them?”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

We skip the line and jump up onto the trailer, where the four of us sit on a bale of hay together. I find it odd that Tommy doesn’t ask us for tickets. I’m curious as to why he let us skip the line altogether. Some of the people waiting look at us with disgust. I can’t say that I blame them.

“Enjoy the ride,” Tommy says with a grin, the kind I’ve seen people wear when told something bad has happened to someone they despise.

“That was weird,” I say.

Sarah shrugs. “He probably has a crush on Emily.”

“Oh God, I hope not,” Emily says, and then fake-gags.

I watch Tommy from the bale of hay. The trailer is only half full, which is another thing that strikes me as strange since there are so many people waiting.

The tractor pulls away, bumps along the pathway, and drives through the entrance of the forest, where ghastly sounds come through hidden speakers. The forest is thick and no light penetrates other than what shines from the front of the tractor.
Once that is off,
I think,
there will be nothing but darkness
. Sarah takes hold of my hand again. She’s cold to the touch, but a sense of warmth floods through me. She leans over to me and whispers, “I’m a little scared.”

Figures of ghosts hang just over us from the low branches, and off the drive grimacing zombies lean against various trees. The tractor stops and kills its headlight. Then come intermittent strobes that flash for ten seconds. There is nothing scary about them and only when they stop do I understand their effect: our eyes take a few seconds to adjust and we can’t see a thing. Then a scream shoots through the night and Sarah tenses against me as figures sweep around us. I squint to focus and I see that Emily has moved next to Sam, and that he is smiling widely. I’m actually a little scared myself. I put my arm carefully around Sarah.
A hand grazes our backs and Sarah grips tightly to my leg. Some of the others scream. With a jolt the tractor turns back on and continues forward, nothing but the outlines of the trees in its light.

We drive for another three or four minutes. The anticipation builds, the foreboding fear of having to walk the distance we just drove. Then the tractor pulls into a circular clearing and stops.

“Everybody off,” the driver yells.

When the last person is off, the tractor pulls away. Its light recedes in the distance, then disappears, leaving nothing but the night and not a single sound other than what we make.

“Shit,” somebody says, and all of us laugh.

In total there are eleven of us. A path of lights turns on, showing us the way, then turns off. I close my eyes to focus on the feel of Sarah’s fingers interlocked with mine.

“I have no idea why I do this every year,” Emily says nervously, her arms wrapped around herself.

The other people have started down the trail and we follow. The pathway of lights occasionally flickers on to keep us on our way. The others are far enough ahead that we can’t see them. I can barely see the ground at my feet. Three or four screams suddenly ring out in front of us.

“Oh no,” Sarah says, and squeezes my hand. “Sounds like trouble ahead.”

Just then something heavy falls on us. Both girls scream and so does Sam. I trip and hit the ground, scraping my knee, tangled in whatever the hell the thing is. Then I realize it’s a net!

“What the hell?” Sam asks.

I tear straight through the twisted rope but the second I’m free I get shoved hard from behind. Someone grabs me and drags me away from the girls and Sam. I break free and stand, but am immediately hit from behind again. This isn’t part of the ride.

“Let go of me!” one of the girls yells. A guy laughs in response. I can’t see a thing. The girls’ voices are moving away from me.

“John?” Sarah calls.

“Where are you, John?” shouts Sam.

I stand to go after them but am hit again. No, that’s not right. I am tackled. The wind is knocked out of me when I’m plowed to the ground. I rush up and try to catch my breath, my hand against a tree for support. I pick dirt and leaves from my mouth.

I stand there a few seconds and don’t hear a single sound other than my own labored breathing. Just when I think I’ve been left alone, somebody shoulders into me and sends me flying into a nearby tree. My head slams against the trunk and I briefly see stars. I’m surprised by the person’s strength. I reach up and touch my forehead and feel blood on my fingertips. I look
around again but can’t see anything other than the silhouetted trees.