Lurker (7 page)

Mandy barely saw her friends over the weekend, though they did manage to spend a couple hours at the mall Saturday afternoon. She spent all of Friday night online with Kyle. She liked chatting with him, not only because he told funny stories about all of the places she dreamed of going one day, but also because he really seemed to understand her. Sometimes they wrote the exact same line of text and sent them simultaneously. Then they'd both rush to write
Jinx
and
LMAO
. They were totally in sync with each other. Which is why she felt bad, even a little hurt, that Kyle wasn't online Saturday night. Mandy waited to see his handle show up on her buddy list, but it never did. Eventually, she turned on the television and fell
asleep. Now it was Sunday, and she planned to meet Laurel and Drew at Nicki's funeral. But Mandy was running late.

Mandy smiled. Here was another example of them being totally in sync.

By the time Mandy got to the chapel, it was already
full. People stood on the threshold and spilled out onto the concrete walk. Cameramen and reporters gathered near the door, and Mandy skirted them, choosing to stand on a small circle of concrete at the corner of the church. She tried to call Laurel on her cell, but for once in her life, Laurel had the phone turned off. Drew's phone was the same. So, Mandy stood on the periphery of the gathered mourners, men in black suits and women in conservative dresses and pantsuits.

She wished Kyle were there, though she totally understood him wanting to make points with the guy from Stanford. Kyle was focused on his future, and she liked that about him. Besides, Mandy had to admit, it would be pretty strange to have a first date (
okay not a date, just meeting
) at a classmate's funeral.

A man wearing a long black coat walked into Mandy's peripheral vision, and her heart skipped a beat. She turned toward him, instantly thinking of the Witchman. But it was just a mourner, making his way to the chapel doors.

When Dale pulled his Audi into the lot and parked against the curb behind a news van, she knew she wouldn't stay. At first, a spark of defiance
kept her feet grounded. She wasn't going to run off just because of him. She did, however, rationalize that she couldn't see the service. She would never get in.
It'll probably go on for hours.
Besides, she had gone to the candlelight vigil. If Nicki were looking down at her, she'd totally understand.

So, Mandy slipped around the side of the church, walking up a grassy rise and back onto Summer Avenue, which would wind around to Garret Street three blocks from her house.

At home, she logged on to her computer and waited for Kyle to get home from brunch so she could tell him all about the circus at the chapel.

 

“So, you ditched us for a username?” Laurel said. “Not cool.”

“I know. I'm sorry. We were just chatting and I wasn't watching the time. How was the service?”

“Well, I'm still a mess,” Laurel said. “It was beautiful and really sweet, and I don't think I've cried that much in my life.”

“How'd Drew hold up?”

“How do you think?”

“That bad?”

“Worse,” Laurel said. “But hell, no one was exactly acting cool, you know?”

“I'm really sorry,” Mandy said. “I should have been there.”

“Damn straight. But we gotta keep livin', so I sort of forgive you. But only sort of.”

“What are you doing for the rest of the afternoon?” Mandy asked.

“Talkin' to you. Talkin' to Drew. Watchin' some screen. Might actually study for that calculus test Wednesday.”

“Do you think Walpern will really give us a test this week? God, nobody can even concentrate on normal things.”

“You were there Friday. You heard him. He said ‘test,' so I'm thinkin' test. And since calculus is the one class that wants to blow my grade point, I'm thinkin' crackin' that book might be a good idea.”

“Ugh,” Mandy said. “I'll never be ready by Wednesday.”

“You will if you don't spend all your time chattin' with Mr. Internet Yummy Drawers.”

Mandy leaned back in her chair and stared at the keyboard. This was the first time either of them had said anything remotely romantic. For all of their chatting, they usually just joked around and shared stories about their families, friends, and lives.
Did she want to kiss him?
She wanted to write
yes
, but it seemed way stupid. She didn't even know what his voice sounded like, and this
realization made her feel really strange. Maybe they should talk on the phone. Or actually meet!

Mandy smiled. She ran her cursor over the name of the castle, copied it, and then closed the IM window. She Googled the name and spent a few minutes surfing pages, looking at pictures and reading blurbs of copy about it. It really wasn't a very pretty place, she decided, but it was cool. The place looked like one of those castles they used in old, old horror movies—movies from the '60s. It was the kind of place where insane barons killed their wives in dank torture chambers, the kind of place for ghosts and vampires. One interior shot showed a massive stone room with wooden tables and a faded brown tapestry hanging from iron bars. Kyle was right; it was totally goth. Her imagination let loose, and she pictured Kyle leading her through the dark halls of Karlstejn Castle, gripping her hand tightly to guide her. They were not tourists in this place, but rather the owners—a king, a queen. Mandy shook her head, telling herself how silly she was being.

She closed the Web page.

Not quite ready to let go of Kyle for the night, she clicked on the file with his picture, and it burst across her screen. She followed the wave of his blond hair as it swept back from his forehead and looked into his clear green eyes that sparkled with embarrassment beneath the hand he used to salute her.

“Weird,” Mandy said, squinting at the picture.

Somehow the image seemed different. Kyle was still a hottie holding a hairbrush and saluting her, but he seemed to have shadows on his face that she hadn't noticed before. They ran along the bottom of his cheekbones, giving him a slightly gaunt look. Something was strange about the hairbrush, also: The light that reflected on its shiny black side looked like a sharp edge rather than just a glimmer of light. Had the contrast of the picture changed somehow? That couldn't be. She'd looked at the picture a dozen times, but she hadn't done anything to manipulate the image. Maybe it was the way her desk lamp reflected off the screen that made it look wrong. It had to be something like that. Pictures didn't just change on their own.

 

Thursday was a day of surprises.

After school, Laurel and Drew came back to Mandy's place to hang out. Both were curious about this Kyle guy she kept talking about, so they followed her upstairs to her room and waited for her computer to boot up. When the picture opened, both of her friends pushed in close to look at the screen.

“Yeah,” Laurel said, “he's got some major yummy going on.”

“God, he's so cute,” Drew said, already drifting into a romantic haze. “It's totally fate. I mean, if you hadn't broken up with Dale, and if Nicki hadn't been killed, you two might never have met.”

“Yeah,” Laurel said, “more kids should get sliced up so we can all get dates.”

Drew's face fell, her dreamy voice quieting. “I just meant, it's great that something nice came out of something so bad. Jeez, Laurel.”

“I'm just playin',” Laurel said, reaching out to pat Drew's knee. “It's all good.”

Mandy smiled, pleased that her friends approved. She leaned back in the chair so they could get a better look and both slid a little closer to the monitor, gawking at the screen.

“I can't believe I was there when you met,” Drew said.

“We haven't met.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Hey,” Laurel said, “I thought you said he was our age.”

“He is,” Mandy replied. “He's seventeen.”

“You sure? Boy looks like he's already got a couple of years of frat parties behind him.”

“He does look older,” Drew agreed. “Like my brother's age or something.”

Mandy leaned forward and looked closely at the picture. The shadows on Kyle's cheeks seemed more pronounced, even more than they had the night before. Another shadow, one she hadn't noticed the night before or any other time she'd looked at the picture, lay across his brow, disappearing into the bigger shadow cast by his saluting palm. When she pulled away from the details of the pic, she had to admit Laurel and Drew were right; he did look older.

“Once,” Laurel said, “I met a guy online, and he was looking all fine and boylicious. So we meet up, right? He's got this big old nasty mole on his cheek, and I'm all ‘Where the hell did that come
from?' I figured he Photoshopped it out of his pic or something, because this girl doesn't go for before-shots. A boy has got to complete
Extreme Makeover
before he comes callin' on the L.”

“That was Hoyt, wasn't it?” Drew asked.

“Yeah, Hoyt. So, I'm all pissed off, because I'm thinkin' he was playin' me. But I get home and open his picture and there it was, right there on his face as bold as you please. I just didn't notice it before.”

Mandy remembered this story now. They were freshmen at Lake Crest when it happened. Laurel spent the rest of the semester being mean to Hoyt, which seemed odd to Mandy since Hoyt didn't do anything wrong.

“Well, it's just a bad pic,” Mandy said. “He shot it in like two seconds while we were chatting.”

“Looks good enough to me,” Laurel said.

“Yeah, and you were really smart to have him do that,” Drew said. “I mean, he could have been anybody, even that scary guy that got Nicki.”

The Witchman,
Mandy thought, remembering his beaklike nose and pointed chin. For a few days, that image of his wild-eyed rage, was everywhere: the Internet, the news, and her own dreams.
Sometimes in the middle of the night, she woke with that old, wrinkled face hanging before her eyes, even after the nightmares he wandered into had ended.

“If we're playing show-and-tell,” Laurel said, “I got something you have to see.”

She got up from her seat on the bench beside Drew and walked to the bed, where she picked up her handbag. Returning to the bench, she sat down and placed the bag in her lap. From it, she pulled a small handgun out by the grip, dangling the weapon between her thumb and forefinger like it was a piece of smelly trash.

Both Drew and Mandy pulled back in shock. Drew covered her mouth with a palm, her eyes wide with astonishment.

“What are you doing with that?” Mandy asked angrily, hating the sight of the gun.

“A gift from Dad,” Laurel said, still dangling the thing between her fingers. “It's not loaded yet. He won't give me the clip until I take lessons, so guess how I'm spending the next three Saturdays?”

“Why didn't you tell him you didn't want it?”

“God, I'd never have a gun,” Drew said.

“Yeah, well, it was take it from him or spend the
rest of my life in my room. I figured this was the lesser of two stupids. In a few weeks, he'll chill out, and I can shove it in a box in the basement. Until then, I'm packin', girls. So, don't be dissin'me or I'll pop a cap in your asses.”

“That's so not funny,” Mandy said.

“Totally not,” Drew agreed.

Laurel laughed and dropped the gun back in her bag. “You know I'm anti-gun. As soon as I can rid myself of it, I will.”

“Your dad's really worried about you,” Drew said, sounding jealous.

Mandy knew that Drew's dad was pretty much nonexistent. Including the candlelight vigil, Mandy could count the number of times she'd seen him on her fingers. He worked a lot; he'd struggled to raise Drew and her brothers on his own ever since his wife had run off to “find herself.” That had been ten years ago. Apparently, Drew's mom was still lost, and so was Drew.

“My dad's a whack job. What kind of dork gives his teenage daughter a gun? I've been asking for a car for the last two years, but instead of a Beamer, I get an Uzi.”

“Just keep it in your bag,” Mandy said, “and don't
go telling everyone you have it.”

“Right, because nothing makes you more popular than fire power. I'm not telling anyone except you guys.”

The next surprise on that Thursday afternoon was for Drew. In a lot of ways, it was even more shocking than Laurel's gun show.

A ring tone had them all scrambling for their cell phones, until Drew announced, “That's mine.” She looked at the caller ID before answering and turned as white as a ghost. “Oh my God!”

“What is it?” Mandy asked, thinking it had to be something terrible.

But just as she asked the question, a wide nervous smile cut across Drew's lips. “It's Jacob,” she said, her voice a high squeal. “My God, Jacob Lurie is calling
me
.”

 

“Why do I think you had something to do with this?” Mandy whispered to Laurel.

On the other side of the room, pressed into the corner, twirling her hair with a finger and clutching the cell phone to her head, Drew nodded and said, “Sure.”

Laurel leaned closer and said, “I figured this was
the only way to shut her up about him. Besides, he likes her too.”

“I thought you hated Jacob.”

“
Hate
is such a strong word. I just feel better when I don't have to look at him. Drew's the one that's got to go out with him, not me.”

Mandy nudged Laurel, knowing she was being far nicer to Drew than she'd ever admit. She'd never seen Drew so excited, though something or another often excited Drew. This was a good excited, a happy excited.

“Oh God,” Drew gushed into the phone. “I know! It's totally like that.”

“You realize we're going to hear about nothing else for the rest of our lives, right?” Mandy said.

Laurel's face scrunched dramatically in a pretended expression of sorrow. “I know. God help me, I know.”

 

Mandy didn't know exactly what to make of the last two surprises of the day. After gushing and babbling about Jacob's call (
We're going to a movie tomorrow. God, I have to buy an outfit.
) Drew left in a fidgeting swirl of exhilaration. Laurel, whose father still insisted she be home
before dark, left with her.

Alone, with another hour before her mom got home, and nearly two before her father would appear, Mandy signed online and immediately searched her buddy list for Kyle's handle. Disappointed that it wasn't there, she checked her e-mails. When her doorbell rang again, she was reading an announcement from Trinity King, head of the yearbook committee, informing the student body that they were dedicating a full-page memorial to Nicki Bennington. As such, they needed photographs and suggestions for text.

The doorbell rang. Mandy rose from her chair to look out the window, and was surprised to see a large green van in her driveway. A bouquet of flowers was painted on the side of the van. Beneath this,
GREEN GUY FLORISTS
was written in large white letters.

Flowers?
she thought.

The doorbell rang again. With the thrill of anticipation urging her on, Mandy ran down the stairs, her hand hopping down the banister as she rushed for the door. She got there just as the deliveryman rang a third time.