Phobic (11 page)

I move mechanically, crawling into my chilly sheets. The bloodstain haunts me as I try drifting off to sleep. And the basement, something was definitely there. Something with blood on it.

I wish there was a way to scratch away memories. But these are like a sour aftertaste in my brain. Once you see something, there’s no way to
un-
see it. The acrid tang moves to the back of my mouth, like the warm night air is baking me alive and I can taste myself rot.

Murder. The same number of letters as Mother. Same start. Same finish.

Though the house holds Mom’s traces, she’s still vague to me. I have glimpses of her in my mind as a child, but I haven’t heard from her since she was incarcerated. Dad never let me call her. Even Joel hasn’t spoken to her since the arrest. I always think of her though.

Most of the time it’s a made-up confrontation. But there’s still so much I don’t know about her.

I rake my mind for something—anything I can think of. A smile, a touch. The way her perfume smelled or how she would bunch up her pantyhose before gliding a dainty foot into them. I can’t remember if her feet were dainty. Or if she’d worn pantyhose.

One memory creeps its way in. I was five or six, looking at her and Dad’s wedding pictures as she slipped them into an album. Her brown hair was cropped short and fluffed out from behind her ears.

I remember asking her why she fell in love with Dad. She got a sad, far-off look in her eyes—oh man, what color are her eyes?

“Because I thought he would never lie to me,” she said.

I
stir awake, but it feels like I have sand under my eyelids. The painted cherubs on my ceiling scrutinize me. My limbs are sleepy and relaxed—I don’t want to move. And why should I? After yesterday—the coughing, the party, the ghost and the bloodstain—I never want to move again.

I crane my head back, and a red 7:20 stares back at me. I blink several more times before it hits. My audition!

“No!”

A rush of energy sends me bolting out of bed. “No, no, no,” I mutter. I peel my clothes off as quickly as I can and stuff on the black shirt and silver skirt I’ve been saving for weeks. I don’t know how I could have done this. Today of all days, I can’t have overslept.

I fumble through my usual makeup routine, trying to cover the redness and bumps on my face. My dying flatiron decides it has straightened its last hair, so one side of my strawberry blonde locks looks sleek, while the other looks like I’ve rubbed a balloon against my head. Bleh. Todd will be here any minute.

I pull the whole mess back into a ponytail and head downstairs; only I smack my forehead and nearly lose my balance halfway down. Practice! I didn’t practice! I force away the thought—I
won’t
screw up.

“Whoa, slow down,” Joel says when he passes me in the hallway. He’s already dressed, decked out in his typical suit and tie.

“Joel, why didn’t you wake me?”

He gives me a blank look. No guilty or surprised expression, not even a grimace.

“My audition?”

He gapes at the briefcase in his hand and groans. “That’s today,” he says as if reminding himself. “You know that piece backwards and forwards, Piper. You got it down like choking on a turnpike.”

“You know you don’t make any sense, right?”

He grins. “That’s the point.”

I slump against the wall, resting my head like I can’t hold it up anymore. Great. This is just great.

“Pipes, about last night—”

“Yes!” I blurt, not wanting to hear it. “I went into the basement! Todd snuck in and I was trying to get him to go home, but he wouldn’t go so the floor opened up and he fell through, okay? I
had
to go down there.”

I wait for Joel to yell, or lose it like he did when he caught us. His voice, however, is controlled, and he presses his mouth into a line. “It’s not safe. You should have gotten me.”

“Yeah, to have you be mean to me for waking you up on a work night? Why isn’t it safe, Joel? There’s
nothing
down there.” Except a feeling in my gut swells as I say the words, and I know they’re not true.

Joel’s mouth parts, like he’s baffled. Maybe he hasn’t been down there after all, and he’s just mad that
I
went.

“Look, whatever,” I say, pushing past him. “Todd will be here any minute.”

I make my way down the stairs, an imaginary rain cloud hovering over my head. Usually going to school is comparable to having my tongue cut out, but now more than ever I don’t want to go. I wish I could skip the next few hours like that one Adam Sandler movie and go straight to my audition.

To make things worse, Todd finally sends me the text he promised.

Had early practice today. Sorry.

Of course Todd has early practice. I half wonder if he really does, or if he’s just avoiding me, considering how he fell through my floor last night.

Feeling like I’m stepping out into a town I’ve never been in before, I head out. The school is about six blocks from my house, and the cool morning air revives me, in a way. It helps me clear my thoughts.

After seeing that ghost in the library and then the blood in the trap door, I feel like I hardly slept at all. I have to keep squinting, even though it isn’t bright out. Sunlight peeks up over the horizon in the distance, and inwardly I urge it to come faster. Cold tacks its way under my skin.

Vale High’s brown brick comes into view, and the parking lot fills with cars as more zip past me. A whistle blows from the nearby field. I’m earlier than I thought. I could sit in the hallway and read or do homework, but I don’t want to face the hallway yet—not even an empty one.

Car wheels crush against the asphalt, and I trek over the gravel and to the chain-linked fence where Todd and the rest of the team practice. So he didn’t make it up. That’s a relief. Except the sight of him makes me change my mind—I’ll take the empty hallway. Who knows what he thinks of me now, after two weird house incidents, an almost “moment,” and him on my bed.

I stop walking at the thought. Todd. On my bed.

Sierra sits on the bleachers, snuggled in a fuzzy hat and gloves, and watches the guys dance on their tiptoes, hit the grass at the blow of a whistle, then get up and do it all over again. Their breath puffs out in front of them like misty balloons. Todd stumbles and then shoots a grin at me.

It pierces right through, turning my muscles into goo. He doesn’t hate me then. I inhale the cold, clean air, suddenly ready to tell him anything he wants to know—especially out here in the open.

Coach Morris chirps the whistle again, and the guys scatter, herding toward the school. Todd meets me by his red truck. He’s all sweaty. Dirt smears on his cheeks and his white, holey T-shirt.

“Sorry about not picking you up,” he says. “I forgot I had practice until I was getting ready this morning.”

I kick the gravel. “S’okay.”

Wait for it. Any minute now he’ll fire his artillery of questions.

“You ready for this?” he asks, pulling his backpack from the cab of his truck. The door slam makes me jump. I’m stumped for a second—I’m not sure, but I think he means my audition.

Here I am, ready for his pestering questions, ready to confess everything I can about my house to him, and now he’s decided to act ignorant. Makes no sense. I need someone to talk to, and Joel is obviously out.

I try to organize my thoughts.
I went into the library after you left and saw a ghost. And blood in the trap door. Oh, and by the way, my house is haunted.

“At least you don’t seem too upset about last night,” he says before I get the chance to spill, heading toward the showers. “See you at lunch.”

My mouth hangs open, unspoken words dangling on my lips. At least
I’m
not too upset? I feel like I was just about to take a bite of food before someone snatched it away. I don’t get why he’s seemingly blown it off. Two more minutes, that’s all I needed.

Usually I’m like another row of lockers—unnoticed unless someone needs something or has something mean to say. But now I’m a walking car accident—the really bad kind that makes people slow and stare just to see how awful it is. Everyone in the hallway is looking at me. And I mean
everyone.

It must be about the party. Maybe something happened that I didn’t know about.

Gazes stick on the back of my neck like sap. I force my eyes straight ahead, even ignoring Sierra’s crowd who are bunched around her locker down the hall from mine. For once they pretend not to notice me. At least Todd isn’t with them.

My locker door opens with a rattle. I stare at its plain content—a few rusted spots, books, notebooks—and then I stiffen. Someone is behind me. His breath hits my neck.

Shane Turcott. He’s about as tall as I am—five seven—with dark skin, dark hair, and shockingly black eyes. Drool-worthy, yes, but the kid might as well walk around wearing a sign that says
I Will Make Your Life Suck
.

Turcott slams my locker shut, barely missing my hand that I pull away just in time.

“Heard a rumor about you, Payback.”

I peer down at the open jaws of my backpack. “I have a name, you know.”

He ignores me. “You were on the news this morning.”

My forehead cinches. I have no clue why in the world
I
would be on the news. My audition isn’t until this afternoon. Not that something like that would make the news. I zip the bag shut. “Go away.”

Brilliant. Very original and threatening.

I turn, but Turcott’s lackey, Virgil, is there, and the two of them press me into the lockers. A lock digs into my back.

“Does murder run in the family?” Turcott asks. Virgil chuckles. He has long greasy hair, and more zits than I do. “I know a few people you could hack off for me.”

Spots appear in my vision. He can’t know—he can’t.

“Shut up,” I say, trying to wiggle free. I hold my breath against the smell of weed laced through his, and cringe as he gets closer to me. He rams his phone in my face and taps on what looks like a YouTube video.

I rear back to let my vision focus. It’s a news broadcast. And wouldn’t you know it, the anchor is Sierra’s mom.

The familiar, cheesy news music chimes, and Mrs. Thompson, looking as sleek and poised as her daughter does, starts speaking. “Our top story this morning—”

Up in the corner of the screen lies a picture of my elegant, gray Victorian house with its side tower and pointed dormers, followed by a snapshot of my father’s photo. His professional one from Cedarvale Community College. His glasses hang down over watery eyes, and feathery hair has plastered itself to one side of his head. I try to swallow a bulge in my throat, but my brain seems to have shut down, and I can hardly think.

“Though it’s been months, Nolan’s death is quite mysterious. Sources say Nolan Crenshaw suffered a stroke, but suspicions are raised considering that Crenshaw’s wife, Marian, committed murder nine years ago. She brutally stabbed Hunter Morgan and hid his body in a trap door under their kitchen.”

My knees nearly give out. No. They can’t—this is what Dad, Joel, and I ran away from. What we’ve tried to hide for so long. To make things worse, Mom’s mug shot appears on Turcott’s tiny screen. She’s wearing orange, holding up a white sign with some numbers scribbled on it, and a deranged twinkle resides in her eyes. Oh gosh,
blue
eyes. Like mine.

I close mine tight. Tears threaten the edges with a burning touch, but I fight them back.

“Shut it off,” I plead. “Shut it off!”

Turcott shoves me and presses his phone against my cheek so the voice comes through even louder. I fidget, not daring to move, but hardly able to keep still. It doesn’t make sense how the news possibly found out, or why they’re bringing it up now. I want to morph and become the cinderblock. To slink under the floors and hide.

“Marian Crenshaw is secure in Shady Heights’ Penitentiary. She appears to be unrelated to her husband’s stroke. Stunning new evidence shows that Nolan—”

“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Todd’s voice comes over Turcott’s shoulder, and before I know it my space is my own again and Turcott gets shoved into Virgil.

I take long, slow breaths and shake my hands, trying to release tension. It doesn’t work. Hurt, frustration, and shame build up inside of me like pressure in an aerosol can. No doubt it’s all over Facebook and Quizper by now. I don’t even want to see how many notifications I have this time.