The Girl in the Wall (2 page)

I am given a sparkling seltzer fruit punch that is probably delicious but I can’t really tell. My taste buds, like the rest of me, go numb when I am near anyone from school.

I drift off to an unoccupied corner of the room. The game room is massive, with leather sofas and armchairs, a pool table, and a huge TV with every video game console sold. Usually small stuffed stools and tables are scattered around but now they, along with the pool table, have been pushed aside to make room for the concert setup.

I feel a tiny shiver of delight when I see the amplifier, guitar, stool, and single mic, with rows of chairs arranged in front. I can’t believe I’m going to see Hudson Winters live like this. In the few interviews he’s done he comes off as a snob but it’s hard to care when his music is so awesome. A big guy lurks nearby, probably Hudson’s private bodyguard or something.

“Sera,” a commanding voice calls.

I straighten up as Mr. Barett approaches. In his wake is John Avery, his top assistant and Ariel’s godfather. He’s more like a father to her than Mr. Barett.

“How’s your father?” Mr. Barett asks, giving me a solid shoulder slap that nearly topples me.

“Well, thanks,” I say. I’ve known Mr. Barett forever but he still makes me nervous. “He sends his best.”

“Trying to get out of that money he owes me on our last round of golf,” he says. He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out his sleek phone, a model that hasn’t even been released on the market yet, checks a text, and tucks it back in.

Mr. Avery smiles and leans over to kiss my cheek. He smells like the lemon lozenges he sucks to soothe his smoker’s throat. Mr. Avery sometimes read us bedtime stories when I had sleepovers here, and from the sympathy in his eyes, I’m guessing he realizes me not being over here for the past nine months and four days means bad things for me. That and the fact I’ve been totally ignored by my classmates.

“Is Abby here?” I ask, glancing around for signs of Abby who was five the last time I saw her but would be six now. Mr. Barett and his second wife Stella had a nasty divorce and he rarely gets visits with Abby, but Ariel adores her sister so I’m guessing she’ll make a birthday appearance at some point.

“Not until tomorrow morning,” Mr. Barett says.

It’ll be nice to see Abby, if she even remembers me. We used to include her in our games whenever she was over and it made her so happy. Ariel said Stella neglected Abby and that made Ariel really protective of her, probably since she’d been pretty neglected herself.

“So are you looking forward to the concert?” Mr. Barett asks in a proprietary way.

“Yes,” I say. “I once read that Hudson Winters doesn’t do private shows so this is really cool.”

Mr. Barett smiles. “He does if the price is right,” he says. Then he frowns as he glances outside. “Though he does seem to require an extraordinary amount of security. Who’d have thought a singer needed that many guards with machine guns?”

I follow his gaze and see several figures standing in the yard, machine guns resting over their shoulders. At least I assume they’re machine guns because that’s what Mr. Barett said.

“That’s what his people said he needed,” Mr. Avery says. He would know because he’s usually the one to handle details like that for the Barett family.

“And whatever he needs, he gets,” Mr. Barett says dryly. “I should have been a rock star.”

It’s hard not to laugh at that.

“The concert is about to start,” Mr. Barett says, apparently having received some kind of signal from somewhere. “Come up front with Ariel. I know she’ll want you next to her.”

Yeah, she wants that like she wants to give up a kidney.

“Um, actually my ears are kind of sensitive so I think I’ll stay back here,” I say.

Mr. Barett is about to insist when we hear a commotion, raised voices, a few shrieks. Hudson Winters has arrived. He’s wearing beat-up jeans and a black T-shirt and he’s even cuter than he is in his videos, with piercing hazel eyes, messy brown curls, and the perfect planes of his face. He’s muscular and wide, like a jock, but he moves with a feline grace that makes him even sexier as he picks up his guitar from the stand and settles on the stool, not really looking at anyone. His bodyguard guy lurks near the front of the stage but he mostly looks bored.

Mr. Barett rushes across the huge room, almost tripping over the edge of the hundred-year-old Oriental carpet to get to the mic.

“It’s my great pleasure to present Hunter Winters,” he says grandly.

I wince at the mistake. Of course Mr. Barett has no idea who Hudson is; he just asked around for the name of the hottest, most exclusive singer and decided that was who needed to headline this party. Ariel’s preferences played no part in the choice, not that I feel sorry for her. She is sitting primly in the center of the first row, Bianca on one side of her and her dad now settling in on her other side. John Avery slips out, probably to the upstairs office suite. This kind of music isn’t usually popular with old guys who crunch numbers for a living.

The lights overhead are giving off a soft golden glow but it’s mostly dark, with the last bit of daylight coming in through the huge windows that line the west side of the room. The right side has the oversized fireplace, the one that’s not yet lit. Paintings hang along that wall, one is even an actual Van Gogh, but right now they are just black squares melting into the scenery. The focus is all on Hudson as he strums his guitar lightly and pauses to tune one of the strings.

By now everyone has a seat and I feel safe sitting. Pariahs need to choose seats with care, something I learned the hard way when I went to the end-of-sophomore-year picnic (my mom acted like she might suffer a spontaneous brain aneurysm if I skipped). That night when we were watching the class movie and people were sneaking off to get beer from a keg AJ Green hid in the woods that morning, I was sitting toward the back when a cup of beer got dumped over my head. Sneaking home with beer-soaked clothes and dripping hair was no easy feat and not something I’d like to repeat.

“Hey, I’m Hunter Winters,” Hudson says.

I laugh but no one else does. Hudson glances back at me, as do most of my classmates, and I am mortified that I didn’t just nod coolly at the joke. I stare down at my hands, my cheeks hot.

“I’m going to start with—” Hudson continues.

Mr. Barett coughs loudly and Hudson stops.

“Right, yeah, happy birthday Ariel,” he says, his voice flat. “Sorry I don’t do birthday songs.” As he launches into his break-out song, “Wanting You,” I notice Ariel and Bianca switching seats, their identical blond hair shimmering in the dim light as they resettle. And then I forget Ariel and her followers, that I’m stuck in this terrible place for the entire weekend, and I just sink into the music.

But just as Hudson begins the chorus, the room goes pitch black, the shades falling silently over the windows as the lights are switched off.

Hudson’s voice and guitar trail off into an eerie quiet. A girl giggles and for a moment I think it must be some kind of weird joke. It is dark for about thirty seconds and then I hear a sharp popping sound and the lights flare back on.

I see the body first, a crumpled form by the front of the stage, a growing pool of blood coming from underneath it. It’s Hudson’s bodyguard. In that moment Hudson leaps off the stool and goes to him.

“Everyone on the floor, now,” someone barks.

The room is chaos as people dive off their chairs to lie flat on the floor.

I stretch out on my belly, my heart thumping violently in the compressed space between my chest and the floor. I lift my head the tiniest bit to look around, trying to make sense of this thing that makes no sense. The room is filled with the men I thought were Hudson’s security team, the ones wearing cargo pants and T-shirts, the ones who now have stocking caps pulled low over their faces. The ones who are carrying guns.

Two of them stride over to where Mr. Barett and Ariel lie prone and pull them up. They expertly fold Mr. Barett and Ariel’s arms behind their backs with one hand while holding guns to their temples with the other. I can’t see their faces, just Ariel’s long hair swishing as she is jerked toward the door of the living room.

For a moment everyone else is frozen, but then Ella Kim screams and the person holding Mr. Barett flinches. In that millisecond Mr. Barett shakes free and grabs for the gun. I see his fingers wrap around the barrel just as more shots ring out. I instinctively scrunch down squeezing my eyes shut. I expect to hear more screaming but now silence pulsates like a living thing.

I don’t want to see what has happened, but not knowing is even worse so I slowly raise my head. My classmates are where they were, still plastered to the floor. For a moment I think everything is okay, or at least the same, but then I look toward the front of the room.

Two more people are lying on the floor, both at odd angles. Each has blood running from a head wound, so fast and thick it’s like a faucet has been turned on. My breath is stuck in my chest and for a moment the lack of oxygen makes me light-headed, like I will faint, but still I can’t look away from the bodies on the floor. The bodies that are most surely dead.

The bodies that are Mr. Barett and Ariel.

When the room goes black I feel my energy coil. It’s been a while since I was in actual physical danger but my body remembers and it is prepared. There is a slight rustle behind me and then the shot, loud, makes me jump and leaves the smoky scent of burnt paper in the air. I am up before my mind processes what it was, heading to the fireplace. My fingers are sure as I reach for the catch that springs open the secret door that leads to the hidden passages that wind through my old house. As the lights flicker on I am inside, grate closed firmly behind me. It’s only then that I realize I am panting and my heart is pounding with a sickening heaviness inside my chest.

I lean back against the wall of the tunnel and close my eyes. These tunnels go all over the house, at least the old part. The addition my dad had put on, the one with his office suite, doesn’t have any. I’m not sure why they are here—the Underground Railroad maybe?—but I also don’t think anyone else knows about them. Which means I’m safe for the moment, while I try to figure out what is happening.

I peek out through one of the openings in the grate and gasp. I see a body on the floor. It’s not until Hudson rushes over that I realize it’s his bodyguard. Someone must be trying to kidnap Hudson. But when I look around to see who’s coming for him, I see it’s not Hudson they’re after at all. It’s my dad and Bianca who are being hustled from the room, guns pressed to their temples. For a moment Bianca throws a wild look behind her and I see pure terror in her eyes. Does she know it’s me they want, not her? If so, she needs to say something, now.

That’s when the screaming starts and I see my dad pulling free, grabbing for the gun. Then it’s in his hands, he actually has the gun, can do something, can fight back.

I don’t see who fires the shots but I see them fall, first my dad, then Bianca.

And now two more bodies lie on the floor. My dad’s head is steadily pumping out blood. Next to him is Bianca, her blond hair matted with red and little flecks of gray, the heart necklace I gave her wet with blood.

I stumble backwards, retching, bile burning the back of my throat. But burning even hotter is the thought that screams in my head. That is supposed to be me on the floor, bleeding to death next to my father. Bianca switched seats with me at the last minute so she could have the better view of Hudson Winters. The chain of my own heart necklace is suddenly searing into me and I tear it off, ripping the delicate links, and throw it in a far corner where it’s hidden in shadow.

I am alive and Bianca is dead. And my father—

There is something wet on my face and I realize it’s tears. I am crying, which is weird because I don’t actually feel anything, just a cold numbness at my core. But tears are there and my nose is started to get stuffed up. Still, I feel nothing, just the surreal emptiness, like a dark cavern where my insides used to be. And the knowledge that I will not look out again at the bodies.

Another shot rings out and I scramble over to the grate, my heart in my throat. I see my classmates stumbling around, crying, a few sitting clumped together on the floor. It takes a minute to see that no one has been hurt. The shot was fired by another man in Army pants and a black ski mask. He is probably the man who shot my father. I am looking at the guy who just made me an orphan. I should probably be crying or hysterical but all I feel is this emptiness, like wind is blowing through a cavern in my center. That and a profound thankfulness that my sister Abby isn’t here. Her mother is a pathetic caretaker, but right now I couldn’t be happier that Abby is with her instead of here, in the room where her dad was just killed.

A shiver runs down my spine because if Abby was here, she would probably have been killed too, and that is unthinkable.

“I said to shut up,” the guy says, calmly.

Everybody shuts up. The sight of a gun cradled in the arms of a guy who just shot two people will have that effect. Two other people with stocking caps are efficiently wrapping a tarp around the bodies that used to be Bianca and my father like they are meat in a butcher shop. My stomach lurches and I look away.

“Everyone sit down and keep quiet,” the guy standing in front says.

Once again, everyone obeys. I glance over to the spot by the microphone and the wrapped bodies are already gone. The rug has been pulled forward to cover any lingering stains. It’s as if nothing happened. What’s really weird is that now it almost feels like nothing happened, even though rationally I know my entire life has just changed completely. Does this not-feeling mean I am in shock?

It’s only then that I think about John Avery. I’ve known John since I was born. John is the same age as my dad, fifty-five, but he’s slight and frail from having bad asthma and looks about ten years older, with his wispy salt-and-pepper hair and deep wrinkles from spending way too much time working. He was the one who came to my kindergarten graduation when my dad had a last-minute business trip to Bermuda. He’s the one who brought me roses when I had the lead in the middle school musical and yet again my dad was away. And he’s the one who made sure I had follow-up medical attention after the stuff happened in Mexico. I’m not deluded enough to think he did it out of the kindness of his heart—he did it because his job is to do what my dad says and my dad told him to go film the graduation and the musical and to make sure the Mexico thing was handled. But I think the roses were John’s idea. And he really did look proud when I walked across the stage when I was five.