The Haunting of Renegade X

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “Perkins.” I tilt my head, trying to signal for him to shut up.

  “Oh, no,” Pete says. “I want to hear this.”

  Riley shrugs. “He and Sarah went out for, like, a week.”

  “Sarah. As in, his sidekick?”

  “It was back before I even knew her. Or Damien. I mean, I didn’t know either of them. That’s how we met, because of Sarah, and... Let me start over. They were friends, it didn’t even take a week for Sarah to realize they should stay that way, and she broke up with him. Nothing even happened. Right, X?”

  He tries to meet my eyes. I glance away without thinking. My heart speeds up, and this elevator suddenly feels way too small for two people. There’s a tense silence that makes me wish I was anywhere but here right now.

  An edge of fear creeps into Riley’s voice. “Are you saying something did happen?”

  “I’m not saying anything. It doesn’t even matter now.”

  Pete’s clearly enjoying this. “Sounds like it matters to Perkins here. Sounds like it matters a lot.”

  “Tell me,” Riley says.

  “You don’t really want to know. It’s just going to bother you.”

  “X. Tell me.”

  I swallow. I make myself not look away this time. “We made out.”

  He takes that in. It’s obviously not good news, but not the end of the world, either. “Is that all?”

  “A lot. We made out a lot. That was kind of the whole point of our relationship, because... Listen, Perkins, you don’t need to hear this. It was stupid.”

  “Did you sleep with her?” His voice gets too high when he asks that.

  “No. No. She wanted to. Eventually. She had this plan...”

  Riley’s face is red. He leans against the elevator wall, his fists clenched at his sides. “She wanted to sleep with you. With you. After a week.”

  “See,” Pete says, “now we’re getting somewhere. Go on, Damien. Tell him what you did with his girl.”

  “Nothing!”

  Riley presses his palms to his forehead. “We’ve been going out for five months, and we haven’t... We’ve talked about it. I think, maybe soon, but... God, X. A week?! No, not a week. Because that’s when you broke up.”

  “We were just messing around! That was the whole point. Sarah wanted to experiment.”

  “Experiment.” Now he looks like he’s going to be sick.

  “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Not a big deal?! Did you kiss her? Did you have your tongue in her mouth? Were your hands on her?!”

  I don’t answer, which is answer enough.

  “Don’t tell me it wasn’t a big deal. I thought you and Sarah just hung out. That you maybe went out to dinner or something.”

  “Now that we didn’t do.”

  He glares at me. “And now I find out that you were going to sleep with her. That that was the whole reason you were even together. Not because you were friends, but because she wanted to have sex with you?”

  When he puts it that way... “Perkins, come on.”

  “Have you and her...” He swallows. “You said you didn’t have sex, but did you... Did you get close to it?”

  “No! Look, it wasn’t a one-week plan. It was a two-month plan. And I don’t think Sarah was really that serious about it, anyway. She liked me, and she didn’t know how to tell me.”

  “So she thought she’d just sleep with you?!”

  “It didn’t mean anything! It wasn’t anything like what you guys have. And if she hasn’t slept with you, it’s because you’re actually important to her, so—”

  “I know that! I don’t need you to tell me that!” He lets his head fall back against the wall and scrubs at his face with his hands. “Why did it end?”

  I look down at my shoes. The carpet in the elevator is gray with black swirls in it. I wrap my arms around myself. “I was in love with Kat.”

  “But you were going to sleep with Sarah.” Riley’s voice is heavy with disappointment. And disgust.

  Guilt squirms in my chest, and my face feels too hot. I wish I wasn’t in this elevator, so I could go find a hole to crawl into.

  A slow clap plays through the speaker. “Aaaaaand, scene. That was great, Damien. You dug yourself in real good—you didn’t even need my help. What did I tell you, Perkins? Not so eager to defend him now, are you? And that only took, oh, about five minutes.”

  “Perkins.” My voice comes out strained, and I hate that Pete’s hearing any of this. “It wasn’t what you think.”

  Riley stares into the corner, avoiding me. “You and Sarah didn’t break up because there was nothing between you. You broke up because you were in love with someone else.”

  “I didn’t know I was in love with Kat. I should have, but I didn’t, because... Because I didn’t want to know. Things were complicated between us—”

  “Complicated,” Pete says. “Is that what you call it when your girl cheats on you with your best friend?”

  Riley looks up at that.

  I clench my jaw, trying to ignore Pete. “I wasn’t trying to sleep with Sarah, okay?”

  “But you would have done it anyway,” Riley says.

  “Or,” Pete continues, “is complicated when you best friend goes out with the girl he knows you like and doesn’t care?”

  “I don’t know what I would have done,” I tell Riley. “Maybe I would have gone through with it, but...” I run a hand through my hair and let out a deep breath. “It wouldn’t have felt right, with Sarah. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad that we didn’t get that far. I’m glad that I lost it with Kat.”

  “Wait.” Riley glances over at me. “You were a virgin?”

  I really wish Pete wasn’t listening to this. Not that it’s news to him, but still. “Yeah. I was.”

  “But you... You’re always...”

  “He’s always messing around where he shouldn’t be.” Pete sounds pissed again, and the elevator suddenly jerks upward. “Always trying to make people think he’s something he’s not.”

  My stomach lurches toward the floor, and I grab hold of the metal bar that’s against the wall. I remember this being the slowest elevator ever, but now it’s going up really fast. Because Pete has control of it.

  What’s Kat going to think when she reads my obituary and finds out I came back to the Banking and Finances building and died? I mean, hopefully someone would tell her before she saw it in the paper—especially since Kat doesn’t even read the paper—but either way, she’s going to be pissed. And heartbroken. And probably really confused about what I was even doing here.

  “Don’t be fooled, man,” Pete says. “Virgin or not, he would have done it with her and moved on, and he wouldn’t have lost any sleep over it.”

  “That’s not...” That’s not what would have happened. I know it’s not. “Just ask your stupid question.”

  “My stupid question?! You don’t get it, do you? You’re going to play my game”—the elevator stops moving up and then drops down a ways instead, far enough that I feel like the floor’s falling out from under me, and like I’m going to die—“or you’re going to suffer the consequences.”

  Elevators don’t usually bother me the way stairs do, but this is different. My heart races, and lightning crackles along my skin.

  Riley shoots me a worried look, though I can’t tell if he’s worried about me, or about me blowing up the place. He takes a step away from the metal bar that runs along the wall, probably so I won’t accidentally electrocute him.

  “Flying’s not going to save you in here.” There’s a smugness in Pete’s voice that makes me wish he was still alive, so I could punch him in the face. “You knew I liked Kat. The only reason you even met her was because I introduced you to her. Because I liked her. I told you that. I told you how I felt about her, and you—”

  The elevator drops again, farther this time.

  I slump down to the floor and wrap my arms around my knees. I hate this. I hate this so much. And I really, reall
y hate Pete.

  “Oops,” he says. “Guess I got carried away. Didn’t mean to freak you out. Oh, wait, yes, I did.”

  “You didn’t need to do that.” Riley glares at the speaker where Pete’s voice is coming from, then at the security camera above us. “He’s answering your questions, and you didn’t need to do that!”

  Pete’s voice has a nasty tone to it, and the elevator shakes a little with each word. “Stay. Out. Of. It.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” Riley says to me.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?!” Pete shouts, and I hate to agree with him, but I was kind of thinking the same thing. “He was going to sleep with your girl! He was going to use her, just like he uses everybody!”

  Riley scowls at that—at me—but he doesn’t say anything.

  Him defending me at all at this point is probably more than I deserve. Even if he only did it because I’m huddled in a ball on the floor and he must have felt sorry for me. “You want answers, Pete? Stop shaking the damned elevator and ask me your question already.”

  “Why’d you go after Kat, huh?”

  “Kat made her own choices.”

  “No. I didn’t ask why she ended up with you, I asked why you went after her. You knew I liked her. But you didn’t say, ‘Hey, Pete, is she, like, the love of your life or something? Because maybe I like her, too. Let’s talk about this.’ Nope. The second you met her, you flirted with her like crazy. You started hanging out with her behind my back. As if me liking her meant absolutely nothing to you! Like I meant nothing to you. You were supposed to be my best friend, but you didn’t care about me. We’d been friends since we were kids, but you were willing to throw all that away the second you met her.”

  The elevator drops a little farther. I shut my eyes and press my forehead into my knees. Sparks of lightning prickle along my back.

  “You screwed me over every chance you got. Hell, you probably took Kat just to show me you could. To prove that you always win, and I always end up with nothing. Was that it?!”

  I cringe, waiting for the elevator to drop again, but it doesn’t this time. Instead, it starts moving up higher. “I wasn’t— I didn’t mean to flirt with her.”

  “So you admit that you were.”

  “It just happened. And she flirted back. And then... It wouldn’t have worked out between you two, anyway.”

  “You think you get to decide that? That because you tell yourself that, it makes it okay?!”

  “Kat liked me. She wasn’t into you!”

  “You never gave her a chance to be into me!”

  “We just clicked, okay? And we started hanging out, and before I knew it, we were together. I didn’t even know if you still liked her by then.”

  “Because I hardly ever saw you. Because you always chose her over me.”

  The elevator stops. The number for the top floor lights up, though the doors stay closed.

  Riley exchanges a look with me. I can’t tell if he’s trying to ask if I have a plan, or if he’s just confirming that we’re screwed.

  Which I’m pretty sure we are.

  “But then,” Pete says, “there was that time she chose me over you. At your own birthday party. When you were still going out with her.”

  Rage boils up inside me. I hate him for doing this, and I hate him for bringing that up. “She was upset. It was a mistake.”

  “That’s funny, because she told me that going out with you was the mistake. You know, maybe if you’d cared that I liked her before you took her from me, I might have cared that she was still with you when I made out with her.”

  “That’s so messed up. You want to talk about caring about somebody? You never cared about Kat. Ever.”

  The elevator shakes. “Say that again, Damien. I dare you.”

  Riley’s eyes widen. “Dude,” he whispers, but I pretend like I don’t hear.

  “If you cared about her, you wouldn’t have taken her hostage! You wouldn’t have made out with her when you knew she was with me! And you wouldn’t have let your friends grope her at your party!”

  “Let them? What happened to ‘Kat made her own choices’? And the way I remember it, she was the one begging them.”

  “She was drunk! And she was hurting.” Because I told her there was nothing between us, that there never could be, even though I knew it was a lie.

  “Yeah, and she’s the one who drank all my booze like I’m made of money, even though nobody even invited her. She’s the one who acted like a skank, too. All on her own.”

  “She came to you vulnerable, and what did you do?” Lightning zaps across my arms and surges in my hands. It makes my hair stand on end. I get to my feet, because I’m not going to say this from the floor. “You know what those guys were going to do to her. She couldn’t say no, and you weren’t going to stop them. If I hadn’t shown up—” My voice shakes. So do my hands. “You want to claim that I don’t care about anybody? You never cared about Kat! You can be pissed all you want that I ended up with her, but the truth is, you were never good enough for her!”

  Pete’s voice is harsh and cold. “Wrong answer, Damien.”

  And then the elevator drops into a free fall.

  Chapter 6

  I TAKE BACK WHAT I said earlier. Getting in this elevator was definitely the stupidest thing we’ve done all night. Possibly in our entire lives, which are about to end.

  I feel like I don’t weigh anything. This is so much worse than falling off the top of the building. At least then I could see how much farther I had before I hit the ground. And of course I could fly. Just barely, but it was enough to save myself. It won’t help here, like Pete said, plus, even if it would, it wouldn’t help Riley.

  He’s going to die because of me.

  He’s going to die thinking I’m a bad person, and hating me for how I treated Sarah. And maybe I deserve that. Maybe Pete’s right about me, and I did ruin things between us. But I’m not going to let that happen with Riley.

  “Perkins, I—”

  A horrible screeching sound of metal on metal interrupts me and fills my ears as the elevator’s brakes kick in, trying to slow us down. It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard. The whole elevator shakes, like it’s going to fall apart. I don’t feel weightless anymore, and the change in speed slams both me and Riley to the floor. I lie down, bracing myself for impact, and hold my breath until my lungs ache. Riley does the same.

  It’s not slowing fast enough. We’re going to hit the ground. We’re going to hit the ground.

  And then—

  We don’t. The elevator stops moving. The brakes stop screeching.

  “Just kidding,” Pete says, and there’s this manic edge in his voice that makes me think it took effort for him not to kill us. “You didn’t think you’d get off that easy, did you?”

  I pick myself up off the floor. I’m covered in sweat, and all my muscles are trembling. My heart’s beating way too fast. But I’m alive. And so is Riley.

  “Nah,” Pete goes on. “After everything you’ve done to me, where’s the fun in that?”

  The elevator starts moving up again.

  He’s going to drop us over and over, until the brakes stop working or he makes a mistake. Or until he decides he’s had enough. And then we’re both dead. But that’s assuming I don’t freak out, go all electric, and accidentally obliterate Riley first.

  And all that because luring me here and trying to kill my friends wasn’t good enough the first time. He had to come back from the dead and try to do it again. Anger and hatred burn in my chest. Lightning washes over my skin.

  “You can throw me down as many times as you want, Pete, but it won’t change the facts!”

  “Us,” Riley says. “You’re going to get us both killed.”

  “Kat liked me better! She never even saw you that way!”

  The elevator shakes. Pete’s voice is a low growl. “Watch your mouth.”

  “It’s been years, and you still can’t stop whining about it? That�
��s just sad.”

  Riley glares at me. “Will you shut the hell up?!”

  “This isn’t about Kat,” Pete says. “This is about you. And I’d listen to your... Well, maybe friend isn’t the right word. Not after tonight.”

  “Fine. You’re not mad that Kat picked me, you’re mad that I ditched you. That I moved on. With a personality like yours, Pete, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner!”

  “X.” Riley’s eyes meet mine, dead serious about this. “Stop. Talking.”

  I ignore him, still addressing Pete. “In fact, you’re lucky I hung around with you as long as I did!”

  Pete screams in rage. The elevator drops a little ways.

  “Dude!” Riley’s so mad, he’s shaking, and I think he might try and tackle me if I wasn’t covered in lightning. “Shut up already!”

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Riley this pissed at me. I stare at him, not because I’m shutting up like he wants, but because I’m not sure what to say.

  “Knew that was coming,” Pete says. “But you’ve got to ask yourself something, Damien. Is Perkins this mad because you won’t keep your mouth shut, or because you can’t keep your hands to yourself?”

  Riley glances away.

  The elevator starts moving up again. “Can’t say I blame him. Finding out that his girl wanted you first, that she had plans for you? That’s rough, man. He’s probably wondering if she ever regrets not getting her chance with you. If she wishes she’d seen you naked so she doesn’t have to use her imagina—”

  “That’s enough, Pete!” I shout. “Sarah’s not... She doesn’t think about me like that.” Not anymore.

  “And what about you? You were into her little plan—you must have had the same thoughts about her.”

  Riley cringes. His face is red, and he can’t even look at me.

  Pete keeps going. “Doesn’t matter if Perkins has gotten farther with her. He’s always going to know that before she did anything with him, she pictured every detail about what it would be like to do it with you.”

  “You don’t know that!” I clench my fists to keep myself from zapping the speaker, because all I want right now is for him to shut up. But Pete getting the chance to torture us is probably the only reason he hasn’t killed us yet.