by Kate Morris
Chapter Ten
October
She avoided him on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at school, skipped the three classes they were in together, but by Thursday, he caught up to her.
Wren had lied to Jamie about the festival, the man in the alley, and the woman in the pharmacy. Omission was still a lie. She wasn’t a little kid anymore. She knew it was a lie not to tell him, but he’d never let her out of the trailer if he knew what had happened. He’d gotten the alert on his phone, but she’d explained it away as nothing major, something overblown and silly, a small-town drama. Her bruises were covered well enough that he hadn’t noticed those, either. She owned a lightweight black turtleneck and was wearing it with t-shirts over it to keep it in circulation longer.
“Can I talk to you?” Elijah requested at her locker, startling her and drawing many stares from their classmates, who worshipped him. He was also pretty damn hard to miss. He was as wide as a bull and tall, too. She felt dwarfed by him, which was silly because she’d never thought of herself as short at five-feet six inches.
She glanced around at the gawkers and pulled her hoodie down over her forehead lower, “No, I-I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I found out some stuff about the other night you might want to hear,” he said.
This got her attention, and she looked up at him, tried not to also gawk at his pretty brown eyes and stupidly long eyelashes. He swiped a hand through his perfectly sun-kissed blonde hair. She also had to force herself not to stare as his arm muscles flexed when he rested his hand flat above her head against the locker beside her. Elijah always looked like he just came from the gym with veins that stood out and muscles that bulged. He was so annoying.
“What’d you find out?” she asked and cleared her voice as she stashed books. She tried to seem nonchalant, but she actually really wanted to know what he found out. It was a dilemma because that night had been haunting her thoughts ever since, but she didn’t want to have to be beholden to Elijah Brannon.
“Meet me behind the gym at lunch. You know, where you go to talk on the phone,” he said.
This really captured her attention. How’d he know that? She chewed the inside of her cheek and wanted to tell him to get stuffed but didn’t.
“Hey, Elijah,” one of his fangirls purred as she boldly inserted herself between them, which was rude and nearly impossible to do. Wren was actually bumped backward.
She figured the girl was getting nervous he might be turning his attention to her. She didn’t want it, but this girl was a rude asshole. She’d already had a few run-ins with her and some of her friends. Melanie. Megan. Something like that.
“Make any decisions about Saturday?” she asked, twirling the end of her ponytail in her fingers.
“Saturday?” he asked with open irritation.
The girl said, “Duh, homecoming?”
“What?” he asked with growing hostility and tried to see Wren around the girl, who was a lot taller than her. It didn’t help that she was wearing spiky, high heels, too. “Missy, I’ll talk to you later.”
“But the girls are asking, Elijah,” she kept on going.
“Wren,” he said, trying to talk around her. “Can you…”
Missy interrupted them. “I’ve already got a dress and everything. I’m all ready to go. I just need the perfect guy to…”
Wren spun the girl with one arm and shoved her away, into the aisle.
“Look, you fucking wombat, you can give him a wristy later,” she swore. “We’re talking.”
“Bitch!” Missy shouted, drawing even more attention.
“Fuck off, asshole,” Wren said, standing her ground. The girl saw the intent in her eyes and huffed. She left with her friends who threw a few choice words at her as they retreated like ‘loser,’ ‘weirdo,’ and other unoriginal slams. Missy questioned her friends, asking what a wombat was. What a moron.
When she turned back, Elijah was ginning. “Well, that settled that.”
“Anyway,” she said, encouraging him to continue.
“Meet me at lunch,” he said.
Wren replied with, “I can’t. I have to leave early today.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
She didn’t want to say, so she lied. “Er, doctor appointment.”
His wide mouth turned down as he stared at her. “You’re gonna have to get better at lying if you want me to believe you, Wren Foster. Where are you really going?”
He irritated her so badly. Why in the last four years of this shit was he the only boy to notice every little thing? Why was he the only one that noticed her at all?
“How ‘bout this, I’ll meet you after practice,” he suggested.
“I can’t. My uncle’s gonna lo-jack my ass if I keep it up.”
“Tell him you’re working out. I’ll meet you at the gym at four. I’ll be done with practice by then.”
She considered this. He might believe her if she lied and told him she wanted to train harder. It might work. She’d just have to be careful not to let him spot her. The new stadium was being built about a mile away.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Fine. But I can’t be there till four-thirtyish.”
“Cool. I’ll grab a shower first then. You’ll be thankful for that anyway,” he said with charm as the bell went off to warn the students to get to class.
“Great,” she offered with sarcasm.
“We better run,” he said and touched her elbow, which was strange.
“You’re the golden boy. You could probably take the rest of the year off and still get passed through with a 4.0.”
“Yeah, but what kind of person would that make me if I took advantage of the system like that?” he asked, making her think about him differently. “Hey, wait a sec. What the heck’s a wristy?”
She smiled, laughed out loud, and left him without an answer as she closed her locker and walked away. His shout of laughter made her blush.
There were only two more classes she had to sit through before she was able to leave. Driving out of town, she tried not to think about that incident in the alley as she passed by it. She also avoided looking at the bloodstains on the sidewalk and in the road as she drove through the area of the city where they’d set up the festival right in the street.
For the last few nights since that event, she hadn’t slept well. She woke from horrible nightmares. It had been a while since she had those. Now, there was just new material from which her brain could pull and torment her. Now, the night terrors were back, but this time, they came with crazed people who could not be reasoned with, who wanted to kill her.
What was wrong with those people? It seemed like they all had the same problem. Was this lame town experiencing some sort of mass psychotic episode or something? Elijah had hit on some interesting points the other night in his dead parents’ bathroom.
He’d also touched her in a way no other boy ever had, and it scared the hell out of her. She wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend. Is that what he wanted? Probably not. It didn’t matter. Not only could she not have a boyfriend, she also couldn’t have friends. Her uncle would have a fit if he even knew about Elijah. After she heard what he had to say later, she was done with him.
The nightmares were horrible, but she also wasn’t getting sleep from not being able to fall asleep, too. The thing that was keeping her lying awake at night since Saturday was the fact that she’d dropped her gun. What a perfect idiot! What did he think of her? What had he thought of the gun? Her intention was never to see him again or have to hear his answers to those questions. She knew he’d want to know why she had a gun in her jacket. Those answers, and pretty much all other questions he asked were off-limits. Then they’d be moving again. She just had to make it two more months here. Then they’d be gone, and Elijah Brannon would be a distant memory. Wren hadn’t wanted to admit it, but that thought kept her up, too.
Wren tried not to think about that night and just kept her eyes on the road ahead of her. S
he drove about twenty miles north to a former industrial area in a town called Akron. There, she went to a long-ago abandoned warehouse she found by the precise directions she was given by Jamie before he left for work this morning.
Pulling up to the wide door meant for delivery trucks to pull in, it opened immediately for her to enter. She checked her pistol, kept her hand on it until she was sure everything was safe. Then she cut the engine and got out.
She hated these meetings. They were so lame and invasive and time-consuming. She usually felt drained after one. This time, however, she sat through the droning and nagging and the interrogations without complaining too much. The events of the festival were brought up. So was the pharmacy and the man in the alley. Warnings were issued. She asked questions and got zero answers about those crazy people. At the end, plans were reviewed, memorized, repeated, a thick envelope of cash was given to her, and she was permitted to leave.
She drove back through the dodgy end of Akron, jumped on the freeway and drove back toward home, her temporary home. She blasted music in the car and sang along. It was something she and her mother used to like doing and reminded Wren of their time together.
She took the exit for the Strip, a shopping district in Canton, which was just north of her town. She hit the shoe store and got a new pair of New Balance gym shoes and a pair of black leather boots because hers were getting pretty worn out. Then she hit an Old Navy store and bought a few long sleeve tees and three sweaters. This colder weather was killing her.
“Do you have our Old Navy points card?” the perky girl behind the counter asked.
“No,” she answered honestly.
“Oh, great! I can hook you right up!”
That was not going to happen. “No, thanks.”
“But you can save…”
“No,” Wren cut her off. Then she applied her practiced but unencouraging smile. “Thanks anyway.”
“…yeah, now he’s sick. I hope he gets better,” another employee was saying to her co-worker as they folded and stacked shirts on a table behind Wren.
“I heard something’s going around. My dad’s friend at work got something like that. He hasn’t returned to work. My dad keeps callin’ the hospital, but they won’t tell him anything. He’s in charge of H.R. where they both work, so he wanted to know if he should put in a leave of absence for him, but they won’t tell him what’s wrong. He called the guy’s wife, and she said they won’t let her see her husband at the hospital.”
Perky Chick was still droning on about the benefits of the discount card as she rang up Wren’s order.
The other girls were still gossiping: “And my sister, Janice, said that three people at her company caught it. She knows for sure that one of ‘em died. It was weird, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“They wouldn’t let her husband make funeral arrangements. They said they needed to do an autopsy. Weird, huh? Why would they need an autopsy if it was just the flu?”
“Is that what she was diagnosed with?”
“Yes. The others, too.”
“Oh, shit. I hope my boyfriend doesn’t have that flu.”
The other girl said, “Don’t worry. He’s tough. He won’t croak.”
She laughed it off, but her co-worker with the sick boyfriend only managed a single, nervous chuckle. When she saw Wren listening, she dropped her gaze quickly to hide her discomfort. Whatever was wrong with her boyfriend, it must’ve been bad.
She paid her bill with cash and left the store, keeping the front of her ball cap down and her hood pulled up and around her face. There were surveillance cameras on the tops of these buildings.
By the time she got back to her town, it was time to meet Elijah. Unfortunately, Hope was spending the day with her grandparents, so she hadn’t had a good excuse to ditch him. If she was being honest with herself, she really didn’t want to anyway. The part she lied about was that she only wanted to see him to get information he had.
She passed a few of the football players coming out of the gym, who took an exaggerated wide berth back from her and one even whistled.
“Hey, baby, where ya’ headed?” another asked.
“Wherever you’re not,” she said, getting a laugh from one and a sneer from the one who’d asked. She kept going and ignored their jeering and teasing.
Wren found him waiting for her in the workout center. He was lifting weights, which she thought was odd since everyone was leaving for the day. As soon as he spotted her, he dropped the dumbbells and rushed over to her.
“Hey,” he said. “Doctor appointment go okay?”
She rolled her eyes because he’d already figured it out that she didn’t have a doctor appointment, but she kept up the ruse. “Yeah, great. I’m not pregnant.”
His eyes widened. Then he threw back his head and laughed loudly. Then he realized she might not have been joking and sobered quickly.
“It was a joke.”
“Good. I was hoping it was,” he said. “Have you ever had any scares like that?”
She jerked back, “That’s not any of your business.”
He just grinned, and Wren looked around at the empty gym. Beyond the training center was the pool and the gym where the players probably did stuff that she didn’t know about. She wasn’t sure why they needed a basketball court. Maybe the basketball team practiced in there. This town didn’t seem like it would’ve spent money on anything other than football.
“Wanna’ work out with me?” he asked next.
“No, I don’t know how to do all of this stuff,” she admitted.
“Here, let me show you,” he said and took her hand, even though she didn’t want him to.
He led her to the rack of weights like he was using and picked one up. Then he brought it up to his shoulder.
“Bicep curl,” he said.
“Is that what you were doing when I came in here?”
He nodded, “Yeah. Wanna’ try?”
She was curious. Other than running, she’d never played sports or worked out. There wasn’t an opportunity because she moved around too much. She might not ever get the chance to try any of this again, so she took the weight from him and almost dropped it.
“Whoa,” he said and took it back. “Twenty-five pounds is probably too much.”
“Good Lord! Is that what you use?”
He chuckled. “A little more actually. Here, you can use a five pounder. Fits your puny chicken wings better.”
“Hey! No insulting,” she warned, getting another laugh.
He showed her some exercises and did them alongside her using much heavier weights. He did bicep curls with one that was even bigger than the one she almost dropped. Then he showed her some of the equipment. He was wearing shorts, and Wren could see how thick his thigh muscles were. They were like tree trunks. Hers did look puny compared to his.
“Do the cheerleaders work out in here?” she asked as she pushed a stack of weights up with her feet while laying on her back on the machine. After just a few pushes, her legs were already getting sore.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I think the girls’ volleyball team does. The coaches don’t intermingle us. They don’t want the guys getting distracted.”
“Would you?”
He smiled and helped her off the machine. “Maybe if you were working out in here.”
She shot him down with a look. Why was he so flirtatious all the time? It made no sense. He knew she was leaving. She’d made that quite clear. Wren pulled her hand free from his and looked past him at the dark gym. The pool lights were all off, too. Everyone was gone. Outside, the sun had set. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost six. The winds must’ve picked up outside because leaves were being carried on them past the floor-to-ceiling windows at the other end of the center.
“What time does this place close?” she asked, looking around.
“For players? Never. We just use our cards and swipe in anytime we want. Then we log our workout, depending on wha
t we did.”
“Oh, will you have to record what we just did?”
He grinned crookedly. “No. That wasn’t much of a workout.”
“Hm,” she remarked indignantly. It felt like one to her.
“Want something to drink? There’s a fridge over here,” he said, leading her to the alcove, which was equally as dark as it was outside.
He opened the big refrigerator door and took out two sports drinks and handed one to her, which she couldn’t open again. He opened his and traded her.
“We need to get you in here more often,” he remarked and walked with her back to a bench where he sat. She took a seat next to him. For some reason, this place just got suddenly creepy. She told herself it was just because they were the only two people in it, and it was dark outside, which cast a lot of shadows inside. “We need to build up your forearms so you can open your own drinks when you move away.”
“Ha-ha, funny,” she said with irritation. “I do just fine.”
“Is that why you carry a gun?” he asked, causing her to snap to attention and glance around.
“Elijah!” she whispered and caught sight of a surveillance camera up in the corner. She attempted to rise, but he hooked his finger in her belt loop and pulled her back down onto the bench.
“Everyone’s gone. Don’t worry. Like I said before, I’d never tell anyone what you say. I may be their all-star football player, but I’m not all that connected to these people. They were a means to an end. That’s all. I’m getting me and my brother out of here at the end of the school year.”