Lead Me Not

by A. Meredith Walters

  This guy she was dating, Blake, was a junior and had just transferred from another school. I hadn’t taken a whole lot of notice of him. He was nondescript in that trying-too-hard-to-be-unique-but-I’m-actually-just-like-everyone-else way. He subscribed to the emo thing a little too religiously. With the black, side-swept hair that fell over his eyes and the skinny jeans and guy-liner, he looked like he had stepped out of the pages of Teen Angst Magazine.

  I had seen the people this Blake dude had chosen to hang out with, and it was common knowledge they were the druggie crowd. But they seemed more interested in playing the part of hardcore fringies than actually walking the walk. I didn’t take them seriously.

  Nobody did.

  Jayme crossed her arms over her barely there chest and glowered at me. She was only just now starting to develop boobs. She had been complaining for years about how flat she was and her ass being like a piece of cardboard. My sister was a late bloomer, and she was fixated on it. Her lack of curves seemed to hit her self-confidence hard. She would say she was ugly, that no boy would ever look at her. So when Blake showed interest, she had been sucked in by his compliments and attention.

  She didn’t see him for what he really was—a pathetic bully who preyed on girls like Jayme. And she didn’t see herself as Mom, Dad, and I did—as a beautiful young girl with her life ahead of her.

  She only saw what Blake wanted her to see. She became the girl he wanted. She followed in his dark footsteps eagerly.

  “I love him, Aubrey. We’re going to be together forever,” she said with the passion of inexperience. I rolled my eyes again, not believing her in the slightest.

  “What’s the rush, Jay? Why can’t you just date around and see who you like? Why does it have to be all blood and guts?” I asked, wishing she’d shut up already so I could get back to my reading. I had a mountain of homework to get through, and the longer she stood there talking about her stupid boyfriend, the less time I had to get it finished.

  “He’s the only one who gets me. You just don’t understand,” she wailed, stomping out of my room and slamming the door. I honestly didn’t understand her constant need to rush things, why she had to jump in with both feet before she had even learned to swim. But Jayme had always been in a hurry to live. In a hurry to love.

  In a hurry to die.

  I hadn’t seen the way Jayme had slowly started to change every tiny thing about herself. Eventually she stopped talking to me altogether. We became strangers living in the same house as she pulled further and further away from her family and into the world of Blake Fields and his friends.

  And I hadn’t noticed she had gone anywhere until it was too late.

  Until the night Jayme Marie Duncan never came home.

  Until she was found asphyxiated on her own vomit in an alleyway outside a notorious druggie hangout, overdosed on drugs I pretended she didn’t take.

  I noticed then. When it didn’t matter anymore.

  “Just take it one day at a time,” I whispered to Renee as she started to drift off to sleep, exhausted from crying her soul out.

  Renee nodded, her eyes drooping shut. “Thanks, Aubrey,” she muttered before falling asleep.

  I lay there a long time afterward, staring at the ceiling and thinking about all the ways my life had gone wrong, and how now, when I thought I was finally getting it right, I was poised to screw up all over again.

  I wondered what Maxx was doing. Was he out up to something nefarious and shady? Was he stoned out of his mind, overdosing in a gutter?

  I thought about him selling drugs to those people in the club, and how smug and entitled he had seemed. I hated that man.

  But then my mind switched gears, and I thought about Maxx telling me about his brother and worrying that he’d fail him. I couldn’t ignore the pull of him and the way he made me want to help him. How easy it would be to fall down the hole with him.

  I rolled onto my side and stared at the bruised face of my friend. She and Jayme were all mixed up in my head. And they were twisted with the memory of Maxx when I confronted him about Compulsion. The way he had split himself open when he realized I had seen him. He had been devastated.

  He had broken.

  And goddamn it, I wanted to gather up all those pieces and put them in my pocket. I wanted to make sure he could put himself back together again.

  I would never be able to turn away from Renee.

  And I couldn’t turn my back on Maxx.

  chapter

  seventeen

  aubrey

  i had been up most of the night with Renee while she alternated between crying and screaming into her pillow. Her phone had started ringing around midnight. At first, we ignored Devon’s persistent calling. But around the fifth time, I turned it off, and Renee didn’t argue. Her red, swollen face had been set with grim acceptance.

  When I got up the next morning for my lecture, I checked on Renee and was glad to see she was still asleep. I had convinced her to skip classes today and rest. She was worried about running into Devon and embarrassed for people to see her face.

  I assured her the bruises could be covered up and the swelling in her lip would be gone by morning. Renee had seemed mollified by that and had finally stopped fretting about it.

  After her initial admission about Devon’s abusive behavior, she had stopped talking about him altogether. She stated she wasn’t ready to hash out everything, and I begrudgingly backed off.

  Stepping out into the crisp air, I took a deep breath, letting it fill my lungs. I wrapped my coat a little tighter around myself and started walking down the street. I noticed a bunch of painters heading around the back of my apartment building.

  I overheard several of them grumbling about “fucking kids and their stupid graffiti.” Curious, I followed them and came to a quick stop. I tilted my head back and took in the gigantic painting along the back wall of my building.

  “What the hell?” I mumbled to myself. It was amazing. Absolutely stunning. But it was also extremely disturbing.

  Because someone had painted a beautiful sky raining . . . blood? There were two people, a man and a woman, each with bright blond hair, holding hands, walking along what looked like a macabre version of the yellow brick road into a stormy sea while the gorgeous clouds above their heads unleashed a torrent of blood around them.

  The ground was a mass of interconnected Xs, giving away the artist’s identity. I should have known. The style was one of a kind.

  But why had the mysterious street artist painted this on the back of my building? Because again, this clearly had nothing to do with Compulsion. This was a painting meant to say something else entirely.

  The painters were putting up their ladders and opening up tins of white paint. They were getting ready to cover it up. And the thought of them destroying it made me feel panicky inside.

  “Wait!” I called out just as a middle-aged man with a potbelly and a bald spot swiped his paintbrush over the blissfully happy couple in the picture. He looked over his shoulder at me in irritation.

  “Do you have to paint over it?” I asked, realizing how ridiculous I sounded.

  “Look, lady, the landlord hired us to fix this shit. Not our call. So why don’t you let us get to work,” another guy said, dipping his brush in the pot and bringing it up to the wall, smearing white over the vivid colors.

  I didn’t say another word. I backed up and watched as the painters slowly eradicated the beauty X had clearly spent a lot of time creating. I felt as though I were witnessing a murder. It seemed a crime to undo something so beautiful as though it had never been there at all.

  Feeling strangely sad, I forced myself to walk away, unable to stand there another moment while the men so callously covered up the picture.

  Normally, I would meet Brooks for a coffee before my first class on Friday morning. But he hadn’t responded to my multiple texts. So I made my way to the coffee shop just off campus by myself.

  I hated feeling lonely, and this mor
ning I felt it acutely. I hated feeling that there was something going on with Brooks and that he was purposefully keeping his distance. I was going to have to confront it head-on eventually, but with everything that was happening right now, I selfishly didn’t feel like expending the energy the situation required.

  I got my caramel latte and a muffin and sat down at my usual table by the window. I pulled out my notes in case there was a pop quiz and took a small sip of my hot beverage. I spent some time people-watching.

  It was then that I saw a familiar set of broad shoulders and a head covered in a gray beanie coming into the coffee shop.

  I thought hard about slinking down in my seat to avoid being seen, but then I thought better of it. Why should I hide? There was nothing wrong with him seeing me, even if just the sight of him caused me to flush to the tip of my toes at the memory of our encounter in the hallway.

  As if sensing me there, Maxx’s eyes met mine. I raised my hand in a halfhearted wave, wiggling my fingers.

  He smiled that smile that lit up his face.

  He is so coming over here, I thought to myself as I waited on pins and needles for him to get his coffee and make the trek to my table.

  “Is this seat taken?” he asked, his eyes dancing at our inside joke. But unlike the time he had asked that question in the library, I offered the chair—not without hesitation, but with a lot less of it. I couldn’t help that I still had misgivings about being seen with him. My lips tingled and my heart smacked against my rib cage, but I felt an undeniable wariness.

  Maxx pulled off his beanie and dropped it on the table. He picked up his mug and blew off the steam before taking a sip. I sat there, staring at him, my tongue tied up in knots.

  “So, thanks for leaving me stuck with Kristie, by the way,” he joked, taking another sip.

  I laughed nervously, cutting my muffin up into small pieces. “Yeah, sorry,” I muttered.

  “Sorry? I’ll leave you to talk about ‘solidifying your support systems’ for an hour and see how you feel.” He was being relaxed, teasing me with a twinkle in his eyes.

  He looked happy.

  It took me aback for a moment. I wasn’t used to seeing him this way. I had grown accustomed to the tortured brokenness hidden behind an overly confident exterior.

  But today Maxx was laid-back, as though by acting casual, he was trying to make me forget how he had fallen apart. How he had shown me a side of himself that was scared and unguarded.

  This time when I laughed, it was real. “That sucks. She can go on a bit,” I conceded.

  “You think?” Maxx scoffed, reaching across the table and snatching a handful of my crumbled muffin.

  “What is it with you and stealing my food?” I asked as he chewed.

  “It just tastes better when it’s yours.” And there it was. The sexual innuendo I had been waiting for. But it didn’t irritate me the way it once would have. Instead, it set my skin on fire.

  Two girls passed by our table, and I noticed the way they glanced down at Maxx and flashed their best flirty eyes at him. But his eyes never left my face.

  I squirmed at being the center of his intense attention. “So, about Tuesday,” he began.

  I held up my hand, stopping him. “Do we really need to talk about it?” I asked, mildly mortified to be talking about our encounter in the middle of a coffee shop, where anyone could hear us.

  Maxx’s face darkened, but then it cleared. “I was just wondering when we could do it again?” he asked, and I jumped at the touch of his hand, reaching under the table to touch my thigh.

  “Um . . . ,” I stuttered.

  His fingers traced lazy circles on my jeans, inching slowly upward. I covered his hand with my own, pinning his palm to my leg.

  Maxx chuckled and removed his hand. “Well, I’m game whenever you are,” he stated breezily, as though talking about the weather. I got the impression that my lack of response had hurt him. And being the person that he was, he covered up the hurt with unaffected seductiveness.

  Before I could respond, Maxx got to his feet and pulled his beanie on. His hand briefly touched my shoulder before he gave me a smile and left. The entire exchange had lasted five minutes, and I was left confused and annoyingly turned on.

  That boy was bad for the heart.

  I wanted to see him again. Even though I knew I should ignore the urge, I didn’t. Who was this girl with such a lack of impulse control?

  I pulled my car into the parking lot of the abandoned department store where Compulsion was happening tonight. My legs wanted to run toward the booming music, but my nerves held me back.

  Now that I was here, I wasn’t entirely sure what I had been thinking. The Maxx Demelo who belonged here wasn’t necessarily the man who belonged with me. He scared me. He terrified me. He fascinated me.

  I tucked my cell phone into my purse and looped it around my arm, securing it close to my body. My heart thudded in my chest almost in time to the bass, which I could hear bleeding into the night air.

  I headed toward the line of people who waited just as they waited every single time Compulsion came alive—wanting their chance, hoping they were enough to be given it.

  I approached the front of the line and watched as more and more people were turned away. I never understood why some were allowed inside and others were told to leave. There didn’t seem to be any rationale to it. Randy, the scary doorman, always seemed to relish the tiny bit of power he had as the gatekeeper.

  But after that first night, when Brooks and I had been turned away, I hadn’t had a problem. I know I would never look the part. I still didn’t fit in with the people who came here, but it was as though I had a magic pass that I wasn’t aware of.

  Again, I stood in front of Randy and the other bouncer. He gave me a cursory once-over and then held out his hand for my money, which I put in his outstretched palm. He grabbed my wrist and roughly turned my hand over, pressing the stamp on my skin.

  Just as I moved toward the door, I noticed another group being told to go home. The girls, dressed to the nines and way more clubbed-out than I was, started throwing a fit.

  One girl wearing a dress cut so low that her boobs were in serious danger of flopping out pointed at me while curling her lip. “Why does that bitch get in and we don’t? She’s a total waste!”

  I flushed in embarrassment at the unwanted attention I was receiving from the people in line. They all seemed to be judging me. And clearly I was coming up short. Pardon me if I didn’t dress for the goth and metal crowd.

  Randy gave the girl and her friends a nasty glare. “Get the fuck out of here. Some people belong here. Others don’t. You don’t,” he growled. I knew the look he was giving them. It was the same one Brooks and I had received that first night. I shuddered, almost feeling sorry for them.

  Boobs girl huffed and puffed in indignation, pushing her obviously surgically enhanced chest out for optimum effect before stomping off with her friends in tow.

  The other bouncer, whom I had never bothered to pay attention to before, turned to look at me. I was still lingering just in front of the door, and he gave me a pointed look to get moving.

  “The fun’s in there, baby. Though I’m sure I can find something for you to do out here if you’re interested.” He grinned and then licked his lips. He was cute in a rough-and-tumble sort of way, with a buzzed head and a face full of metal. I knew, without a doubt, that I couldn’t handle this guy’s idea of fun.

  I hurried inside the club, followed by the bouncer’s laughter. The club was as it always was—dark and oppressive, but with an energy that couldn’t be described.

  I wanted to dance. I wanted to get wild. It’s what people came here for. How easy it was to forget who I was and why I was there. The appeal of it was never lost on me. But I wanted to find Maxx. I had to talk to him here, on his turf.

  I started pushing through the crowd, trying to search the shadowed faces for the one I recognized. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I rem
embered how hard it had been for me to find Renee, and I had been able to do so only with Maxx’s help.

  Maybe if I stood by the bar, he’d find me. He always had before. I ordered a beer and leaned against the wall, watching, waiting. I was nervous. Actually, I was a mess. I hadn’t thought this search-and-rescue mission through.

  What did I hope to accomplish by tracking Maxx down at the club? I really had some unrealistic, no-way-in-hell ideas when it came to Maxx Demelo. I could admit that I was already succumbing to the daydream in which I was that girl, the one he would change for.

  But I blamed him entirely for making me feel that way. Because he made me think that I was that girl, that he was counting on me to pull him out of the chaos he found himself in.

  I didn’t even begin to understand exactly what demons he was facing, the struggles he dealt with on a daily basis. I was given glimpses of a tortured soul barely treading water.

  Or was that my overly dramatic mind looking for the person who needed me to save him?

  Who fucking knew? Maxx had screwed royally with my head.

  I wasn’t even trying to be subtle as I perused the room, seeking him out. I inadvertently caught the attention of a few less than savory individuals, but I straightened my spine and quickly turned away, hoping the obvious rebuff would be enough to dissuade them.

  And then I found the person I didn’t want to find.

  Brooks was out on the dance floor with a girl I vaguely recognized. Brooks was a really bad dancer, as in shouldn’t-be-out-in-public-with-moves-like-that bad. But this was a place where style and technique didn’t matter, which was lucky for him, because he looked like he was in the throes of a full-on body spasm.

  The girl he was with was cute in an unassuming way. She had blond hair that was very similar to my shade and style. She had clearly done a Google search on club attire and had gone for the most extreme example she could find. She was decked out in head-to-toe black leather. She had a flickering glow stick between her teeth, and she bobbed her head around in awkward, jerky movements. She belonged here about as much as I did.