Hidden Worlds

by Kristie Cook

  “Okay, I’d love to come. I missed dinner. I just need to use the bathroom, and then I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

  Opening the back door to the parking lot, I come face to face with the Golden Goose. Buns parks it directly under the flood light by the back door so I am able to get a good look at her car. It’s a late model Grand Marquee in the most metallic shade of gold ever created. Buns hits the horn, and it wheezes out a honk that sounds suspiciously like a goose. I open the back door on the driver’s side, climb in, and as soon as I shut the door, Buns hits the accelerator. The car handles like a vehicle meant to be in water; it feels like a big land yacht.

  “Buns, is this your parents’ car?” I ask her suspiciously.

  “It was Elise’s car, but she gave it to me when she got a new one,” Buns says, looking at me in the rearview mirror. As she did so, the car casually drifts over the double yellow lines in the road before Brownie puts her hand on the wheel to gently pull us back to our lane. Buns seems not to notice the helping hand.

  “Is Elise your mom?” I ask interestedly, watching to see who’d be driving the car when Buns answers the question.

  “Elise and Charlie Bonds are my parents,” Buns says sweetly, but we don’t drift into the other lane this time.

  “And before you ask, no they’re not pimps,” Brownie says good-naturedly. Brownie has kind of nailed the essence of this car; it does seem suspiciously like a pimpmobile. Buns smiles pleasantly as the car sways over the road with the consistency of a butterfly. “They own several ice cream stores in the Fort Wayne area. You should see the little uniforms that Buns wears to dish out ice cream. She works for her parents during the summers, and she looks like a candy striper in her outfit,” Brownie says.

  “You said you were going to work with me this summer,” Buns says to Brownie teasingly. “I can’t wait to see you in the stripes. I might order an extra small for you and see how many tips you can rack up.” She laughs as the car sways over the road.

  Buns makes a left turn and we’re in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven. She turns off her lights and the engine, and I try not to let any of the pop bottles escape from the floor while getting out. Pushing the store’s glass doors open, the girls go straight to the chip aisle while I diverge and go toward the refrigerated section.

  Walking to the back, I study the selection of pre-made sandwiches behind the glass door; none of them looks appetizing, about as moist as sawdust. There are packages of crackers with turkey and cheese; it seems to be my best option, so I open the refrigerator, drawing one out of the vending line. Seeing bottled water in the next refrigerator, I select one of those, too.

  A couple of boys from school walk in, and Buns calls out, “JT, Pete! How was your practice, sweetie?” They’re on the lacrosse team. I recognize JT by his uniform.

  JT smoothes back his dark, wet hair as he walks to Buns’s side, saying, “It was hard because I kept getting distracted by the blond girls with the sticks. Reed hit me in the head twice with the ball. See, I have a little cut here by my eye.”

  “Oh you poor thing—let me look at it,” Buns says sweetly, examining JT’s wound. Brownie rolls her eyes at me and goes to talk to Pete, who is getting a fountain drink.

  As I shuffle toward the front of the store, the darkest sense of dÉjÀ vu trickles down my spine like icy fingers. A shiver of dread creeps over my skin, causing goose bumps to rise on my arms. I slow and then stop in the middle of the aisle, eyeing the fluorescent light over my head, watching its strobe-like flicker. A low hum vibrates from it while it sizzles with disjointed flashes of illumination.

  When I look away from the light, everything around me had changed. The walls of the store are spattered like a Jackson Pollock painting with blood and brain matter. Bloody trails of speckled drops cover the beige-and-taupe, checkerboard-pattern vinyl tile. I gaze around in horror. Everything is upturned; the displays of chips and candy lie in towering piles on the floor, and the magazine racks roil with choking smoke. The coffee pots are blown to bits; only the brown and orange rims remain to testify as to what they had been. The glass doors of the refrigerators are shattered and dripping with the contents of several cartons of milk and juice.

  Unable to comprehend what I am seeing, I am also wholly unprepared for the next assault on my senses. Breathing deeply, the putrid air permeating the store hits me. I have never smelled anything like it before in my life—even the cadaverous flesh of formaldehyde-soaked frogs are no comparison to the heinousness of this reek. I clamp my hand over my mouth and nose to cover them, trying to block out some of the rotten stench. My trembling fingers feel slick and sticky. Pulling my hand away, the stain of blood mars my pale skin and fingernails.

  The eerie, pulsating light draws my eyes back up to the ceiling—to the flickering fluorescent glow. A cacophony builds around me, as if I am beneath an amp, and the reverb pounds me in low frequency waves that echo off my body. Clasping my hands to my ears, I attempt to block out the crushing waves assaulting my eardrums. The intense light grows whiter and brighter while it slowly reaches out to me. Then it bursts forth in a flash, knocking me to the ground with a deafening wham!

  My eyes flicker open, and I squint to see Buns crouching above me. “Sweetie … sweetie … can you hear me?” Buns asks while she pushes my hair back gently from my forehead. “Here she is! Here you are, sweetie. Are you okay?”

  Why am I on the floor? I wonder.

  I try to sit up, but I am held down by JT’s hand on my shoulder. “There is no rush, Evie. Take your time; try to take some deep breaths,” JT says kindly as his hand remains on my shoulder. “You fainted. When did you eat last?” he asks me.

  In confusion, I gaze into JT’s hazel eyes, trying to think. “I had some coffee before lunch, and then a bagel,” I stammer.

  “You have to eat more than that, Evie,” he says with concern. “Your body can’t survive on coffee and bread.”

  “My body can’t survive …” I begin to repeat him, but I trail off. In an instant, I recall what happened. The 7-Eleven is the stage of my nightmare, I think feebly, and hope I won’t get sick. My heart starts hammering in my chest, and I have the urge to jump up and run, but I can’t because JT is still holding me down. “Um, that’s why I was getting food,” I say, trying to locate the crackers I’d had in my hand before being rudely slapped around by the light above me. “I think I’m okay now. Can I get up?” I ask JT in a soft tone, glancing at his hand on my shoulder.

  He squints at me suspiciously as he says, “I don’t know. You’re about as white as a ghost. How do you feel?” he asks.

  Faking a winsome smile, I reply, “I feel like getting up.” Satisfied that I am better, JT helps me to my feet.

  Covertly, I scan the store for signs of the blood and gore from my dream. Except for the morbid sense of dÉjÀ vu, everything else seems fine. My hands, gratefully, are as clean as they’d been when I entered the store. Pete picks up the food and bottled water I must’ve dropped. He hands them back to me kindly.

  “Thanks,” I say, trying to act normal and hoping my tone isn’t too loud because my ears are still ringing.

  The clerk behind the counter hasn’t moved at all from her position by the cash register. She eyes me skeptically while the piercings in her eyebrow draw down into a frown. I set my stuff on the counter as she chews her gum with relentless fervor. When I finish paying her, everyone congregates around me while I take a few sips of my water.

  Brownie puts her arm around my shoulder and asks, “How do you feel?” But before I can answer her, she adds, “I was really freaked, especially when you stopped mumbling and just went limp.”

  “I was mumbling? What was I saying?” I ask in alarm.

  “I don’t know,” Brownie replies,” I couldn’t hear you that well, but it wasn’t English. You know what it sounded like?” she asks, pointing at me excitedly. “It sounded like the time Bobby, my brother, and I put on an old Black Sabbath record and tried to play it backwards. Bobby thought
that there were hidden messages on it, but we never really heard anything.”

  Goose bumps rise on my arms as a shiver runs through me again. I smile to cover it up and say, “I take Latin. I was probably ordering a pizza.” Everyone laughs, to my relief.

  The clerk butts in, asking, “Is that all?” We are still milling around the counter, which seems to be annoying her.

  “Yes, thank you,” I say, moving away toward the door. I want nothing more than to escape the store and never come back.

  As I step outside, I breathe in deep gulps of air to try to clear my head. JT and Pete walk over to the shiny, silver car parked next to the Golden Goose. Seeing it, I cringe, because unless JT has a car exactly like Reed’s, then it’s safe to assume that JT had borrowed Reed’s car to go to the store with Pete.

  They both climb into the elegant import, before opening its windows. “Hey, Buns,” JT calls from the driver’s side, “Delt wars are starting soon. You ready?”

  Buns’s smile is full of hubris when she retorts, “Sweetie, we’ve been plotting your demise all summer. You’ll never see us coming.”

  “You’re that confident in your arsenal, are you?” he replies, grinning.

  “Don’t worry about my arsenal, sweetie, just make sure you aren’t bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Buns teases.

  Brownie rolls her eyes. “Or, you two could just get a room and fight it out there. Lez go, Buns.”

  “What are the Delt wars?” I ask them, attempting to open my crackers with shaky hands. I’m trying really hard not to think about what had just happened to me.

  Buns backs the car out of the parking spot, wheeling it around like a motorboat. “The Delt House picks a couple of sororities to go to war with each year. But it’s usually just our house, which is the Chi house, or the Kappa house. They take something from the sorority house so that we go to war with them to get it back. Last year, they stole one of our Greek Week trophies and were drinking beer out of it. They sent ransom photos,” Brownie explains.

  “But this year, Brownie and I are operating an offensive. We thought that we could initiate a pre-emptive strike,” Buns explains, sounding sly. “We figured, why should we wait for them to draw first blood? That’s just plain stupid if you ask me. Then we’ll have to play on their terms—follow their clues—fall into their ambushes. Why not take their game to them?”

  Brownie nods. “We’ve been trying to decide what to take from their house that will dis and dismiss and throw them into chaos mode,” Brownie says with relish.

  I think about it for a second, and then I blurt out, “You should take one of their composites. You know, the ones they have with all of the members in the house pictured on it? Then you can rate them, on a ten-point scale, and take a picture of the results as ransom,” I blush, thinking about the Mothers’ Club Directory again.

  With a wicked grin, Brownie chimes in, “Hey, yeah, like they do with the freshman directory!”

  I raise my hand in a there you go gesture.

  “Evie, you’re an evil genius,” Buns beams, and the Golden Goose begins swaying over the yellow lines in the road. She winks at me over her shoulder and Brownie corrects the wheel without missing a beat.

  “No, just a woman scorned,” I reply, taking a bite of my cracker sandwich I’ve compiled.

  “We need you!” Brownie says, “You think on your feet, and you’re really athletic, and other than passing out in the convenience store, I’d say you’d make a great soldier in our war.”

  Buns screeches into the dorm parking lot with her eyes on me in the rearview mirror, “We need stealth, and you move like a cat,” Buns says. “Brownie and I were discussing that play you made just before Tamera took you out. It was like watching a panther go up against an armadillo.”

  “Did we say armadillo? I thought we said a panther and a porcupine,” Brownie interrupts.

  “Sweetie, armadillo, porcupine, hedgehog—the point is Tamera knew she couldn’t match the speed and grace, and so she resorted to violence to take Evie out,” Buns reasons rationally, parking the car in the back of the lot.

  “Just say yes, Evie, because she’ll only work on you until you do,” says Brownie conspiratorially.

  We open our doors and climb out of the Goose. “Don’t I have to be a Chi or something to be involved? Especially if I’m on your team?” I ask, wondering how this all works.

  “No, everyone will look at it like we’re recruiting you, which we are, but come on, you’re no Kappa,” Brownie says, then takes a sip of her fountain drink.

  “You’re recruiting me?” I ask as we head toward the dorm.

  “Sweetie, we didn’t start out to, we never recruit because it’s kind of beneath us. I figure you either like us or you don’t, but it’s just that we like you—you seem to get us. A kindred spirit if you want to look at it that way,” Buns says, putting her arm around my shoulder. “You don’t have to pledge if you don’t want to; we just like having you around.”

  “So, you’ll help us beat the Delts?” Brownie persists, opening the door to Yeats and holding it for Buns and me.

  “Yes, I’ll help,” I agree, because it will be the distraction I need after my smack down at the 7-Eleven. I don’t have any way to decipher what is happening to me. I am just trying to live through the horror of it.

  Brownie and Buns both clap like two ten-year-olds. “Okay, strategy meeting tomorrow night after practice. Are you all right to practice, Evie? How’s your knee?” Brownie asks with concern.

  “It’s stylin’. I can practice,” I say, knowing that I can’t keep up the charade of fake limping anymore.

  “Fierce! Do you want to come in and kick back for a while?” Buns asks, opening the door to their room.

  “No thanks, I think I’m going to try to go back to sleep,” I decline. “I’ll see you both tomorrow. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, sweetie.” Buns says as I walk down the hall to my room.

  There is a note taped to the outside of my door. I open the note and read it:

  Dear Red,

  Sorry, I was being a tool. I stopped by to see you, but one of the girls I asked to get you said that you weren’t in. Please call me when you get this so I can apologize. Russell

  CHAPTER 9 - FOREIGN LANGUAGE

  I read the note from Russell several times. It’s so sweet; he actually said he was being a tool, which he kind of was, but he was a sweet tool. Once inside my room, I fold up the note, placing it on my desk, and then I change into a t-shirt and boxer pajama bottoms. After washing my face and brushing my teeth, I walk down the hall to the bathroom.

  On my way back to my room, I stop dead in my tracks because there are butterflies taking flight in my abdomen the closer I get to my room. Backing up from my door slowly, I consider my options. I’m in my pajamas with no shoes and no keys to get very far. Rabbiting doesn’t really appeal to me anyway, since this is my room. Mine. I square my shoulders, walking the remaining steps to my door.

  When I open it, I scan my room for Reed, but he isn’t inside. Leaning back against the door to close it, I sigh in relief until I think to look in the closet. Creeping to the folding door, I peek inside, but he isn’t in there either. I exhale the breath I’ve been holding, before I brush my hair and pull it back into a ponytail, preparing to go to bed soon.

  Then I prowl my room nervously. My Reed radar is still going off. He has to be here, at Yeats Hall, somewhere. But why? I wonder anxiously. Maybe he’s visiting someone downstairs or something, I think and instantly feel a twinge of jealousy shoot through me, shocking me with its intensity. What do I care whom Reed sees? I think rationally, trying to shrug off the feeling that I’ve just had. I don’t even like him, and the less he thinks about me, the better, right?

  Turning on my computer, I read an email from Uncle Jim that outlines some technologies that are being developed to insert subliminal messaging into advertising. Realizing that none of the software that he is talking about resembles anything like what Reed can do
, I decide I might have to accept Reed’s explanation.

  I think for a second about telling Uncle Jim about the scary light and having my nightmare in the 7-Eleven this evening, but my hands shake with fear. I can’t tell him, I think, wringing my hands together so they won’t tremble. He’ll be really freaked out, and he’ll want me to come home. He’s safer if I stay away.

  I type a quick reply message to him, giving him a bubblegum version of college life. Then I ask him to check out Russell’s computer, providing him the IP address. I send the email and shut down my computer. Finding my phone on my nightstand, I send a text to Russell explaining that I am sorry, too, about our argument and that I’ll see him at breakfast in the morning.

  I pull back the blanket on my bed before I walk over to shut off the desk lamp. On my way back to the bed, I happen to look out the window, and I see Reed standing outside of it. I nearly scream but I am able to stifle it. I do, however, shy back from the window in a knee jerk reaction while my heart just about pounds out of my chest.

  I hadn’t been able to see him out there because the light from the lamp had made the window almost opaque. With the lamp off, I can easily see Reed leaning back against the fire escape railing with his arms crossed in front of him. He has been watching me since I came back from the bathroom, I think in irritation. I try to remember if I’ve done anything embarrassing, but I can’t think of anything, so I march to the window and wrench the curtains closed. Then I get into bed and lie there fuming.

  Hearing the window latch release and the two panes of glass fan open, I realize that Reed is letting himself in, so I roll over and pull the blanket over my head. “Just go away, Reed!” I whisper-hiss to him in the darkness.

  “Genevieve,” Reed’s voice carries from outside on the fire escape, “meet me in the parking lot in five minutes.” His voice sounds strange—strained.

  “Whyyyy?” I whine, hoping to put him off.

  “You have five minutes!” he says sternly before the windows slam shut.