by CM Wondrak
What I should’ve done was wish myself good luck, because, after lunch, when Aubree and I made our way to the language arts hall, I’d find out that fate would be laughing at me today. Fate would be laughing, and Aubree would be insanely jealous.
Everyone in class was moving desks, rearranging the room to talk to their partners better. Today was all about brainstorming, which sucked. No one was thrilled about this presentation or the paper that came along with it; it would count as twenty percent of our final grade. I didn’t care much either way, although I could tell by the looks Aubree was throwing at me from across the room that she either hated me or wanted to be me.
Why? Because the student turning his desk around in front of me, to pair up with me, was none other than Kyle Sturgis himself.
His amber eyes met mine, and he gave me a grin. It was a grin I did not return, because I wasn’t feeling too thrilled about this. When he was on the team, he had to keep his grades up enough to stay there, but now that football season was over and he’d gotten a scholarship to a local college to play on their team come fall, there was nothing to stop him from forcing me to do all of the work.
It was the curse of group projects. The teachers didn’t get it. They thought it would foster the skill of working together, prepare us for our adult lives and the workplaces we would end up in, but did it really?
In a way, I guess it did. I bet there were people who showed up to work, did shit all day, and managed to go home every other week with a paycheck, just as there were people who carried the company on their backs and did all of the work themselves. Yeah, when you think of it like that, these stupid group projects were one step in that direction.
“So…” Kyle broke the silence between us.
I blinked, taking my stare away from Aubree and bringing it to her crush. The scent of his body spray was almost overpowering. Though he had a cute face, the smell, the overconfident smirk he wore… it was too much for me. I was not a fan of Kyle, not like Aubree was. “So,” I repeated.
“Any ideas who you want to do our presentation on?” Beneath the desks, his knee hit mine, and he chuckled, adding, “Sorry.”
“I don’t care.” I meant it for both of the things he’d said: his apology and who we would do our presentation on. And by we, I meant me, because I had the feeling he would try to use his charm—or whatever the hell he called his smirks and his ridiculously potent body spray—to get me to do all of the work.
I don’t care was pretty much my life’s attitude toward everything.
Turned out, Kyle here had no idea who some American authors even were. He had to pull out his phone and rattle names off to me so I could make a list which we would pick from. I leaned my face on a hand, a fresh page of my notebook in front of me, pen in my other hand. Mrs. Johnson wanted every pair to come up with a list of five, in the order we’d rather do them. No one in the same class could do the same author.
The list we turned in had Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, Harper Lee, and Washington Irving.
I put our names on the paper and tore it out of my notebook, handing it to Kyle, who then got up and turned it in. The way he walked, putting too much weight on his feet, he walked the opposite of gracefully. My eyes fell to the backs of Kyle’s feet, and my mind went elsewhere.
Darkness, all around, save for a dim lightbulb hanging on the ceiling, on the bare wood. The sound of footsteps, foreign but familiar. A strange smell, stagnant air, but it didn’t bother me. None of it bothered me, even though it should…
I was thrown into my head, into a memory I did not recall having, and I was only jerked back into reality by Kyle sitting at his desk again, dropping into it with such force the bottom metal scraped upon the tile floor as he spoke to me.
“You okay?” Kyle asked, cocking his head at me. Whether or not he really cared was anyone’s guess. I’d say he didn’t; he was just a good actor. It’s how every teacher in school had come to love him. Him and his friends weren’t exactly sparkling or clean, if you get my drift.
“Yeah,” I said, faking a smile. “Fine.”
The rest of the day, I could not shake the weird feeling inside of me, the strange memory that had popped into my head. Maybe it was from a movie, or something. Something I’d watched on TV when I was younger? It made just about as much sense as any other possibility I could come up with.
At the end of the day, Aubree was waiting for me at my locker. I might’ve run out of language arts to avoid the barrage of questions she surely had for me, all of them undoubtedly about Kyle and what he was like, whether he mentioned her—though God only knew why the hell he would ever bring her up, since she didn’t live in his world.
“I cannot believe you got paired with him,” she said. Everyone else was hurrying to their lockers, grabbing their backpacks and practically running out of the school, not able to leave this horrible place quickly enough. Aubree, on the other hand, thought it was best to stand by my side and talk to me about her crush, as if she didn’t talk about him enough.
Was it normal? I didn’t know. I couldn’t say. I was the farthest thing from normal, so I had nothing to compare her to.
“You should find a way to talk about me,” she said, hazel eyes bright with the idea. “Oh, my God. What if he invites you over to work on the project? Mrs. Johnson said we would have to spend time out of class working on it, that our once a week brainstorming classes wouldn’t be enough to research, make the presentation, and write the paper…” Aubree sounded as if she was short of breath. “You have to go. If he invites you, you have to go.”
Swinging my backpack over my shoulder, I looked at her. It wasn’t like I wanted to burst her bubble, but the odds of Kayla letting me go over a boy’s house to work on a project was slim to none. She did not like it when I was out of the house. My aunt was super protective of me, I think because of what happened with my parents. Maybe she thought I would end up like them—dead—or start to feel a murderous rampage and suicidal streak like my father.
Or maybe it was because I was the only thing she had left that reminded her of her big brother.
“I don’t think my aunt would let me go,” I said, slowly closing my locker. Speaking of my aunt, she was outside, waiting for me. She skipped her lunch break at work to come pick me up every day at school.
Aubree rolled her eyes. “You’re eighteen, Tenley. You’re an adult. You should be able to leave the house for things—” She had no idea what happened to my family ten years ago, so I couldn’t blame her for acting like I was the weirdest person she’d ever met.
Still, going over Kyle’s house was not something I wanted to do.
“If he mentions it,” I started, walking away from her, “I’ll think about it.”
That got her happy enough, and she grinned at me as I left.
Going over Kyle’s house was the last thing I wanted to do—almost as if interrupting my thoughts, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I dug it out, expecting it to be my aunt. I stood just before the doors, the sunlight streaming through the windows, hordes of Banner High students barreling past me to get out, to claim their freedom for the rest of the day.
But it wasn’t my aunt. It was a hidden number, restricted.
Eyebrows coming together, I debated on whether or not I should answer it. I knew of no one who would call and purposefully restrict their number from me. Plus, no one called me anyways, other than Kayla, if I took too long to get out of the school.
I decided to let it go to voicemail, turning off the screen before heading outside and climbing into Kayla’s vehicle. She was parked a ways down, in the long line of cars that were here to pick up their kids.
“Everything okay?” Kayla asked, noticing something was wrong the moment I got into her car.
“Yeah,” I told her, buckling my seatbelt. “Everything’s fine.”
And it was.
For now.
Chapter Two – Tenley
Wednesday rolled around, and I could not stand to listen to Aubree tal
k about Kyle anymore, about how lucky I was to be paired up with him. I zoned out during lunch, hating my lot in life. If I would’ve been paired with anyone else in class, I could’ve saved myself all this hassle.
Having passion for something, for someone, was good I guess, but this? This was straight-up obsession on her part.
I was not in a very good mood by the time language arts came, and I sat at my desk with my shoulders hunched. Today was not a workday for our projects, so the desks were arranged facing the front in rows. I foolishly thought I’d be in the clear, since Aubree didn’t sit by me—thank you, assigned seating—but I was wrong.
So, so wrong.
How wrong? Let me tell you.
Before the bell rang, before Mrs. Johnson could yell at us for chitchatting, someone sat in the desk before mine, someone who had his own seat two rows away. Kyle. Of course. He grinned at me, those amber eyes trying to pull me in, drown me in his cockiness. I didn’t let myself get reeled in, though.
No boy had ever attracted me, not really. I never looked at a boy and thought, there’s one I’d like to kiss, one I wouldn’t mind bending me over the desk and letting him have me. Not a single one had ever elicited those feelings inside of me—yet another reason I was different than everyone else.
“Hey,” he said, causing my eyes to snap in his direction. I hoped I looked bored, disinterested in whatever he was about to say. Still, that did not stop him from continuing, unfortunately. “I’m having some friends over Friday. I thought, maybe, you and I could get together beforehand, work on our project.”
Mrs. Johnson had given us who we would base our presentation and papers on yesterday. We got our last pick, Washington Irving, but I was fine with it. I didn’t really care who the hell we got.
I opened my mouth, about to ask him why he was even trying this, but Kyle grabbed my notebook, opened it to a blank page, and jotted something down after taking my pen.
He set the pen back on my notebook, handing it to me, allowing me to see that he’d written down his number for me. Lucky me. “Just think about it, okay?” After drumming his fingers on the edge of my desk, he got up and wandered to his own seat.
Meanwhile, Aubree could not stop staring at me. Her blonde eyebrows were lifted as high as they could go on her face, and I knew she was dying to know what that interaction was about, what Kyle had written down for me.
I pretended not to see her, and then the bell rang, and Mrs. Johnson took the front of the class.
Why the hell did he give me his number? It wasn’t like I would call or text it. As if I’d want to get together with him on Friday after school. Even if Kayla would let me, which I knew she wouldn’t, I didn’t want to. Kyle was so not my type.
I didn’t know what my type was, but that was beside the point.
Of course, it occurred to me then that Kyle wasn’t flirting or anything like that, that he really was just trying to get the project started with me. He didn’t strike me as an academic, as someone who gave a shit about his grades and not procrastinating until the last minute on things though.
Ugh. Couldn’t the rest of this school year go by without incident? That was the million-dollar question.
Aubree was by my locker at the end of the day, unsurprisingly, and she instantly bugged me about what she’d seen before language arts, so I told her. I even offered to give her Kyle’s number, but she shook her head.
“No, I can’t randomly get his number,” Aubree said. “He’ll know you gave it to me.” Today her dirty blonde hair was pulled into a messy bun, a big sweater on her torso. It looked comfy, at least.
I had no idea why him knowing that I gave her his number was a bad thing, so I just shrugged.
“He mentioned a party though, right?”
Her question caused me to say, “No, he said he was having some friends over.”
“That’s a party, Tenley. He invited you to the party.” The way she spoke it, it was as if I was the stupidest person around, to which I could only blink and stare at her for a while.
Did he mean that? Had it been some weird invitation to a party? I’d never been invited anywhere before, not to a dance, not to a party, not to a date or anything like that. I admit, even though I knew Kayla would never let me go, I was curious.
Aubree came up with a plan. “You should text him tonight and tell him you’ll think about Friday. Bring up the party, ask if you can bring a friend.” When I said nothing, she said, “Me. You’ll bring me as your friend.”
“You are aware my aunt will never let me go to a party at a guy’s house?”
She let out a strangled sound. “You and your aunt, man. Come on! This is a once in a lifetime thing! Or, okay, maybe not that rare, but rare enough for people like us. We have to go. Besides, I’ve been trying to get you out of that house forever now. This is perfect.”
I said nothing, because I did not see why this was perfect, as she’d said.
“You gotta get out of that house,” Aubree went on, grinning ear to ear, as if she’d just figured out the secrets of the entire universe and was happy about it. “Live a little! We’re only in high school once.”
That much was true, I guess.
I agreed to text Kyle that night, though I did tell Aubree we’d take it from there. I made no promises about going to any party with her. My aunt dropped me off at the house before going back to work, and I let myself in through the front door, throwing the deadbolt behind me, a habit.
Our house had the doorbell camera, along with a motion-sense camera near the garage and backdoor, so it wasn’t like I could ever sneak out of this house… unless I went out through the window and had someone pick me up a few houses down. The only problem there was Aubree didn’t have a car, either. If she really wanted to go to this stupid party, she’d have to borrow one of her parents’ vehicles.
Although, frankly, they’d probably gladly give it to her for the night. They wanted her to be happy, to not cut herself again. Kayla, on the other hand, wanted to keep me locked up, it felt like.
I couldn’t blame my aunt for feeling the way she did. After losing her brother and sister-in-law like that, I knew she just wanted to keep me safe.
Sometimes, though, safety was a luxury you couldn’t afford.
I showered, did my homework, all the while wondering when I should text Kyle. I had no interest in him, so I didn’t want him to think me texting him meant I wanted to hook up or anything. Really, I was only doing it for Aubree, for the girl who had tried for what felt like forever to get me to go to one of the hot parties everyone talked about for weeks after.
Sitting in the living room, with my notebook open to Kyle’s number, I stared at it for a long while. My phone sat in my hands, my legs tucked beneath my ass. The TV was on, some rerun of a sitcom that they always played in the afternoons, just for background noise. When the house was silent… well, the silence was almost overbearing. Too much. Too heavy.
Too much like the darkness that I knew I shouldn’t crave as much as I did.
My phone began vibrating, and I picked it up without hesitation, without even looking at it, expecting it to be Kayla, calling on her way home from work, wondering if she should either pick something up from the grocery store to make or just call it a night and get takeout to bring home. My vote was always takeout, even if I never ate much of it. My aunt’s cooking wasn’t that great, you know. All her life—or at least for the past ten years—she’d put aside everything to take care of me.
And that meant working lots of hours to afford the little house we had.
“Hey,” I said, waiting to hear Kayla’s voice, for her to come up with a list of options to choose from tonight. The animal hospital she worked at was downtown, close to dozens of places to eat, and the grocery store was on the way home.
She didn’t answer. In fact, I heard nothing on the line… nothing except heavy breathing, and that’s when I lifted the phone away from my head and glanced at the screen.
Restricted, the same unid
entified number that had called me on Monday. I hadn’t picked up then, and I’d promptly forgotten about it, too.
Eyebrows creasing, I brought the phone back to my ear, even though I knew I should hang up. This wasn’t a spam call; if it was, they’d already be rattling off their spiel, whatever they wanted to dupe you into. This was… this was something different, only I didn’t know what it was.
When I brought the phone back to my ear, I heard nothing. Not even breathing.
“Hello?” I asked, my voice taking on a different tone. Tentative, unsure. I didn’t like talking to strangers; I should just hang up the phone right now, but it was like something took hold of me, something whispered over my shoulder, told me not to. “Who is this?”
The other person on the line spoke, his voice low and gravelly, the kind of voice that fell over you like honey, caused goosebumps to rise on your arms and the hair on the back of your neck to stick up. The kind of voice that made your heart stop and your lungs refuse to take in any other breaths. He spoke, and it was like I was thrown into a past I couldn’t remember.
“Have you been a good girl, Tenley?”
Darkness. Darkness all around me, save for a single lightbulb above my head. I sat on a cot that was not my own, surrounded by things that were not my own. No windows, no way out. The air hardly got movement down here, stale on my tongue. The space around me had started out as something unfamiliar, unwanted, but it was easy to get used to something that wasn’t normal.
Surprisingly easy.
Heavy footsteps creaked on the wooden stairs, telling me someone was coming, and then he came for me.
It was just a brief flash of a memory, something that both didn’t seem real but also felt too real. All of the unease I felt building inside my gut hardened when I forced myself to again say, “Who is this?”
The man hung up, and I nearly dropped my phone. Something inside me felt so wrong, my heart acting up ever since I’d heard that man on the other line ask me if I’d been a good girl.