“This place blows,” Neil said. “Let’s go.”
The night was still relatively warm as the five friends marched through the parking lot toward the plaza on the other side of Main Street. Ronni made funny buzzing noises with her lips, making Annette and Neil laugh. Jacqueline’s stomach rumbled. She still had eight dollars left, enough for a value meal if she wanted one. There was only so far one could go on a belly filled with Sprite and Reece’s Pieces.
Toward the center of the mall’s massive parking lot, Jacqueline spotted a pair of cars parked equidistant between two light poles, far enough from either one that the space between was bathed in darkness. There was something going on over there. Jacqueline stopped walking. She heard sounds of struggle, along with a barely audible whimper.
“What’s up?” asked Ronni. She tugged on her brunette pony tail, keeping her eyes fixed on the street they’d soon have to cross.
“You hear that?” Jacqueline whispered.
Annette cocked her head, then abruptly shook it. Her eyes widened briefly. “No,” she said. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
“Wait,” said Olivia. “I hear it too.” She took a few steps toward the cars, her fists clenching and unclenching. Someone cried out in pain, and without warning Olivia took off sprinting.
“Olive, no!” Neil shouted.
For an agonizing moment, everyone froze as Olivia ran. Something then clicked inside Jacqueline, and she took off after her friend. Her heart thumped in her ears.
She’d once told Aunt Mitzy she was fast, and it wasn’t a lie. She caught up with the taller girl in seconds. Jacqueline wrapped her arms around Olivia, wrestled her to the ground. Jacqueline fell on top of her friend, catching an elbow in the gut, knocking the wind out of her.
“Get off me!” Olivia shouted, pushing her, making Jacqueline tumble off her back. Jacqueline gasped and rolled onto her side, and her heart nearly stopped.
She faced the fronts of the two cars. They were parked with an empty space between them, and in the darkness stood a large human outline. Another outline was sprawled out on the ground. There was a strange smell in the air, a tinge of copper. The standing figure turned, the sound of gravel crunching underfoot echoing across the lot.
“Oh shit,” Olivia said, and then hands were on Jacqueline’s shoulders, pulling her backward. The shadowy figure took one step, then a second. Its hand lifted, and the faint light from the distant lamps glinted off a knife’s sharp edge.
“Pretty little things,” grumbled a man’s voice.
Neither Jacqueline nor Olivia said a word as the man strode ever closer. He lifted the knife higher. Behind him, his victim moaned.
Olivia tripped, falling on her rump with a yelp. Jacqueline continued to kick out her feet, trying to scurry away from the lurching monstrosity as fast as she could. She tried to get her anger to rise up again, to feel the strength of her rage as she had when Papa Gelick attacked her, but it remained hidden, locked away, out of reach. This wasn’t confronting some boisterous kid in a high school hallway. This was real. This was dangerous.
And Jacqueline was afraid.
“Get away!” Annette’s voice shouted. “Don’t come any closer!”
Jacqueline’s friends rushed forward. Ronni helped Jacqueline to her feet while Annette did the same for Olivia. Neil stepped toward the man with the knife with his phone held up, the flashlight on the back shining. The man held up his hand to shield his eyes. Jacqueline shrugged away from Ronni and joined Neil’s side, trying not to be completely terrified.
The man dropped his hand and leered at them. Neil kept his arm raised, the wavering light revealing a haggard, forty-something adult with a patchy beard, messed-up teeth, and beady eyes. The guy wore a beaten-up leather duster and grimy jeans. He took another step toward them, which prompted Neil to hastily retreat and stumble over his own feet.
“Little gook, little gook, let me in,” the man growled as Neil fell. His beady eyes shifted in Jacqueline’s direction. “Not by the hair of my—”
His mouth abruptly snapped shut, his jaw twitched, his cheeks sagged. Jacqueline froze, not sure what to do. Finally, the brute turned tail and dashed across the parking lot, looking like he was headed for the thin line of woods on the mall’s west end.
Jacqueline wasn’t sure if the danger was over. She heard Olivia sobbing behind her. “I’m so sorry…I’m so sorry…my cousin was mugged last week…what’s wrong with this town?” Jacqueline stepped toward the darkened area between the two cars, where the second shadow still lay. The victim. Jacqueline knelt on wet pavement. She touched the body, and it flinched.
“Please…” whispered a weak, female voice.
“Guys!” Jacqueline called out over her shoulder. “Neil, call 9-1-1!”
It took the police a few minutes to arrive, their bright spotlights lighting up the parking lot. The ambulance arrived shortly after. The victim’s name was Debbie, a townie in her mid-twenties, who the cops said worked at the Sears in the mall. She’d been stabbed multiple times but was still alive, and she moaned and cried as the paramedics wheeled her into the ambulance. The cops then took their statements, nodding and asking for the attempted killer’s description as they jotted down notes.
Halfway through the process, Jacqueline realized it was past eleven. She quickly called Aunt Mitzy, who showed up half a minute later, peeling out once her sedan entered the mall parking lot. The cops had looked peeved, but when Mitzy stepped out of the car, made up as usual, their stern expressions disappeared. One of the younger officers stumbled all over his words. Despite all that’d happened, Jacqueline couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly. Cops really did have a thing for her aunt.
The whole ordeal took over an hour, and when the police finally left it was past midnight. Mitzy drove her friends to their respective houses in silence. Annette was the last to be dropped off, and Mitzy lingered in the doorway for a long while, talking in hushed tones with Annette’s mom while Jacqueline waited in the running car. Annette paused at the base of her front stoop and turned around. She mouthed sorry to Jacqueline and disappeared into the house.
“It’s okay,” Jacqueline whispered.
She heard a muffled sound coming from her pocket. Jacqueline checked to make sure her aunt was still talking with Mrs. Shepherd, and then pulled the compact out. She flipped it open to find Mal staring at her, his gray eyes wide, his lips puckered as if angry.
“What happened?” he asked. “Dammit, Jackie, what’s going on?”
“Someone got attacked in the parking lot,” she said quietly.
“Did you get hurt?”
She shook her head. “No. It was weird. He looked at me and then…ran away.”
“Odd,” said Mal.
Jacqueline bobbed her head.
Mitzy wrapped up her conversation with Mrs. Shepherd and began walking back toward the car. “Gotta put you away,” she told Mal. “Sorry.”
“Get me later. We need to talk.”
“Okay. I will. I promise.”
Mal nodded to her as she snapped the compact shut.
Aunt Mitzy slid into the driver’s seat and threw her sedan into drive. “This damn town,” she said with a grunt. “I thought it’d be safe here, at least for a while.”
“It’s okay,” said Jacqueline. “We weren’t hurt.”
“But you could have been, Jackie. That’s what matters. I think from now on we have to reconsider your curfew. Sorry, but safety trumps fun.”
Jacqueline groaned and sat back in her seat. She sank into silence, not even bothering to answer her aunt when she asked if she was all right. All she wanted to do was go home, hide in her room, and talk to Mal until the memory of what she’d just seen faded away enough for her to get some sleep.
Only when she got home, Mal was nowhere to be found. She stared at the mirror for hours, until the birds began to chirp and the sky brightened, but he never showed his face.
That morning, once she finally passed out from exh
austion, her nightmares returned. Only this time, Mal wasn’t there to protect her. He was just…gone.
CHAPTER 17
Mal didn’t return, and Jacqueline spent the next thirteen days spiraling into a pit of despair. It was similar to what she’d felt in Lake Salem, when her father had become sullen and withdrawn and prone to violent outbursts. That sadness had only escalated after he lost his mind. It’d been Mal who comforted her.
But now Mal, her lifeline, was inexplicably gone, and she didn’t know what to do. Her friends tried to snap her out of it, but they didn’t know what was wrong and Jacqueline couldn’t tell them. She felt trapped, which only caused her sadness to deepen.
It’s not like she liked feeling this way. She tried to stop, wanted to stop, but couldn’t. Once the cycle began, it was a sled careening downhill, building momentum until it eventually hurtled over a cliff. It was as if part of her actually enjoyed the misery.
Surprisingly, none of her friends pushed her away. The more she tried to distance herself, the more they paid attention to her. Random teens she didn’t know offered her sympathetic nods. Her sadness made her a magnet, when all she wanted was to shove everyone as far away as possible.
Aunt Mitzy, of course, was also drawn into the magnet’s powerful embrace. She constantly asked if Jacqueline wanted to watch a movie, if she wanted to invite her friends over for dinner, if she’d like to go shopping…anything that included being by her niece’s side at all times. Jacqueline’s guilt doubled every time Mitzy’s beautiful face twisted into a mask of concern, but she still refused to say more than two words to the woman. Any day now, she’ll put you back in foster care, the self-destructive part of her declared.
But she never did.
After another day at school feeling depressed, Jacqueline sat by herself in the back of the bus. Just fifteen minutes earlier, Annette had pleaded with her to come over and watch Spirited Away, Annette’s favorite movie, but Jacqueline had declined. Then Annette told her that Debbie, the girl who’d been attacked in the mall parking lot, had called her mom to let the kids know she was all right. “She thanked us!” Annette shouted.
Jacqueline had said she didn’t care, and as the bus rocked and bucked, she realized a part of her really didn’t.
Her guilt grew.
The bus eased to a halt at the Chestnut Street bus stop, and the doors folded open. Jacqueline mindlessly wandered down the center aisle behind the spiky-haired boy. “Bye, Jackie,” the boy said as they stepped onto the street. “Hope you feel better.” She stared as he smiled shyly and then walked away. The kid hadn’t spoken a single word to her since school started. Why now? It made no sense.
What the hell’s wrong with me?
Aunt Mitzy’s sedan was in the driveway, the fourth day in the last two weeks she’d left work early. Jacqueline ambled up the porch steps and into the house. She tossed her stuffed backpack onto the couch and glared at it. I’m not doing homework anymore, she decided. If she flunked out of school, then maybe Aunt Mitzy really would send her away. Her lips rose in a self-deprecating grin. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? she asked her depressed inner self. You’d finally win.
Mitzy wasn’t downstairs, which was odd considering how her aunt had taken to continually greeting her the moment either of them got home. It happened, she thought. She stopped caring. A mixture of dread and excitement filled her belly as she climbed the stairs.
She found Mitzy in her room, sitting on the bed. Her aunt looked deep in thought, her back straight, her brow furrowed. In the woman’s hand, much to Jacqueline’s horror, was the compact. Her aunt stared at it, flipped it over, examined the backside, and then held it upright and considered the small round mirror again.
“Where did you get this?” Mitzy asked without looking at her.
Jacqueline walked over to her aunt and snatched the compact from her hand. She opened the dresser’s top drawer, tossed the compact inside, and slammed the drawer shut. When she turned around, she saw Mitzy frowning.
“Don’t touch my things,” Jacqueline said coldly, feeling a rush of excitement as the words left her mouth.
“Sweetie,” said Mitzy, “I’m just trying to help you. Please talk to me.”
“You can’t help.”
“Sure I can. I love you. I’m responsible for you. I can—”
“You’re not my mother.”
Mitzy glanced away and rubbed that slender nose of hers that was so similar to Jacqueline’s. For a moment it looked like she might lose her temper, but she took a deep breath, flattened her blouse with her palms, and considered Jacqueline once more.
“I know I’m not,” she said, and just as when she’d confronted the Gelicks, she displayed strength that Jacqueline found awe-inspiring. “However, I am family, the last you have left. And I also happen to know that compact was your mom’s. She got it on her sixteenth birthday.”
“Oh,” said Jacqueline, casting her eyes downward.
“I’m also a lot more like you than you realize. I know exactly what you’re doing, and it won’t work. You can’t push me away, sweetie. You can’t make me give up on you. I’ll be here no matter what you do.”
“Even if I killed someone?”
Without hesitating, Mitzy said, “Yes, even then.”
Surprised, Jacqueline hung her head and shuffled across the carpet. She sat down on the other side of the bed, facing the window. Her parents’ faces smiled down from their places on the wall. She turned away. Stupid as it sounded, she didn’t want to disappoint them, whether they’d been dead for years or not.
A silky, comforting hand caressed her shoulder. “You can talk to me, sweetie. You can tell me what’s wrong. I’m not angry. You’ll find no judgment here. Maybe I could help.”
“You can’t,” whispered Jacqueline.
“This is about a boy, isn’t it?”
Jacqueline froze. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to turn to her aunt and tell her everything. She wanted to tell her about Mal and how much she loved him, relied on him. She wanted to say that now that he was gone, there was an empty hole in her heart. She wanted Mitzy to tell her she wasn’t crazy, that her greatest fear, turning out like her father, was unfounded.
Instead she sat silently, fingers twined together, and stared at her hands.
“Listen,” Mitzy said, reclining on the bed. “Boys aren’t worth it. Boys don’t define you. Most of them are a dime a dozen, and even those who are special…even those can be replaced if things don’t work out. All it takes is effort. Searching. Feeling. Just because one boy broke your heart doesn’t mean it’s time to give up.” Jacqueline suppressed a shudder. “Did you sleep with him? Is that why he’s so hard for you to get over?”
Jacqueline said nothing.
Mitzy exhaled softly. “Of course you didn’t. How could you? Right now, he’s not even real.”
Jacqueline spun around in a panic. “Huh?”
“He’s not real. Whatever image you have of him in your head isn’t the real him. Whoever this boy is, you’ve built him up into something he could never be. Not a real person, but a fantasy of a real person.”
“How would sex change that?” she asked softly.
Mitzy’s eyes narrowed. “Because you’d still be sad, but in a different way. It’s hard to explain. Intimacy can make a connection stronger, but it also strips away the mask. You’ll never see a boy be his true self as much as when he’s about to get your pants off. That’s when they’ll show their real face. That’s when you’ll know, once and for all, what really goes on in that head of his.” Mitzy pursed her lips and blew out a thin breath. “And it’s also why teenagers shouldn’t have sex. Kids your age aren’t ready for that sort of truth. Which is why I know you’re still a virgin, thank God.”
“You know this because…?”
“Because it’s in your eyes. Because I know things, Jackie. I know you.” She reached out and fiddled with a strand of Jacqueline’s hair, making her pull away a bit. “No matter
what you show on the outside, no matter how tough or world-weary you claim to be, you’re still innocent. Trust me on this. I know these things.”
“Because you’ve screwed so many boys?”
Mitzy laughed. “If only you knew how untrue that is, sweetie. You have to trust me when I say that if you do feel the urge to have sex, you need to talk to me about it first. The last thing we need is a little you running around this place.”
Her aunt slapped the bed and shoved herself to standing. She stood there for a long moment, staring down at Jacqueline, a fragile sort of love shimmering in her eyes. Jacqueline felt undeserving.
Mitzy smiled. “You know what’ll make this night better? Cookies. I’ll go whip us up a batch. I’ll order Chinese while they bake. Sound good?”
Jacqueline stared at the floor.
“Okay then. Cookies and Chinese it is.”
Mitzy twirled around on her heels and eased the bedroom door shut behind her as she left. The sound of clanking metal mixing bowls drifted up through the floorboards a few minutes later. Jacqueline stood from the bed and retrieved the compact from her dresser. For a long while she sat with it in her lap, staring at her own reflection, trying to wish Mal back into existence.
Of course, he never came.
She violently shoved the compact into the drawer once more, cursing under her breath. Downstairs, the electronic whir of the egg beater came to life. She thought of the cookies Mitzy had brought to the Gelicks’, and hoped this batch wouldn’t be a letdown like all the other batches Mitzy had made since.
As she discovered later that night, when she and her aunt sat down for a silent dinner, her wish had come true. These were almost as good as the first, melting on her tongue. The sadness inside her seemed to diminish as she took bite after bite, washing the warm morsels down with a glass of root beer. Finally, Jacqueline forced herself to smile.
CHAPTER 18
Andrea Newsome rolled her eyes. “There they go again. No shame. I swear.”
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