Safe House

by Jenny Carroll

  Fortunately, a car pulled up about midway through my description of my U.S. Government class, and the people who piled out of it all started calling out Mark's name.

  Only it wasn't, as I'd first thought, because they were so glad to see him. It was because they had something to tell him.

  "Oh, my God." It was Tisha Murray, from my homeroom. She still had on her uniform from the memorial service—Tisha was on the varsity cheerleading squad—but she'd apparently left her pompons in the car.

  "Oh, God, I'm so glad we found you," she gushed. "We were looking everywhere. Look, you've got to come quick. It's an emergency!"

  Mark slid off the picnic table, his shake forgotten.

  "What?" he asked, reaching out to take Tisha by either shoulder. "What's happened? What do you need me to do?"

  "Not you," Tisha said, rudely. Except I don't think she meant to be rude. She was just too hysterical to remember social niceties. "Her."

  She pointed. At me.

  "You," Tisha said to me. "We need you."

  "Me?" I nearly fell off the picnic table. Never before had a member of the Ernie Pyle varsity cheerleading squad expressed even the slightest interest in me. Well, except for the past two days, when they'd been berating me for letting Amber die. "What do you need me for?"

  "Because it's happened again!" Tisha said. "Only this time it's Heather. He's got her. Whoever killed Amber has got Heather now! You've got to find her. Do you hear me? You've got to find her, before he strangles her, too!"

  C H A P T E R

  9

  It probably isn't politic to slap a cheerleader. That's exactly what I did, though.

  Hey, she was hysterical, all right? Isn't that what you're supposed to do to people who can't get ahold of themselves?

  Looking back, though, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do. Because all it did was reduce Tisha to tears. Not just tears, either, but big baby sobs. Mark had to get the story out of Jeff Day, who didn't know nearly as many words as Tisha did.

  "We were at the memorial thingie," he said as Tisha wept in the arms of Vicky Huff, a Pompette. "You know, up at the quarry. The girls threw a bunch of the wreaths and flowers and crap from the service into the water. It was all symbolic and shit."

  Have I mentioned that Jeff Day is not exactly on the honor roll?

  "And then it was time to go, and everyone went back to their cars . . . everyone except Heather. She was just … gone."

  "What do you mean," Mark demanded, "by gone?"

  Jeff shrugged his massive shoulders.

  "You know, Mark," he said. "Just . . . just gone."

  "That's unacceptable," Mark said.

  I wasn't sure what Mark was referring to … the fact that Heather had disappeared, or Jeff's shrugging off that disappearance. When, however, Jeff stammered, "What I mean . . . what I mean is, we looked, but we couldn't find her," I realized Mark had meant Jeff's answer. Jeff's hurrying to correct himself reminded me that, as quarterback, Mark was in a position of some authority over these guys.

  "People don't do that, Jeff," I said. "People just don't just disappear."

  "I know," Jeff said, looking a little miserable. "But Heather did."

  "It was just like in that movie," Tisha said, lifting her tear-stained face. "That Blair Witch movie, where those kids disappeared in the woods. It was just like that. One second, Heather was there, and the next, she was gone. We called and called for her, and looked everywhere, but it was like … like she had vanished. Like that witch had gotten her."

  I regarded Tisha with raised eyebrows.

  "I highly doubt," I said, "that Heather's disappearance is the result of witchcraft, Tisha."

  "No," Tisha said, wiping her eyes with her twig-like fingers. The tiniest member of the varsity squad, Tisha was the one who always ended up on the top of the trophy pyramid, or came popping up into the air, to land in a cradle of arms on the gym floor beneath her. "I know it wasn't really a witch. But it was probably, you know, a Grit."

  "A Grit," I said.

  "Yeah. I saw this movie once about these Grits who lived in the mountains, and they totally kidnapped Michael J. Fox's wife—you know, that Tracy Pollan. She was an Olympic biathlete, and they kidnapped her and tried to make her, like, tote their water and all. Until she, like, escaped."

  I can't believe my life sometimes. I really can't.

  "Maybe some freaky Grits like those ones in the movie, who live out in the woods by the quarry, got her. I've seen them out there, you know. They live in shacks, with no running water or electricity, and, like, an outhouse." Tisha started sobbing all over again. "They've probably stuffed her in the bottom of their outhouse!"

  I had to give Tisha her propers for having such a colorful imagination. But still, this seemed a bit much to me.

  "Let me see if I have this straight," I said. "You think a deranged hillbilly, who lives out by Pike's Quarry, has kidnapped Heather and stuffed her down his toilet."

  "I've heard of that kinda thing happening," Jeff Day said.

  But instead of supporting his fellow team member, Mark snapped, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard."

  Jeff Day was the kind of guy who, if anybody else had called him stupid, would have slammed his fist into the speaker's face. But not, evidently, if it happened to be Mark Leskowski. Mark, it appeared, was next to godlike in Jeff's book.

  "Sorry, dude," he murmured, looking shamefaced.

  Mark ignored his teammate.

  "Have any of you," he wanted to know, "called the police?"

  "Course we did," another player, Roy Hicks, said indignantly, not wanting to look bad, the way his teammate Jeff had, in front of the QB.

  "A bunch of sheriff's deputies came up to the quarry," Tisha chimed in, "and they're helping everyone look for her. They even brought some of those sniffer dogs. We only left"—she turned mascara-smudged eyes toward me—"to look for her." Tisha could not seem to remember my name. And why should she? I was so far out of her social sphere as to be invisible....

  Except when it came to rescuing her friends from psychotic hillbillies, apparently.

  "You've got to find her," Tisha said, her damp eyes aglow with the last rays of the setting sun. "Please. Before … it's too late."

  This blew. I mean it. How was I supposed to convince the Federal Bureau of Investigation that I don't have psychic powers anymore, when I can't even convince my own peers of it?

  "Look, Tisha," I said, aware that not just Tisha was gazing at me hopefully, but also Mark, Jeff Day, Todd Mintz, Roy Hicks, and a veritable Whitman's Sampler of cheerleaders. "I don't … I mean, I can't . . ."

  "Please," Tisha whispered. "She's my best friend. How would you like it if your best friend got kidnapped?"

  Damn.

  Look, it wasn't like I harbored ill feelings toward Heather Montrose. I did, of course, but that wasn't the point. The point was, I was trying to keep a low profile with the whole psychic thing.

  But if Tisha was right, then there was a serial killer loose. He might very well have Heather in his clutches, the same way that, a few days earlier, he'd had Amber in his clutches. Could I really sit around and let a girl—even a girl like Heather Montrose, who, after Karen Sue Hankey, was one of my least favorite people—die?

  No. No, I could not.

  "I don't have ESP anymore," I said, just so that later on, no one would be able to say I'd agreed to any of this. "But I'll give it a try."

  Tisha exhaled gustily, as if she'd been holding her breath until I gave my answer.

  "Oh, thank you," she cried. "Thank you!"

  "Yeah," I said. "Whatever. But look, I need something of hers."

  "Something of whose?" Tisha cocked her head, making her look a lot like a bird. A sparrow, maybe, eyeing a worm.

  Yeah. That'd be me. I'd be the worm.

  "Something of Heather's," I explained, slowly, so she'd be sure to understand. "Do you have a sweater of hers, or something?"

  "I have her pompons," Tisha said, a
nd she bounced back toward the car she'd arrived in.

  Todd Mintz looked perplexed. "That's really how you find them?" he asked. "By touching something that belongs to the missing person?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Well. Sort of."

  It wasn't, of course. Because here's the thing: since that day last spring, when I was hit by lightning, I'd found a lot of people, all right. But I'd only found one of them while I'd been awake. Seriously. Everybody else, it had taken sleep to summon their location to, as Douglas had put it, my mind's eye. That's how my particular psychic ability worked. While I slept.

  Which meant that, as a future career option, I was going to have to rule out fortune-telling. You were never going to catch me sitting in a tent with a crystal ball and a big old turban on my head. I could no sooner predict the future than I could fly. All I can do—all I've ever been able to do, since the day of that storm—is find missing people.

  And I can only do that in my sleep.

  Except once. One time, when one of the campers I'd been assigned to watch had run away, I'd hugged his pillow and gotten this weird flash. Really. It was just like a picture inside my head, of exactly where the kid was, and what he was doing.

  Whether or not this would happen with the help of Heather's pompons, I had no way of knowing. But I knew that if the same person who'd killed Amber had gotten hold of Heather, we couldn't afford to wait until morning to find her.

  "Here." Tisha rushed up to me and shoved two big balls of shimmery silver and white streamers into my hands. "Now find her, quick."

  I looked down at the pompons. They were surprisingly heavy. No wonder all the girls on the squad had such cut arm muscles. I'd thought it was from all those cartwheels, but really, it was from hauling these things around.

  "Uh, Tisha," I said, aware that every single patron of the Chocolate Moose was looking down at me. "I can't, um … I think maybe I need to go home and try it. How about if I come up with anything, I'll call you and let you know?"

  Tisha didn't seem particularly enthused by this idea, but what else could I say? I wasn't going to stand there and inhale the scent of Heather Montrose's pompons. (Which was how I'd found Shane. By smelling his pillow, though, not his pompons.)

  Fortunately, Mark, at least, seemed to understand, and, taking me by the elbow, said, "I should be getting you home, anyway."

  And so, under the watchful gazes of most of Ernie Pyle High's elite, Mark Leskowski escorted me back to his BMW, tucked me gently into the passenger seat, and then got behind the wheel and drove me slowly home.

  Slowly not because he didn't want our evening together to end, but because he was so busy talking, I guess it was hard for him to accelerate at the same time.

  "You get what this means, don't you?" he asked as we inched down Second Street. "If Heather really is missing—if the same person who killed Amber really has done the same thing to Heather—well, they can't keep on suspecting me, can they? Because I was with you the whole time. Right? I mean, right? Those FBI people can't say I had anything to do with it."

  "Right," I said, looking down at Heather's pompons. Was this going to work? I wondered. I mean, would a lapful of pompons really lead me to a missing girl? It didn't seem very likely, but I closed my eyes, dug my fingers into the feathery strands, and tried to concentrate.

  "And before I was with you," Mark was saying, "I was with them. Seriously. I came straight to your house from my interview with them. The FBI guys, I mean. So I never had an opportunity to do anything to Heather. She was all the way out at the quarry, with everybody else. And that waitress. She saw me with you, too."

  "Right." It was really hard to concentrate, what with Mark talking so much.

  Oh, well, I thought. I'll just wait until I get home, and try it there, in the privacy of my own bedroom. I'll have plenty of opportunity, once I get home.

  Only of course I didn't. Because my parents had gotten home before I had, and were waiting for me on the front porch, their expressions on the grim side.

  Busted again!

  Mark, as he pulled into our driveway, went, "Are those your parents?"

  "Yes," I said, gulping. I was so dead.

  "They look nice." Mark waved at them as he got out of his car and walked around it to open my door. One thing you had to say about Mark Leskowski: he was a gentleman and all.

  "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Mastriani," he called to them. "I hope you don't mind my taking your daughter out for a quick bite to eat. I tried to have her home promptly, as it's a school night."

  Whoa. Didn't Mark realize he was laying it on a little thick? I mean, my parents aren't morons.

  My mom and dad just sat there—my mom on the porch swing, my dad on the porch steps—and stared as I emerged from Mark's BMW. I had never seen them looking so worried. That was it. I was dead meat.

  "Well, it was very nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Mastriani," Mark said. Exercising some of that charm that made him such an effective leader on the ball field, he added, "And may I say that I have enjoyed dining in your restaurants many times? They are particularly fine."

  My dad, looking a little astonished, went, "Um, thank you, son."

  To me, Mark said, picking up the hand that was not clutching Heather Montrose's pompons, "Thank you, Jessica, for being such a good listener. I really needed that tonight."

  He didn't kiss me or anything. He just gave my hand a squeeze, winked, climbed back into his car, and drove away.

  Leaving me to face the firing squad alone.

  I turned around and squared my shoulders. Really, this was ridiculous. I mean, I am sixteen years old. A grown woman, practically. If I want to punch a girl in the face and then go have a nice dinner with the quarterback of the football team, well, that is my God-given prerogative. . . .

  "Mom," I said. "Dad. Listen. I can explain—"

  "Jessica," my mother said, getting up from the porch swing. "Where is your brother?"

  I blinked at them. The sun had set, and it wasn't easy to see them in the gloom. Still, there wasn't anything wrong with my ears. My mom had just asked me where my brother was. Not where I had been. Where my brother was.

  Was it possible that I was not in trouble for going out after all?

  "You mean Douglas?" I asked stupidly, because I still could not quite believe my good fortune.

  "No," my father said sarcastically. He wasn't worried enough, apparently, to have lost his sense of humor. "Your brother Michael. Of course we mean Douglas. When's the last time you saw him?"

  "I don't know," I said. "This morning, I guess."

  "Oh, God!" My mother started pacing the length of the porch floor. "I knew it. He's run away. Joe, I'm calling the police."

  "He's twenty years old, Toni," my father said. "If he wants to go out, he can go out. There's no law against it."

  "But his medicine!" my mom cried. "How do we know he took his medication before he left?"

  My dad shrugged. "His doctor says he's been taking it regularly."

  "But how do we know he took it today?" My mother pulled open the screen door. "That's it. I'm calling the—"

  We all heard it at the same time. Whistling. Someone was coming down Lumley Lane, whistling.

  I knew who it was at once, of course. Douglas had always been the best whistler in the family. It was he, in fact, who'd taught me to do it. I could still only manage a few folk songs, but Douglas could whistle whole symphony pieces, without even seeming to pause for breath.

  When he emerged into the circle of light thrown by the porch lamp, which my mother had hastily turned on, he stopped, and blinked a few times. From one of his hands dangled a bag from the comic book store downtown.

  "Hey," he said, looking at us. "What's this? Family meeting? And you started without me?"

  My mother just stood there, sputtering. My dad heaved a sigh and got up.

  "There," he said to my mother. "You see, Toni? I told you he was all right. Come on, let's go inside. I'm missing the ballgame."

  My mother, with
out a word, turned and went into the house.

  I looked at Douglas and shook my head.

  "Ordinarily," I said, "I'd be truly pissed at you for going off like that and not telling them where you were going or when you'd be home. But since they were so worried about you, they forgot to be mad at me, I will forgive you, this time."

  "Well," Douglas said. "That's gracious of you." We went up the porch steps together, and he looked down at the pompons in my hand. "Who do you think you are?" he wanted to know. "Marcia Brady?"

  "No," I said with a sigh. "Madame Zenda."

  C H A P T E R

  10

  It didn't work, of course.

  The pompons, I mean. All I got from them was a big fat nothing … and some of those streamery things up my nose, from when I tried sniffing them.

  This isn't as weird as it sounds, since the vision I'd had about Shane seemed to have had an olfactory trigger. But what had worked with Shane's pillow most definitely did not work with Heather's pompons.

  Maybe because I had actually liked Shane, and had felt responsible when he'd run away from the cabin we'd shared.

  But Heather? Yeah, don't like her so much. And don't really feel responsible for her disappearing, either.

  So why couldn't I fall asleep? I mean, if I felt so damned not responsible for what had happened to Heather, why was I lying there, staring at the ceiling?

  Gee, I don't know. Maybe it was because of all the phone calls I'd gotten that evening, demanding to know why I hadn't found her already. Seriously, if I'd heard from every single member of the pep squad—with the exception of Heather and Amber, of course—I would not have been surprised. My mom, who was already in what could in no way be described as a good mood, on account of Mrs. Hankey's pending lawsuit against me and Douglas's sudden streak of wanderlust, threatened to disconnect the phone if it rang one more time.

  Finally I was like, Go ahead, because I was sick of telling people I didn't know anything. It was bad enough the entire student population of Ernest Pyle High seemed to think I was still in full possession of my psychic powers. Now they apparently thought that I was refusing to use them for certain people, because I resented their popularity.