The Color of Fear

by Billy Phillips

  And with that, Jack strode off. He felt a bit bad for the pee innuendo. But it was the only way to put Piper in her place. Jack knew, given the chance, Piper would skin alive someone as vulnerable as Caitlin.

  “I can’t believe he’s taking that nerdy Yank to our ball,” Piper complained.

  Layla nodded. “Agreed.”

  “Forget about it,” Paige said. “One date with her and he’ll realize how positively lame she is. Probably tell her to piss off before night’s end. Let’s go. It’s getting late.”

  The girls arrived at Penhaligon’s, where they selected expensive bottles of perfume. Each girl paid with her parents’ credit card.

  Layla saw it first.

  A mobile phone sitting unattended on the counter.

  She snatched it. Opened it. Her eyes popped. “It’s Jack’s!”

  Piper swiped it from Layla. She started snooping through Jack’s phone—his e-mails … his text messages …

  Piper glared at the screen, her lips thinning into blades.

  “How romantic. After the ball Jack and Caitlin are going gallivanting about in some graveyard.”

  Piper suddenly broke out in a crooked smile.

  “Why the grin of sin?” Layla asked.

  Piper slid the mobile into her purse. “Suppose Caitlin never shows up at the ball? I’ll have Jack all to myself” Her smile sharpened. “And Caity will have the fright of her life.”

  All three girls exchanged conniving looks.

  “You’re positively evil,” Layla said.

  Piper admired her manicured nails and smiled.

  The clock on Caitlin’s nightstand showed 4:22 p.m. as a slanting rain pelted her window and Royal Street below. The Kingshire Masquerade Ball was scheduled to start at 7:00 p.m., and Caitlin still had to dream up some edgy makeup concepts for her zombie bride get-up.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of a bright red chili pepper.

  Caitlin’s eyes widened. Natalie was dressed in a life-size chili pepper costume. The bulbous bell of the pepper was a brilliant red, and she wore bright-red tights and a matching long-sleeve, bright-red shirt underneath. It started at the shoulder and fell to a point at the knees. The brown stem of the pepper was provided by a turtleneck.

  “I thought you were going to dress up as Alice in Wonderland, with striped stockings?” Caitlin asked.

  “I saw this in the costume shop,” Natalie said. “It looked more … exciting.”

  “Exciting? You’re a freaking vegetable.”

  “Technically, I’m botanically classified as a fruit. Wanna help me zip?”

  Caitlin’s cell phone beeped. Another text from Jack.

  “Out!” Caitlin shouted at Natalie.

  Natalie pouted as she left, and Caitlin sat on the edge of her bed to read the text: Let’s skip dance & go strght to graveyard. Besides, I’m not 2 fond of dancing.

  Caitlin was sort of delighted. No need to fake a sprained ankle, and she’d spend a spooky and kind of freaky fun evening with Jack. However, there was still the issue of the cemetery in Guildford. She didn’t have her magic wand to wave. Then again, she’d have Jack by her side and she wouldn’t have to go to her grandpa’s burial site. Only Charles Dodgson’s.

  She texted him back: Awesome. Meet u under clock at Waterloo station?

  Her phone chimed again: Cant. Need 2 run errand 4 mum. Meet u @ mount cemetery. 7:30. Or should we cancel?

  A terrible dread punched Caitlin in the stomach. It winded her, in fact. Not because she was afraid of gathering up ghouls in a graveyard. Not at all. Caitlin had seen all the Scream horror movies. Seen The Shining four times. World War Z twice. And she devoured vampire books like Skittles.

  The solo train ride to Guildford is what caused a wrecking ball to swing in the pit of her stomach. What if she got panicky midtrip, when she was far from home?

  Just then, Natalie busted into the room again.

  Caitlin had to act fast. She’d be crushed if Jack canceled. So she did the most daring thing she had ever done in her entire life.

  She texted him back: C u 7:30!

  Am I not adventurous?

  She stole a peek at the four corners of her ceiling.

  One, two, three, four.

  Fear was strange. Caitlin was comfortable standing in front of a class or an auditorium and giving a lecture on any given topic. But dancing at parties and worrying what others thought about her always brought forth stifling insecurities.

  On a dare, she’d have no problem running through … say … a pitch-black graveyard in the middle of the night. But the thought of having a panic attack in the school hallway or in the middle of a mall far from the nearest exit, or at a party—well, just the anticipation of potential panic would altogether make her knees go soft, make her beg for relief. Caitlin wouldn’t have wished that type of terror even on Piper. No one understood how crippling it could be.

  The first time she had an attack, she thought she was dying or losing her grip on reality. The anxiety ran her over like a bus. She had to run to her dad, panicked and wild-eyed, not knowing what was happening to her. Her dad gave her half a Xanax—she only wondered later why he had any—and said it was just her nerves.

  Just my nerves?

  What did that even mean? What nerves was he referring to? Where were these evil nerves located? Why did they suddenly revolt and shut down her breathing and fill her head with dreadful thoughts and irrational fears and cause her to sweat icicles? How did these nameless, indefinable “nerves” exert that much control over her?

  Caitlin couldn’t be pissed at her father. Not at all. He was doing his best. He had sent her to bed after she popped half a Xanax. She had hoped she would sleep it off. Yeah. Right.

  A fresh roll of thunder stirred Caitlin from her reminiscing. She turned and looked at her window from afar.

  The grimy fingerprints were clearly visible, pressed against the pane.

  Rain fell softly outside. Raindrops dribbled down the window like tears.

  Something gnawed at her. Something drifted at the edge of her mind like a delicate billow of fog as she looked through the window. She couldn’t put a finger on it and she knew that if she tried to, the vapor would dissipate.

  She let it go.

  A heartbeat later, however, the thought sharpened in her mind. The fingerprints!

  Why hadn’t the rain washed them away?

  An icy wave flooded over her, making her skin prickle.

  She moved toward the window, warily. She reached her hand out. With her pinky, Caitlin rubbed one of the fingerprints.

  Please don’t!

  It did.

  It smudged.

  Oh my God!

  Whoever left those fingerprints had done so from inside her bedroom.

  Standing and breathing next to her bed.

  While she slept.

  Natalie suddenly busted into the room and her mouth fell open when she saw Caitlin.

  “Whoa,” Natalie said. “What’s with you? You look severely spooked.”

  Caitlin responded in a grim tone, “Those fingerprints on the window … they were made by someone inside this bedroom.”

  Natalie leaned toward the window to inspect. She raised her eyebrows. “Nice work, Sherlock. How’d I miss that?”

  “I’m creeped out, Nat. This isn’t funny.”

  Natalie shrugged. “Probably some maintenance worker from the building came while we were at school. In fact, I overheard Dad talking about ordering new window blinds for this room. Yeah, that was it.”

  Caitlin exhaled. Of course. That explanation made perfect sense.

  She turned her attention to Natalie’s red chili pepper outfit. She snickered. “A bit bright, dontcha think, Lady Gaga?”

  Natalie folded her arms. “First you’re on the verge of a major freak-out, now suddenly you’re cocky and mocking me after I solved your mystery. Could it be you’re a bit uptight? A suppressed fear of freaking out in front of Jack? Like you did in front of
that skateboard dude last year at the dance?”

  Low blow, Natalie Fletcher.

  Caitlin’s nostrils flared. “I never freaked out, you pretentious, bigmouthed brat!!”

  If a tone of voice had teeth, Natalie would’ve had bite marks on her flesh. Except that Caitlin had totally freaked out that night. She really thought she was dying.

  Skateboarder Dillon Slater had asked her to dance. Suddenly, as they strode onto the dance floor, the DJ played that song. That song was “She’s Not There” by the British sixties band The Zombies. The same song her mom played all the time while dancing with Caitlin around their house.

  When Caitlin heard it at the dance, her body turned ice cold. She ran out of the gym because she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Everyone had stared wide-eyed, wondering what was happening to her. But there’s always a jerk in every school who degraded others for the sake of preserving his own reputation. That jerk turned out to be Dillon Slater. “Skateboard dude” himself. He hollered a comment that wounded Caitlin deeply as she’d fled.

  “Hey look,” Dillon Slater had shouted, “another Fletcher disappears into thin air!”

  The insinuation was cruel. A joke about her mother’s disappearance was heartless.

  Some other creep then posted Slater’s comment on Facebook. Caitlin had been crushed.

  Natalie, suddenly contrite, lifted Caitlin’s chin with her finger. “I’m not trying to take the piss out of you, sweet sibling. It’s just that you were gasping for air when you came home that night.”

  Caitlin shrugged. “Was not. I just like oxygen.”

  Natalie rolled her eyes. “It’s called hyperventilation.”

  “Spare me your copious vocabulary. And how about you?” Caitlin countered. “With your intimacy issues? You head-butt instead of kiss good night.”

  “Not true. I’m tactfully evading infectious germs.”

  Caitlin heard the sound of their apartment’s front door opening.

  “Finally,” Caitlin said. “I’m ravenous!”

  Both girls darted downstairs.

  “Guess who’s home?” Harold Fletcher called out as he entered the kitchen carrying a large, white plastic bag filled with takeout food.

  He plopped the plastic bag onto the counter and then turned to his girls, a warm smile on his face.

  “So? How was everyone’s day?”

  Caitlin leaned across the counter, and her father planted one on her forehead. Natalie made a vinegary face, slid both hands in her pockets and tottered across the kitchen. She offered her dad the very top of her frizzy, red-haired head.

  Harold Fletcher surveyed the scalp area in search of a clearing—to no avail. He pecked a shapeless mound of red hair instead.

  Caitlin glared at Natalie. “Told you. Head-butt.”

  Natalie took a seat at the kitchen bar, smiling at Caitlin while throwing a sideways glance at their father.

  “I’ve been trying to help your daughter with her various phobias and anxiety disorders.”

  “Dad!” Caitlin hollered at the top of her lungs. Their father’s smiling face turned solemn.

  “Come on now, girls, get along. Natalie, don’t blow things out of proportion just so you can start with your sister.”

  Natalie’s eyes popped.

  “But the last time she cut her precious hair she was my age. Which explains why it now hangs down to her butt crack. It’s called tonsurephobia!”

  Caitlin’s eyes blazed as Natalie kept up her attack.

  “She’s had contact lenses sitting in the medicine cabinet for almost as long. Fear of eyes is called ommetaphobia.”

  Though Caitlin wanted her sister to shut up, she couldn’t deny the truth.

  She recalled the time she’d had a temper tantrum, which her mom said had hit 7.2 on the Richter scale. It had happened when a salami-breathed eye doctor tried to insert a contact lens in her eye. Caitlin had lost it. She’d flung her arms wildly, knocking over a tray of lenses and freaking him out. Her mom had said her fear was irrational.

  Irrational? Mom’s disappearance … now that was irrational.

  And Caitlin had only stopped cutting her hair when her mom was no longer around to take her to the hair salon. How was that her fault? Besides, she adored her long, flowing hair.

  Harold Fletcher pressed his lips into a thin line.

  “Natalie, another word and you’re staying home for Halloween.” Natalie zipped it lightning-quick. Her dad then pulled up a tall stool and joined the girls at the counter.

  “Who’s hungry?” he asked. Her dad opened the takeout container and passed around some paper plates. Natalie and Caitlin stared at the contents of the containers. Puck-shaped slices of black sausage, speckled with blobs of fat, floated on a sea of brown, saucy beans.

  “What! Is! That?!” Caitlin asked, wide-eyed.

  “Black pudding,” her father replied. “With bangers and mash. You had it once a few years ago.”

  “What’s it made of?” asked Natalie.

  “Dried, congealed blood.”

  Caitlin felt her stomach churn. “How wretched.” She pushed it away.

  “Fascinating,” remarked Natalie, leaning in to study it more closely.

  “It’s a classic dish of English cuisine,” her dad said. “People have been eating it for centuries.”

  Caitlin got up and made herself a nice, familiar tuna salad sandwich.

  Natalie stuck her finger into the blood pudding gravy and slurped it up. “Hmm,” she chirped, “needs hot sauce.”

  She reached for the bottle of Upton Cheyney Sweet Chilli Sauce sitting nearby on the counter. She tipped it over onto her plate … and one measly drop fell out. Natalie shook it vigorously up and down. Two drops.

  “Hmmmm. What’s with the child safety cap?”

  She turned the bottle upside down and gave the bottom a mighty pound.

  GLOOP.

  That did it. A spicy wad of hot sauce blurped out of the spout. It covered her entire slice of blood pudding, her plate, the table—and her costume!

  “Smooth move, chipotle,” gloated Caitlin. “Now you’ll stink like a pepper too.”

  Natalie shrugged, scarfed the black sausage and washed it down with some bubbling spring water. After a few sips, she let out one of her famous hot-dog burps—the family joked that they hung so thick in the air, you could brush a slab of mustard on it.

  “Disgusting!” Caitlin lifted the hem of her top over her nose to block out the foul odor. It took a moment for the stench to dissipate, and then the Fletcher family dug into the rest of their dinner.

  After supper, Caitlin suddenly found her dad standing in the kitchen with a birthday cake. It was big, it was chocolate, and it was just what Caitlin needed at that moment.

  They sang “Happy Birthday,” and then Harold Fletcher shared a birthday kiss and hug with Caitlin.

  “Congrats on your second year of teenagerdom, Caity-cakes!” Natalie said and gave her a head-butt.

  Caitlin’s dad handed her a thin box wrapped in silver foil. “I know how much you love writing, honey.”

  Caitlin apprehensively peeled away the wrapping. Her eyes grew as bright as twin light bulbs.

  A mini tablet!

  Dad beamed. “Now you can write articles from anywhere. For your blog.”

  Caitlin was truly grateful. She hugged her father tight.

  “Thanks so much, Papa Bear.”

  “Whattaya say, Caitlin?” her dad said as he cleared away the plates. “Sure you don’t want to come trick-or-treating with us tonight?”

  “I’m too old for youthful indulgences like knocking on doors in search of sugar.”

  Caitlin watched as Natalie stretched her bright-yellow raincoat over the bulbous pod that served as the frame for her ridiculously oversize chili pepper outfit. She hooked her pumpkin-shaped candy-collection bucket over her arm and snapped her coat.

  “For the record,” Natalie said, looking up at her father. “We don’t say ‘trick-or-treat’ in London.
Kids here say ‘Happy Halloween.’”

  Her dad smiled. Then he put on the silliest-looking court jester hat Caitlin had ever seen and left with Natalie.

  Caitlin spent the next half an hour dishing out candies to every superhero, phantom, pirate, princess, and witch who knocked on the door. She also booted up her new tablet to check the London-Guildford train schedules.

  When her dad and Natalie returned from their trick-or-treating, Natalie quickly disappeared into the bedroom with her bucketful of treats.

  “It’s getting late, pumpkin,” her father said. He plopped down on the sofa next to Caitlin in the living room. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for the dance?”

  Caitlin sighed. “I don’t know. I’m feeling a bit tired.”

  I’m getting cold feet about going alone to Guildford.

  Harold Fletcher looked at his daughter with mournful eyes. “Mom would have wanted you to go. She was always so outgoing and spirited.”

  Caitlin despised hearing about what her mom would have wanted so she shut down the conversation. She knew her father was trying his best—or denying his best! She didn’t want to say anything that would make him feel worse than he already felt on the anniversary of her disappearance, her birthday aside.

  “I’ll see how I feel later.”

  “Whatever makes you happy.” He kissed her on the forehead.

  Caitlin headed upstairs. When she entered the bedroom, Natalie was passed out, snoring just like her father. Sugar crash, no doubt.

  Her bag of superabundant Halloween calories lay at the foot of her bed with a “don’t touch or else” sign on top of it. Sometimes Girl Wonder did act her age.

  Caitlin’s phone vibrated. A text from Jack popped up on her screen.

  C u soon.

  Caitlin slumped onto her bed. Her clock read 5:42 p.m. She had to be at Waterloo station by 6:15 if she was going to catch her train to Guildford.

  That meant she had to leave right away to make it on time. Caitlin bowed her head and sighed. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t pull this off. She’d tried, but there was no way it was going to happen. She picked up her cell to text Jack. She’d say she was feeling fluish. No, she had a migraine. No, it was that time of month.