by Shawn Sarles
But she couldn’t let Elena ruin the night. She couldn’t let her win.
She got to her feet and picked up the pajama pants. Hot pink wasn’t really her color, but she didn’t have any other option. She changed quickly and tucked her old clothes into her duffel bag. Then she bent over and hid her stuff under the bed. Better not to give Elena the chance at another easy prank.
As she straightened back up, Steph’s eyes fell on the covered mirror. She thought about their game again. About the girl she’d seen in its depths. She closed her eyes and that face flashed in front of her. The same girl she’d spotted in the hallway earlier that week. But could it really be?
She studied that face in her mind’s eye, relishing every detail. The spritely nose and inquisitive eyes. That short, smooth hair that she longed to run her fingers through.
Lightning flickered across the memory and the face shifted in a flash. The girl grew fangs. The corners of her mouth dripped blood. Her hair curled into long reptilian coils. A stench crept up Steph’s nose. Like rotted flowers. Sickly sweet and foul. Roses left out on a gravestone for months.
Steph’s eyes shot open. They frantically searched the room, but she was all alone. No one hiding in wait to scare her out of her pajama pants.
What was she even doing thinking like that? Thinking about soulmates? She didn’t have time for romance. Especially not one with a girl. She couldn’t afford to let her guard down. She couldn’t give Elena any more openings. She had a team to win over. A sleepover to get back to.
It was one of those perfect autumn days, the leaves half-turned to brilliant reds and oranges, a comfortable chill running underneath the air, summer’s last breath going out. It was the kind of day Grace lived for, when she got to impersonate her favorite mystery-solving cartoon and break out her chunkiest sweater—the pumpkin-orange one with the thick collar that came all the way up to her chin. And since it was spirit week at school, they even got to eat lunch out on the front lawn. They got to enjoy the weather before it got too cold.
Grace’s lunch box squeaked as she opened the lid and pulled out her sandwich. She took a bite and raspberry jam spilled from the corners of her mouth.
“You’ve got something there,” Calvin said, dropping his pen and pointing as he tried not to laugh.
Grace slapped her hand over her lips, sure she looked like some kind of vampire. She wiped her face clean and then carefully took another bite, nibbling at the sandwich now, ignoring her grumbling stomach.
“What are you drawing?”
Calvin had picked up his pen and started scratching at his notebook again. Grace tried to sneak a glance, but he was good at covering it up.
“Just sketching,” Calvin replied casually, his eyes flitting up from the page to meet Grace’s even though his pen kept moving.
“You’re always sketching. But you’ve never shown me any of your drawings.”
Calvin’s hand stilled, his eyes locked on Grace’s. An awkward moment passed between them.
“Sure I have,” Calvin finally replied, staring back down at his work, edging the notebook a little farther away. “My Wolf Man T-shirt. That’s a Calvin Lee original.”
Grace nodded, remembering. But he was always drawing in that notebook of his. He had to have more than just the one finished picture. Hadn’t he ever entered a contest? Or had to present a project for art class?
Then Grace remembered that she still had the sketch she’d picked up on the stairwell—the demon in all its grim glory. She glanced at her own stack of notebooks and pulled over the binder on top. She flipped it open and took out the folded-up piece of paper.
“This is yours, too, right?”
Calvin’s eyes bugged out and his pen thumped against his notebook. Carefully, he reached over and took it from her, his hands trembling slightly.
“Where’d you get this?”
“I found it a couple of weeks ago. On the stairwell where you’d been drawing. I assumed it was yours.”
Should she not have mentioned it? It was just a drawing, after all.
“I mean, I think it’s really cool. Is she like a banshee or harpy or—”
“She’s a succubus.”
The way Calvin murmured it, like he was legitimately afraid, only made Grace more intrigued.
“She preys on the weak, the defenseless, those who don’t even know that she’s there.”
“She sounds scary.”
Grace had leaned in close, a thrill running through her.
“Here, you can keep it.” Calvin shoved the page back at Grace like it might burn his hands if he held on to it.
“But be careful,” he warned, his voice a whisper. “She’s dangerous.”
Grace didn’t know what to say as Calvin’s head dipped down and he got back to his latest sketch. So she stared at the picture instead, the demon’s ferocity terrifying on the page, blood on its lips and murder in its eyes. She could see why this creature would be dangerous.
But only in the movies. Or in a fairy tale.
The monster couldn’t do any true harm, Grace assured herself. Not out here in the real world. Then she folded the picture up and tucked it back into the front pocket of her binder.
She regretted bringing it out. It was creepy that she’d found it, held on to it. There was an uncomfortable tension between them now and she didn’t know what to say. Calvin wouldn’t even look up at her, so her eyes wandered across the lawn instead.
She spotted Steph first, leaning her back against a tree, her head tilted up to the sky, lost in whatever clouds she was seeing up there. And then there was Elena, not too far away, sitting on a picnic blanket surrounded by a group of her friends.
But then Elena leapt to her feet, taking quick, decisive steps across the lawn. Grace narrowed her eyes and realized she was heading straight for Henry. Henry, who was looking pretty comfortable sitting next to one of the girls from the volleyball team. The redhead, Julia.
“What’s your favorite candy?”
Grace blinked, surprised by the question as she focused back in on Calvin. “My what?”
She watched as Calvin reached into his bag and pulled out a handful of fun-sized candy bars.
“I raided my mom’s Halloween stash.”
Grace’s eyes lit up. Because trick-or-treating candy was just another one of the things that made Halloween her favorite holiday. When she was little she’d always hoarded her candy, hiding it from her mom and dad, making sure to ration it out so that it would last until Christmas, when she could replenish her stores with stocking candy.
“Twix are my favorite,” Grace said, her hand darting to pick one out of the pile. “But I also love a Milky Way.”
She grabbed one of those, too, but kept herself from eating it.
“I go for anything that has crunch or caramel,” Calvin said as he picked out a rectangle of chocolate and stuffed it in his mouth. Grace followed suit and took a bite of the mini Twix.
As she chewed, she couldn’t believe how well things were going between them. It was almost like they were soulmates. Like they were meant to be. Maybe what she’d seen in that mirror had been real and not just her imagination messing with her.
Grace swallowed and looked over at him, the sun shining off his dark hair, his eyebrows furrowed as he concentrated on his drawing, his glasses slipping to the end of his nose. Had he ever been cuter?
She should tell him.
What if he doesn’t like you back?
Grace froze as doubt slipped in.
What if he rejects you?
She couldn’t let the fear win out.
What if he hurts you?
And with that thought, Grace felt a pair of hands press down on her shoulders. A frozen breath brushed against her ear. Nails dug into her neck as the phantom fingers squeezed tighter, her throat closing up. It was a feeling she’d been familiar with over the years, but she’d never felt it this intensely before. It scared her.
But Calvin would never hurt her. He was swee
t. He’d been nothing but nice to her.
Grace managed to shake off the bad feeling. She felt the claws retract and fly away ahead of her, moving on to their next victim.
She had to tell Calvin how she felt. She had to tell him now, before she lost the courage. But as Grace opened her mouth to say it, multiple things happened all at once, everything slowing down around her so that she could take it all in.
First, Calvin jumped to his feet, his notebook falling to the ground, lying there open on the grass as panic contorted his face into something scary and unrecognizable, a shout welling up in his throat.
At the same time, a loud yelp drew Grace’s attention away from the boy. And as she swiveled her head to the side, she spotted Steph, a look of shock evident on her face as she struggled to get to her feet.
And then there was a piercing scream. The shriek of tires. The thud of metal denting in on itself. Glass crunching. A body thrown up and then hammered down to the ground.
Grace’s hands flew to her mouth as she watched the violence of it. As she recognized the body slumped in a pile of motionless limbs on the pavement, the car he had just been hit by screeching to a halt a few feet away.
Henry.
And Elena standing there on the curb, her hands thrown up, a splatter of red dotting her cheeks, her mouth open wide, silent after her scream had shredded her throat.
The world suddenly careened back to its normal speed, giving Grace whiplash. Her whole body shook. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t believe it. She’d never seen something so horrible. She wanted to rush over, to help out in any way she could. But her feet wouldn’t budge. She glanced down at her boots, expecting to see herself frozen to the spot. But there was no ice gripping her toes. Only Calvin’s notebook.
Grace squinted, her eyes quickly taking in the drawing but unable to process what she was seeing. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t possible. Still shaking, she bent over and picked it up, bringing it right to her nose so she could examine it more closely.
The ink shimmered on the page, fresh from Calvin’s pen.
“I swear, it’s not what it looks like.” Calvin’s voice trembled, pulling Grace’s attention away from the picture and back to the disaster in front of them.
“But how could you have known?” Grace tapped the notebook, not believing the proof in front of her eyes. “How could you have drawn this before it even happened?”
“I—”
But Calvin’s reply was cut short as Vice Principal Matthis flung open the front doors of the school and came racing out onto the lawn. He had a walkie-talkie pressed close to his lips, shouting orders into it so quickly that Grace couldn’t understand any of them.
But that didn’t matter right now. And neither did Calvin’s picture or what would have possessed him to draw it in the first place.
What mattered was Henry. Getting him help. Making sure he was still alive. So Grace pulled herself away from Calvin and hurried after their vice principal, cutting through the small crowd of students craning to get a better look.
He had to be okay. He couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t have just watched someone—
Grace broke through to the front of the group of onlookers and came up short, gasping as she caught sight of Henry.
Blood and guts never fazed her in horror movies, but here in real life, seeing someone she knew bruised and bloody and broken, seeing his arm bent at an unnatural and scary angle—it was almost too much for her to stomach. She hadn’t expected it to be so gruesome. She hadn’t expected Henry to look so much like a corpse, unmoving and pale.
In the distance a siren wailed, but Grace worried the ambulance might not get there in time. Henry might really be gone.
But as she stared down at him, his arm twitched. His head turned slowly to the side to look up at them, a croak escaping his lips.
Relief washed over Grace just in time for the paramedics to arrive, rushing to get Henry strapped to a gurney, off to the hospital, where the doctors could set his arm and make him better. But as they carted Henry away, Grace couldn’t keep her thoughts from turning to Calvin.
How had he drawn that scene—the accident—moments before it had happened? How had he predicted the future? And what else did he have tucked away in that notebook of his? What other disasters had he seen?
She hadn’t done it. She had a conscience, even if no one else believed her. She hadn’t pushed him. She couldn’t have hurt anyone like that. Especially not Henry.
Elena tried her best to hold on to that, her head cradled in her lap, her legs pulled up and curled into a tight ball against her chest. Her whole body trembled, the trauma of that moment—of that horrible accident that had come out of nowhere—playing on a loop in her head.
She hadn’t done it. She didn’t have that kind of cruelty in her.
But why, then, did she have to try so hard to convince herself of that? Why did she have doubts?
Elena buried her fingers in her hair, twisting the strands into a tangled nest.
Because she didn’t know. Not for sure.
When she closed her eyes and thought back to that moment, all she could see was her rage. Her apocalyptic fury at Henry. That he would be talking to another girl right there in front of her. That he’d be flirting with someone else only a few days after they’d broken up. He shouldn’t have moved on so quickly. Especially not with Julia, one of her teammates.
Elena squeezed her eyes shut harder, but she still couldn’t visualize exactly what had happened. She couldn’t remember how Henry had stumbled off the curb and into the street. Only that they’d been fighting. That her arms had flown up in anger. That she had screamed at him, and then just as suddenly screamed for him.
The sounds came back to her. The sickening crunch of the hood of the car. And then the crack of the windshield splintering. The tumbling thuds as Henry rolled over the top of the car and crashed back down on the trunk and then the pavement. How his body sat there so still, a pile of jumbled limbs, his blood the only thing moving as it oozed out of the scratches on his arms and the gash across his forehead.
A shudder ran through Elena and her eyes snapped open to find three pairs staring back at her.
“What are you looking at?”
Elena knew she sounded vile, but she didn’t care. She’d thought she was alone. She didn’t want anyone seeing her this upset.
“You missed a spot,” Grace said quietly as she leaned forward with a tissue.
Elena snatched the Kleenex and pulled out her phone, using the camera to inspect her cheeks. Her hands shook as she scrubbed away the last bit of Henry’s blood. A text message popped up on her phone and she quickly tapped it away, ignoring her anonymous admirer’s concerned words. She didn’t have time to deal with him now. Not when Henry could have died. Not when she could have been the one who pushed him.
“Are you all right?” Grace asked eventually, swallowing the lump building in her throat.
“Of course not,” Elena spat out, using the anger to cover up her fear and anxiety. She couldn’t let them see any weakness.
“Things looked pretty heated between you two.”
Elena’s eyes flicked to the other side of the room, where Steph had her arms folded across her chest, a frown pursing her lips together.
“What are you all even doing here?”
Elena threw the question out to everyone—Steph, Grace, and Calvin—because she couldn’t stomach the thought that Steph might have the upper hand on her here.
“Vice Principal Matthis asked for any eyewitnesses to come and give a statement,” Steph explained coolly.
“And you all saw what happened?”
Hope flickered in Elena’s chest, beating alongside her heart. Would they be able to tell her what had happened? Clear her name?
But no one spoke up. In fact, they only looked more uneasy, sharing sideways glances with one another.
“What did you see?” Elena demanded, uncertainty creeping back in. Had sh
e done it? Had she lost control in that moment of anger?
“We saw you all fighting,” Steph finally broke the silence. “And then Henry was in the street.”
“But how’d he get there?” Elena demanded.
Suddenly, Steph looked uncomfortable, her earlier smugness replaced by something skittish. Usually Elena would have reveled in this power, but right now she needed answers.
“What about you two?” she asked, turning quickly to face Grace and Calvin.
“I was there, but I didn’t see exactly what happened,” Grace replied, picking at her fingernails and refusing to meet Elena’s gaze while Calvin looked white as milk beside her, his eyes big and glassy and far away.
“If you didn’t see anything, then why are you here?” Elena nearly lost it, her frustration boiling over.
A few tense moments passed before Grace mustered a quiet reply.
“Because of this.”
And she motioned to Calvin. But he refused to budge, his lips sealed in protest. His arms clamped tighter around his chest, then Elena realized he had his notebook tucked there against his heart.
“What is it?” Elena was losing her patience again, but she was also curious. What could he possibly have in there? And how could it have anything to do with what had happened on the front lawn that afternoon?
“We have to show her,” Grace murmured, having her own private argument with Calvin. They battled quietly for a few more seconds before Grace’s unblinking stubbornness won out and Calvin relented, loosening his arms. The notebook dropped and he caught it, thumbing through the pages and handing it off to Grace.
“We’re here because of this,” Grace said. And she came forward carefully, the notebook falling open to an ink drawing that spread out over the two pages.
Elena leaned forward to study it, taking in the sharp black lines that crisscrossed the paper forming shapes that her brain couldn’t comprehend. Then the figures slowly began to swim into recognition, and Elena had to blink to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.
“Is that Henry?” Her finger quivered as she reached out and tapped the page. “That’s totally sadistic. Why would you draw that? Are you trying to be funny?”