I wonder, briefly, if his sister’s face is in my notebook.
He throws a rock in the lake.
“So you saw all that stuff in Berlin…” I say.
“Yeah, and when Lilly got that coin with the pyramid, it looked exactly like the one on the door of that crazy place. I thought it’d be cool to check it out.”
“You wanted to come here, even though you knew it might be creepy?” I ask, knowing that I, too, came despite the warning signs.
“Maybe, in a way, we all did. I was sort of a freak. No one understood me in the States like they did in West Berlin, where we would have these ragers and spray paint art on the Wall. I came home to the states and I was a freak again. Lilly was the only person who didn’t see me that way.”
“I don’t see you as a freak, either,” I say.
His face shifts and then brightens when he looks at me, touching my cheek with the outside of his thumb. All the worries about this place, all the insecurities about gorgeous ex-girlfriends, vanish when our eyes meet and electricity swirls between us again.
We spend the rest of the day alone, forgetting about the dark hands of Trinity. We lie in the sunshine, wade into the lake, tackling each other, giggling, kissing. A whole lot of kissing. We roll, entwined, through the tall grass, though my ribs are still sore and the dull ache in my head lingers. The air feels light when we’re together, like a gentle breeze. I know, of course, that time on the outside world is speeding past. But with Tre, I can forget.
When the sun dips behind the mass of trees and cliffs, turning the sky Creamsicle orange, Tre stands and holds out his hand to help me stand.
We walk side by side through the colorful meadow. “Well, the upside of being in this prison: we get beautiful scenery,” I joke, gesturing to our surroundings.
“You sound like Lilly,” he says.
It deflates me. How torturous to live in the same house with an amazing boy you’re falling for—and his beautiful, perky ex-girlfriend.
“Lilly does stay pretty positive,” I say. “Got to give her that. Though we do know she’s batshit crazy.” I try not to sound bitter, but I think I do anyway.
“Yeah, it can seem that way,” he says shaking his head. His eyes are cast downward, as if he doesn’t want to turn this into a Lilly-bashing session. Which is fair enough.
“What happened with you two here anyway?” I ask.
His lips scrunch together in thought. “Well,” he says, almost whispering, “we probably weren’t the best match. But she’s persuasive. Enthusiastic.” I know what he means. She was so inviting to me those first two days. “She has a lot of demons. When we got here, she just got sucked into this place, the freedom, no pressure—where she could forget real life. I didn’t get it. We fought about it, over and over… and then she started hanging out with Pete. And they pretended all was great here. Then when she agreed to work with Zoe to make you like it here… let’s just say she is not at all who I thought she was.”
“Oh.” I was the reason they broke up, before we even started… I shake off the thought.
“She slowly started letting go,” he says. “Started spending time with Zoe. Everyone just gives in after a while, and the memories slowly dissipate.” His voice becomes a sad whisper. “People lose who they are.”
“Are you losing who you are?” I ask, as we duck under a tree.
He shrugs. “I hope not. I just try to think of my life a lot, will myself to hang on to me. I think about my mom and the way she’d cuss when we’d play poker. I think about my dad’s weird habit of blowing out the side of his mouth when he hammered things. I remember my friends Kristian and Stefan and the crazy nights we’d sneak out in Berlin to get into the SO36 club, where all us weirdos hung out. Talk about mohawks and piercings. Like foot-tall perfect red mohawks. I don’t know. Just, I think about my life a lot. And more and more, I stay away from Zoe.”
We’re quiet for a few minutes as we walk. The tall grass sways in the breeze. I wonder whether I am going to be strong like him, or disappear like Chris.
When we get to the house, Pete hangs off the deck railing like he’s at a wild party. Lilly waves to us. Looking sweet and beautiful, blonde hair flowing from behind. Smiling her imperfectly beautiful gap-toothed smile.
“Hey, guys, where you been?” Pete yells.
“We were just hanging out,” I say.
Lilly’s smile falters and her eyes dart between Tre and me. She and Tre lock eyes. I glance between them. The expressions on their faces are hard to read. It’s like some secret language I cannot translate.
Then Tre glances at me, squeezes my hand, and under his breath says, “Home sweet home.”
His hand is pure comfort. His words make my stomach turn.
46
“I mean, why would they spell it that way if they didn’t want us to say col-on-ol?” Pete asks. He waves his arm emphatically.
Lilly giggles and lurches forward, the ice dancing inside her glass. Zoe tilts her head up, exhaling smoke from her cigarette slowly, making a nasty habit look sensual and sophisticated. Her other arm rests on the deck railing, the snake bracelet glinting in the setting sun.
Tre and I sink into cushy deck chairs near them. Obligatory audience members who know this is the way to dinner. Tre stares out at the milky meadow. I remember sitting on this deck that first night back. I ignored all of the warnings, waved off cryptic words from Tre and from Chris.
Wait. Chris.
“Where’s Chris?” I ask.
Lilly’s eyes finally break away from Pete, her smile frozen on her face. She gazes at me a moment and then a slightly catty expression crosses her face before she shrugs and waves her hand at the house. “Don’t know. Haven’t seen him all day.” She throws her attention back to Pete, her voice moving an octave higher as she gushes. “Oh, Petey, you should have written the dictionary.”
I gaze through the sliding glass door into the house, looking for some sign of Chris, but I see no one. I haven’t seen him since the weird conversation on the stairs. I consider looking for him when Lilly does the most surprising thing: she stands and slowly saunters over to sit on the bench next to Tre.
She places a small porcelain hand on his arm and leans her head close. “You look so distracted, Tre-boy,” she says to him softly. “You okay?”
He doesn’t move or wiggle away. He knows she tricked him into going to Trinity where he has basically been trapped for years. He just spent the day with me, rolling and kissing in the grass. But he looks her in the eye for a long while. She blinks slowly and pouts her perfect lips.
“I’m fine,” he whispers.
My face heats up. It’s not like me to be jealous. To be that insecure of pretty and annoying and fake girls. I usually just avoid them altogether.
Pete goes on with a story about being stoned. “Seriously, I thought my teeth were locked together when I looked in the mirror and saw my braces. Totally stoned out of my head. But seriously. They look like they’re locked together with wire if you do this.” He spreads his lips to show his squared-off horse teeth. “If there were braces there, they would look locked. They would.” He’s obviously high as a kite now, too.
Lilly leans farther into Tre now, placing her cheek on his tanned arm and whispering so low I can’t understand. Tre listens intently, even leaning in to hear her better. He doesn’t necessarily return her affection—but he’s not rejecting her, either.
Was his interest in me just a matter of passing the time? I’m falling for him. Swift and hard and intense. I thought he was falling for me, too.
He glances at me and offers a small smile. And me? I dig out Hardened, Bitchy Ember Face #2 (the one where all expression slides off my face). It’s one I’ve worn so often in months past. My Keep Out sign for my heart and mind. My fingernail mindlessly runs back and forth over the bumps on the wicker chair.
All the blood in my body pumps furiously into my cheeks, turning me tomato red. I am a fool. I stand up and walk back into the dark, em
pty house.
I need to be away from them all, away from the Lilly and Tre Show, so I wander the halls. Around a corner, I see a staircase to the basement I’ve never noticed before. The laughter from the deck tells me no one will know if I explore. Maybe I’ll find Chris. Or better yet, maybe I’ll find a way out of here.
My feet echo as I descend the stairwell with its gray stone walls and flickering sconces. The lower I go, the thicker and cooler the air, like I’m sinking to the bottom of a lake. The light dims.
My own footsteps and breathing mark the only sounds as I pass an antique bar with five metal stools and move through a ballroom with parquet wood floors and nineteenth-century paisley wallpaper.
A long dark hallway extends beyond the room, forming an underground tunnel with a low ceiling, stone walls, and rows of thick wooden doors. I stop at a door, jiggle the wrought-iron handle, but it’s locked. I walk farther, trying the other doors. They’re all locked.
On the far end of one of the twisting hallways, a faint sound catches my attention, and I stop and hold my breath to listen. It sounds like a washing machine and some sort of low-pitched humming. Ebbing and flowing, the tones draw me down another offshoot of the hallway. The deeper I travel into the basement, around bending corners in a dizzying dark labyrinth, the louder the din.
Finally, I see it. A flickering light emanates from beneath a one-inch crack between the floor and the base of the door. A swishing sound and low chanting.
I drop down to my stomach and lie on the stone floor that feels as cold as a block of ice. But curiosity keeps me here, and my cheek presses hard into the stone. With one eye shut, I attempt to get a glimpse of what’s happening behind the door.
Through the crack, I see what I think is a large circular room from a medieval castle. Dirt floors. Stone walls. Candles flickering, arranged in a circle. A girl with a floor-length dark robe moves through the space in front of the door. Long red hair flows over the hood, down past her shoulders, glinting in the dim light. She holds up what looks to be an ebony rod with a large looping metal top.
I’ve seen this scene before. The day I knocked over one of Mom’s wet canvases that leaned against virtually every inch of the kitchen. Another product of one of her midnight painting fests. Irritated, I rolled my eyes as I grabbed my backpack off the counter.
“Mom!” I let out a frustrated grunt before straining to yell to her in the living room. “Can’t you let this stuff dry in a room other than the kitchen?” Mom’s manic mess made me crazy sometimes. Washing my hand off in the sink, I studied the gray and muted yellow canvas in front of me: The glow of candles in a circle. A figure with a long dark hooded robe holding a black walking stick with a looping top. A tiny person, a girl, could be seen in the distance. I dried off my hands and muttered to myself before leaving the house. “Put all your weird-ass paintings someplace else.”
That weird-ass painting now plays out before me. The cloaked woman speaks to someone, but I can’t make out the murmured words. I forget to breathe for a moment as the realization sets in that there are actually other people here in this house with us. They’ve been downstairs all the time, hiding out, doing… doing this. Whatever this is.
“Prepare her,” the woman says louder in a lilting British accent. Her voice moves through my Color Crayon Brain like a black ocean in the midst of a hurricane, out of control, treacherous, raging. That sticky black fear returns, coating all of my insides. I lift my cheek to make a run for it, but curiosity pulls me back down to the floor like a magnet.
The woman moves to the left, revealing a young girl at the far end of the room, standing amid a circle of small black stones, her arms dangling loosely at her sides. Asian, pretty, with a heart-shaped face and lips like rose petals. My age. She looks familiar.
Laurie Parker. I suck in a breath and hold it.
She wears normal clothes—a T-shirt and jeans. Her face wilts, and her hollow eyes seem to stare into a distant world. Two long marks line her right temple—as if they’re drawn in soot.
The redheaded woman begins to chant, low and humming, and the girl drops to her knees on the floor like a collapsed puppet. The robed woman walks slowly around the circle of stones and drops liquid onto each of them. The drips land with a sizzle, followed by small plumes of steam. This is the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.
As if she’s sleepwalking, Laurie raises her arms to grasp at something invisible and her face twists into a merry-go-round of emotions.
“No! I’m sorry!” she’s screaming. She’s crying. She’s panting. She collapses onto the floor and cries out in pain, her legs convulsing.
I cringe, wincing as I watch her squirm in obvious pain, and have to hold myself back from running out to stop whatever’s happening, to rip her out of that room. Save her from this crazy witchcraft.
I lift my head to revolt, to grab the door handle, when a sweet-smelling scent rolls under the door, mixing with the musty air. Calm and numb, I don’t move. I lie there, frozen.
“She will be new. She will be Sentra.” The sound of the redhead’s voice is wild blue and black waves, an unruly, vicious hurricane. In the far corner of my mind, I see more than color. I see a vision—clear, defined, and absolutely grotesque: bodies, piles and piles of bodies stacked high on the earth.
The image is like ice-cold water shooting through my veins. I scramble to my feet and sprint through the dark winding hallway, the sound of my breath ricocheting off the walls.
My feet stumble over the rough edges of the floor. My beat-up ankle, drugged by adrenaline, doesn’t stop me.
After several twists and turns through the maze, I realize I’m lost. Ahead, the hallway forms a Y, offering two different paths. Wild panic hurls through my chest, a crazy pinball machine. If I get lost, there’s a good chance that the redheaded witch may find me.
I strain to block out the sound of my thumping chest to listen for anyone following me. The basement answers back with distant humming. I have to get out of here. Fear seeps out of every single pore of my skin.
“Screw it,” I whisper. I pick the path to my left, racing down the dark tunnel.
After a couple minutes, relief the size of the sky floods me as I pass through familiar territory. The room with parquet floors. The empty chairs at the bar. The dim rays of light. I bound up the winding stairs. A sharp rock edge on one of the stairs catches my foot but I recover my balance and keep going, whispering a mantra: Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out.
By the time I get to the top, relief and wild panic crash together and I can’t get my feet up fast enough. My right foot slips on the edge of the top step, sending me sprawling, flying through the air. I’m going to land flat on my stomach.
But I don’t. A hand catches me. Tre.
He holds out a floppy slice of cheese pizza. “Got tired of waiting through their cocktail hour for dinner. So I grabbed us leftover pizza—if you’re as hungry as me.”
I stare at the pizza, wide-eyed, and shake my head swiftly. Terror swirls inside my chest.
“You okay?” he asks. “What were you doing?”
My mind replays the scene I saw a few minutes ago. How can I even begin to tell him what I saw? “I was looking for Chris.”
“Did you find him?”
“Who?” I ask. Thoughts break up and disintegrate just before they enter my brain, a radio wave interrupted by static. After a moment, the words connect. “Oh, Chris. No, no… but I um, I saw a light from a room down there. I saw something—” I glance around, paranoid that the redheaded witch will hear me, grab me, throw me into a crazy spell, too. “I need to get out of here.”
He follows me outside, and we stand facing each other in the tall grass about ten yards from the house. A cluster of dark clouds hurtles across the evening sky, so low it’s like the sky will cave in on us.
A familiar sound aack aack pierces the air—bright, stabbing orange, the color of construction cones. That small puffy white bird with the black mask across its eyes perches on the b
ranch of a nearby pinyon tree. It watches us like a prison guard.
“There’s that damn bird,” I whisper, pointing. “It was there every morning when I was lost in the canyon. I hate that bird.”
Tre glances at it. “Yeah, that’s a northern shrike. It’s really cute, but it’s a nasty predatory songbird that impales its prey on sharp branches.”
The thought sends shivers down my spine. Perhaps that is what happens here. Trinity lures us in with beauty and then impales us with voodoo séances.
Tre places a warm hand on my arm. “What’s up?”
“Something is happening,” I say.
“Well, I thought that was obvious.”
I tell him everything I saw in great detail, not stopping until I get to the part where he grabs me before nearly falling flat on my face on the stairs. “It’s like a freaky séance room down there. That girl. I wanted to help her, but…”
He looks worried, running his hand through his dark hair before talking. “I’ve been here so long and I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“It was terrifying, Tre” I say.
“I explored down there and I didn’t find anything at all,” he says. It’s as if we’re having two conversations.
“You went down there?” I ask.
“When Pete first got here, we took dining room chairs and tried to break down all of the locked bedroom doors upstairs. But the rooms were empty. In the basement, the doors down there are made of, like, two feet of wood. I couldn’t even get in with a fire poker.”
Maybe I couldn’t have gotten that door open to help that girl even if I wanted.
He grows still as he pauses and then, gently, he touches my arm. “You have to show me what’s down there. This might be our chance.”
I know I need to help that girl, but I’m truly terrified. “There is no way in hell I am going back there.” The mere thought of it makes me nauseous. I fold my arms over my chest and shake my head, as if my words needed any extra punctuation.
“I need to see what you saw. We’ve got to try to help her. We can’t just sit here and do nothing with things like that happening.” He strides back toward the house, but my own feet become superglued to the ground.
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