“Does it have a great answer?”
“I thought it did,” he said. “I thought I only cared about you helping me. Then I realized if that was all I cared about, I didn’t deserve your help. Which of course was the first indication it wasn’t all I cared about.”
“Noah, you’re not making any sense.”
“I only make sense when she wants me to,” he mumbled.
“What does that even mean? Why can’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“You’ll figure it out. I just don’t know if I want you to anymore. I can’t protect you from her. I can’t even protect you from me.”
Whoa. This whole encounter was becoming a little too intense, even for me. I folded my hands in my lap and stared off into the foggy winter morning. A gray-blue veil of moisture hung over the frozen lake, but I could still detect the rose-gold haze surrounding us.
“Do you believe in magic?” he asked.
“I think you know I do.”
He nodded. “Do you think people can be magic?”
“Can they?”
Noah pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m not sure,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands, “but it would explain a lot.”
When I got home that afternoon, Dad was waiting in the foyer, hands on hips, the scowl on his face accentuating the deep lines around his mouth.
I closed the door behind me, eyes on him the whole time. “I can explain.”
“I got a call from the principal’s office, Emily.” He shook his cell phone in the air. “Where were you today?”
Oh. Crap. This was one of those times where truth would so not set me free. “I don’t know” wasn’t going to fly, either.
“The thing is,” I started, “I did go to school. But I stopped to use the bathroom and I heard a girl getting sick in the toilet, and when I asked if she was okay, she asked me not to tell anyone. Bulimia is real, Dad. It’s an illness.”
“That doesn’t explain missing all your classes!” Raised voice. Not good. He had skipped the disappointment bandwagon and taken a train straight to Angry Town.
“I wasn’t finished.” I chewed my lip. “I told her we had to tell someone and that if she didn’t go right away to get help, I would tell the school nurse. Well, turns out, her mom knows the nurse, so I got her to agree to go to a clinic. I took her there and waited with her and stuff.”
“Then what?”
“That’s it. The waiting room was super crowded. Some kind of flu going around the school, I guess. Took most of the day. But you always said how important it is to do the right thing, and I knew I had to help this girl.”
Dad pointed his phone at me. “You better not miss another day. I’m not playing around. I will take away your car, and you’ll be carpooling with me for the rest of the year.”
This meant he didn’t believe a word I said but was too stressed to argue. He shoved his phone in his pocket. “Heather stopped by, but I said you were sick and that’s why you missed school. She dropped off your assignments.”
Heather. Yeah. I would need to talk to her again, but something told me Dad wouldn’t let her come over now.
“I better get started on my homework,” I said. As I tried to slip around him, he shot out his arm to stop me.
“Phone, Emily.” He waited with his palm out, and I begrudgingly shoved my best electronic friend into his grasp. “I’ll return it after school tomorrow. Assuming you actually go to school tomorrow.”
“Got it,” I mumbled. When he dropped his arm out of my path, I bounded up the stairs.
Once in my room, I locked my door and sat at the vanity with my laptop. Dad wasn’t tech savvy. I didn’t need a phone to contact the outside world. I pulled up the web browser and searched the web for all the main social networks until I found one with Heather’s profile. Seeing she was online, I typed her a quick message.
WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT NOAH CALDWELL?
Her icon went from idle to active within moments as she typed her reply. Downstairs, Dad kept making noises. Every time he walked toward the front of the house, my heart leapt in my throat. I needed to get some answers before he knocked on my door and took my computer away next.
HE’S CUTE. ALL THE GIRLS WANT HIM, BUT HE DOESN’T DATE PEOPLE FROM SCHOOL. EVER. EVERYONE STAYS AWAY FROM HIM BECAUSE SARAH IS INTO HIM AND NO ONE DARES PISS HER OFF. BUT THEY’VE NEVER GONE OUT. HE JUST FOLLOWS HER AROUND. I HEARD HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND IN COLLEGE AND THAT’S WHY HE HASN’T FALLEN FOR SARAH COMPLETELY.
Huh. Well, that was probably some rumor. Girls needed a reason for why a boy wouldn’t be into them. I bet it had something to do with him not being able to talk to them – he had said something about how he was “able” to talk to me. Was Sarah blackmailing him? What could she have on him that would turn him mute?
WHAT ABOUT SARAH? DOES SHE LIKE NOAH?
This time, Heather took longer to respond. Right as I was about to close my laptop, the messenger flashed again.
SARAH WON’T LET ANYONE NEAR HIM. SHE OWNS HIM, AS FAR AS SHE’S CONCERNED.
Yep. She had something on him. She must.
But what?
The next morning, the side of the road held no surprises on the way to school. Just me, the salt-covered asphalt, and the gray mushy sky.
Noah smiled at me in homeroom, though he didn’t approach me. To distract myself, I traded old-fashioned notes with Heather in our classes about all the trivial gossip that didn’t affect us.
In the class I shared with Sarah, she flirted her way into copying homework from a boy who sat behind her. Once she was done, she ignored him to talk to her red-headed wing-girl, Kate.
“Did you do something with your hair?” she asked, combing her fingers through her own silky blonde tresses.
Kate beamed, her red curls shinier and springier than ever. “Argan oil! Do you like it?”
“No,” Sarah said, voice monotone. “It’s all greasy like you didn’t wash it.”
I held back a gasp. That was how she treated her friends?
The smile drained from Kate’s face so fast I worried she might faint. “Ouch, Sarah. That’s seriously harsh.”
“Don’t be upset! I only told you because I care about you. Real friends tell each other the truth, right? I mean, I’d want you to tell me if I made a major fashion faux pas like that.” Sarah placed her hand on Kate’s, giving her a fake-as-hell sympathetic smile. “It’s not your fault. We’ve all fallen victim to false advertising.”
If it wouldn’t have drawn attention to myself, I would have told Kate her hair shone like a Pantene model’s. That Sarah was just jealous. How could she try to play the good friend card on that barb? She made my penchant for lying look better by the minute.
Sarah was every bit the piece of work I had imagined, but that still didn’t explain her hold on Noah. Maybe he was right. If Sarah had a side worse than this, I didn’t want to see it. No matter how hard I was crushing on a boy.
The thing was, this wasn’t only about Noah. If I could save him, maybe it would give me some answers I was seeking about what had stolen my mother from me.
Whether Noah liked it or not, I couldn’t back down now.
At lunch, I bought one of those vitamin electrolyte drinks from a vending machine – some purple-tinged energy brew – and joined Heather at our usual table.
I spotted Noah sitting by himself and shot him a small wave. He gave me a quick smile before glancing over at Sarah then staring down at his food. Odd. Here he was, this super popular guy in school, and yet he sat alone?
Heather’s banter disrupted my thoughts.
“You should have seen Miss Jensen in gym yesterday,” she was saying. “She was so pissed you weren’t there. It took her ten minutes to figure out how to divide everyone since we had twenty-three students without you.”
I ripped my atten
tion away from Noah and tapped my cherry-red fingernails against the lunchroom table. “Does she think no one is ever going to miss a day of school?”
Heather bit the straw poking out of her orange juice box. “I think she likes having something to complain about, and for whatever reason, she’s latched onto you.”
Clearly I wasn’t climbing the popularity ranks. Not even a week since we’d moved here, and even the teachers disliked me; that had to be some sort of record.
“You okay?” she asked, nudging my elbow.
I shrugged then shook my head. Opened my mouth. Closed it again. Hmm. Could I tell Heather about the awkward scene I’d witnessed with the It Girls? Maybe I could, especially since it wasn’t related to the Noah situation. There’d be no harm in that, right?
“I have a class with Sarah and Kate, and Sarah was being…I don’t know. Mean. To Kate. Her friend. I can’t understand why the other It Girls would want to be friends with someone like that.”
Heather nodded and set down her tuna on rye. She took a sip from a box of chocolate milk before replying. “She’s not mean to them all the time. She’s usually nice to them – only to them – but I guess she wants to make them think they need her. To be popular, you know?”
“I guess.”
Heather frowned. “You probably wonder why I was ever friends with her. Well, she wasn’t always like that. Like, she’s always been beautiful, but I think she didn’t realize it until she passed up her mom’s at-home hair trims for a professional cut and upgraded her wardrobe from hand-me-down pants to pencil skirts and pretty purses.”
Heather sounded envious. I wanted to tell her she was a million times more beautiful than Sarah, but I didn’t want to reveal that I’d noticed hints of her insecurity, so I smiled instead.
“Do you think that’s the secret to her popularity?” I asked. “Being unpredictable? Keeping her friends walking on eggshells?”
That couldn’t be what had Noah scared of her, though. Something was missing.
Heather bobbed her head back and forth. “Yes and no. It’s more than that. She makes people feel special.”
If by “special” she meant “like crap”, I could concede.
“Oh, geez,” Heather whispered. “She’s coming over here.”
I took a swig from my drink and set it aside. When I turned around, sure enough, Sarah was runway-style walking down the aisle of the cafeteria in a khaki skirt, white dress shirt, and gray and pink argyle sweater vest. Her pale blonde hair was parted straight down the middle, creating a line of symmetry above the sharp angles of her face. Her approach was like a scene out of a movie, one playing out in slow motion while wind machines blew back her hair to make her even more appealing.
Okay, that last part wasn’t true, but it might as well have been.
She stopped at the end of our table, gripped the edge, and leaned forward with something like a smile, only more sickly than sweet. “Hope you’re feeling better today, Squirrel.”
I didn’t give her the reaction she was searching for. “Much, thank you. I think you have something between your teeth.”
A scowl flickered across her face, but she managed to get her fake smile back in place. I had to admit, as much as I hated her, she was pretty. I could see why she was the leader of the pack. Her hyenas hovered behind her, arms crossed, sneering. I couldn’t remember which twin was which, but Kate’s red curls matched my nail polish today.
Sarah sat next to me, bumping me with her hip to make room for herself. She picked up my drink and turned it around in her hand.
“You shouldn’t drink your calories.” She put the bottle down and faced me. “Look, Emily, I know we got off on the wrong foot. I say this because I’m only trying to help you: Noah is a basket case. As in like, mentally ill,” she whispered, her hand blocking her mouth as though she didn’t want anyone to read her lips. She pushed my drink to the side and leaned her elbow on the table, resting her head in her hand. “Just look at him.” She shook her head as if in pity. “He’s stalking you. Can’t you tell by the way he’s staring at you?”
Wow. This girl knew how to lay it on thick. I glanced over to where Noah sat on the other side of the cafeteria. He was indeed watching us. But then, so were the rest of the students.
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she said, clicking her tongue. She stood and strutted back to her own little corner of hell.
“What was that about?” Heather asked, her eyebrows knit together in a frown. “I’ve seen her do a lot of strange things, but that was –”
“Pathetic, unimportant, and so not worth our attention,” I finished for her. Yes, Sarah intimidated me, but I couldn’t place why. And I wasn’t going to let anyone know that. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
Maybe.
Okay, probably not.
I grabbed my bottled electrolytes, but before I could take a sip, something plummeted into me, and the drink spilled everywhere.
I jumped up as the liquid pooled on the table and streamed to the ground. Some soaked into my shirt and jeans. “What the –”
It was Noah. He shook his head, his hands trembling. “D – d – don’t dr – dr –”
His tremors turned to convulsions, and I could only stare at him horrified, trying to make sense of what had happened and what was happening now. He fell to the floor, and my heart throttled into a full panic.
I called over my shoulder, “Someone get help!”
I dug in my bag for my phone but remembered my dad took it last night. Damn it! I kneeled beside Noah. Was this a seizure? I put his head in my lap and tried holding him still.
“What do I do? What do I do?” I looked everywhere and nowhere at once, too distraught to think of something that might help.
The world around me darkened. For a moment, the whole room was a blur. Only Sarah was clear in my vision, standing at the end of the aisle, glowering. The noise was drowned out by a hissing. A rattling sound chased by the beat of tribal drums. Whispered chants pierced my mind.
I stared at Noah and swallowed back a scream. His skin was painted chalk white. A line of black stiches crossed his mouth that wasn’t there moments before. A bone necklace clacked around his neck, resting against his suddenly bare chest. Painted on his skin was a black heart, thudding as if it had a pulse like the real organ beneath it. Red gashes covered his arms, and yellow symbols I’d never seen before marked the rest of his exposed skin.
In another flash, large, stake-like bones stuck out from his stomach. I blinked and watched as the “regular” Noah – dressed in the same clothes I’d seen him in earlier that day – convulsed again.
He was being tortured, but by what? And was I the only person seeing all these other things?
The scene flashed like a strobe light in front of me – a flash of the Noah I knew, then a flash of the painted Noah that made no sense. I scoured the room for someone to help, but no one else seemed to notice what was going on. Except for Sarah, her glower across the room turning to a maniacal grin.
“STOP!” I screamed at her.
The unexplainable vision melted away. Standing at the cafeteria doors, Sarah gave one last smirk before turning on her heel and walking away. A crowd of people hovered near us. The school nurse appeared next, hurrying as quickly as her short legs would carry her.
“Paramedics are on the way,” she said as she arrived, kneeling beside me. “Everyone, please, go back to your tables.”
When no one listened, she yelled, “Go!” This cleared away a few of them. I didn’t leave. Noah’s head still rested in my lap, his eyes closed, though he wasn’t convulsing anymore. His body had gone limp, the rise and fall of his chest nearly unperceivable.
“What happened?” the nurse asked.
Before I could answer, the EMTs rushed in with a stretcher. They pulled him away, yelling all sorts of things I couldn’t understand a
s they started performing CPR.
“Hang in there, buddy,” one of them said. He passed some small white tube-like packet under his nose, but nothing happened. “Can you hear me?”
No response. At this point, I thought Noah had stopped breathing, making me feel more hopeless than I’d ever felt in my life. What in the hell did Sarah do to him?
More CPR. More failure.
“It’s not working!” said the attending EMT. He put his ear to Noah’s chest then nodded toward the exit. “He’s breathing, but his heart rate is low. We need to transfer him now.”
And just like that, Noah was gone, flying away on that stretcher like a helium balloon in the wind.
5
PROMISE YOU WON’T GO TO THE ASYLUM
Ibolted after the EMTs.
“I need to come with you,” I blurted as they loaded Noah into the ambulance.
The dark-haired one shook his head. “Sorry, no can do. Family or school officials only.”
“I’m his sister,” I lied. “Please, my parents are gonna freak out. Let me stay with him.”
His lips twisted and eyes narrowed, but what was he going to do – waste time verifying my story? If I was lying, that was on me, not him.
“Fine,” he said as they finished loading Noah into the ambulance. “Get in.”
I hopped aboard and took a seat on the worn leather side bench. We pulled away, sirens wailing, and the EMTs crowded Noah. Every few minutes or so, I caught a peek at his handsome but all-too-still face. He seemed so pale. Ghostly. Slipping away before my eyes.
One of the EMTs said something about low “sats” and another about low blood pressure. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I didn’t want to interrupt them, not even for a second.
The dark-haired EMT must’ve had a paranormal ability of his own. As if he could sense my fear, he told me everything would be okay. He said he’d seen worse and it’s always scary while it’s happening, but that one day it would make a hell of a story.
Something like Voodoo Page 5