Ripple

by Heather Smith Meloche

“What do you want, Dalton?” She doesn’t lower her paper, doesn’t look over.

  “How long do you think I’ll be here?”

  She finally glances at me. “That’s up to Officer Fogerty. He seems to have plans for you.” She lifts the paper higher, like a wall between us.

  “Has he contacted my mom?”

  “Can’t say.”

  The silence stretches for a long minute. The first message unacknowledged, my phone sounds again with Mom’s tone.

  “My brother died.” I say it all abrupt, like a slap. But it works.

  Officer Weinhart lowers the paper. “I heard about that.”

  I crinkle my forehead, purposely let some of my pent-up emotions flood my face. Officer Weinhart watches me. “It ripped my mom apart. She’s always thinking something’s going to happen to me any second.” I look at her meaningfully. “Do you have kids?”

  She nods, her pale lips spreading into a thin smile. “Two boys. Both grown and moved out of state now. I don’t see them enough.”

  “My mom’s texting.” I nod at my phone. “She’s worried. I can feel it.”

  Officer Weinhart’s gaze flits to my cell. The screen has gone black, the message hidden.

  She sighs heavily. Then brings my cell over to me. “I’ll let you see the message and text one back, but Officer Fogerty said no communication for you to anyone outside until all his paperwork is written up, so don’t you dare tell him I broke the rules. I’m only doing this as a favor from one mom to another.”

  I give her a grateful smile. “Thanks.”

  I type in my security code, and Mom’s message pops up on the screen.

  Jackie, I don’t know if you are able to get this but I see your car next door and I know HE must have gotten you. Hold on, honey. I’ll get you out. I love you. Mommy is coming to get you.

  My breath halts. My heart feels crammed in my throat. Holy shit!

  I reread her words.

  HE must have gotten you. Mommy is coming to get you.

  I think of my options. I could tell the police now. Or I can hope no one is home at Tessa’s. Or I can wish and pray that Mom snaps out of this before Tessa’s family sees how far gone she is.

  Or my best choice might be to try to talk myself out of this mess with Fogerty 2. I’ve done it before. I need to do it again tonight.

  Hands shaking, I type a message before it’s too late.

  Mom, I’m totally fine. Stay right there. I’ll be home soon.

  I pass Officer Weinhart the phone.

  She looks at me. “Did you make her feel better?”

  “I always do,” I say, but my voice sounds small and far away, like it’s stuffed in a metal box, a lifetime of solitary confinement.

  Tessa

  I only have a vague idea of where Simone and Baker live. Seth mentioned once that Simone was in Hickory Hills, a mega-upscale neighborhood in the north of town. When I pull in, the houses loom three times as big as mine. Some of the lush lawns, I’m sure, are irrigated by my stepdad. No doubt, their dirt has come home smeared all over him, the dry bits cracking against our floors.

  I stop my car and wait for a sign of where in the neighborhood to go—loud music, drunk kids wandering. A pickup skids around the corner, peeling past me. Guys crammed inside howl. I go after it, turning the corner to see a lit-up house with people streaming in and out.

  The house is massive, of course. The stone fascia lit up. Cars line the curb. I park six houses down. I follow the clump of people up the brick front steps and into a foyer. A crystal chandelier dangles sixteen feet high. A wide staircase curves into an upstairs off to the right. To the left, a sitting room is heavy with the smell of beer partyers everywhere.

  I look for Willow. And look out for Simone and Ty. And Seth.

  I edge past chatting girls in the hallway, walk into the kitchen. The keg there curtained by partygoers, plastic cups stuck in their hands. Willow isn’t here. And she isn’t in the family room with the bodies gyrating to music or outside with the smokers on the massive back deck.

  My frustration builds, my heart beating faster. Simone’s house is the last place I should be. A confrontation with Simone or Seth could get ugly. But I need to make sure Ty is nowhere near my sister. I have no idea what he might do to her. I just need to get Willow and get the hell out.

  I push toward the staircase to the upstairs hallway, where it’s dim, all the doors closed. I walk to the end of the hall, wondering if I should check inside each room. I risk Simone, Ty, or Seth being in them. But then I hear my sister’s voice behind the door next to me. “Oh, God.”

  I grab the handle, but it’s locked. “Willow,” I say, knocking hard. “Unlock this door.”

  In a second, the lock clicks and the door swings open. Willow crawls on hands and knees back to the toilet, where she hovers her sweating face.

  I close the door, then kneel by her. “Will?”

  She shakes her head. “Drunk.” And she moans again.

  I pull her hair back gently, grab a couple tissues from the counter close by.

  Willow plants her forehead against the toilet seat, says as slow and sloppy as honey into the bowl, “I might . . . have had . . . a little too much . . . to drink.”

  “Oh, God, Willow.”

  “The party was fun . . . until this.” And Willow hurls hard into the toilet bowl. I cringe, but rub her back until it’s over.

  “Oh, God.” She swallows. “Thanks, Tessa. . . . I mean . . . for helping me.”

  I wipe her face and mouth with the tissues. “You’re my sister, Will. I love you.”

  She looks at me through half-closed eyes. “Are you a skank?”

  “What?”

  She tries to shrug, but just twitches, then lays her head back onto the toilet seat. “Baker and Simone told me . . . you screwed that Ty kid. . . . They said if you did it once . . . you probably skanked-out with others, too.”

  I knew Baker might tell her nasty things about me, but my little sister questioning if I’m a skank stings so much more than random people at school doing it.

  “I didn’t screw Ty Blevens, Will. But I do maybe need to get some help learning how to be more confident and respect myself.”

  She raises her head. “You should . . . Tess. Because . . . you’re too pretty . . . and too smart to be . . . a skank.”

  I let a laugh and tears out at the same time. “Thanks, Will.”

  “Welcome,” she says.

  “Are you ready to go home now?”

  She gives a long, slow smile. “I am.”

  • • •

  I’m practically carrying Will’s wobbly body down the hallway toward the stairs when Simone appears.

  Her eyes narrow. “What are you doing here? This party isn’t for whores.”

  “We were just leaving,” I say.

  But Simone doesn’t let me by.

  “Before you go,” she says, “let’s talk about how your life at school is about to become the absolute fucking worst.”

  Jack

  I think about asking to call Mom, but I usually can’t calm her down by phone. I need to be there with her.

  My adrenaline is so high. I pace back and forth in the tiny cell and think about what Mom might do. Tessa’s stepdad is so much bigger than she is. He could hurt her easily. And he has every right to defend himself if she attacks him.

  But what if Tessa gets in the way? What if she becomes Mom’s target?

  Shit. Maybe I should have told Tessa about my mom’s obsession with her family. Maybe I should have called Dr. Surrey. I really need to get the fuck out of this police station.

  Fogerty 2 finally appears in the hall. My first instinct is to lunge at the cell door and scream, “I need out of here!” But Fogerty 2 and I don’t work that way. So when he stands in front of the bars, I say, “You know, thes
e vertical blinds you had installed are broken.” I tug at the bars and fake a groan. “They don’t move at all.”

  His thick eyebrows slam together. “Dalton, I don’t think you quite understand the gravity of what you’ve done tonight.”

  I’m sitting in a jail cell, so I sort of do. But I listen anyway.

  “You are about to be charged with a breaking-and-entering offense. Not to mention trespassing.” He shakes his boulder-size head. “And that’s aside from the vandalism of public property conviction I’ll push for because of how you befouled Pineville’s deer signs and because you broke our arrangement with Ms. Barnes over at your school. So you can keep pulling on those bars all you want, but you’re not getting out of here until all the charges are officially filed and you give me some explanation of what you were doing on Clement Valley’s property.”

  My anxiety builds, but I keep my expression even. “You do realize,” I say, “that holding me here means no doughnuts tomorrow morning. It’s Sunday. Doughnut day.”

  “What were you doing in Clement Valley?”

  “Country line dancing.”

  “Clever.” He sighs. “Keep dancing, Dalton, because since you’ll be locked up for a while, you’ll need some kind of hobby to keep you occupied.”

  He’s not kidding. I realize I have to try a different approach. I choose a little more honesty.

  “Look, it was an innocent dare,” I say. “I would have been in and out. I took nothing. Hurt no one.”

  Fogerty 2’s face peers between two bars. “Nothing innocent about what you did tonight. And you can’t talk your way out of this one.”

  I can feel the concrete, the metal, Fogerty 2’s face, his hot breath pushing in on me. I stumble to sitting and brace myself on the bench. My head sags. Mom’s “lost” face floats in my head.

  “I can’t be here.” My voice comes out thin and actually quaking. “I have to get out of here.” I shake my head for a long minute.

  When I look up, Fogerty 2 is staring at me, his mouth open, his expression confused. He’s stepped away from the bars like I’ve become something otherworldly.

  “What did you just say?” He eyes me.

  I stand and grip the bars. “I have to get out of here. I need to go.”

  His expression tightens. He crosses his arms over his beefy chest. “Why?”

  “I have something I need to deal with.” I sound like what I am—a scared kid.

  Fogerty 2 cocks his head. “You know, Jack, you have everything I never did.”

  WTF?

  “You’ve got brains and skills that some people would give anything to have.” He sniffs with contempt. “But you’re pissing them away.” He shakes his head.

  I smooth my tongue along my lip ring, thinking about what to say next. But all that comes out is the truth. “Officer Fogerty, please. I have to take care of something before it gets really out of control. It’s nothing illegal. It’s personal. I really just need to go. You can come after me later. Hell, I’ll come back willingly. But right now, I can’t be here.”

  He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. You did this to yourself, Jack. Just accept it.”

  But with Mom so far gone and me so used to pulling her back from the edge, I can’t accept it. “I’ll confess to everything.”

  Fogerty 2 lifts an eyebrow.

  “I’ll tell you all the things I’ve done, not just in Pineville but in Hallend, too, and you can bust me all over the place. If you let me handle this right now.” I never thought I’d make a deal like this. But shit’s gotten so serious that I’ll do anything.

  Fogerty 2 takes a deep breath in, thinking it over.

  “You know where I live,” I tell him. “I’m not fleeing to Mexico or anything. I just need to check on . . . my mom.”

  His bulky body freezes for a second. Then, slowly, he nods his huge head. “Okay, Dalton. But you only have two hours. Then I want you back here.” And unbelievably, he pulls out his keys, inserting one into the cell door lock.

  “Thank you so much.” My tone is sincere. But Fogerty 2 doesn’t answer. So before he declares this some cruel joke, I walk out the open cell door.

  Tessa

  “I told him a billion times you were trash.” Simone give a bitter laugh. “And you’ve totally proven me right.”

  Her words are cutting, especially with Willow standing next to me.

  “But I always knew you weren’t going to be anything but a temporary fuck for him.” Simone’s lip twitches with anger, rage, jealousy.

  I open my mouth to defend myself somehow, but a yell comes from behind the closed door next to us. “Stop it!”

  Simone, Willow, and I jerk our heads toward the sound.

  “That’s my room,” Simone says.

  “Get off!” The voice, female and fearful, rips through the wall.

  I press my head to the door to listen, to make sure I actually heard what I heard.

  “Don’t!” the girl says.

  Her voice vibrates through me. I twist the handle and swing the door open.

  A slice of light from the hallway cuts into the dark room. Two bodies are struggling. A guy, his body pressed into a girl. Against a desk. Her bare legs kick out into the air. She wrenches her head enough to yell. “You’re hurting me!”

  And in the darkness of the room, this girl’s words burn into me, my nerves on end. I know I risk this very thing when I crawl into the darkness of coffeehouse basements, drug users’ trucks, and the crumpled sheets of strangers’ beds. But this girl, no matter what reason she had to walk into this room, doesn’t deserve this.

  “No!” I grab a trophy off a bookshelf—a smiling, gold cheerleader standing atop a glass pyramid—and hurl the trophy hard at the guy’s back. “Stop!”

  “Fuck!” The attacker turns toward me.

  “Oh my God,” I say. “You.”

  “Ty?” Simone seems shocked next to me. The girl behind Ty yanks down her skirt and pushes toward us.

  “Baker?” Simone whispers.

  Baker’s face is red, like Ty’s hand had been clamped over her mouth. Strands of her dark hair stick to her sweaty face.

  Simone grips her shoulders, looking her over before turning her attention back to Ty. I put my arm around Simone’s sister, thinking of her in the convenience store parking lot, tossing her hair, touching Ty’s arm, wanting him to notice her. And now he has.

  Ty’s eyes dart from Simone to Baker to me. Next to me, Simone’s eyes turn to slits. She moves to him and whispers in his ear, her hands balling into fists. Ty listens. His face paling as if she’s slit his throat.

  “I promise you,” she spits, done whispering.

  A small drunk and murmuring crowd has gathered behind us in the doorway.

  “Someone call the police,” Simone says as she guides Baker out of the room.

  Ty’s jaw clenches. A circle of blood seeps into his shirt where the trophy hit his shoulder. Now the trophy lies by his feet, the glass pyramid cracked down the center, but the cheerleader is still smiling.

  He points at me. “You little bitch.”

  “But not yours.” My words come out slow and sure. Then I say to Willow, “We’ve got to go.” She looks a bit more sober and awake now. Though she falls into me as I put my arm around her and lead her down the stairs.

  We move through a wall of people. Simone holds Baker close, telling Seth what happened. Pointing upstairs. Pointing to me.

  Seth looks my way, but I don’t stop. I need to get Willow out of here and get us both home before the police come. I just want to put this night behind us.

  • • •

  I settle Willow into my car as the sirens sound in the distance. When I pull away from the curb, my phone rings.

  “Tessa?” Jack is breathless when I answer. “Are you home? Are you okay?”

  “I�
��m not at home, but I’m fine.”

  He sighs. “Okay. Good. But I’m in town, and I need a ride. I need you, Tessa. I need you.”

  Tessa

  Jack’s sweating hand holds mine tightly as we drive twenty-five miles over the speed limit. He insisted on driving.

  “Jack, you need to talk to me.”

  He nods, but doesn’t look at me, just keeps driving.

  “Seriously, Jack. What is it?”

  He glances behind us, to Willow, fallen into a drunken sleep. “I should have told you before now.” His forehead furrows. “Remember I told you my mom has delusions?”

  “Yeah?” I say, cautious. “Schizophrenia, you said.”

  “Right. So, since we moved next door to you, she’s been . . . obsessed with your stepdad.”

  A wave of fear begins to rise. “What do you mean obsessed?”

  “I mean, like, she—” An exasperated breath bursts from him. “Shit, this sounds crazy. She thinks he’s, like, evil or something.”

  I’m getting more anxious as Jack shakes his head, turning down our unlit dirt road. “I mean, like possessed-by-a-demon evil,” he says. “Like super-fucking-natural evil. Like she’s-truly-out-of-her-mind evil.”

  I put a hand over my mouth, feeling freaked out and confused.

  “Lately, it’s gotten really bad,” he continues. “And tonight, she texted me.”

  He pulls up to the curb between our driveways. My front yard is glowing orange. A huge fire rages in the grass.

  “Oh my God!” My heart jams into my throat. “Jack? What—”

  “What’s going on?” Willow, awake now, stares out her window. “Holy shit! Tessa!”

  “I’ll go find out what’s going on,” Jack says. “Stay here.”

  But Willow and I are already out of the car, running down our yard.

  Jack

  The smell hits me first. Gasoline or . . . lighter fluid. No . . . both. The fire in Tessa’s yard is in the shape of a cross. The stumps of wood her stepdad had cut and stacked in the backyard laid out on the grass, then set on fire. Chunks of chopped wood have also been stacked in her doorway, blocking any entry or exit. The door is wide open, and through an opening above the stacked wood, I see movement.