Crazy T smiled, too lost to the darkness that swirled around him to do anything but feed off of my fear. I knew I was going about it all wrong. I needed to find whatever was hurting Crazy T. I
needed to help him move on, or at least to stunt him. I sensed, given the power I showed last time, that there was something about the girl the bullying was over that I needed to discover. But I couldn’t figure it out by watching his black hole of an aura.
“Tomorrow’s his practice day,” Crazy T said, pointing at the pictures.
There was everyone from Alex and Tom to Sue and Steph, the recent addition. I sensed that these, along with two coaches, were the cardinal six. These had to die before he killed himself.
“Choose one,” Crazy T said.
“One what?” I asked.
“Choose one that you want to save. Alex, maybe?”
His smile grew darker than a starless night.
“That’s all you’ll get, if you’re lucky. I don’t think my boy’s ambitious enough. With the plan I show him tomorrow, he’ll make a clean sweep.”
My fear fed Crazy T; I fought to control it.
“Watch my protégé at work,” Crazy T added.
Crazy T and the other Takers swirled about Zipper until he picked up a gun, until he saw the squirrel in his sites.
“Slowly,” I heard Crazy T whisper. “You can’t grow startled. You must learn control.”
Zipper shot at the squirrel’s left hind leg.
It was a direct hit and a bloody mess. Zipper didn’t smile, didn’t react, as the squirrel cried out, scared for its very life. The Takers kept control, ordering him to take out the other leg.
I couldn’t watch, but I heard the trigger. The squirrel cried out again until Keepers swarmed around the innocent life and brought it to its end. I saw the animal spirit rise, join the spirits all around it, as the lifeless body stayed behind. But still the Takers weren’t through. Zipper fired again and again, until each leg had been shot off. Then he shot the head and the heart. His expression didn’t change. Not once.
Zipper simply picked up the body and threw it with the other dead animal bodies in a bag. He took it outside, deep into the woods behind his house, to bury. Zipper had a pit just full of animals. He threw it in there, covered it with dirt and leaves. No neighbors were around to notice. He went back into the basement, hid his gun, wiped up the blood. Zipper was still cleaning the blood when his mother pulled in and called down, “I brought McDonald’s. Get up here before it goes cold.”
“Cold,” Crazy T said. “I don’t think my man minds the cold.”
“In a minute, Mom,” Zipper called up. “I’m almost done.”
He kissed my photo, put it and his target photos away, and started scampering up the stairs like an eager child.
* * *
The phone rang again, and again my mother ignored it. The machine took over, and I heard a woman say, “We’re Burgundy Hill Mothers against Drinking and Driving and we’re calling to express our sympathies. We go around to any school that will have us, speaking for free about what drinking did to the lives of our children. We’re not calling to ask you to join us there, but to join other grieving mothers who went through what you’re going through now. We tried to visit, but no one answered the door. If you want to talk, please call me, Louise Chenning, at 860-659-4354. We’re meeting after the boys’ soccer game at my house on 234 Gold Hill Street at 8 this Friday night. Hope to see you there.”
My mother stared at the phone, reached out for it at one point in the message, but did not pick up. She sat alone, a divorced parent surrounded by flowers and cards from people who meant well but didn’t know anything my mother was going through. My death had launched her into a personal hell of second guessing herself. She asked questions like: Didn’t I know Fay had a drinking problem? Did I allow her too much freedom? Why wasn’t I monitoring her Facebook and Twitter accounts? Why didn’t I ask her to text me from wherever she was, on the hour, after nine p.m. Why didn’t I get more strict about who she could hang out with and where she could go?
Mom imagined the day over again. She imagined herself telling me that I had to come home directly after school, that there would be no parties that night or over the weekend until my grades were up so as not to endanger my NHS status. She imagined that her words would’ve made a difference, as if I wouldn’t have found a way to coax her or sneak out anyway.
Mom had it hard. My father left when we were little. If I wanted to, I could fly to him, see him sitting in a bar somewhere, watching a game with his friends. But he was my father in title only. Mom had worked hard to provide for me after he left. While she had a steady string of boyfriends, she never trusted a man enough to settle down and remarry. Now, in the middle of the worst tragedy of her life, my mother was alone.
I teared up myself seeing her cry. How hard it had to be to sacrifice so much for a daughter who became a drunk like her father and didn’t appreciate all the hard work. Years and years of saving up, scrounging, getting by, all for a daughter who’d be dead before her eighteenth birthday. What a terrible waste it all felt like. Yet I knew my mother loved me and wouldn’t have traded me, any more than I might have traded anything for my daughter. Believe it or not, I felt the ability to look into the future that might have been. I saw myself grown up, working odd jobs for low wages, all to put my daughter through school after I got divorced. I would’ve had a hard life, but I wouldn’t have traded my own daughter for anything. And yet I did. I traded her life for alcohol without even knowing it. Maybe she would’ve been the one to break the cycle, to be the professional woman my mother strived to be, the woman I should’ve been working to be.
My mother got up, canvassed my room for alcohol, found a few beer bottles left underneath the underwear in my dresser drawer. I wasn’t exactly careful. And my mother did choose to turn away.
She told herself it was a teen phase like the one she went through and that, like her, I’d get over it.
I saw her looking over the mess of clothes I left behind when choosing what to wear the night I died.
She broke down again. I went to cradle her, to send her aura positive energy, but that’s when Belinda appeared, looking anything but sympathetic.
“Help my mother,” I said to her.
She shook her ghostly head. Her hair, thin strands of pure light, cascaded.
“The Takers are confusing you,” she said. “Remember your mission.”
I felt pure energy glistening all around Belinda, like when the sun gets too bright and spills the extra light across the top of a mountain.
“These next two days will take you down some difficult paths,” a voice in the light told me.
“But hold strong. Share whatever love you have with the image your shown, no matter how harrowing, and we will guide you on. We will help your mother, but don’t forget your friends. Don’t forget the school.”
I didn’t judge myself as harshly as I should have or fall into a sea of self-loathing. I simply hugged my mother, prayed for her, gave her aura whatever love I had, and let go.
As I did, I could see my mother reaching for the phone, dialing a number, saying hello.
* * *
Soccer was huge at my school, where we’d won more Class M division titles than in any other sport, even basketball. And this year we were even bigger. The party I was going to was to celebrate a victory in the finals. Burgundy Hill had advanced and was now going after a state championship. The team hadn’t played a game since my death, and while I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe for a moment that my life or death meant anything to most of those on the soccer field, my death did mean something to one of its star players: Alex.
Alex, a captain, was the team striker and was practicing a few step over moves with his starter, Tom. I’d never really been into soccer, practically sacrilege in our town. Watching the footwork between the two as they alternated step-over strategies with one another, however, I couldn’t help but admire the skill it took to
dominate the ball and your opponent. Everything about soccer was teamwork, and to have a striker with anything on his mind but goals was to invite defeat.
“Stop stepping too fast,” Tom told Alex.
“Sorry,” Alex said.
Tom looked down. His face had my name written all over it, but he didn’t say Fay, not once.
“I’m sorry for how it all turned out,” Tom said, “and I know today’s fight at lunch got you down. But we have to pull through for both of them.”
“I know,” Alex whispered.
“This is the state championship. We’ve been waiting for the chance to lead the team since freshman year, and I’m not about to let four years of work—”
“I know,” Alex said louder, nearly yelling. “I heard you the first time.”
“It’s screwed up,” Tom said. “This should be the biggest moment of high school for us both, and all we can think about is, well—”
“I won’t let it get in the way of Friday’s game.”
They drilled again, this time alternating the ball, doing something with the forwards that they called the outside foot hook and reverse. Alex messed up the drill, and Tom came to a stop, shaking his head.
“We’ll try again,” Tom said.
“Later,” Alex said. “I need some water.”
Coach Ryan stood and watched, muted by the events at hand. Normally, he’d scream up and down Alex, but he had a daughter who was friends with Cindy, and I sensed from the blue pervading his aura that even he was a bit down.
Alex stumbled towards a water cooler lying on the side of the field. A few kids hanging out in the bleachers called out to him.
“Hey, man, we need to talk about the party after the game,” one of the kids said.
“We got three full kegs,” the kid’s friend called out.
They laughed, and Alex nodded, his eyes on a kid standing on the side of the field. It was Zipper, dressed in a groundskeeper uniform. That was his after-school job. Alex stood up, water in hand, and looked at Zipper while he imbibed the water.
“Hey, joining the team?” Alex called out. “You can start by picking this up.”
He threw his cup towards Zipper. The two soccer groupies laughed, taken with the excitement of the upcoming game. It was so huge that it was the only time I could remember when the players would be let out of class early just to warm up.
Zipper said, “No need to get jumpy. Just celebrating an anniversary.” He then disappeared.
“You have a girlfriend?” Alex asked.
By that time, Zipper was far gone, but the groupies still had a good laugh at his expense.
It began to occur to me what Zipper meant. The day after tomorrow was the same day Crazy T shot up the gym class. Judging from his aura, Alex’s thoughts were too much on the game and on me for him to get it. That’s how much our town tried to the put the past behind us. But one kid hadn’t, and even though he was showing the warning signs, walking into the school with concealed weapons, no one was noticing.
Two full days from today Crazy T and his protégé would have the perfect opportunity. Everyone was going to the game. Everyone. Brothers and sisters of the team, making a special trip from work or college—some of the very kids Crazy T set out to kill years earlier. That year they’d come close to the title, but lost in the finals to Franklin Shore. Now their brothers and sisters would have their chance at high school legend, and Crazy T would have his shot at immortality. Seeing the Takers circling around Zipper, Alex, and the two groupies, I began to realize that everyone going to the game didn’t mean everyone would be leaving the game without stretchers and body bags. But how to warn them when soccer was the only thing on their minds?
TWO DAYS TO GO
Chapter 6
Two mornings before the school shooting Takers hovered, watching over me.
I could feel Preggers’s macabre presence, could smell the fire and brimstone before I could see her.
The memories of my drinking days came back to me.
I saw myself, at thirteen, in the basement, experimenting with cigarettes and alcohol, nothing too big. By that age, at least one-third of the kids I knew had experimented with actual drugs. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be popular. I wanted, most of all, to be Alex Maroshe’s girlfriend. The sweet taste of whiskey intrigued me. Heinekens repulsed me at that age, but I drank them anyway. I found that I could loosen up more if I drank, that I could do more wild things that kids in my class would remember after the weekend was done. As plain old Fay, I was the smart girl trying to be pretty and popular. As Fay the partier, I was uninhibited, wild, free.
Ironically, I’d just gotten done working on history project with my ex, Zipper, still John at that point. He’d tried to get me to stay, but I’d run off after mocking him a bit. That’s how eighth graders can be, I guess. Immature and mean. As I sat there, surrounded by bottles in a competition to see who could drink the most, I didn’t even remember Zipper. Like everyone else, I’d come to forget him.
“Hey, Fay,” Preggers told me. “Bet I can drink you under.”
I laughed. “Make it worth my while and I’ll take you on,” I said.
Preggers looked right at Alex.
“Winner gets a kiss,” Preggers said to Alex.
Alex smirked.
“So long as you don’t barf in my mouth,” he said.
“No promises,” Preggers said.
We ponied up to the coffee table. Kids surrounded us, chanted.
“Whoever downs the most in two minutes,” she said.
“You’re on.”
We set up a whole row of scotch, whiskey, Heinekens, Budweisers, even a few chick drinks.
Alex called time, and we were guzzling. I saw myself for what I was, a kid, really, who looked ridiculous with foam from beer running down her cheeks. I looked like a mess. I was already bad at applying makeup, but the beer foam made it run even more. Camera phones flashed as kids threatened to put up pics on Facebook and Youtube. I kept drinking.
Preggers was a true friend that day. She had the weight advantage and could’ve easily held more liquor than me, but she let me win.
I smiled, looking as awful as I did, and Alex puckered up. I kissed, went in deep, trying to turn it into a French kiss to act cool. That kiss signaled the first time we’d become a couple. Not that it was me, really. It was Popular Fay, the girl who knew how to have fun at parties. Watching my old self kiss Alex, I wondered when I lost sight of who I really was.
The focus changed to an image of Zipper, or John, as he was then, back at his home. He was curled up on his bed, listening to old music from Joy Division, crying his eyes out. He had a middle school yearbook picture of me, and for all intents and purposes, that picture was his girlfriend. He kept it with him always. I felt shame. I knew I had hurt him. I liked Alex, but I never really gave John a chance. There was just something about him—too serious, too depressive, too quiet, too far removed from the friends I’d soon call my drinking buddies.
“You did this,” I heard a voice say. “You took my life.”
It was bodiless, deep, hollow, but still had some girlish familiarity. The ghostly voice was Preggers’s.
“You liked Alex too,” I said.
I could see her red and blue aura in the vision; she was such a good friend, but still jealous.
“I gave him up for you, and this is how you repay me?”
“I drove that night as a favor to you,” I said.
“You did it because you couldn’t get to the party fast enough so that you could put down the one girl Alex was going to announce as his girlfriend. You always were a jealous bitch.”
I looked more closely at what was left of Preggers. She was a giant black mist, not unlike my lower body, but she had this storm above her. Her aura was full of red and black clouds swirling with occasional bursts of gold that looked like pure anger, pure lightning. Her face was sunken in, and her lips and her eyes were black.
“You were going to be the new gir
lfriend,” I said. “Preggers, I’m so sorry.”
“I always hated that name.”
“Cindy,” I said. “I really am sorry.”
“No, not yet,” Preggers told me. “But you will be.”
Preggers threw her storm of anger towards me. I could feel her anger enveloping me, making me flash back to the time I kissed another boy, Tom, Alex’s friend. Alex never burst in and caught us in the act, but rumors started and those rumors were enough to end our relationship. I saw myself looking up Alex’s Facebook status, seeing it change. I saw an image of myself handing him his ring back, telling him that he was making the biggest mistake of his life, that he’d be sorry. Turns out that it was the second biggest mistake of mine.
I fought my way back to the moment.
I was a Taker, I told myself, and Preggers’s exploiting my grief.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I told her.
“A little late for that,” she said.
Preggers again threw her storm clouds at me, and again I saw a painful memory, one where she was watching as Alex and I kissed, as we got to talking one summer day. It was by the town beach, and Preggers had just left. I thought we were alone. I was talking to Alex about finding a guy for Preggers.
“That’s a hard one,” Alex said. “Don’t know if I have any friends with arms long enough to wrap around that big a body.”
I slapped him playfully, but Preggers heard, broke down as she fled.
The image jolted me back to the present.
“Cindy,” I said. “Why in the world would you want to go out with a guy after he said that about you?”
“Because I loved him,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have played the tramp on him like you did. I would’ve been the best girlfriend he ever had.”
“But you were pregnant.”
Spree (YA Paranormal) Page 6