by Aarsen, Zoe
“McKenna, what are you…”
I didn’t know what I was doing. It was as if my thoughts were being supplanted by something or someone else. Like I was a marionette puppet being operated by some other force. And then I realized that probably was exactly what was happening. The spirit that controlled Hannah was trying to distract me from what I had to do, and it was doing a darn good job of it.
“Sorry,” I said, turning crimson, regaining control of my thoughts. I must have seemed like a complete nut, first being panicky and cowardly and then coming onto Trey so strongly. “Something is messing with my head. I don’t want to wait for her downstairs. Really, I think it’s a bad idea.”
In the gym, I could hear the song winding down. Applause was rising and feet were stomping in the bleachers. The sound inside my ears was deafening. I felt as if my eardrums might explode, and in that moment I wanted nothing more than to run from the high school and get out into the parking lot, away from the brain-aching noise. “McKenna,” Trey said firmly, shaking me.
Before I had a chance to really get a grip on myself, the pom pon squad was exiting the gym. In a single file they rushed out of the gym, led by Shannon Liu, a senior still glowing from the excitement of the performance. The entire team jumbled together in front of my eyes like a wild octopus with twenty bare tan legs and long hair of every color, until my eyes settled on the girl at the heart of the group: the gorgeous girl with the ice blue eyes. Hannah.
Without even thinking through exactly what I was doing, without even giving her a fraction of a second to look up and see me and Trey lurking in the shadow of the hallway, I sprang forward. I moved too quickly for Trey to hold me back, too quickly to even entertain the possibility that by acting so impulsively and recklessly, I was jeopardizing everything. Not a word left my lips as I threw the entire weight of my body at Hannah, knocking Stephani deMilo out of my way and sending her crashing down onto the tile floor. I tackled Hannah, pushing her backward, and as we both hit the floor I grabbed for her locket, gritting my teeth as I felt my fingers wrap around the gold chain that disappeared beneath her sweater.
“Hey! No! Help!” Hannah cried out as soon as she realized what had happened. I was on top of her, pinning her to the floor with my knees pressed against her shoulders. I was sure that I was hurting her, but didn’t have time to care.
The chain was surprisingly strong although the gold looked delicate and old. I tugged on the chain hard enough to break the clasp, I was sure, and yet just as I felt the metal about to snap, I felt strong hands under my arms, pulling me backwards. I was yanked off of Hannah with such force, I felt the locket slip through my fingers in an instant, and gaped at it as I saw it—the embossed heart dangling by the delicate gold thread—snap back into place over Hannah’s sweater.
“What in God’s name,” Coach Simon yelled from behind me. I recognized the voice of the boys’ basketball coach even though I had never exchanged words with him before. Even before my feet found the ground and stabilized so that I could stand on my own, behind me, Trey tackled Coach Simon from the side, knocking him to the ground. I fell over with them since Coach Simon still had a strong grip on my arms, but I regained my balance faster. Back on my feet and suddenly liberated, I turned to see Trey struggling to keep the tall, balding coach down on the ground.
“Run, McKenna!” Trey yelled.
And so I turned back to my left and saw Hannah climbing up to her feet.
There was commotion everywhere—other teachers and parents rushing toward me and Trey—but nothing was going to stop me. With determination unlike any supply of energy I had ever sensed before in my life, I charged toward Hannah like a tiger, blowing past the other girls on the pom pon squad. She darted just fast enough to escape my grabbing fingertips, and she ran toward the staircase leading to the locker room entrance at top speed. I was steps behind her, skipping stairs to catch up to her, and clumsily missed a step. With a sickening feeling in my stomach because I knew every part of my body was about to start hurting a lot, I crashed into Hannah from the back, sending her tumbling forward. She fell face-first down at least four steps, and then bounced down two more, buffering the fall with her arms outstretched as her knees tucked around to one side. With more velocity on my side, I fell over her, surely hurting her back and shoulders as I tumbled forward, and I rolled down the rest of the stairs tucked into a ball, feeling every single stair jut into my ribcage until I hit the floor at the bottom.
I took a deep breath, sure that the warmth that I felt on my forehead was blood, and before I even gave myself a moment to adjust to the terrible pain setting in along my back and ribs, I saw Hannah collect herself and sprint toward the locker rooms. Hearing footsteps and concerned voices calling out to me from the top of the stairs, asking if I was okay, I struggled to get up on my feet. The only serious injury I had ever suffered before in my whole life was a broken finger in seventh grade, but I knew that if I was standing, I couldn’t be too hurt even though I couldn’t remember ever falling down stairs like that before. With no time to lose, I ran toward the locker room. My left hip crashed into the door frame as I entered, releasing another blinding jolt of pain through my body. I didn’t wait for the the pain to swell along my left side, and followed Hannah into the cool, calm locker room, losing sight of her the moment I entered as she dashed behind a row of blue steel lockers.
I rounded the corner carelessly, only realizing after I stood there, unsure of where she’d gone, that she could easily have been waiting for me, ready to bash a garbage can or something over my head. For a second I stood perfectly still, barely daring to breathe, desperately trying to hear any noise that might have indicated the direction in which she had darted. That second passed, and I heard nothing but the footsteps and voices of girls and parents following us into the locker room. I had to move quickly; I couldn’t risk being detained by parents. Since the moment that locket had grazed my fingertips, I knew I needed to feel it in my grasp again. It felt as if my skin was hungering for it, craving it.
To my right, I saw the row of blue bathroom stalls past the small walled-off square that served as Coach Stirling’s office. It was possible but not likely that Hannah might have stepped into a stall to hide from me, but I couldn’t afford to waste a few seconds checking. To my left were the white tiled blocks of showers, their walls definitely tall enough to hide Hannah if she had stepped into one to dodge me. Beyond the showers were the rows of lockers and then the double doors, locked from the inside on weekends, leading out onto the track. Having no option but to keep moving, I headed for the last cube of showers after a moment’s hesitation, hearing the voices of other people from the gym chasing me into the locker room.
As soon as I stuck my head into the shower area, I heard light footsteps ahead of me and darted back out of the shower block just in time to see the double doors swinging closed. I bolted with all my might for those doors, finding a new burst of energy, leaving the locker room just as the girls from the pom pon squad chasing me filtered in, hot on my trail.
Outside, my ears adjusted to the quiet afternoon. It was cold enough to startle me, cold enough for the air to smell sharply like snow. Ahead of me by at least ten feet I saw Hannah booking it for the gate that led to the parking lot. She glanced over her shoulder only once, dark hair flying, to assess how close I was to her. Reaching the fence, she grabbed at the gate that was all that kept her from sprinting across the parking lot, and found it surprisingly stuck. From behind her, I saw plainly what it took her a second to realize: there was a padlock and a chain securing the gate, presumably to keep weekend visitors from using the high school track. I could hear Hannah snarl in frustration as she ran her fingers over the lock for a split second and then wasted no time doing what I never expected her to do: climb the fence in her tiny pom pon skirt.
“Oh, geez,” I muttered to myself. I slowed myself down to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the fence just as Hannah was two steps into her ascension toward its top. I reached up and gra
bbed her left foot with the intention of pulling her back down to the blacktop, but instead of causing her to falter, she held onto the fence more tightly. I pulled harder a second time and was taken by surprise when she jumped down from the fence to knock me over with a fierce, raging look in her eyes. I fell backwards hard, hitting the blacktop and instantly knowing I had bruised my tailbone. While I was down, Hannah delivered a brutal, powerful kick to my gut, completely knocking the wind out of me. I gasped for air and rolled over onto my hands and knees as she began scaling the fence a second time, and before even catching my breath, I was back on my feet, reaching for her again in an attempt to pull her down.
Only this time, I caught her by surprise. This time, it was her body that hit the blacktop with an unpleasant thud, and her head that smacked against the ground. It was as her eyes blinked slowly, refocusing as she tried to figure out what had just happened and how badly she had been injured, that I reached for that gold chain around her neck and pulled with all my might.
This time, she howled, “OW!” and her fingers flew to the back of her neck, where undoubtedly the chain had dug into her sensitive skin before the clasp snapped off.
With the locket clutched tightly in my right hand, I was scaling that fence as fast as I could, still very aware of Hannah’s dazed state on the blacktop below me. By the time I reached the top of the fence, other girls from the pom pon squad had caught up to us, and while half of them bent to help Hannah back onto her feet, the other half childishly shook the bottom of the fence in an attempt to make me fall. I threw one leg over the top and took two small, careful steps down before I decided to just wing it and jump. I landed firmly with a thunk that sent pain snaking up my back from my tailbone, and wiped a dark trickle of blood out of my right eye. I wasted a fraction of a second looking over my left shoulder only to see that Hannah’s fury had returned, and she was violently pushing back her teammates intending to help her. One foot in a black leather dance shoe slipped into a hole in the aluminum fence and within seconds, Hannah had reached the top of the fence as if a supernatural force was lifting her.
Now it was my turn to run, to run as fast as I could. The only thoughts in my head as I ran were nebulous, imprints of colors suggesting the immense physical pain I felt. I had the keys to Trey’s mom’s car in the right pocket of my black jeans, but the only way to get across the lot to the Civic was to weave through parked cars. There was a possibility that Hannah would reach the car faster than I would, and even if she didn’t, I didn’t like the idea of driving out of the lot on my own without Trey. From there, I wouldn’t know where to go, or what to do with the locket.
Fortunately, just then, through the West doors of the school, Trey ran out, followed by Mischa. Trey spotted me, and then saw Hannah chasing me, and he broke into an impressive sprint and tackled Hannah from the side, knocking her over. “Don’t get up!” he warned her as he backed away and began jogging in the same direction in which I was jogging, toward his mother’s parked car. Parents and teachers from both Willow and Angelica poured out of the school through the West doors and had witnessed Trey’s assault on Hannah. Coach Simon was among them, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his nose. Several mothers rushed toward Hannah, who obeyed Trey and made no effort this time to get up. As I anxiously transferred the locket from my sweaty right palm into my left palm so that I could jam the key into the car door, I looked up to see the disarray we had caused in the parking lot: pom pon girls crying and shouting angrily on the other side of the fence near the track, parents weaving through parked cars toward me and Trey, Mischa standing alone on the stairs leading to the West entrance, her arms wrapped around herself.
“Don’t look, just drive!” Trey commanded. I climbed into the driver’s side of the car and started the engine so that I could open the lock on his side. He popped into the car and slammed the door shut seconds before a heavyset dad of one of the basketball players reached the car and yelled, “Out of the car right now, you two! You are both in a lot of trouble!”
I tried to block out the man’s voice, and set the locket down on the plastic divider behind the transmission lever. Trey fastened his seat belt and said confidently, “Let’s go.”
I backed out of the parking spot as fast as I could, a little impressed with my own driving skills until I heard the crunch of metal and realized I had backed out a little too overzealously and had clipped the back corner of the car next to me. Not bothering to see how bad the damage was, I floored Mrs. Emory’s Civic toward the entrance of the parking lot, not wanting to waste time driving all the way around the parked vehicles to exit the proper way. I made an illegal right turn, and could see the angered father through the passenger’s side window, his face red, his hands packed in fists. Near the doors to the high school building, it looked like concerned parents were helping Hannah limp back inside.
CHAPTER 18
“Where do we go?” I asked Trey, terrified, barely even stopping at the stop sign at the end of the block before throwing the car into a hard left turn without signaling. My pulse was racing, I felt like I was sweating flakes of ice. My palms felt so slippery I feared I might not be able to control the car.
“We have to destroy this thing,” Trey muttered, picking the locket up to examine it. “How do we destroy a gold locket?”
At the next corner I turned right and merged into traffic, heading toward the rural highway that was our best bet for getting out of town limits quickly. Almost immediately after I felt the warm rush of relief from mixing in with other cars driving at normal speeds, I heard sirens behind us. The sirens could only mean one thing on a Saturday afternoon: someone at the high school had called the police, and they were coming after us.
“Oh god!” I exclaimed. “Do you think I should pull over?”
“Um, you just assaulted a fellow student, I just punched a teacher, and you just drove away from the scene of an accident. I really don’t think you should pull over right now,” Trey advised me.
“Right,” I agreed, impulsively switching lanes and cutting off someone to my left who honked angrily at me. I wanted to put as many cars as possible in between us and that police car behind us in traffic.
Using his miniscule, chewed-down fingernails, Trey managed to pry the locket open and made a sound that was a mix of oops and whoah. I took my eyes off the road for a split second to see that there was a small lock of golden hair, the color of honey, in the locket. It had uncurled the moment Trey had parted the two halves of the heart, and was stretched out, tickling his palm.
“I don’t know if this is gross or cool,” he muttered.
I thought instantly of the portrait in the Simmons’ hallway, with Hannah’s grandmother, her blond hair perfectly coifed, smiling so gracefully. My memory of that patient smile suddenly seemed eerie. In the painting, Grandmother Simmons wasn’t welcoming guests into her living room with that smile. She had been telling me, through the cracked paint, that her patience would outlast mine. She could wait a very, very long time for her revenge on those who had wronged her family.
We were greeted by two more police cars when I turned right onto the rural highway leading out of town. Upon seeing our car, they flipped on their sirens and the swirling red and blue lights on the tops of their vehicles filled the gray afternoon with color.
“I really don’t like this,” I told Trey, my voice shaking. I was already daring to wonder if anyone had called my mother to inform her that there was a wild police hunt for my capture in progress.
“Just keep driving.” Trey scratched his head, thinking, and said, “The lakes. If we can make it as far as County Highway up past the airport, we can toss it over the side of the suspension bridge at White Ridge Lake.”
That was far from where we were. The drive up to Shawano Lake and the smattering of smaller lakes around it in the densely forested area would take almost thirty minutes, driving fast. I wasn’t sure my nerves and driving ability could hold out that long. The rural highway was only four lanes, two lanes
eastbound, as we were, and two lanes westbound. If the police attempted to obstruct our passage, I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to react. What was equally concerning was that we had less than a quarter tank of gas.
“Trey, I don’t know if we’re going to make it that far,” I said, too scared to even cry.
“Think about Mischa,” Trey encouraged me. “We have to at least try.”
“But do you think throwing the locket into deep water is going to be enough to actually destroy it?” I asked. I would have felt a lot better if we had made the preparations to throw it into a vat of acid or an incinerator hot enough to melt precious metal. But it was three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in suburban Wisconsin; how the heck would we ever come across either of those options? “Gold doesn’t rust.”