She’d have to be careful.
She wasn’t used to hiding these things. She wouldn’t be like Jimmy Mason who continuously fingered the bruises under his shirt until everyone knew it couldn’t be anything else. Jack and Daniel couldn’t know. They could never find out.
She could only guess at what they’d do.
Several cars and trucks pulled to a stop in front of the high school across the street, a few junior-highers who had been lucky to bum rides from older siblings piling out. Most of them hurried inside where the air conditioner was working strong. A few headed to the opposite corner where they could smoke without the teachers knowing. The high school kids across the street didn’t even have to pretend, loitering by their cars and the sidewalk and the front yard. Sandra wasn’t sure if the junior high teachers would care either, if it wasn’t for appearance’s sake.
Some more cars, stopping and dropping kids off, students on foot, and then the bus rumbled up, dropped off its fifteen students before turning into the back parking lot where it stayed parked during school hours, next to the principal’s and the teachers’ slowly rusting cars.
Then, Lem’s black truck.
She couldn’t see his face. But Jack and Daniel didn’t look too thrilled when they climbed down. Daniel was already looking for her. Sandra didn’t get up. She saw them say something to Lem, and then to each other, and with another few looks around, Daniel crossed the street, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his blue jeans. His shirt was worn and faded green, molding to his shoulders and back.
Jack headed slowly for the front door, scowling more than usual, red shirt looking too bright and Sandra looked away. When she looked back, he was gone.
She waited for the first bell before going inside.
Sandra avoided her locker, stayed late in each class and ate her lunch in a different hallway than usual.
She just wanted to be alone. She didn’t see Jack until after school ended. And that was only because Daniel already stood by his lonesome at the curb when she got out the door, and Sandra couldn’t exactly just walk on by without him knowing something was wrong. The sun at her back pressed her on and it was hard to stop and stand still. The change in temperature between the air-conditioned chill inside and the hot-bright air outside was enough to dampen her back.
Not because of nerves, she told herself.
She had to play this cool.
“Hey,” Daniel said quietly, hand reaching for her and stopping halfway, falling back to his side with a tightening of cool gray eyes. Sandra quirked her lips, bottom one feeling chaffed from worrying it. She raised one brow as he stared at her hard.
He couldn’t know. He couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.
It was hard to not let her brittle smile break.
“Danny?”
A small shake of his head, and then his eyes were perusing down, taking in her scuffed jeans, her ratty shoes … her too-long shirt.
He’s going to know.
A hand grabbed her shoulder and Sandra sort of flinched before Jack spun her around, anger in every line of his body. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.
Sandra noticed Lucy Myers over his shoulder, standing by the door and leering with her gossiping harpies.
Sandra pulled away, mouth a tight frown. “I was busy.” She shrugged and her lax attitude must have shut him up, because Jack’s teeth slammed shut.
“No,” Daniel said simply, those observant eyes of his knowing more.
“What?” Jack asked.
Daniel shook his head.
“No, what?” Jack intoned, heavy on the words. “Tell me.”
“Not here.” Daniel’s eyes made a careful sweep of the yard and Jack’s shoulders straightened the tiniest bit, warrior peeking through. Daniel tugged her shirtsleeve to get her walking.
“But—”
“Dad’s not coming today.”
They bracketed her all the way down the sidewalk and Sandra felt smaller than ever. Their gazes were sharp, cutting on the sidewalk at their feet, at the yards and roads and neighbors they passed. Panic crawled up her throat, and it took everything she had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, not letting her face show a thing.
The whole time, no one spoke.
About a block from home, Daniel stopped her, pulling her before she could turn onto the street that would let her run into her room and shut everything else out. Knowing the boys, they would jimmy open her window and crawl in over the dead thorns of the wild rose bushes so that they could follow her inside.
They were still on the sidewalk and out in the open and Sandra crinkled her forehead at Daniel.
“If I’m right,” he said, “I don’t know if I can trust myself so close to home.”
Sandra inhaled sharp, looked away, feeling her cheeks burn and said, “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Danny.”
His eyes shifted subtly. “We know our dad had some words with yours.”
Sandra fought to keep her face still. She stared at a patch of yellow in the yard beside them. Everything else was green.
“He told us this morning when you went missing.”
“I got an early start,” she said.
“You didn’t show all day.” Jack glared down at his feet. “I was worried,” he admitted and Sandra’s throat clicked dry, feeling even guiltier.
“So what?” she forced out. It felt like there was something stuck just behind her tongue “I just had a busy day, is all.” She jutted her jaw, but she didn’t think she was fooling any of them. Daniel looked ready to call her on her lies. “It’s my dad,” she said. “You guys know he doesn’t care.”
“He seemed to care plenty when our dad was through talking,” Jack said, a low sort of growl in his voice. “Dad would’ve checked on you yesterday, but he didn’t want to make things worse.”
“It was fine.” Sandra shrugged again and felt her bruises sting – felt her eyes sting, too, and she blinked hard and stared at the patch of yellowed grass.
A long silence, and she assumed the boys were having one of those quiet, no-word conversations where entire universes were examined and conquered. The silences that normally didn’t bother her, didn’t vex her. Today, it rubbed her raw. She inhaled, long and wavering, and the air sludged into her lungs, sticking along the muscle and cartilage. With one last moment of silence, she turned and started off down the sidewalk. One step and her arm was caught, right on her bruise, and she couldn’t keep from gasping. Then she was free again, two sets of narrowed eyes right on her, and Sandra really considered running.
She should’ve walked out of town.
Jack grabbed her sleeve in one fast move, pushing the fabric up, wrist held firmly even as she tugged. He stilled, immovable as stone, as the deeply bruised skin was revealed, just above the joint of her elbow. It looked worse than it had that morning, darker in the bright sunlight, purple-black in the shape of one perfectly captured hand. The fingers had dug in deeper, darker, and Jack’s face was a mask of rage.
“Fuck him,” he breathed. “Fuck. Fuck! Fucker! I’m gonna—”
Daniel grabbed him before he could get more than a step. “Calm down.”
“No, Danny. What the hell? Did you see? Do you see what he-?!”
“I saw.” Daniel’s calm seemed to help and Sandra stared, wide-eyed.
“That’s why I didn’t want to say,” she said, voice quivering and shrugging helplessly at the two of them. “You’re both…” She didn’t know how to end it delicately.
“You get crazy, Jack,” Daniel said, blunt, to the point.
“I do not!” His face burned for a fight. “And this isn’t something you hide! No one hurts you. That isn’t-!”
He took off again and this time Sandra caught him. “No,” she whispered, nose pressed tight to his chest, almost to his neck. She wrapped her arms
tight and felt him shake – shake. “No.” He wasn’t listening, still glaring over her shoulder like he couldn’t trust himself not to lash out at the next person he looked at. But he didn’t push her away to keep moving. “They’re not worth it,” she said.
“You are.” Danny’s hands briefly touched her back.
“Damn right you are,” Jack growled, voice extra rough and low and his arms came up to catch her hard.
“Don’t do something stupid,” she said. “Promise me. He’ll call the police. You know he will. And he’s just a stupid old man that hasn’t been my father in years. He isn’t worth it.”
“You are,” Jack said, repeating Daniel’s words.
And, for once, Sandra believed them.
“You are.”
Sandra squeezed him back just as hard.
~
They didn’t knock her dad down, though not for a lack of wanting on their part. They couldn’t get her convinced it was for the best, and Sandra had heard her dad muttering enough about the new neighbors to not want to press her luck.
The last thing the Sloans needed were charges brought against them, especially with how Lem eyed the cops every time they passed by. Sandra wasn’t spending the rest of her years in this town without them in her life. She was stuck in that house until she came of age and hell if she was going to let Jack and Daniel ruin that for her.
Heck, even Lem took some convincing once he saw her arm.
And then all he said was, “They ever check in on you?” Her incomprehension must have shown. “At night?”
“No.”
“Good. Pack up a bag. You’re staying here from here on out.”
“What?”
“I don’t like having to repeat myself.” He’d given her one of those looks and Sandra snapped to attention.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
And that was how Sandra found herself sleeping in Daniel’s room. He was tucked in with Jack and she woke up each morning to a fistfight crashing against the wall, Jack’s voice raised high with teenage angst and irritation.
She had to be really careful to not laugh at them.
It couldn’t be fun for those two tall boys to be sleeping in that tiny little room. She was sure they had some sleeping bags spread out on the floor, but they always complained anyway.
They always stopped when she felt guilty and talked about going home, or taking the couch instead.
“Shut up and eat your breakfast,” Lem would say, downing his fifth cup of coffee for the morning and glaring enough to finally stop the bickering. He always looked like he could use another three hours of rest, dark circles under his eyes, and face lined from lack of sleep.
Jack and Daniel would poke each other behind his back.
Sandra always thought he knew – he’d get this little smile over at the corner of his lips that only she ever saw – but he never stopped them either.
She didn’t think her parents noticed her coming home less and less, her belongings slowly disappearing into the Sloan house. And if they did, they didn’t care.
Her dad never talked to Lem again.
And Lem didn’t talk to him.
And Sandra’s bruises faded. She didn’t grow any taller, but those boys helped her grow up, and then the whole year had gone by, school was over, summer had come hot and damp, and had gone cool and windy, school had started up again, and Sandra Daron was fifteen years old.
Then girls started going missing.
Chapter Four
“I can’t believe it about Nikki Trite.”
Amanda blew across her newly polished nails, a shining, searing pink. The bottle sat on the corner of her desk.
“What?” Sandra frowned at her, pretending to listen as Mr. Murray turned to the class, voice such a steady drone that she’d nearly fallen asleep three times in the past fifteen minutes.
“Nikki Trite? How can you not know? What, do you live under a rock or something?”
Sandra sent her a look and Amanda at least had the grace to blush. “Oh, right. Sorry.” Former gossip-mongrel of the school’s now head-honcho Lucy Myers, Amanda finished spinning the cap back onto the bottle of polish. “Didn’t you notice how she hasn’t shown up for class in over a week?”
Sandra glanced around the room, shrugged, and Amanda rolled her eyes.
Amanda wasn’t so bad to hang out with, even if she was only a class friend, and even if she still gossiped like she was back at Lucy Myers’ side. Sandra supposed someone couldn’t change all that fast and all at once. And it was better than having no one now that Jack was across the street with his brother.
Heaving a massive sigh, Amanda said, “Apparently she and Dun Brackerly had some fight and she said she was going to leave town. And now she’s gone. I mean, everyone was just waiting for her to show back up at school, licking her wounds – she’d been caught making out with over half of the volleyball team; I don’t know what she thought would happen. But they said she really did it. She ran away. Can you imagine?” Amanda snapped her mouth shut as Mr. Murray turned again, frowning as all the whispers immediately morphed into dead silence. He turned back around. “I give her another week before the cops bring her back.”
“Huh.”
Amanda rolled her eyes again, so hard they were about to fall out of her head. “You’re hopeless.”
Sandra’s whole page was doodled full of names. Two names in particular. She turned it quickly and ripped it clean. “I guess I am.”
Amanda sighed again. “You’re no fun.”
Sandra shrugged again, opened her mouth to speak, but closed it immediately when Mr. Murray’s dark eyes landed on her. She kept her eyes wide and held her pen as though she was studiously taking notes. Amanda snickered.
“I hate Social Studies,” she said.
“I’m not even sure what Social Studies are.”
Amanda grinned again. By then Mr. Murray finally had it and spun around, catching Edmund Rasui and Zachariah Inger throwing spit balls at Dale Brackerly (Dun’s twin brother) and booted them both out into the hall. The rest of the class was spent in silence, saliva gathering at the corner of Sandra’s mouth when she accidentally fell asleep for the last five minutes of class.
She was sure Mr. Murray glared her all the way out the door.
After school, she climbed into the truck between Jack and Daniel – both who, she swore, had gotten even bigger and bulkier over the summer (she hadn’t).
“Fuck, Dad, we need a bigger truck!”
“Watch your mouth!”
Sandra smiled all the way home.
~
On November twentieth, fourteen-year-old Lydia Barsowich went missing.
This time, no one could say she ran away. She didn’t fight with her parents, she didn’t have a boyfriend, and she seemed happy with her quiet, normal life.
That was when Sandra became worried.
Because maybe Nikki Trite hadn’t run away either.
Maybe everything she had seen last year was coming true.
Maybe there was just nothing left of those girls to find.
It seemed like the world should’ve changed. But classes were the same. The same kids with the same lax attitudes and whispers and gossip and hidden laughs. No one thought about Nikki Trite, and after a while not many thought about Lydia Barsowich either. Sandra guessed it was easier to think she’d also run away; better than believing there was something dark and sinister out there. Someone with a knife and greedy hands and—
Sandra didn’t remember much from her vision anymore.
But she remembered that there were three girls.
She hoped he didn’t still have them, in that dark pit somewhere, bleeding and scared.
He was still going to take one more and she didn’t know who it was.
“Miss Daron, please stay after class.�
�
Amanda gave her a commiserating look as she gathered her books, grabbing up her bag on her way out of the room with the rest of the class.
“Don’t forget to hand in your papers!” Mr. Murray shouted after them, looking even surlier than normal and Sandra marched slowly up to the desk, dread pooling low in her stomach.
“That’s the third time this week, Miss Daron,” he said, as he shuffled the pile of papers into some semblance of order. “You have to start paying attention. This can’t continue any longer.”
“I know,” she said, swallowing fast. “And I’m sorry, Mr. Murray. I don’t mean to. I just…”
He paused in settling the papers into his briefcase. “What has you so distracted?”
Sandra mumbled an inaudible reply, shrugging, and Mr. Murray sighed. “Times have been hard, Miss Daron. I understand that. I’m not quite the ogre everyone makes me out to be.” Sandra stared wide-eyed as he actually smiled – a small one, granted, but a smile nonetheless. “You were friends with Miss Barsowich.”
Sandra just nodded her head, because it was easier than saying she hadn’t really known her at all, but thought that maybe she’d seen her die.
“I’ve been assured that the police are doing everything they can to locate Miss Barsowich. They’ll find her.” His grin was reassuring, and Sandra fought down a sudden surge of bile.
“Yeah. I know.”
“Off to your next class, Miss Daron.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Sandra slowly left the room, wishing she had someone other than the boys she could confide in to say: those girls aren’t coming home.
Lydia Barsowich hadn’t run away.
Most of all, she hoped she was wrong and Nikki Trite had run away from this town. That fourteen-year-old Lydia was safe somewhere, maybe not happy, but certainly not dead. That there was no third girl that was going to disappear.
Sticks and Stones Page 4