Giant Man smiled. “A surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
His smile grew, stretching across his face like an elastic band being pulled tight. “You’ll like this one.”
“Doubtful.” I felt something brush against my ankle. Something cold. Something with scales. When I looked down and saw the snake, black as pitch and easily as thick as my arm, I couldn’t contain the scream. It flew out of my mouth in a violent burst of sound that rocked me back on my heels. The snake didn’t flinch. It’s long body undulating, it traveled leisurely through the grass and when it reached the man it slithered up his leg, vanishing inside the cuff of his black pants.
When it popped out of his shirt collar like some horrific jack-in-the-box I almost screamed again. A dream, I told myself. This is only a dream, Lola. It can’t be real. Get your shit together! And if it was only a dream, why couldn’t I go through the door? This wasn’t real. Nothing could happen to me.
“Open it,” I said. I stared him straight in the eyes, able to do in my dream what I hadn’t been able to do in real life. The snake wound itself around his trunk sized neck and hissed at me, its long tongue as black and slimy as its body. It took all of my willpower not to shudder. “Let me see what’s inside.”
Giant Man beckoned me closer with the crook of a finger. “You are either very brave,” he whispered into my ear when I stopped in front of the door, “or very foolish.”
“Open it,” I repeated through gritted teeth.
Cold seeped out from under the door. Goosebumps rose on my exposed skin and I hugged my arms tight to my chest, belatedly realizing Dream Lola was wearing the same thing as Real Lola: a gray t-shirt two sizes too big and a ratty pair of pink sweatpants.
I could dream up a massive snake but I couldn’t manage to put myself in a rocking outfit? Thanks a lot, subconscious.
The door slowly opened without being touched. I tipped forward onto my bare toes. I saw the steel walls, walls that shouldn’t have been there since from the outside it appeared as though the door led to nowhere. A single bulb hung from the ceiling. It swung back and forth, sending streaks of light skittering across the small room and catching on long, rolled up rugs stacked ten high.
In hindsight, I should have seen it coming. I really should. I mean, I wasn’t a horror movie maniac like Travis, but even I knew standing in front of an open door with a bad guy at your back is a really, really lame idea. I was basically asking for him to shove me inside and slam the door, which is exactly what he did.
I tripped over one of the rugs. Another one caught my fall. The naked bulb continued to spin in crazy circles, never letting light settle in one spot for more than a second, and my eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness. I stood up, rubbing my palms dry on my sweatpants. The rug I’d landed on must have been wet. This was, officially, the strangest dream ever. I was locked inside a freezing cold steel room with a pile of wet rugs. Except they weren’t rugs. Not really. But you knew that already, didn’t you?
All at once the light stopped swinging. I looked down at the floor and that’s when I saw the bodies.
And the blood.
Bodies wrapped up in rugs with heads and feet sticking out. Lifeless eyes, staring at nothing. Mouths, open and gaping. Blood, red and wet and sticky, staining the floor, the walls, the ceiling.
I attacked the door. I beat at it like a wild animal, kicking and clawing and screaming until my voice was hoarse. Blood splattered. It dripped down my face. Coated my eyelashes. Slipped inside my mouth. The taste of it was salty and metallic. I spat it out in disgust.
“Wake up,” I whimpered as I hit the door until my own hands began to bleed. “Lola, wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!”
But I didn’t wake up. Because nightmares didn’t work like that. After all, if you could remove yourself from the horror of your deepest, darkest thoughts with the snap of your fingers… what would be the point?
The next morning I brushed my teeth for a good ten minutes. Still the taste of blood lingered, and even though I knew it was impossible, even though I knew it had just been a horrible dream, I checked the sink anyways, half expecting to see the white porcelain bowl streaked with red.
I dressed quickly after my shower, not even bothering to dry my hair before I hurried out of the apartment. As usual I was running late and the high school was a fifteen-minute walk from Green Lane. I reached for my cell to text Travis before I remembered it was missing, and made a mental note to retrace my steps after class. I would have much rather bought a new one than go anywhere near the Livingston’s house again, but that would require money. Money I didn’t have.
I seriously needed a job. Then again, I needed a lot of things. A mother who remembered she had two daughters, not just one. A father who gave a shit. A good shrink.
I’ve actually been to therapy (I know, shocker, right?). Well, we’ve been to therapy. Me, Mom, Pops, and Big Sis. One big, happy, dysfunctional family.
I didn’t mind it that much. Big Sis and I got to wait in a separate room filled with decent magazines while Mom and Dad duked it out with the therapist, a mousy looking woman in her early thirties who was fond of phrases like “how does that make you feel?” and “maybe if you asked that differently”. She was nice enough, I guess.
For a shrink.
The real entertainment came when Mom and Dad started yelling. I learned some of my best curse words from those therapy sessions. After they were done screaming about how much they hated each other Big Sis and I were allowed to come in and contribute to the discussion. She bitched a lot about not having the same things as her friends and her early curfew (which was, to her credit, pretty lame).
I was a fan of the silent and stoic approach, which the therapist found particularly interesting. Once she kept me after and we had a little one on one session. I must not have impressed her all that much because when it was over she called my parents back in and said she was very “concerned” for me.
“Lola can take care of herself,” Mom had snapped impatiently. “She’s not the one I’m worried about.”
Some people really shouldn’t have children.
Suffice it to say the therapy didn’t really take, and we stopped going after a few more times, which was too bad because, like I said, the magazines were pretty cool.
Travis was already in his seat by the time I got to the classroom where the prep course was being held. By some miracle I’d managed to arrive ten minutes early, and only about half of the thirty or so students that were taking the course had arrived. They sat in bunches of two and threes, quietly talking amidst themselves. One girl with long blond hair and a pink polo shirt that practically screamed preppy bitch looked up when I sauntered in. She whispered something to the brunette sitting beside her, and together they rolled their eyes.
I supposed Blondie wasn’t very impressed with my tangled wet braid, black tank with a silver skull embossed on the front, and faded jeans. Like I gave a shit. Our eyes met and held, our stares saying two very different things.
You shouldn’t even be in here, you goth psycho.
I will punch you in the throat, you skinny barbie bitch.
Okay, so maybe I was overreacting just a little. But I couldn’t help it. I felt unsettled. Agitated. Anxious. The nightmare with the dead people rolled up in carpets was still lingering in the back of mind, not to mention what had happened in real life. Scary giant men with silver fangs did not a calm Lola make.
Zeroing in on Travis, I walked to the back of the classroom and slid into the orange plastic chair next to his. He had his head burrowed in his arms, forehead pressed flat against his desk. I slapped my number two pencil and notebook down and spun in my chair to face him. Without so much as a ‘hey, how are ya doing’ I gave his desk a small shake and said, “Tell me again what happened after I left.”
Travis sat up slowly, as though the weight of his head was heavier than he was used to. I drew in a sharp breath. Travis looked awful.
His eyes wer
e bloodshot. His skin pale. Well, his skin was always pale, but today he was extra pale. Like ghost pale. The freckles on his nose and cheeks stood out in sharp contrast to his white skin, and when he frowned the freckles pulled and stretched, moving across his face like little fleas. “I told you what happened,” he began in a tired voice. “Mr. Livingston saw us trying to steal his car and he decided to scare us to get even. When you left he sat me down, gave me a lecture, and let me go. That’s it, Lola. There isn’t anything else to tell.”
Unfortunately for Travis, he’d never been a very good liar. I knew he wasn’t telling the truth. What I didn’t know was why he wasn’t telling the truth. “Mr. Livingston isn’t some stupid teenager,” I argued. “If he wanted to get us in trouble he would have called the cops, not pretended to be someone he wasn’t.” I slid to the edge of my seat. My knee bumped against Travis’ thigh and he jumped, flinching away from me as though I’d shocked him.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Then tell me what really happened. Come on, Travis,” I cajoled, frustrated by his silence. “You know I won’t say anything.”
“Why the hell do you care?” he snapped.
The acid in his tone caught me off guard. I was used to people being jerks to me because I was jerks to them. But not Travis. Never Travis. “Because I want to know what happened to you. What really happened.”
He looked down at his desk. Picking up his pencil he began to draw long, hard furrows down the length of his notebook. I winced when the lead tip of the pencil broke off with an audible snap. Winced again when Travis threw the pencil down on the floor.
It bounced once on the beige carpet and rolled up against the leg of his chair. He bent to retrieve it, frowning as he stared at the broken tip, as though he had no idea what had happened to it. “You don’t get to know,” he said softly. When he turned his head to glare at me I felt the air wither and turn cold inside of my lungs. Travis had never looked at me like that before. Like he hated me. Like he loathed me. Like he wanted to take the broken pencil and stab it through my eye. “You ran away, Lola. You left me all alone and you. Ran. Away. So you don’t get to know. And you don’t get to ask. And I do not want to talk about it anymore. Do you understand?”
I didn’t know what to say. “Travis… I… You…” I was saved when the teacher walked in. He went to the front of the classroom, cleared his throat, and picked up exactly where he’d left off last week.
As he droned on about integers and prime numbers I knew I should have been taking notes, but all I could think about was a man with silver fangs and a bloody room filled with bodies and the horrifying blankness in Travis’ eyes as he told me what I already knew: I’d abandoned my best friend, and now both of us were paying the consequences.
CHAPTER SIX
Everett James
“Lola you should… have seen…your…FACE!” Doubled over in the senior parking lot behind the school, Travis clutched his knees and howled with laughter.
I was not amused.
“You’re an asshole,” I said flatly. “I can’t believe you would do that to me.”
Wiping at the tears in his eyes Travis slowly straightened and grinned his familiar, goofy grin. Gone was the blankness. Gone was the meanness. It had all been an act to get even with me for making him steal a car. Or so he’d said the moment class was over.
“You were totally freaked out,” he snickered.
“I wasn’t freaked out.”
“You were too.”
My shoulders hunched defensively. I kicked at a rock on the ground and sent it bouncing across the empty, pitted up parking lot. A lone trickle of sweat dripped down the middle of my back. I swiped at it absently before I fixed my so-called “best friend” with a glare that would have made Blondie tremble in her designer heels. “It wasn’t nice, Travis, and it wasn’t funny. I was really worried about you. I hardly slept last night.”
Travis’ smile dimmed. “Geez Lola,” he mumbled, looking away from me, “it was only a joke.”
“Well, like I said it wasn’t a very funny one.” I kicked a second rock hard enough to send it spinning up over the curb and onto the grass.
Silence stretched between us, as uncomfortable as it was unfamiliar. Maybe it was because we were always careful never to discuss touchy subjects, but in all the years we’d been best friends Travis and I had never fought. Not once. At least not over anything meaningful. This was as close as we’d ever come, and I didn’t like the heavy weight in the bottom of my stomach or the feeling of tightness in the back of my throat.
“I’m sorry I left you behind, okay?” I said finally. Scowling, I looked down at the ground. “Maybe I was scared. But only a little.” I lifted my head and found Travis watching me, his brow furrowed and a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. “That guy really freaked me out. Like, a lot.”
“He freaked me out too,” Travis admitted after a pause. “I shouldn’t have gone in the house. It was a stupid thing to do. I don’t know what I was thinking. But seriously Lola, nothing happened. He was just being a jerk, trying to scare us. Let’s forget about it, okay?”
Forget about it? Somehow I didn’t think it would be that easy. Still, I nodded and managed to smile. “Sure. We can forget about it. Grand theft auto, one and done.”
We left the parking lot and headed downtown towards Chubbie’s Ice Cream Parlor, a hot spot destination for anyone too young to get a beer to help fight off the choking summer heat.
It was almost one. Usually the sidewalks would be swelled with traffic (for some reason tourists loved Revere; apparently it was “historically charming”, whatever the hell that meant) but today, with the exception of Travis and a few other locals, the entire town was strangely empty.
Now, I know what you’re thinking.
Travis coming up with some lame excuse to cover his behavior, a normally bustling town reduced to some annoyed looking moms and their whining kids, and let’s not forget the guy with the silver fangs or my freaky dream. I mean, could it be any more obvious that something really bizarre was going on?
I suppose I could have put two and two together then and there, but sometimes you only see what you want to believe… and I wanted to believe everything was fine.
My life was falling to shit – an absent mother, a drunken father, a dead-end future – but at least everything else was fine. Travis was fine. I was fine. The town was fine.
Oh please. Don’t act like you’re any better. Our planet is literally dying and you’re still turning up your air conditioners and putting gas in your big cars and tossing out plastic water bottles by the dozen (it’s called recycling, people). If that isn’t denial I don’t know what is. So yeah, maybe I was in denial. And yeah, maybe if I’d reacted sooner I could have saved a few hundred lives.
Don’t get too bent out of shape about it.
It won’t be my last mistake.
We ate our ice cream on a wooden bench facing the used bookstore, a four story Victorian townhouse stuffed to the gills with old, dusty paperbacks. I licked my small plain vanilla cone slowly and tried not to be too jealous of Travis’ large mint chocolate chip.
What would it be like, I wondered, not to worry about stretching five dollars to the end of the week? I bit into the edge of my circular wafer cone. Chewed it thoughtfully. Did Travis even know how lucky he was? Sure, his parents were divorced, but they still lived in the same state and he saw his dad every other weekend. His mom may have been a bit of a hard ass, but at least she cared enough to worry about where he was and what he was doing.
I knew Mrs. Henderson didn’t like me. She tried to hide it, but I was pretty good at reading faces and hers said stay the hell away from my son. She thought I was a bad influence.
She was right.
“One more month and then we’ll start our last year of high school.” I glanced sideways at Travis and nudged his sneaker with the toe of my flip-flop. “Are you excited?”
“Sort of. I mean, yeah, I am. But I’m ki
nd of nervous too.”
“Nervous?” I looked at him like he was crazy. I may not have had much of a future, but Travis was going places. He was going to do things. Important things. Meaningful things. If I were him I would have been counting down the days to graduation, not working myself up into an anxiety attack. “Why are you nervous?” A white sugary trickle of ice cream slid off the cone and onto the back of my hand. I licked it clean with the tip of my tongue and caught Travis staring out of the corner of my eye. “Ew,” I said, shoving my elbow into his ribs. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He tried to pass it off like he had no idea what I was talking about, but the blush in his cheeks gave him away. “Like what?”
“Like that. Check your teenage hormones, okay? That’s what the Internet is for. Porn,” I whispered. “Everyone is watching it.”
“Did someone say porn?” Everett James, resident bad boy of our high school and my occasional make-out partner behind the bleachers during fifth period last trimester (like I was supposed to take home economics seriously) sauntered up and stopped in front of us, blocking the used bookstore with his tall, lanky body.
Everett was cute, if you were into the eyeliner/piercing/black clothes/long hair look coupled with a don’t-give-a-shit attitude. I’d been mildly obsessed with him at the beginning of last year, but my interest quickly waned after our first few sloppy kisses. The guy may have put on a good show, but he was a tongue jabber.
No one likes a tongue jabber.
Still, we all had our parts to play. If Everett was the bad guy, then I was the bad girl, and Travis was… Well, Travis was better than both of us combined.
He was going to graduate high school and make something of his life. He was going to go to college and graduate top of his class and get a great job and have a successful career. He was going to be big, which meant right now his part was small. And even though he was my friend, my best friend, my only friend, Travis was also the geeky guy. The picked on guy. The bullied guy.
The Lola Chronicles (Book 1): A Night Without Stars Page 4