Fractured

by Lisa Amowitz

Bobby blinked, apparently stunned into silence. “We?” His face turned bright red. Bobby Pendell looked like he was about to cry.

  “Dude,” I said. “I get it. I’ve been through my own crazy crap. And you never saw such a diva. I guess I just show it differently.”

  Bobby sank onto the couch next to me and buried his face in his hands. After a while he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. My dad. My brother. They need me. I can’t— This can’t.”

  I sighed and patted him lightly on the back. I wasn’t sure if I was the ideal choice for pillar of strength, but right now he could use all the friends he could get.

  He looked up at me, eyes wet, then swiped at them roughly with the back of his hand. “If you tell Gabe about this—about how I— I swear—I will punch out your front teeth.”

  “Sure you will, dude. It’s okay. I get it. We’re uncomfortable being weak. But you’re not weak. You’re a balling monster of crazy nerve. You’re going to do this. And I’m going to make sure of it.”

  No, I didn’t hug him. We were not quite ready for an actual bro moment.

  “Shake on it?” I smiled and extended my hand.

  Bobby nodded and extended his. “I guess I had you kind of all wrong, Glass.”

  I shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first one.”

  19

  Bobby

  Saturday: 8:29 PM

  Jeremy Glass might be the strangest guy I’d ever met. One minute, he was mocking me, treating me like he’d never met anyone dumber in his life. The next, it was as if a curtain had gone up and there was a totally different person standing there. Someone I could maybe hate just a little bit less.

  I didn’t know if I could ever be friends with Jeremy Glass. I still wanted to kick him in his metal shin. But something in his eyes told me that he was a lot tougher than he looked. And maybe his smarts went further than his big mouth.

  I placed my palm in his, and Jeremy Glass and I shook hands.

  “Can you promise me something?” I asked.

  “Depends.” Jeremy flashed me a lopsided grin.

  “Will you please not tell Gabe about what happened tonight? I don’t want her to know that there’s a—that I’m a ticking time bomb. If I—if something happens to me, she can deal with it then. I don’t want her to have to worry so much.”

  He stared at me for a beat without the trace of a smile. “If you like. Though I think your girl is tough enough to deal. Plus she’ll rip your head off if she finds out.”

  “But she’s not going to find out. Because you’re going to keep your mouth shut. And if I’m—if I fail—well—I won’t know the difference.”

  “If that’s what you want, Bobby,” he said softly. “But I think you’re underestimating Gabe.”

  I closed my eyes and sucked in a breath, hoping I wasn’t making the biggest mistake of my possibly really short life by trusting Jeremy Glass.

  I got up and started pacing again, then stopped and pressed my face to the window. The city sprawled below in a geometric grid of light. I couldn’t help but thinking it looked a lot like a web. And I felt a lot like a fly. I wondered where the spider was.

  I couldn’t panic. I had to think. “I’m ready to tell you what I saw when I was—seeing stuff. If you’re ready to hear it.”

  I told him how Brittany had been attacked in the limo and then, later, the church. Her transparent form watched us as closely as if we were broadcasting the final minutes of the Super Bowl.

  I didn’t know what happened to her after she’d been dragged to the basement, but it was clear her attacker had killed her at some point.

  And that it was the same person who’d attacked Marisa.

  “What?” Jeremy exploded from the couch. “Why didn’t you say the person who killed the ghost girl was the same person who attacked Marisa?”

  “I was sort of semi-conscious at the time.”

  “Damn it,” Jeremy was up tugging at his hair, his limp more pronounced than ever. “Fuck. We really have to do something.”

  “Maybe we should just go to the police.”

  “You’re not thinking, Bobby. Marisa will have to testify. Identify this creep. And your evidence is worthless. Hey—yeah—I’m your favorite neighborhood freak. I can tell your fortune by touching your toilet seat. I mean, only Agent Reston knows what to do with your evidence. We’ve got to work with her. It’s our only option.”

  I let out a breath. I wanted to disagree. Come up with a better plan. But there was none.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “We return to the scene of the crime. Right now that’s all we have.”

  “And we can see if there’s anything else there that gives us info?” I felt queasy. I was saying the words, but the idea of going under again terrified me. “What about Brendan Wavestone’s ring?” I added.

  “I don’t know, Bobby, you tell me. Did the ring place Wavestone at the crime scene? Otherwise what we have is a lost and found object. I guess we can bring it back to him…since your girlfriend has an in with the guy.”

  “We’ve got to go to the church, don’t we?” How did I know that Agent’s Reston’s antidote would hold? What if I was immune to it and I was lost forever in a vision?

  “Yeah,” said Jeremy. He flashed me a sad kind of look. It was at that moment I decided that maybe I really could trust Jeremy Glass. And maybe, with his help, I had a fair chance of surviving the weekend.

  20

  Jeremy

  Saturday: 9:00 PM

  I hoped I wasn’t a one-legged albatross around Bobby Pendell’s neck. He seemed as if maybe he might be starting to look up to me as the older and wiser guy. I wanted to warn him to look elsewhere, but there was nowhere else.

  “The church basement, then?” I said, feeling sick inside. And hungry. “Let’s order pizza first.”

  “Did someone say pizza?” Marisa and Gabe entered the apartment looking flushed and happy. Apparently Bobby and I weren’t the only ones who’d done some bonding tonight.

  After we’d devoured the pizza, we tried to convince the girls to let us go to the church alone.

  “What is this, the Middle Ages? You’re protecting the damsels?” Marisa said, blocking the door. “A guy with one leg and another one who goes catatonic at the sight of a gold ring? Give me a break. We’re coming, too.”

  “Damn straight we are,” echoed Gabe, amber eyes blazing.

  “But—Marisa. It was just last night. Your eye is still—” I stopped. Marisa’s dark eyes shone like wet stones. I knew she wasn’t going to budge.

  “I want to catch this monster. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, Jeremy.”

  I sighed. I never had a chance.

  ◆

  So it was decided that the four of us would go to the church for evening mass. We’d seem innocent enough—two couples who’d felt the sudden urge to get spiritual. My heart pounded. I didn’t know if Agent Reston would let the clock run out on Bobby or not. I didn’t know what cards she held. Or what side she was even on.

  As an afterthought, I grabbed a quart-sized plastic zippered bag for evidence, just in case, and we were off.

  21

  Bobby

  Saturday: 10:43 PM

  The church sanctuary was empty and unheated, exactly like I remembered it from my vision. Our footfalls echoed in the silence. The row of candles near the altar glowed red and yellow. I clung to Gabe’s arm, half-expecting to be swept away from her any second.

  Around the shadowy edges, Brittany’s ghost flickered vaguely, like returning here was more than she could deal with, too.

  Trembling, I clutched Gabe’s arm tighter. “Are you sure you’re up for this, Bobby?” she whispered.

  “Sure. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine,” she said.

  “Whatever,” I muttered. “There’s no going back now.”

  Maybe it was stupid to put Agent Reston’s promises to the test like this, but I couldn’t come up another plan. Better to hold my
nose and dive in than tiptoe around trying to avoid the inevitable.

  “She sat over in that pew,” I whispered. My heart raced as we walked down the center aisle. I glanced at the shadows. Brittany’s ghost had faded to the thinnest veil.

  When I stopped at the tenth row, Jeremy stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “I’d volunteer for floor duty, but Veronica has her standards. It’s kind of difficult for me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Gabe said.

  “No,” I said. “It’s got to be me. You guys could miss something and I…”

  The three of them looked at me and nodded. Of course it had to be me.

  I handed Gabe my jacket and shimmied under the pews on my belly, using my phone for a flashlight. It was dusty under the benches, unidentified mounds buried in fine silt like gray snow. But I was looking for something much more recent.

  Blood pounded in my ears. I had to fight to focus. I couldn’t help but wonder if Agent Reston had implanted me with some kind of tracking or monitoring device to remotely assess my performance. Then they’d discuss and score me, like an Olympic ice skater. If I did well, would they share a high five and shout that I’d nailed it? And if I didn’t…

  I swallowed down the bile that rose in my throat. I’d been outmaneuvered. And Agent Reston was a much better chess player than me. I had no choice but to play the game her way.

  I shut off the light from my phone. Sprawled on my stomach, I closed my eyes, and waited to feel, rather than see, what had happened to Brittany Byers.

  There were layers of stories cluttering the dark—some angry, others loud and demanding, still others sad, grief-stricken, and sorrowful. Most of them were faded and worn, woven together into a hundred-year-old record of all the people who’d sought comfort in this church.

  But I was searching for that single bright strand that would lead me to the answers I needed. My hand burned with a deep spark of pain as it passed over a certain patch of floor.

  I opened my eyes and shined the light from my phone. There was nothing. I scanned the floor. Whatever it was that had caught my attention, it was pretty damn small. I wondered if my senses were so attuned now that I was picking up invisible evidence, like fingerprints or grains of dirt. Crime scene stuff better left to the police forensics team. But we’d ruled out bringing in the police, so I proceeded, lying there, trying to slow my breath. My fear loomed behind me like a tidal wave of fire. I had to find the quiet inside the noise, to capture the residue of the events that took place.

  I narrowed my range to a small area, my fingers circling above. To my surprise, a sort of visual map was forming in my mind, kind of like those topography graphs from Earth Science class.

  Then I saw it. A single long, bright hair.

  I picked it up and realized my mistake a second too late. My brain spasmed violently. My lungs seized and I couldn’t pull in a breath. Everything went black. I was teetering at the edge of an abyss. I fell— then landed with a bounce. Something had caught me on my way down. It was like dangling by a single thread over boiling pits of lava.

  I found I could breathe. And see. Remnants of past events whirled by like windblown petals, but my gaze focused in on that single long hair.

  It didn’t belong to Brittany. Her hair was short and black.

  The vision narrowed and crystalized.

  It belonged to a woman.

  The person who’d killed Brittany Byers was a woman.

  22

  Jeremy

  Saturday: 11:08 PM

  “Fuck,” Bobby Pendell muttered.

  “I’m coming for you, Bobby. Just hold on.” Gabe had already swung into action, readying herself to crawl under the low pews.

  “No!” Bobby hissed. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

  First his feet emerged from under the pews, and a moment later, a dust-covered, flannel-shirted Bobby Pendell stood smiling, dangling an invisible object from his two fingers.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Brittany’s ghost brighten from a shimmer to a smudge.

  “Interesting, Bobby,” I said, squinting and peering closer.

  “It’s a hair, shithead,” he said. I smiled. The sound of his impatience signaled that Bobby Pendell was in control. And that maybe Agent Reston’s creepy claims were working—that the drug she’d injected him with had held him back from the brink without shutting down his freaky third eye.

  Marisa scrunched up her face. “That’s a pretty long hair. Like a girl hair. The victim?”

  Bobby turned to her, still dangling the long hair from his fingers. “No. Brittany had short black hair. This belongs to her attacker. A female with long hair stuck under the same kind of black knit cap and bandana as your attacker.”

  “Weird,” said Gabe. “Are you sure the hair isn’t from another victim?”

  Bobby smiled grimly and cut me a look that told me there was a lot more behind that statement. “Couldn’t be surer.”

  I supplied the plastic bag from my pocket and he dropped it in. I returned the bag to my coat pocket.

  “How do you know, Bobby?” Gabe asked pensively. “Why are you suddenly able to control this when yesterday you were—you were falling apart?”

  Bobby put his arms around Gabe and drew her into a kiss. Marisa flashed me a questioning look, but I only shrugged.

  “Because, baby,” he said, “practice makes perfect, right?”

  Marisa and I held hands, but did not follow suit with the face-sucking. Ever since I’d gotten here, there’d been very little spark between us and I couldn’t help but feel just a bit envious. Here was Bobby Pendell, not even eighteen, staring death in the eye and tonguing his girl right in the middle of a church. “Ah, youth,” I said.

  Gabe wrenched herself free, her expression far from lusting. In fact, she looked like she could spit flame with her next breath. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Bobby,” she said. “Do you think we just waltzed out the door and skipped to the orientation? Marisa called my phone and I left it under the couch on speaker. We heard everything. Every. Damn. Thing.”

  “Foiled again,” I said. Bobby cut me a malevolent look. I understood it now. I was the only person among us who did not terrify him.

  “Apologize, Bobby,” she said fiercely. “You promised you’d never lie to me. I gave you the chance to fess up—but you didn’t.”

  “I, uh.” Bobby rubbed at his scalp with a palm.

  “He only wanted to keep you from worrying, Gabe,” I said. “It may be boneheaded, but that’s the way he is.”

  Bobby glared at me like he was about to launch himself at me again. Gabe scowled at him and shook her head. “Okay. Short version, you need the help of the anti-psycho drug Agent Reston shot you up or the visions will eat your brain.”

  “That’s, um, well…” Bobby looked at me for support. Clearly, he lacked the tools to keep from stuffing his other foot in his mouth. Since I only had one foot at my disposal, he figured I was his guy.

  “Well put, Gabe,” I said. “I warned him you’d tear him limb from limb if he tried to protect you.” I turned to Bobby. “I don’t know about you, but I’m more scared of Gabriella Sorensen when she’s pissed than some blind, impeccably coiffed FBI agent.”

  Bobby Pendell looked like he might have turned three shades of green. But it was kind of tough to tell in the dim light.

  Gabe’s expression softened. “When are you going to learn, Bobby, that I am not made of eggshell china? Stop trying to be a hero. We are all in this together.” She flashed me a mildly hostile look. “At least some of us are.”

  “Sometimes, I mean, most of the time—I want to kick him in the face, but don’t shit on Glass,” Bobby blurted. “He’s…he’s my f-f— He’s my friend.”

  “Cue the heartwarming music,” I said.

  “Leave it to you to spoil any moment,” Marisa said coldly, releasing my hand.

  I shivered. Something told me that while my fledgling friendship with Bobby Pendell was warming, there was an ill wind blowing through my rela
tionship with Marisa Perez.

  My stump began to throb inside of Veronica.

  And the thing I wanted badly at that moment, more than I wanted anything—was a drink.

  23

  Bobby

  Saturday: 11:42 PM

  I caught the tail end of the look Marisa flashed at Jeremy and the way his face kind of fell. I could see the tiny hairline cracks starting to form in that joker’s mask he wore. And I realized that Jeremy Glass wasn’t all that different than me. He just danced along the edges of a different kind of brink.

  “I don’t get it,” Marisa said. “You’re saying the same person attacked Brittany and me? Yet hers was a woman?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just pretty sure it is, because…”

  “You saw both attacks for yourself,” Marisa finished for me.

  I nodded and said softly, “Yeah.” Marisa’s eyes were dark, shiny, and bird-bright. I got the sense that she was wearing her own kind of mask. And it didn’t fit that well either.

  “Why don’t we see if there’s anything else downstairs,” Gabe said, her voice frosty. “Since you’re all nice and safe in your freakout-proof suit.”

  I let the girls walk on ahead of us out of the sanctuary into the brightly lit stairwell and waited for Jeremy. From the way they leaned in to speak and laughed at their own secret jokes, it was obvious they had gotten close pretty quickly. Which was nice, because at least Gabe would already have a friend when she came here next fall.

  But Jeremy wasn’t keeping up. He shuffled along, a few feet behind, and instead of his usual smirk, he wore a barely disguised grimace. “Veronica again?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No. I can always count on her, at least.”

  “What’s up, Glass?”

  “And you care why? Thought you were just tolerating me.”

  I sighed. “You really did put a first-rate effort into that. But it’s kind of hard to hate you,” I said. “Even if you are a total a-hole.”

  He shrugged and smiled, but his eyes were misty. “Nice to know my work is appreciated,” he said.