Premeditated

by Mcquein, Josin L.

  I gave him a gentle tap, to cue him that he needed to back up, but instead, our awkward moment turned worse. Dex leaned in harder, with one hand against my back, pulling me toward him.

  “Dex … wait.” I turned my head so his lips had nowhere to go other than my jawline. “Hold off a minute.”

  When that still didn’t get the point across, I shoved him hard enough that I felt the resistance when he didn’t want to move. He stopped, but he wasn’t happy about it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Celebrating,” he said again, as though it were his personal buzzword. “Your cousin’s feeling better, so you should, too.”

  Talk about your mood killers. I didn’t want to think about Claire anywhere near a guy’s lips. All that did was make me think about Claire and the lips of the guy who’d started her downward spiral in the first place. It didn’t help at all that the second time he kissed me, the only thing I could focus on was the greasy smell stuck to his clothes.

  Despite the popular opinion of a few nameless drones from my old school, I am not, in fact, a slut. I don’t go around attaching my face to anything with a Y chromosome. I had kissed a grand total of four guys when Dex’s better judgment jacked into his hormones—including Brooks and Brucey, which is the sort of subject for which brain bleach was invented—but even with only four reference points, I knew it was a bad sign when the number one thought in my head was that he was making me think of French Fry from the coin toss.

  “Stop it, Dex,” I said.

  His hand dropped from my back, so at first I thought he was listening, but instead of letting go, he stuck it inside the back of my shirt, inching his fingers up. They got as far as the back clasp on my bra before my patience ran out. If he couldn’t hear me at a normal volume, I had no problem with yelling.

  “Stop!”

  He bypassed the clasp and tried to work his hand around to the front. I flattened both of my palms against his chest and shoved, using the momentum to push myself back and duck out of his grip. The chair fell over when I stood up.

  “What was that for?” He sat there, his hands out wide as he asked the question. The first hints of anger hardened his eyes and mouth.

  “I said stop!” I backed up just to prove to myself I was on level ground. “I’m not doing this.”

  “I told you, no one’s going to bother us in here. There aren’t even any cameras; the owner’s too cheap to install security. No one’s going to see anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I am not worried.”

  “Are you a virgin or something?”

  “That’s none of your business. I said no—I’m not in the mood to make out while stuffed dead people stare at us with their eyes hanging out of their sockets. I’m leaving.”

  “Then why’d you come in here?”

  “Because you brought me?”

  “Yeah, and you should have known why. Why else would I bring someone into a closed ride with a locked door?”

  “Because until two seconds ago, you weren’t an ego-inflated ass like the rest of the boys in burgundy and blue.”

  Dex was out of his chair almost as soon as I’d said it, and like mine, his crashed to the floor. Unlike me, however, he showed absolutely no signs of nerves or being uncomfortable. He was pissed.

  “I am nothing like them!”

  He grabbed for me, and I honestly don’t know what he had in mind when he did it. Maybe he was going to shake me or drag me back out of the house of horrors physically to salvage his pride—maybe he was tired of hearing no and had decided it didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t care. All I saw was a guy with half a foot and sixty pounds on me coming my way like a raging bull, and this time there wasn’t much chance of Chandi or Jordan showing up as backup.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  Strange as it sounds, I didn’t scream it or shriek. An intense calm had settled on me. I wrapped my hand around the closest thing I could reach and swung it at him. One of the prop candelabras collided with his arm and crumpled. The stupid thing wasn’t metal, or even plastic. It was some sort of molded papier-mâché painted to look like lead. Dex knocked it out of my hand.

  The alien serenity that had allowed me to stand my ground shattered; I walked backward as fast I could. I was afraid turning around would take longer, and there wasn’t that much space between us. As it was, Dex could have caught me with one short lunge, if he hadn’t been so out of it.

  “You think you’re better than me, too?” he growled.

  I didn’t know what to think. I had convinced myself that the scene in the parking lot at school was a misunderstanding, or the fluke of a bad morning, but this wasn’t the same guy I’d sat with in class. Some enraged creature wearing Dex’s face had replaced one of the few sure friends I’d made at Lowry, and I was torn between retreat for self-preservation and wanting to break down and beg for details about what had happened to flip his personality.

  “Dex, calm down.”

  “You think just because you’ve got an uncle who’s some kind of big shot with a nice house, who can afford to buy you a car, that gets you off the servants’ floor and into the inner circle?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. “Why are you acting like this?”

  “I’m not the one acting, Dinah; you are. You pretend to be like me, but you’re not. I’ve seen a dozen girls like you who trade up as soon as they get the chance, and then they never look back. You’re all alike—dangle something shiny and you’ll roll over for a few tricks. Channing did it. Even that pug-faced slag Abigail, who likes to pretend her brain could keep her grades a point higher than mine without her being on her back.”

  My stomach dropped when I felt something solid behind me. Without watching where I was going, I hadn’t walked a straight line the way I had hoped. I was still inside the banquet exhibit, and up against a wall. Dex closed the last few feet between us, using his extra height to make me feel as small as possible.

  “You only give it up for someone who can get you what you want—so here—” He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a quarter, flicking it at me as if the space between my eyes were one of the platforms from the game kiosk. “I expect change,” he said, and dipped his head down toward my face while his hands stretched the neck of my shirt until I thought it would rip.

  It was in that moment that Kyle Smith became my hero. During that fight when Tabs and I were pummeling him with toy horses, Kyle was awarded the honor of being the first (and until Dex, only) guy I’d ever kneed in the crotch. With Kyle, it had been an accident, and Tabs and I had leapt off as soon as his face turned red and he rolled up in a ball. With Dex, I anchored my hands against his shoulders, which were now conveniently placed as a brace, and did my best to turn one hundred and ten pounds of me into three hundred pounds of upward thrust.

  There are perks to being a mechanic’s kid; I just never expected Dad’s lessons on piston movement to be quite so relevant to life in general.

  “Actually, I flunked charm school.”

  While he was doubled over, I gave him a punch to the jaw, to ensure he toppled, grabbed the bright orange key placard hanging out of his pocket, and sprinted out of the exhibit area, back toward the maintenance hall we’d used to get there. All it took was the open, hot-dog-scented air of the carnival grounds and the sound of a few hundred strangers laughing and screaming to make the tears start.

  28

  They were oblivious. All of them. I’d been mauled, right there in the middle of at least five hundred people, and not one had a clue.

  Was that what Claire had felt?

  So many people flooded Freeman’s Point every weekend, especially in the middle of summer. To think that they could have been walking over her head while she was afraid to scream would have made the helpless feeling worse.

  Even now, and even knowing that I’d fought back, I caught myself adjusting my clothes, trying to smooth the stretched wrinkles out of my collar, rubbing my arms be
cause I could feel his fingers on my skin no matter how much distance I put between us. My knee throbbed from the force of impact, and I was fairly certain I’d broken my knuckles punching his jaw. There was pain even in escape; I couldn’t imagine what it was like for someone who hadn’t been able to.

  I couldn’t keep the panic back. Tabs was long gone by now, and Dex was surrounded by friends here. There was no guarantee that even if I found a security guard they’d believe me; Dex was one of them, and they’d seen us together for the last hour. If I could make it to the front gate, there was a security hub with a real cop, but that was a long walk, and Dex knew the layout a lot better than I did. If he didn’t come to his senses, I’d never beat him there.

  And I really did hope he’d come to his senses. It was impossible to wipe away the Dex I’d known and replace him with the version from the house of horrors. Evil Dex had as much substance to him as the legless stuffed corpses from the banquet table. I couldn’t rationalize it. That quick less-than-a-minute stretch played over and over and over in my head, but no matter how I looked at it, nothing changed. There were no signals to miss or cues to misinterpret. He simply flipped out.

  A second wave of nauseous dread came behind the first, putting Chandi’s behavior around him in a different light and calling back Abigail-not-Abby’s first reaction when she thought I’d been ogling Dex at lunch instead of Brooks. Chandi folded anytime he was close to her, turning into a smoldering mess; she only worked up the nerve to speak back to him when someone else was nearby. And Abigail-not-Abby … unless there was a file drawer nearby to slam his hand in, I couldn’t imagine her doing anything to defend herself.

  I felt the terrain shift under my feet from the loose gravel of the behind-the-scenes areas to the paved sections of asphalt and looked up to find I’d reached the outer edge of the midway, where Dex had left me before. For a desperate moment, I searched for the bench where Chandi and Jordan had been, but four kids sharing a boat full of cheese fries had replaced them. None of the cominations of blond hair and black were anywhere close to either of the girls I knew from school, but I did find one I recognized.

  What’s that saying about it’s better to stick with the devil you know?

  Well, that’s what I chose. I glanced back at the red-painted fence around the house of horrors and saw the gate open slowly. Dex limped out at a careful pace, but the damage I’d done had zero effect on his ability to find me in a crowd. And there was no question that Evil Dex had stuck around. He started straight for me.

  “Brooks!” I called out toward the dark-haired boy with his back to me. It’s ironic that I’d thought Brooks’ description to be so generic that first day at Lowry, because there was no way to mistake him for anyone else, even from behind. The way he carried himself was completely unique, and probably a lot more representative of that aristocratic bloodline he loathed than he realized. “Brooks!”

  He turned at the sound of his name, scanning the crowd to see who’d called him; there was surprise on his face when he figured out it was me. I started running his way, no longer calm enough to simply walk.

  “Dinah? Are you okay?” he asked.

  “No. I’m not.” I cut my eyes sideways, vindicated by the sudden stop in Dex’s advance. He wiped his mouth of what I could only hope was blood and stalked off.

  “Are you crying?” Brooks asked.

  “Was crying,” I snapped. “Past tense. Now I’m not.”

  For the moment, I’d let him help. Later, he could share a jail cell with Dex. Even if Dex could talk his way out of what happened with me and whatever he’d done to Chandi, Abigail-not-Abby was younger, and as she’d been avoiding him all year, whatever history they shared had occurred well before she was legal.

  “What happened?” Brooks’ tone hardened as he shifted his focus from my face to my arm and clothes. His attention paused at my collar, then dropped to just below my shoulder. It was a reflex to throw a hand up to block his when he tried to use his hands for a closer inspection. “Your hand, it’s—”

  “Don’t touch me,” I ordered, shifting my weight onto my back foot to lean away. “Sorry … just give me a minute to get my bearings.”

  “Where’s Dex?”

  “Gone.”

  Hopefully.

  “Did he say something to you?”

  “Say? No.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “That saying things wasn’t the problem.”

  “Dinah, what happened to your shirt?”

  “It got stretched.”

  Brick walls and iron bars rose up around the humiliation I felt standing there with my arms crossed over my chest while he tried to read the expression on my face. I had the sudden urge to go home and burn everything I was wearing, right down to my underwear, then find the bra I’d shown off that first day of school and torch it, too. Maybe then my clothes wouldn’t feel so heavy or clammy against my skin.

  “Stretched how?” he asked. “I don’t know what’s going on, but about five minutes ago, Jordan unloaded on me. The things she said … I came looking for you and Dex. Now you’re shaking, and it’s not that cold. Tell me what happened and where he went.”

  “I don’t—”

  The ringtone belonging to Uncle Paul and Aunt Helen bought Brooks a reprieve from my temper. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten I had it in my pocket, but the whole time I’d been trying to think of a way to avoid Dex, I hadn’t even given a thought to that nearly weightless piece of plastic. I didn’t need Tabs, and I didn’t need Brooks—Dex was sunk.

  “Uncle Paul,” I said, not bothering to hide the relief in my voice. “I’m at the fairgrounds. I really need … What?.… When?… How?”

  New tears stung my eyes as my legs forgot how to function; suddenly the ground was much closer than the five and a half feet away it should have been. Uncle Paul’s voice faded to black; all thoughts of asking for help vanished.

  29

  Someone was beside me, shouting and calling my name. A familiar voice asked for help from others I didn’t recognize as cold water dropped onto my face.

  The whole time, my eyes were open; I was staring straight up, confused by the way the world looked from my place on the ground. A vast canopy of stars, interrupted by vague, human-colored shapes, filled my field of vision from one edge to the other. It was as if a screen had been pulled between me and reality and I’d realized how very small I was in the scope of the universe. All the plans and all the power I thought I’d had was nothing in the grand scheme. One moment of hope was a dim Christmas light compared to the blazing dots out there beyond my reach.

  I was pointless—just like all the effort I’d put into trying to make things right for Claire.

  “Dinah.” The familiar someone called again. He shook my shoulder, and when I tried to sit up, he helped me the extra few inches I couldn’t manage on my own. “Somebody get security.”

  Brooks.

  It was Brooks talking to me.

  I was sitting here at a carnival with Brooks while Claire was back on life support.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Your call log said ‘Uncle Paul,’ but he’d already hung up when you fainted. He wouldn’t answer when I called back.”

  “He had to go back into the hospital,” my voice said, but I don’t remember my mouth moving.

  “Dinah, you’re scaring me. What’s wrong? Does this have something to do with Dex?”

  I heard him asking, but the words didn’t register as a question until much later. At that moment, nothing was getting through as coherent, other than what had come from the other end of my phone.

  “I need to get to the hospital,” I said. “I d-don’t h-have my c-c-car. My fr-friend t-took it.”

  The stutter was new. I’d never gone far enough into a hole that I couldn’t remember how to speak in whole words without tripping over them. Not only could I not form real sentences, I couldn’t get my legs to cooperate with me and get my body off the ground. Eithe
r I worked it out on my own or Brooks pulled me up, because at some point I was able to look down and see my own feet. Everything was gray except a puddle of teal syrup sticking out from under my shoe.

  Brooks had ceased to exist as a real person, even though he was close enough to put a hand on my arm to draw my attention. He was more like a shadow or a stray thought on the edge of my mind. Not quite solid, until he spoke.

  “I can take you,” he said. He could have said other things, and I have no reason to think he didn’t, but those four words were all I registered. It didn’t matter who he was; I latched on to the lifeline he offered and let him pull me out of my scattered haze.

  “Do you know where Trinity is?”

  “My phone’s got GPS; I can figure it out,” he said. “Come on.”

  He walked me to the car, I guess. It’s the only way I could have made it, because I wasn’t in any shape to get there on my own. One second, I was testing the tensile strength of whatever cotton-candy and bubble-gum mishmash had glued my shoe to the asphalt, and the next Brooks was opening the door to his Beemer so I could climb in. He even buckled the seat belt for me.

  Time shifted. The world passed like a stop-motion camera with a sluggish shutter. The next time I blinked, we were on the highway.

  “Is it your cousin?” Brooks asked.

  There’s not much room in the front seat of a car like the one he drove, and rationally, I knew he was close, but his voice sounded miles away, like I was listening through deep water.

  I was drowning.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s your cousin, right?” he asked. “The phone call?”

  “Y-yeah. Uncle Paul said to get there quick. W-we’re almost there, aren’t w-we?”

  “Maybe five miles,” he said.