“Sorry I missed your party last night, Eel. Want to do a birthday lunch?” Anna Beth called once Coach dismissed both teams. Even though Anna Beth was two years younger, we’d gotten close over the past six weeks since our captain duties often brought us together. Apparently, she had decided to be responsible the previous night, and declined the invitation to my surprise party.
“She owes me sprints,” Coach Peters growled with a malicious glint in her eyes.
Great! My birthday celebration had been a catastrophe, and now I was going to suffer physically for it as well.
“Maybe next week,” I called back. Anna Beth shot me a sympathetic smile before scurrying after her teammates.
As I walked dejectedly towards Elizabeth and Coach Peters, I noticed our assistant coach placing bright orange cones at intervals on the grassy slope. Elizabeth hung her head and stared at her cleats while Peters lectured her on the merits of punctuality.
“It’s my fault, Coach,” I said, sidling up to them. “We stayed up a little late celebrating my birthday.” I added the last part in hopes of eliciting a little bit of sympathy from our tough- as-nails leader. She didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at my excuse. Instead, she put the silver whistle dangling from a lanyard around her neck to her lips, and a shrill peal mingled with the sounds of my teammates’ departing cars.
“GO!” she shouted to drive home the message.
Elizabeth and I sprinted for the first orange cone on the hill. The grass was slick with residual dew, and even with our cleats we both slid when we made the turn. Even with my hurt foot, I finished my first suicide a full thirty seconds before Elizabeth, and therefore had time to catch my breath before Coach Peters’ whistle punctured the air again.
Ten suicides later, my lungs ached from all the panting, my glutes burned, and my left sock was soaked, leading me to believe the cut had started bleeding again. I squatted, palms on thighs, my head dangling between my knees, and tried to catch my breath, when Elizabeth finally collapsed on the ground next to me. Her face had a sickly green hue to it, and her chest rose and fell in rapid succession.
Coach Peters brought her whistle to her lips one last time and blew. “Don’t be late again,” she said in a tone that hit me like a bucket full of ice. With that, she turned on her heel and left the practice field, her assistant not far behind.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Elizabeth moaned, rolling onto her stomach.
I grabbed her long, blonde ponytail just in time to save it from the mess that projected from her mouth. As I rubbed her back, I held my breath so I wouldn’t be compelled to join her vomit party, and vowed never to be late again.
I drove Elizabeth’s car back to the Bowers’ house. Luckily, Devon and Mandy were still there, so I didn’t need to ask Helen, the Bowers’ housekeeper, to drive me home.
“How’s your history paper coming? Mine totally sucks.” Devon asked as she pulled the Chevy out of Elizabeth’s development.
I rolled my eyes. Nothing Devon ever did sucked. She liked to play down her brains in favor of playing up her looks, but she couldn’t hide the fact she was a near genius.
“I have a bunch of words written. I’m just not sure they make any sense,” I told her.
Devon snorted. “I hear ya.” She glanced in my direction, taking her eyes off of the road for a heartbeat.
The air inside of the car became heavy, a thick fog suddenly invading the small space. Devon’s next words echoed as though she were standing at the opposite end of a very long tunnel, instead of sitting right next to me. “Want me to come over later? We can work on them together.”
An eerie feeling crawled over my skin and I shivered. Then, the fog began to swirl, churning faster and faster and causing my head to spin. A picture formed in my mind: us barreling through a stop sign at the same time a Bronco shot through the intersection. My breath hitched in my throat. I’d been in this same situation before; I could feel that. Not just because Devon was a bad driver, which she truly was. It was more than that. I had experienced this very moment before - I just couldn’t remember when or where. Blood roared in my ears and I reached for the door to steady myself.
“Stop sign! Stop sign! Stop sign!” I screamed, and squeezed my eyes shut and braced for the inevitable impact.
Devon swore loudly, a string of expletives that would have made a sailor proud and her mother cringe. The Chevy’s tires screeched against the pavement. My body jerked forward. The seat belt locked, forcing me back into my seat with bruising force. I opened my eyes just in time to see a blue Ford Bronco dart through the intersection in front of us.
Shakily, I glanced at Devon, panting like I’d just run the mile in PE. Weird didn’t begin to explain how I felt.
“Sorry about that,” Devon said sheepishly, not nearly as fazed by our close call as I was. Then again, Devon wasn’t the one who’d known the Bronco was coming. I was.
I didn’t respond. I just sat facing forward, blinking rapidly as if that would right the world.
We rode the next ten minutes in silence, with only the morning show playing quietly on the Chevy’s radio.
“So I’ll come by later with pizza?” Devon asked when she stopped in front of my big brick house, my mother’s Saab noticeably absent from the open garage bay.
“Yeah, sure,” I responded automatically, not entirely sure what I’d just agreed to. All I could think about was the near miss with the Bronco. What was it called when something happened and you thought you’d experienced it before?
“You okay?” Devon asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
I forced a smile. “Of course. Just tired. Practice was rough.”
My legs shook as I climbed from the passenger seat and hurried up the walkway to my front door.
“See you in a little,” Devon called after me.
Agreeing to let Devon “help” me with my history paper was a poor decision. No research or paper would get done. But when I walked into my big, empty house and found a note from my mother saying she would likely be at the office until late tonight preparing for her trial, I was relieved I had made the concession.
The home I shared with my mother wasn’t as large or luxurious as Elizabeth’s, but it was in the wealthier section of town and expertly, if not impersonally, decorated by a professional. We did have a housekeeper who came in twice a week, since my mother was too busy to take care of such trivial measures as cleaning. Unfortunately, Mom didn’t put as much stock in eating, so she refused to hire a cook, which meant I was forced to fend for myself at mealtimes. Luckily, the Holloways and Helen normally took pity on me and made sure I wasn’t malnourished, or worse, resigned to eating fast food for three meals a day.
The morning’s torturous practice had driven all thoughts of the previous night from my mind. Now, alone, I had nothing to distract me from the incident at the lake. Had it been real? Had I actually seen something, or rather someone, in the water? And what the hell had just happened with the SUV running that stop sign? In the last twenty-four hours my mundane life had taken a turn towards the surreal.
The mark on my cheek tingled, a physical reminder of the boy who’d saved my life. I hurried to the downstairs powder room and checked my reflection in the mirror. The red patch was still there, but fainter now than it had been earlier that morning. The small circle of skin was warmer than the rest of my face.
I leaned closer to the mirror, turning my head from side to side, examining the mark from every angle. Devon was right; it did resemble a burn.
“Weird,” I muttered to my reflection.
Returning to the kitchen, I hit the blinking light on the answering machine. I crossed my fingers that my father’s voice would speak from that machine, even though the odds of him leaving a message were slimmer than Ross Perot’s chances in the 1996 election. Mom would freak if he called the house. She actually forbade him to do so.
Mom, not Dad, spoke from the answering machine. She wanted me to call her at work immediately. Sighing, I picked
up the cordless and wandered into the living room as I dialed my mother’s work number.
“Evelyn Andrews,” my mother answered on the third ring.
“It’s your daughter,” I told her.
“Good, you’re home. I left some money for dinner under the toaster. It looks like I will be stuck here for a while. I’ll call and update you periodically.”
“Update” was mom code for “make sure you are there.” “I’ll be here,” I said into the phone. I reached for the laptop sitting on the coffee table and hit the start key.
“Get your homework done – ” my mother started to lecture.
“I will,” I cut her off. “Um, Mom? Were there any hang-ups on the answering machine yesterday?” I held my breath, waiting for her answer. Even if my father had called, my mother wasn’t likely to tell me. She was the reason he no longer took an active role in my life.
“No, Endora, your father didn’t call, which is a good thing since he isn’t allowed to have any contact with you,” my mother replied after a long pause.
“Okay, right, sure. Bye.” I hung up quickly, before I could remind my mother the moratorium on visitation only extended until my eighteenth birthday. My father was legally free to call and see me as much as he liked now.
My parents’ marriage had never been a happy one. They’d fought constantly about everything. Mostly about me, though. Even back then mom was overprotective, and Dad thought she was smothering me. After an epic battle of wills that lasted well into the night, my father moved out.
I was twelve then.
Two days later he picked me up from school and said we were going on vacation. Apparently, Mom never received the memo. She called out the National Guard, and my father was arrested for kidnapping.
A bitter divorce came next, complete with a nasty custody battle that my mother won. Initially, my father had been awarded limited visitation. That didn’t last long. My mother was still a US Attorney then, and she convinced a judge that it was in my best interest to sever all ties with my father. By the time I was thirteen, my mother quit her job and we moved from our home on the edge of D.C. to the suburbs of Maryland.
The laptop hummed to life in front of me, and I waited while the internet connection was made. I considered searching for my father online and finding a way to contact him. But I’d tried that numerous times over the past five years without success. After the judge had stripped him of his parental rights, my father became a ghost. He risked my mother’s wrath once a year to call and wish me happy birthday. He always called my cell from a blocked number and refused to give me a way to contact him.
My cell phone, I thought, brightening a little. I hadn’t checked my messages since the previous night. I picked up the cordless again, this time calling my own voice mail. I typed in my access code and waited.
“You have one new message and five saved messages,” a mechanical voice informed me. I hit one to hear my messages and crossed my fingers.
“Please be Dad, please be Dad,” I chanted.
“Hey, Eel. Happy birthday, sweetheart. I’m sorry I missed you, but I hope you did something fun for your eighteenth.” A fist tightened around my heart at the sound of his voice. I clutched the phone harder so I wouldn’t miss a word. “Listen, Eel. I really need to talk to you as soon as possible. Try and keep your phone nearby and charged. I’ll try to reach you again tomorrow.”
The strained quality in my father’s voice gave me pause. Something was wrong, and he was going to try to call back tomorrow. Not tomorrow, today. And my phone still didn’t work. I swore under my breath. I really wanted to talk to my dad. Not only because it had been a year since our last catch-up session, but he sounded almost scared in his message. Maybe he was in some kind of trouble?
I dialed my voice mail again. This time I chose the option to change my outgoing message. After the beep I spoke in a slow, deliberate tone when I said, “You have reached Endora. My phone is not working, so it is safe to call me at 410-545-9189 until further notice.” I hoped my father would understand that giving him the house number and telling him it was safe to call meant my mother was not home.
Two hours later, I had yet to work on my history paper, receive a phone call from my father, stop obsessing over the lake monster I’d imagined and the boy who’d pulled me from the water, or figure out how I knew the Bronco would run the stop sign. Instead, I was sitting on my bed dissecting every moment of the past twenty-four hours like it was the fetal pig in my anatomy lab.
Deciding my fixation was reaching an unhealthy point, I grabbed the antique-style phone on my bedside table. When I was younger, I’d been enamored with all things turn of the century; so when my mother had finally decided I was responsible enough to have a telephone in my room, she purchased the 1890s replica. Luckily, I knew Devon’s number by heart, which is more than I could say for just about anyone else’s. I dialed, cradling the headset between my ear and shoulder and counting the rings.
“Eel?” she answered on the fourth ring.
“Yup, it’s me,” I replied.
“What’s up?”
“Want to come over now? My mom is at work and…” I let my voice trail off. Devon knew I hated all the alone time my mother’s extended work hours created. Not that my mother was great company when she was home anyhow.
“Sure,” she replied kindly. “You ready for pizza now?”
“Nah, we’ll get delivery later.”
“Be there soon,” she said into the phone, but then her voice became muffled. “Rick, stop, I’m trying to talk to Eel,” she giggled, and I heard a soft thud followed by Rick’s deep laughter.
“Are you at Rick’s?” I asked.
Rick had an apartment he shared with his friend Bill Thompson in town. Devon’s parents had practically forbidden her to go there, but it went in one ear and out the other, much like with any other rules they imposed.
“Yup, we were just…watching a movie?” she said it like it was a question, and I assumed that “watching a movie” was a euphemism for getting naked between Rick’s sheets.
“Oh well, why don’t you finish, um…watching your movie?” I suggested.
“Don’t worry, Eel, it’s over,” Rick yelled over the line, and I wondered if Devon had me on speaker phone or if the volume on her cell was just up that high.
“I’ll be right over, Eel,” Devon said, and then promptly disconnected.
“Right over” in Devon time turned out to be two hours ― her movie must’ve been really good. When she finally barged through my front door, full of apologies and carrying an extra-large pizza, I forgave her excuses. Extra cheese and mushrooms weren’t her only “forgive me” gifts. She also brought a selection of romantic comedies from the Red Box.
In theory, the DVD vending machines were great inventions. For a dollar you could rent a movie for the night, which sure beat the $4.99 that on-demand charged. But Devon and I had a problem with the returning part of the equation. As a consequence of our inability to do just that, I had an extensive, and extremely expensive, Blue-Ray collection. To make matters worse, we rarely watched the movies. Instead, we favored gossiping through entire films. Devon’s father often marveled at our ability to spend so much time together and still always have so much to say to one another.
That night was no different. While chowing down on greasy slices of pizza and numerous cans of soda, we caught each other up on every detail the other had missed in the rare time we’d spent apart.
“You should’ve come in the hot tub last night,” Devon mumbled in between bites of pizza. “Mandy was so drunk that she let Kevin go to third base IN THE WATER!” she punctuated each word to drive home her point. Translation: Mandy was easy.
Of course, Devon had done much worse with Greg Crenshaw in that same hot tub after one of Elizabeth’s parties the year before. She and Rick had been on a “break” after she’d caught him with an Arby’s drive-through girl. But since she was my best friend, I didn’t point out the obvious double standar
d. Instead, I widened my eyes to mirror her look of horror, like that was the most shocking news I’d heard all day.
Gossiping was fun and all, but more than that I liked how comfortable our conversations had become as we commented on who hooked up with whom the night before.
“I’m pretty sure they went all the way, although that isn’t exactly something to brag about.” Devon tapped her pointer finger against her chin, leaving a greasy fingerprint.
“Be nice,” I scolded her. “Mandy is nice and she means well. She just wants people to like her. It sucks being the new girl. If you hadn’t come to my rescue and deigned to be my friend, then I would be just like her.” It was sort of true. If I hadn’t met Devon in the eighth grade, I would probably be a loser with no social life. She’d introduced me to most of the friends I had. And it was her parents who had convinced my mother that Westwood was safe enough to let me go places without a chaperone.
“No way. You would never do it in a hot tub,” she teased. She meant it as a joke, but it stung a little. Not that I would do it in a hot tub; I wouldn’t. It was a reminder that I was the only virgin among my friends.
I wasn’t exactly a newbie to the dating scene; I’d had my first boyfriend when I was six. His name was Nate Shin, and he chased me through our first grade classroom pulling my pigtails until I agreed to hold his hand. In the second grade, he gave me a paper flower for Valentine’s Day, with a note that read “Be my girlfriend? Check yes or no.” I checked “yes” and we officially became an item.
For my birthday that April, he gave me a stuffed teddy bear holding a heart that read, “I love you this much.” In return, I gave him the chicken pox, which I’d gotten from Regina Skloven. Later that same year, his family won nine million in the state lottery and moved to Canada ― although I’m not sure if the two events were actually related.
Pawn (Nightmares Trilogy #1) Page 4