White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  As I leap forward, I reach for the weapon, envisioning the barrel in my hands—anticipating the force it’s going to take to wrench it out of her grasp, and how the action might throw me off-balance; I have to be prepared for that. I am prepared. My heart is throbbing, heat scratching at my chest, my throat, my face, and I channel all of it into the strength of my will.

  There’s too much ground to cover, though. Peyton sees me coming before I’m halfway there, and the barrel jigs up again, the sight swinging toward me just as I put my hands out to grab it. Sebastian shouts, my fingers close around cold metal, and the rifle goes off; the bullet probably misses my face by an inch, but heat and pain radiate through my palms as all the sound in the world vanishes in an instant, replaced by a piercing, insistent ring.

  Peyton loses her footing, and the rifle is ripped from my numbed hands as she stumbles backward and falls, dropping hard onto the slick grass and twisting away. I don’t try again. I’ve got a split-second choice to make—dive after her, or turn and run—and she’s already scrambling to right herself, finger still on the trigger. My close call scared me a hell of a lot more than I think I’d care to admit, and my bladder doesn’t have the integrity for a second attempt.

  “RUN!” I scream, spinning around, every muscle in my body suddenly alive, my nervous system blazing like a fire in a coal seam. I spring over Race’s body just as Sebastian—already on his feet—falls into step beside me, and we bolt together into the fog. I’ve never run so fast and felt so slow, the gun at my back making every stride nightmarishly inadequate.

  The rifle cracks twice, hideously—the noise expected, and yet simultaneously so startling that Sebastian steps wrong and falls, skidding several feet on his shirtfront. I help drag him up again and we keep going, veering left, afraid to look back. Peyton shouts, and we pour on more speed.

  A butterfly garden appears ludicrously before us, the entrance a whimsical arch of willow branches woven through with tendrils of ivy, and we plow down a slender path, twisting between beds of echinacea, zinnias, and milkweed; we cut right as we emerge on the other side, careening down a shallow slope, skirting a massive tree stump and blundering headlong into a forest of waist-high cattails. The earth squelches under my feet, and I realize that we’ve reached the water’s edge, a doleful tree with drooping branches bending over as if admiring its reflection in the lake.

  We hunker down, cold mud seeping through our clothes, insects and worms crawling over our exposed flesh, and we wait. Lake Champlain is eerily calm at our backs, flat as a mirror, the mist hanging above it like smoke. Minutes pass and we don’t move—we don’t dare—listening for the sound of Peyton’s footsteps, refusing to believe we’ve lost her. Have we? Even without a visual, she could still have easily heard us; panting and gasping, our feet slapping the ground as we fled the business end of the rifle, stealth had not been our main objective.

  But as three minutes of silence becomes four and then five, it seems obvious she isn’t out there. If she’d been anywhere close behind us, she’d have already shown herself; she doesn’t have the luxury of time to lie in wait for us to emerge—not with the clock ticking on Race’s life, and her clean getaway dependent on finishing this business before Mr. Atwood can discover his son’s alleged suicide note and send the authorities out here to find him.

  “Okay,” I whisper at last, my lips so dry that the skin across them feels tight. “Okay. We should move. I think … I don’t think she saw where we went, but I feel like a fucking bull’s-eye just sitting here. We should go before she doubles back or something.”

  “Rufe.” Sebastian shakes his head, looking pale and worried. “I’m staying here.”

  “The sun’s up, though. If the fog starts to lift, we lose our cover, and it’s our only advantage!” I have to convince him; there’s no way we’re splitting up now. “We can make it to the Jeep, I know we can.”

  “No. Rufus—”

  “Listen, if we stick to the edge of the park, where there are trees and stuff—”

  “No.” He says it so forcefully I fall silent and just stare at him. He winces, his dark lashes fluttering, and mumbles, “I’m saying I think I need to stay here, Rufe. I don’t … feel so good.” He pushes himself up into a sitting position, and panic wraps around my throat like a noose when I see his left flank soaked in blood. Lifting his shirt, he reveals an ugly furrow of ragged flesh, raw meat exposed where Peyton’s bullet carved a channel across his skin, and I feel my gorge rise abruptly in my throat. “I think … I think she hit me.”

  Tears spring to my eyes instantly, bile stinging the inside of my nose, and my voice is like a busted harmonica—seventeen tones all at once. “Sebastian—”

  “It doesn’t actually hurt all that bad,” he says, a dopily proud smile on his beautiful face. “But I’m kind of a little bit dizzy?” He shakes his head. “I think I need to stay here. I’ll just slow you down—”

  “Sebastian, no, no, no.” Air rattles as I suck it in, my lips wet with tears. I feel like I can’t breathe. I try to make the universe reshape itself, to make Sebastian’s wound as insignificant as the one on my own flank, but I can’t. I want to trade. This is wrong, all wrong. “You can’t stay here—we have to get you to a hospital! Put your arm over my shoulders and I’ll help you—”

  “Rufus—”

  “I’ll carry you,” I sob as he shakes his head, looking terrifyingly beatific, like a martyr who’s already accepted his fate. Digging into his pocket, he wrestles out the keys to the Jeep and pushes them into my hand.

  “You know how stupid that sounds?” He cocks a brow, still relaxed, still flirting with me. “Get my car and go for help—I’ll be okay. It’ll be better for both of us if I stay here and just … you know, rest.”

  I kiss him, because I don’t know what to say—because I can’t take him with me, and I can’t stay, and because suddenly I cannot possibly kiss him enough. Pulling the jersey over my head, I bunch it up and press it to his wound, making him flinch. “Hold this here, as hard as you can for as long as you can. I mean it. It’ll slow the bleeding, okay? Promise me.”

  “I promise.” He gives me that dumb grin again, eyes traveling drunkenly over my naked torso as his thumb traces my bottom lip. “You’re so beautiful, Rufus. I love you. I love saying that. I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I whimper, overwhelmed, sandbagged by debilitating emotions I’m not accustomed to. I’m used to being alone and angry. I’m used to fighting back and wrapping myself in a protective shell of combative resentment. I’m used to distrusting people and second-guessing their motives.

  I’m not used to this—this wretched feeling of needful love and utter, paralyzing helplessness. This feeling that for the first time ever, saving myself just isn’t good enough. I kiss him again, then again. And then I leave him there.

  29

  The return trip to the parking lot is agonizing. Even adhering to my own simple plan—following the shore until it gives way to dense woods, and then trusting that the trees will lead me back to my destination—I feel totally lost, my confidence destroyed by the pressure I’m under. I’m so shaken, I can’t even be sure I’m heading in the right direction, that I’m not actually going deeper into Fernwood Park instead of out toward the road.

  The fog is dissipating much faster than I expected, and the added visibility unnerves me; every sound I hear sends me scrambling into the trees to hide. Even so, I move as quickly as I can, risking the attention-grabbing crack of twigs underfoot and the rustle of bracken at my ankles, determined to save Sebastian before it’s too late. I have to believe that he’ll be okay. He has to be okay.

  After what might have been five minutes or five hours, I abruptly find the parking lot spreading out before me, like a lake of fire I’ll have to cross to reach the road. This is where Peyton was the last time, waiting for us, knowing that it’s the only way out. I hesitate, breathing hard, anxious sweat prickling my scalp and under my arms, and look in the direction of Race’s
car. It’s still where it was, just visible in the slackening mist, an apparition against a hazy backdrop of faded gray. Is she there?

  She’ll know that, short of diving into the lake and swimming north, our two best options for getting help are the Jeep or the emergency phone. It’s plain to me that the phone is too risky, an obvious trap with a bright yellow light that would make it real easy for Peyton to pick me off while I stood there trying to figure out if the damn thing even works anymore. To hedge her bets, though, she’ll probably be on the opposite side of the lot—close enough to the phone to watch for shadows, close enough to the road to listen for footsteps.

  My eyes riveted on the front end of the vehicle, watching intently for any sign of life, I step cautiously over one of the concrete wheel stops and start creeping toward the road. My heart pounds, my steps as loud in my ears as bones breaking, and my fingers tingle painfully with a surplus of adrenaline. I’m halfway across before I realize she’s heard me—before a deafening crack rips apart the humid morning air and a bullet shreds its way into the trees behind me. Peyton’s silhouette materializes at the far end of the Camaro, rifle held high—but by then I’m already at a full sprint.

  I tear across the pavement as the rifle barks out a second report, another tree taking the hit as my innards churn and fizz, going haywire from the overload of panic. I jump the next wheel stop and narrow grass verge in a single bound, stumbling off the curb and into the street as I land. Pivoting left, I race up the empty roadway, arms pumping, my lungs already in pain.

  Half a mile to the Jeep. Give or take. Half a mile that might as well be a half-marathon. I keep expecting another bullet, wondering if it’ll knock me off my feet or if I’ll even notice it at all—they say you don’t hear the one with your name on it. Maybe I’ll just blink out, defiantly alive one second and a sad memory the next, a flame guttering and then gone.

  Believe it or not, it’s the sound of metal scraping against concrete—a car chassis thumping as it rolls over the curb and settles on the even road—that serves as my first reminder that Arlo’s rifle isn’t the only weapon in Peyton’s arsenal. There’s a rumble as the Camaro’s engine devours some fuel behind me, tires growling like a pack of angry dogs as they begin chewing hungrily at the pavement, and the lingering fog flares white around me when high beams come on at my back.

  My heart coughs, my feet stumble, and I go dizzy with fear as rubber shrieks brightly and the car lurches forward. There’s nowhere for me to go. The road is barely two lanes wide, bordered on both sides by steep ditches filled with black water—moats that disguise a treacherous bounty of sharp rocks and dirty needles. Even if I want to climb down the embankment and splash across one, I’ll only find myself thrashing through a dense maze of trees and chest-high shrubs on the other side. I’d make it about five feet before Peyton pulled up and blew my head off. If I try to use the trench as a secondary escape route, I’ll be a duck at a shooting gallery. There’s nowhere to go.

  Swerving right for no reason, I hear the Camaro’s engine getting louder, tracking me, closing in. My throat is sandpaper, my eyes reeling at the sight of my shadow leaping and shrinking against the mists as the headlights bear down. My shoes graze the lip of the ditch and I balk.

  I turn around. The front end of Race’s car rushes at me, picking up speed, and I dive sideways at the last second. Time slows as the metal monster zooms by, so close I feel hot wind against my legs—so close my shoe clips the side-view mirror as it rockets past. My body flips over, flung away by the glancing blow, and I flail wildly in the air.

  I crash-land hard on the pavement, my knee ripping open with a blinding burst of pain, and I roll to a turbulent, agonized stop on the opposite side of the road. My head spins violently, my body stinging all over, and I gulp down frantic mouthfuls of air. The Camaro’s brakes engage fiercely and it skids, spins, and screeches to a halt at an angle, its engine panting; then, after a fractional pause, Peyton puts the vehicle into reverse, straightening out—readying for another try. Whimpering out loud, I shove up on shaky arms and shakier legs, deep scratches crosshatching my bare torso, and I stagger back into a pitiful, limping run.

  I’m heading for the park again, not thinking, just afraid—reduced to a primal state of sheer terror. Peyton revs the engine, bringing the tires to a frenzied, stationary spin, keeping the car in place while she patiently waits for me to give her enough room to build up some real speed. Loping hopelessly along the verge of the road, I sense the dark, evil-smelling water in the trench below, pain breaking through me like a jackhammer every time I put weight on my injured knee. Through the haze of pain and tears, I hear Sebastian’s voice in my head again, talking me down from one of my feral, mind-wiping rages: Take a breath and step back.

  Peyton releases the brake, and the car leaps forward with a triumphant squeal, tires humming gratefully as they’re finally set loose. I stop and turn—exhausted, bloodied, weak—and watch with a hollow feeling as the coupe surges at me. There will be no death-defying jump this time; I’m lucky to still be standing at all. The air parts between us, Peyton’s malicious grin flashing behind the wheel …

  And I take a step back.

  The verge drops away beneath my foot, and I fall, my nerves amplifying to a queasy, nightmarish frenzy as I plunge through limited space to a hard destiny. The stream running through the ditch gives me a cold, shallow embrace and my back smashes down on a bed of sharp stones, bottle caps, and long, pointed twigs that puncture my flesh like candles sinking into a birthday cake. My head strikes against something, light strobing behind my eyes, and I inhale a mouthful of oily, fetid water.

  Peyton slams on the brakes again, but she’s too late; the pavement is slick with dew, and Race’s tires can’t bite down fast enough. The car wobbles and fishtails … and then shoots over the edge of the road. Trapped and dazed, I watch the underside of the vehicle as it jumps the ditch just past where I lie, the Camaro’s headlights firing against the sturdy tree trunks that wait for it.

  The sound of the collision is deafening—a hideous detonation of glass, metal, and plastic collapsing in the blink of an eye—the car flipping up and swinging wide, tossed sideways by its own momentum. It bangs down hard, the quarter panels raking loudly against the trees, and finally settles at an angle in the ditch. The air reeks of gasoline and oil and heat, and I drag myself up from my watery berth like a zombie freeing himself from the grave.

  I think I half expect Peyton to somehow kick her way out of the wreckage like the Terminator, rifle aloft, still determined to finish things; but my fears are unfounded. In her haste to run me down, she never put on her seat belt. Struggling to stand on feet I can’t even feel, I see where she rocketed halfway through the windshield—where she now lies sprawled across the Camaro’s hood, blood and glass decorating her hair, her body ruined.

  Peyton Forsyth is dead.

  ONE MONTH LATER

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” my mother says with an ingenuousness that is not the least bit convincing. Two minutes earlier, Sebastian and I had been making out on the floor of the living room, our shirts cast aside, and I was very excited by the telltale hardness I felt against my hip when he shifted subtly on top of me. Then the front door rattled and popped open, my mom calling out an improbable “Yoo-hoo, it’s just me!” and we’d scrambled to dress and reorganize ourselves in the thirty seconds that passed before she sauntered into the room with a sly grin on her face.

  “No, Mrs.—uh, Genevieve,” Sebastian stammers nervously, his face adorably flushed with embarrassment. “We were just watching a movie.”

  Mom takes in the TV screen at a glance. “Ooh, Friday the 13th! This is part … seven, right? The psychic girl who throws stuff around with her mind?” She flops down into our easy chair, settling herself and giving Sebastian a broad wink. “You don’t mind if I join you guys, do you? Part seven is my favorite.”

  I offer her a resentful scowl, my erection practically making a slide whistle noise as it defl
ates beneath the popcorn bowl I brilliantly used to disguise it when she made her entrance. On the screen, Jason—the hockey-masked killer—impales the teenage protagonist’s mother with a scythe, and I announce pointedly, “What a coincidence—this is my favorite part.”

  Sebastian nods vigorously, too preoccupied with his attempt at acting casual—pressing an old copy of Elle Decor across his lap, like that’s fooling anybody—to notice my sarcasm. The nice thing is, he’s still sitting right next to me, our legs brushing together as we pretend to be engrossed in a movie we’ve both seen about a billion times. It’s taken a while to get to this point, where he doesn’t reflexively pull away whenever someone catches us touching or holding hands, and the feeling is good. I like the closeness—the not having to worry anymore about how people will react.

  After I crawled back up onto the road that night, broken twigs jutting out from my bloodied flesh like a botanical experiment gone hideously awry, I somehow managed to stumble all the way to the emergency phone and call 911. The first responders wanted to put me into an ambulance the second they saw me, but I refused; first, I led them all the way to where Sebastian was lying among the reeds—gray-faced and unconscious but still breathing—and then I collapsed.

  Sebastian, Race, and I were all taken to the same hospital; all three of us were questioned thoroughly by the authorities, and all three of us were ultimately sent home. I don’t know what version of the night’s events Sebastian told the cops—if it even matched mine in the slightest—but I doubt it mattered. The entire affair was a PR nightmare for the authorities, with several notable families involved in a high-profile scandal of drugs and murder and arson, and we were handing them a closed case on a silver platter. Three eyewitnesses and a dead suspect made the case open and shut, and I think they were relieved to turn a blind eye to all our lying and dissembling.

  “I thought you were supposed to be meeting with a potential client or something,” I say to my mother, hinting rather obviously that she should leave again.