Most of the gang glanced up for a moment and looked right at me as I went past. I spotted Garrett Hathaway. He had his arm around one of the tinier blond cheerleaders. He was wearing his Tornadoes jersey and laughing about something.
I honestly didn’t know how anyone could stand the smell of this place. It was absolutely nauseating. I covered my mouth discreetly as I attempted to insert my debit card into the ancient soda machine. But it spat it right out. That was weird. I tried again.
A hand reached around from behind me and grabbed my card.
“This machine takes it ass backward,” a male voice said, and I spun around.
Garrett Hathaway held my debit card and smiled at me.
I smiled back. It was a knee-jerk reaction. He was pretty disgustingly good-looking. Problem was, he knew it. And he was an asshole.
“Thanks,” I said, watching as Garrett inserted my card into the machine. “What are you having?” he asked.
“Cola,” I said, and Garrett pressed the button.
“For the prettiest lady in the caf,” he said, grabbing the soda can as it bounced into the bottom tray and handing it to me.
“Thanks,” I said again, as the machine spit my card back out. I put it in my pocket. It was time to escape, but Garrett was blocking my exit. He gave me a smile that was clearly meant to dazzle.
“I’m Garrett,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially. “So, what happened today at band? I saw you go off with that cop and… It didn’t have to do with that missing little girl, did it?”
I felt eyes on me now from every direction. It was like being in a fishbowl.
“Um, yeah,” I replied, shrugging. “They’re trying to find Sasha. I’m trying to help.”
“Jeez, that must be really hard on you.” Garrett shook his head. “I heard you used to babysit for her. I can’t imagine knowing someone who just ends up gone like that.”
“Yeah, it’s been difficult,” I said guardedly. I really didn’t feel like discussing this with someone I barely knew.
Garrett put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Poor thing. You’ve been through the wringer.” He paused. “If you want, I could…you know…help. Too.”
“Help,” I repeated, a little surprised.
“Look for her,” Garrett said.
Now I was majorly surprised. Was it possible that the asshole had a soul?
“I’ll call you,” he said, getting out his cell phone and flipping through his contacts list. “What’s your number?”
I looked up right then to see Calvin watching us through the window, his eyes wide.
And maybe Garrett had a special homecoming-king sixth sense that let him know a rejection was coming, because before I could not give him my number, he shut off his phone and said, “On the other hand, I’ll just stop by. Pick you up, so we can…you know. Search. Together.”
“You know where I live?” I asked, surprised again.
“Well, yeah, down the street from the dead girl.”
“Missing,” I corrected him.
“Right,” he said. “Maybe Saturday afternoon?”
I’d believe it when I saw it, but I wasn’t going to discourage anyone from helping me find Sasha.
“See you then,” he said with another smile, and walked away.
When I went outside, Calvin’s “Oh no you didn’t” was hanging in the air, as ominous as a storm cloud on the horizon.
“What was that?” he asked.
I popped the top of his soda and took a sip before handing it over to him. “Garrett wants to help us look for Sasha.”
Calvin frowned. “No, he doesn’t. He’s a douche. In fact, he’s a double douche. A super-douche.”
“Well, that’s what he said.” I took a seat on the picnic table, resting my elbows on my thighs.
He ran an exasperated hand through his fro-hawk. “Maybe he wants to help you look for Sasha—in the backseat of his car.”
I pretended to think about that, mostly to piss Calvin off. “He is pretty hot.”
“So is Beth Randall, in theory, but I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.”
Beth was the school’s female Garrett Hathaway. In fact, they’d just broken up, noisily, last week.
The bell rang, and I gathered up my granola bar wrapper and lunch bag. Calvin took his soda can and put it in a cup holder on the side of his wheelchair.
“Still,” I said, “if Garrett wants to help look for Sasha…”
Calvin tossed the sandwich bag into a nearby trash can. “He’s douche-tastic. Take my word for it.”
But all I could think of were the police detective’s ugly questions about Edmund and how, if the investigation focused on an innocent man who would never hurt his daughter, they’d never find the real person who’d taken Sasha.
And we’d never get her back.
• • •
Wednesday afternoon was a waste of time.
Calvin and I drove around and looked at playgrounds, parks, and even the aquarium. No Sasha.
When I got home that night, I pulled my e-reader out of my backpack. As mundane as it seemed, I knew I had to keep up with homework. If nothing else, it would keep my mom from getting on my case too much.
I began a lengthy reading assignment about the Second World War, and even though history was one of my favorite subjects, I found my eyelids getting heavy. I cleared my throat and rubbed my eyes to stay awake.
But after reading just a few more paragraphs of what should have been a riveting story—Hitler had tried to bomb the crap out of London every night for months—I soon found my attention had wandered.
I was staring drowsily at the poster on my bedroom wall. It was a picture of a cat that my mom had given me for my tenth birthday.
I was allergic to cats, and since I couldn’t have one, this was supposed to be some kind of lame substitute. I hated the picture and I’d long ago outgrown it, but I’d never been able to break that news to Mom. I’d tried to lose it in the move from Connecticut, but she’d found it and hung it here in my new bedroom.
The cat was clawing at a tree branch. Underneath it were the words “Just hangin’ out.”
Yeah. Calvin mocked me about it mercilessly.
I returned to my reading, vowing to stay conscious for at least another five pages. But gradually, exhaustion won, and I fell into a deep sleep.
• • •
The alarm was grating. I woke up with a yelp to see papers scattered everywhere. I had fallen asleep wearing my clothes and on top of my covers. And only half of my homework had been completed.
Crap.
Quickly, I hit the off button on the alarm clock—and then double-checked it, just to be sure. My eyes were cloudy, but I could clearly see that the clock was still securely on my bedside table.
Sitting up, I yawned and stretched my arms overhead. I felt rested for the first time in days. It was a welcome feeling, especially after everything that had been going on.
And then I remembered that Sasha was still missing, and Edmund was the police’s prime suspect. The realization hit me like a punch to the stomach.
Things weren’t back to normal just yet.
Sighing, I organized the papers on my bed and silently calculated the amount of time I’d need to complete all of my assignments before school started. It was no use. I would probably have to wing some of them or turn them in late.
I heard a sound in the corner of my room and looked up, startled again. But it was just the noise of the pipes creaking as my mom turned her shower on. I stared across the room at my blank wall, still working to wake myself up.
And that’s when it hit me.
Blank wall.
Blank wall.
Where was my cat poster?
I stood up and crossed the room slowly, my mouth open. The sound of the pipes got louder, and I padded gingerly across my carpet, reaching out a hand to run my fingers across the wall space, as if touching it would confirm what seemed utterly impossible.
Th
e poster that had been hanging there the night before…it was gone.
I hated that poster. I really did. But the fact that it was the epitome of tacky didn’t make its disappearance any less weird.
I looked on the floor, even under my bed. No poster.
It had been set in a cheap black plastic frame. It would have been hard to miss.
But it wasn’t there.
My heart was pounding again.
I stepped backward and looked behind me.
“Hello?” I said to the empty room, and then felt absolutely ridiculous.
I had a feeling, and the feeling told me to check my closet. I placed my hand gently on the doorknob before swinging the door open and lunging forward, fists clenched.
But there was no one there. I exhaled, relieved, and unclenched my fists. Yeah, right. Skylar the ninja.
I kicked aside my dirty laundry, but this time there was nothing underneath. Heart still pounding, I opened the top drawer of my old dresser. I’d put the piece of furniture in the back of my closet as a place to store junk I didn’t want to throw out.
Nothing in the top drawer.
I paused…and then opened the middle one. I sifted through school assignments, a medal I’d received from my old school band in Connecticut, and a couple ancient paperback novels. Underneath them were four black pieces of plastic—the frame—and a rolled-up cylinder of glossy paper.
I took out the cylinder and unrolled it.
The cat stared back at me. I dropped it.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!” I sprinted out of the closet and down the hallway, tripping over a full basket of dirty laundry.
My mom came bounding out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel, turban style.
“What? What is it?” she gasped. Her ninja imitation was even more ridiculous than mine. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so freaked out.
“Why did you move my cat poster?”
Mom looked confused. “What cat poster?”
“The one from my room. You must have moved it. Right?”
She shook her head. “Sky, I haven’t been anywhere near your room for the past two days. Not even to do laundry, which we need to play catch-up on, by the way.”
I nodded impatiently. “Fine. Okay. But you didn’t take down that Just hangin’ out poster?”
“No, that poster is adorable. I know you love it. Why would I do something like that?”
I didn’t understand. First my alarm clock and then my poster. Something was happening, but I didn’t know what.
“Sky, are you okay?” my mom said, frowning. She shivered in her towel.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Go get dressed. Sorry for the weird questions.”
Mom stood there for a moment, staring at me. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then shut it again.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s nothing,” Mom said. “Nothing important.”
• • •
“I neeeeed coffeeee!” Calvin wailed dramatically as I buckled my seat belt.
“I haaaaave tiiiiiiiime!” I replied, grinning, as Calvin made a U-turn back toward Beach Street, one of the numerous CoffeeBoy locations on Coconut Key. But then he slowed. “Wait. When’s your first class?”
“I’m free until second period,” I replied.
“What happened to science with Wilson?” Calvin asked. Even though we didn’t share all the same classes, we still knew each other’s schedules by heart.
“Mrs. Wilson is out sick today,” I said without thinking about it.
“Liar,” Calvin said, grinning.
I looked at him and gasped, feigning shock. “Well, I nev-aah!” I exclaimed in a pretend British accent. I raised my hand to my chest dramatically. “Accuse me of lying? Despicable!”
Calvin grinned. “Mrs. Wilson was perfectly fine yesterday. I saw her rocking the pleated pants. What’d you do? Call her this morning and check?”
I realized that he was absolutely right. I had no idea why I thought Mrs. Wilson was sick. But I still knew it was true.
“Come on, lie-aah,” Calvin said, pulling off an equally horrible Brit accent. “Let’s get some coffee and scones!”
He parked the car in the closest space, which was just as good as the handicapped spot. Even though it was seven thirty in the morning, the place was dead.
I didn’t know a whole lot about the state of the economy, but I didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that things were getting worse. If a usually-bustling coffee shop wasn’t ringing in morning customers on a weekday, there was a problem.
I hopped out of the car and waited for Calvin’s nifty wheelchair ramp to let him out of the driver’s side. “Scones?” I asked. “Do they even sell scones outside of England?”
My mother had once told me that back before CoffeeBoy, a chain of coffee shops right here in the States used to sell scones. But then England had gotten on the corporate government’s blacklist and far more American donuts—with red, white, and blue jelly—had come into vogue.
“Crumpets too!” Calvin said delightedly as he closed the driver’s side door.
This particular CoffeeBoy was looking pretty bleak. Inside the dingy place were three cheap-looking tables and a scattering of battered plastic chairs. Boxy TVs hung in each corner of the shop, tuned to various news channels. The din of reporters filled the almost empty room.
I absentmindedly tapped on the counter, an orange Formica rectangle stained with large O’s where people had set down their overflowing paper cups. A girl stood behind the register, looking simultaneously bored and despondent. She popped her gum as Calvin and I scanned the menu. There were no scones. At one time, there had been donuts available, but the word had been crossed off the menu with a bedraggled strip of masking tape.
Apparently there was coffee, or coffee.
“Hey…Amber,” Calvin said, reading her name tag. Beneath her name was a little sticker that said “Ask me about my…” Amber had scrawled the word “schnauzer” in messy letters. “How’s your schnauzer?”
“Dead,” Amber said, and snapped a bubble.
“Right,” Calvin replied. “Sorry to hear that. I’m going to have a large coffee, extra cream, lots of sugar.”
“We’re out of cream,” Amber with the dead dog replied apathetically.
“Out of cream at a coffee shop?” Calvin asked disbelievingly.
Apparently Amber figured a lack of response would suffice for a yes.
“Okay, awesome!” Calvin said, his voice absurdly cheerful. My best friend was a clown.
“I’m gonna pass,” I told him as I sat down in the least disgusting chair. I let Calvin continue to torture Amber and briefly thought about the homework assignments that I should have been working on, last minute. There was no way I’d be able to concentrate, though, with so much on my mind.
So I stared at one of the TVs and zoned out.
“…police continue to investigate the bizarre disappearance of both Coconut Key resident Edmund Rodriguez and his nine-year-old daughter, Sasha.”
In a heartbeat, I was paying attention. I turned to search for the TV where the news anchor had just said Sasha’s name, and found it. An image of Edmund Rodriguez appeared on the screen behind the blond news anchor, followed by a recent school picture of Sasha.
“In a breaking story, local law enforcement officials have identified Mr. Rodriguez’s truck, which was found near an abandoned warehouse in nearby Harrisburg, just over the county line.”
“Calvin!” I yelped. “Look!” I pointed at the TV.
“Can you turn that up, please?” Calvin asked Amber, who rolled her eyes and aimed a remote control toward the screen we were watching.
The image changed to a police lieutenant speaking into a miniature microphone atop a wooden podium. His expression was grim. I recognized Detective Hughes standing slightly behind him.
“Lab tests confirm that the blood in the bed of Mr. Rodriguez’s truck was, indeed, that of his daught
er, Sasha.”
Blood?
Images from my dream three nights ago hit me like a punch to the head. I brought my hand up to my mouth and looked at Calvin. But Calvin didn’t look away from the TV. The muscle was jumping in his jaw.
“…found another item, also stained with the victim’s blood, which confirms our fears that this crime was of a…sexual nature.”
“No,” I said, and I shook my head as the picture changed back to the news anchor.
“We’ll have the latest in sports and weather when we return,” she said brightly as the station went to a commercial break.
Now Calvin was looking down at his hands, but then he turned and gazed at me. “You okay?”
“Am I okay?” I asked, laughing humorlessly, as on the TV children sang a song about toilet paper. “No, I’m so not okay! I’m furious!”
“I get that,” Calvin replied quietly.
“I’m furious,” I continued, “because I know Mr. Rodriguez didn’t hurt Sasha!”
Calvin looked surprised at that. “Um, weren’t you paying attention?” he asked. “They’ve got physical evidence. I’m just seriously glad that sick a-hole didn’t hurt you.”
“He didn’t do it,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “I know he didn’t do it.”
“And how exactly do you know that?” Calvin countered. “Sky, I know you’re upset, and I’m really sorry.”
I bit a nail to the quick, frustrated. “Cal, you’ve got to believe me on this one. Remember when we went to Sasha’s the night she went missing?”
Calvin nodded.
“And remember how I thought I saw something in her room?”
“The big, bad, vaguely witchy shadow that had her teddy bear?”
I nodded, ignoring Calvin’s slightly mocking tone. “Well, when I was in that room… I don’t know. It’s like I could smell the fear—and something else too. That nasty sewage smell… I don’t know how to explain it, but I felt this…I don’t know, pressure. Doom or foreboding. And it definitely didn’t have anything to do with Edmund.”
Calvin stared at me. “Girl, are you playing with me?”
Dangerous Destiny: A Night Sky novella Page 9