The Rules

by Nancy Holder

  So yeah, he blew her off after that. He didn’t even know she’d left the party until she had called him in tears and told him that she needed him to come get her out and then they got disconnected. He’d tried to call her back but his call had gone straight to voice mail. She was too wacko to deal with. She was dead, and that was sad and freaky, but it hadn’t been his job to babysit her.

  “Praveen, shit,” he said irritably, poking his head back outside. “Where are you?”

  This hunt was too hard. They had always been a fun excuse to party, not some kind of reality show audition. If he got to vote anyone off the island, it was going to be August. The test answers would be nice, but he knew he’d be going to Yale unless he really blew it. And as for his own prize, a getaway on Guilty Pleasure for two would also be nice, but nothing he couldn’t live without.

  Maybe she’d gone back into the warehouse. He crunched over the fifty or so feet of shells to the back door, moving mostly by memory because he couldn’t see a damn thing. His hand brushed against the door handle and he yanked. It squealed open just like in a horror movie.

  Oooh, I’m so scared.

  This room had not been decorated; it was just a bunch of crap that had been stashed for a million years. He ran the flashlight beam along the floor. Something glittered and he bent down to get a closer look. Nestled among some rodent turds and scraps of filthy cardboard lay a shiny diamond hoop earring. It looked familiar and he ran down the list of girls at the party, trying to figure out who had lost it.

  He dropped the earring into his pocket and turned his head at a noise. A cough? A chuckle? Someone trying to get dressed?

  “Hey?” he said.

  The noise stopped, and Larson laughed. Busted. He said, “Did you lose something?”

  No response. Maybe it was one of August’s winged monkeys. His spies.

  He heard the sound again. Not a cough or a chuckle this time. Like someone dragging something?

  “Hello?” he called again. He cupped his ears, trying to pinpoint the location of the noise, crossing the room and walking into a hall on the opposite side. Go left? He took a few steps before he paused and listened again, then continued down and tried the door there, but it was locked.

  Suddenly he was sure that someone was standing directly behind him. He could almost feel their eyes burning holes into the back of his skull. Someone in the hallway. Maybe it was a girl looking for her earring or Praveen had caught up.

  “Boo!” he cried, whirling around.

  To his surprise, there was no one there. He made a slow pan with his flashlight. Not only was the hall empty, but also there weren’t any doors along the walls that a stalker could have darted into to escape detection.

  It had to have been his imagination. But it had felt so real.

  “Good one, August,” he said casually.

  Then he ran-walked back outside as fast as he could.

  PRAVEEN’S RULE #1: Only trust Drew.

  Praveen was running her flashlight along the wall of the warehouse, batting at the fog as it rolled in. She’d been hoping Drew would come see her on his break but it seemed he was keeping up the façade that they meant nothing to each other. Praveen was more disappointed than she should be, she supposed. But half the reason she had shown up tonight was to see him.

  She stopped and readjusted her top, which wasn’t nearly as comfortable as it looked. It was so unfair. Seeing the green wrap on the hanger in the boutique, it looked like the softest thing in the entire world. She knew she needed it. It would complement her skin perfectly, move like a dream, and drive Drew absolutely wild.

  So she had slipped it into her purse and casually headed for the front door. She didn’t even see the antitheft device tag clipped into the armpit. The boutique had never used them before, which was one of the reasons she “shopped” there.

  When the alarms went off, she’d panicked. She’d had the hood on her sweatshirt up so she was reasonably sure they wouldn’t be able to identify her on the security cameras, but a guard had given her the run of her life.

  She had met Drew in the Callabrese music store. Her cousin Sudeep wanted a harmonica for his birthday, and she was casually going through the sheet music, which was organized in bins close to the harmonica display, preparing to make her move. Once she’d accounted for all the clerks, making sure their attentions were occupied, she had sidled over to the display and wrapped her hand around the nicest one.

  Suddenly there was a clatter across the store. She jerked and glanced in the direction of the noise. At the same time a clerk who had been squatting undetected behind the harmonica display had popped up like a Whac-A-Mole and she had pulled back her hand just in time.

  A shaggy-haired guy in a Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt and jeans said, “Whoops,” and picked a pair of cymbals off the floor. As he straightened, he gave Praveen a wink. She caught her breath. He knew. And not only did he know she’d been about to take the harmonica, but he’d also saved her from getting caught.

  “We all have our things, man,” he’d told her, and then she’d recognized him and realized he was Drew from Maximum Volume. She was breathless. He was famous.

  They went for coffee—she was dizzy with amazement—and she was just about to ask him for his autograph when he’d invited her to a practice and then a concert and then she was, like, his girlfriend. But they had to keep it quiet because of his image. It had been exciting at first to be together in secret. It was like they had a world all their own, where everything could be perfect for a few precious stolen moments.

  Praveen went to as many of Drew’s gigs as she could, but she had to pretend to be a fan, a pathetic groupie. She did it for love, but she did not have a song in her heart when she joined the other girls at the foot of the stage, gushing over him and talking about his hotness and his great butt. Mine, mine, mine! she wanted to shout at them. Drew said it wouldn’t be like this forever. And she knew that, but it already felt like forever.

  He’d been super moody lately, but she had chalked that up to his responsibilities to the band. He was under a tremendous amount of pressure. Maximum Volume had been signed by a record label, and their first album had to be perfect or they’d be back on the street. Drew had worked so hard for so long. She wasn’t sure the others fully appreciated what he had done for them. But she’d found strange bottles in his underwear drawer—she had not been snooping, just looking for a pen—filled with little blue and white capsules. She was afraid to ask him about them because it had been a little odd to think she could find a pen mixed in with his boxers and she didn’t want him to think she was checking up on him.

  “Praveen!” someone shouted, and she winced. It was Larson.

  She waved her flashlight back and forth, watching it bounce off the fog, until a dark shape approached and her scavenger hunt partner materialized through the mist as if he were moving curtains aside. She wondered, not for the first time, what crime he had committed that August had tried to humiliate him with.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, scowling at her.

  “Where have I been? Where did you go?” she countered.

  “Never mind.” He waved a hand. “I got nothing. I don’t even get what we’re supposed to be looking for.”

  “A brick,” she said.

  “What? How did you get that?” he asked.

  She handed him their clue.

  GoIng thRough life

  NicKing what you choose

  But Believe it or not

  Eye C u

  Larson studied it, then looked at her.

  “Well, genius, he capitalized the letters I, R, K, B, and C when they shouldn’t have been. Unscrambled they form the word brick.” She sighed and ran her beam along the wall. “But I haven’t found anything yet.”

  “It’d have to be a loose brick,” Larson said. “We have to take it back to him.”

  She winced. She hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Larson wasn’t a total idiot who deserved to be lobotomized.

/>   “There’s a pile of bricks in the parking lot,” he said.

  She nodded, and they began to walk over the noisy shells, then around the tall wall made of abalone shells, rocks, and cement.

  “So what’s he got on you?” he asked. “What did you do wrong, Miss Demeanor?”

  It took her a moment to realize he was making a pun. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Underage drinking,” he replied smugly. “But you’ve got another story—am I right?”

  He should mind his own business. She imagined his head exploding like a giant watermelon dropped from a thirteen-story building. It made a satisfying pop as his brains sprayed everywhere.

  Drew’s groupies? There were so many things she’d do to them. In her mind’s eye she armed herself with ice picks, knives, matches. The girls who pushed in front of her, that girl who had flashed her boobs at him two weekends ago at Petrol, the local coffeehouse—

  They came to a pile of blackened bricks, pieces of trash, and beer cans. Gross.

  Eye C u. He’d used texting abbreviations for see and you, but he’d spelled out Eye for I. So an eye must be significant to the brick they were looking for. Or else he was being a perv, or reminding her that he had spies or whatever. This was all so annoying.

  She crouched down and passed her flashlight over the blackened brick. “Not fun, August,” she muttered as she inspected each mottled surface.

  “What are you looking for?” Larson asked, crouching down beside her.

  “A picture of an eye on one of them. At least, I think that’s what we need to find.”

  “You’re shivering,” he said. “Let me rub your arms.”

  “No!” She jerked away from him.

  “God, Praveen, what’s your deal?” he said. “I only—”

  “I know what you only.” She got to her feet. She wished she could pick up a brick and hit him with it. “Go away!”

  “But we have to—”

  Then she bent down and picked up a brick. Larson stared at her openmouthed. “Oh my God, did you get arrested for assault?”

  Her arm spasmed as if it had a will of its own; he held up his hands and backed away. “No problem. I’m gone. See you, Praveen.” He turned and muttered, “Psych ward.”

  Once he was gone and she had calmed down, she resumed her search. Her prize was a shopping spree in San Francisco and she was all for that. She’d get some black leather pants and a corset for when she went to live with Drew. And black satin sheets for their bed.

  Finally something white caught her eye and she trained the flashlight on the bottom set of bricks. The rough chalk outline of an eye was drawn on the brick closest to her left knee.

  She heard a footstep behind her. Rising, she turned, expecting to see Larson. There was no one there. Not too surprising: with all the hard surfaces, sound bounced and ricocheted.

  She swept her flashlight across the jumble of parked cars; fog drifted lazily along the ground, but nothing else.

  She turned back to the bricks to collect her so-called object. A moment later she could swear she heard a muffled laugh much closer than the footstep.

  She spun around fast, light slashing through the darkness.

  Cold, empty space.

  “Okay, August, very funny,” she said.

  Silence answered her.

  Praveen waited a few seconds, then shoved the top bricks off with her feet. They fell with dull clunking noises, and she had nearly worked her way to the bottom when something scratchy touched the back of her calf.

  She bulleted into the air and landed, wrenching her knee and nearly falling.

  “That’s not funny!” she shouted.

  A laugh skated on the wind.

  “S-s-s-teal it.” An amplified whisper in her ear. “Thief.”

  Fury rushed through her, blocking out most of the fear. People did not mess with her.

  “You suck! You’re dead!” she shouted, kicking aside the last two bricks and then grabbing up hers.

  Running footsteps echoed against the bricks, the shells, the cliffs.

  “You better run or I’ll use this to bash your head in!” she yelled.

  There was an envelope taped to the side of the brick, proving that it was indeed the one she was supposed to get. Now she was sure that August knew about her little habit of taking things. So what? It had nothing to do with him. Who died and made him her judge?

  Hefting her spoils, she angrily marched back toward the main building. Maybe she would bash his head in with this brick.

  That would shut him up.

  THE WALKING DEAD

  STACY’S RULE #1: Drugs don’t kill people. People do.

  “It’s so hot in here,” Stacy muttered from the table where Drew had parked her.

  No one else was there. August had disappeared. He was always running off. Hiro had charged into the room, taken something out of his bag, and disappeared again. He didn’t even ask her how she was feeling. They used to be so close.

  She wiped the sweat off her face, caking her fingers with eyeliner and mascara, and guzzled down the rest of a water bottle. Then she caught sight of her travel tumbler on the chair beside her. Maybe she was kind of careless with her drinks. She really hadn’t been trying to kill Mick. But he was being such a butthole now that she kind of wished she had.

  “Not nice,” she murmured.

  But she was feeling not nice. Maybe they were planning to go to Los Angeles without her. With a sob, she lurched sideways, plucking up the tumbler and cradling it against her chest. She tottered outside on her heels, sucking in the cold air. Her lungs were aching. The moon gleamed on the topmost layer of fog, making it almost shine; she could smell and hear the ocean but not see it, and she staggered left and right. Maybe she’d go crawl into the van and go to sleep.

  Did someone scream?

  Her eyes were tearing up; she held a hand to her face and her fingers blurred and stretched. Her hand was like a foreign object, or someone else’s hand. She peered through the fingers and saw—

  “Hello?” she whispered at a figure standing a few feet away. It was a fuzzy outline, human-shaped, but who it was she couldn’t tell. She turned her hand around and contracted her fingers in a sort of clawlike greeting.

  It still didn’t move. It just stood there and then, as she stared at it, a hazy glow bounced around and she saw two black holes where its eyes should be. It has no eyes. It was a white-faced monster, and it took a step toward her.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she blurted, and her ankles gave way. She crashed to the ground, palms slamming into crushed shells, the sting of it shooting up both arms and slapping her cheeks. She let out a terrified sob.

  The figure approached. Huge black half-moons took up her field of vision. Somehow she understood that they were the toes of a pair of boots.

  “No, no,” she bleated. “Stay away from me.”

  A hand wrapped around her upper arm and pulled her to her feet. She dangled like a string puppet, struggling to find her footing. The figure’s face swam before her and she batted at it.

  “Stacy. What the hell?” It was Hiro. He sounded angry. She pressed her face into his shirt as silent tears dampened the cloth.

  “I think someone screamed,” she told him.

  “They’re all playing their games,” Hiro said. His voice lowered. “Lots of games. She’s probably laughing right now.”

  “She,” Stacy repeated. “She who?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You hate me. You want me to quit and go away. You’re afraid I’ll mess things up in L.A.” She waited for him to deny it. “You do!” she cried.

  He kept his gaze fixed on her and she moved cautiously, feeling totally detested. She lost track of time, and then her boots echoed on wood, and she knew they were at the dock. She heard the ocean; the fog was thinner here, and she saw sharp stars above and sharper rocks below.

  Leaning over the railing, she closed her eyes and tried to let herself throw up. But she’d never be
en able to do that; she hated vomiting. Hiro rested his hand on her back and the weight of it made her lean farther over.

  He’s going to push me, she thought in a flash of terror. He’s going to kill me. He hates me that much.

  “Hiro, stop! Stop!” she begged. She tried to turn around but she couldn’t do it. The world was whirling. The deck rocked back and forth.

  And then there was pain.

  ROBIN’S RULE #4: Believe the best of people until they prove otherwise.

  Beth may bluster and Thea may rave

  But when you give in, girls, you…

  Tonight someone will change your life.

  The tension’s so thick you could cut it with a…

  When you give in, you cave.

  Robin led the search for a cave on the property. There was a ginormous one in the cliff beneath the highway. Thea, Beth, and Robin trooped across the parking lot to search it, Thea whimpering dramatically as they passed Beth’s Beemer. Beth was getting very touchy and seemed to be taking every expression of less-than-loving the scavenger hunt as a personal insult. Robin was suffering from cognitive dissonance: she wasn’t particularly enjoying the hunt, but once it was over, there would be real partying. She and Kyle were definitely connecting, and she couldn’t wait to hang out. Maybe make out; for sure crow over the Penalty Babes’ victory.

  But the large cave was completely trashed, and the coppery tang of blood permeated the darkness. Thea retreated, Beth loping behind her. Robin didn’t argue her case very hard that they should give it a more thorough search for their next object, which was obviously a knife. More with the theme of murder weapons. It didn’t smell good and she was afraid they would find a dead animal, which then got her to worrying about the presence of coyotes or even mountain lions, which were more aggressive. It simply wasn’t true that wildlife stayed away from people, at least not in wine country. Coyotes were actually welcome in Callabrese because rats loved to nibble on the wine grapes, and the coyotes took care of the rats. Mountain lion sightings were not unusual, either. If animals were lurking around the cannery, the smell of food might encourage them to be bold.