Secrets of Skin and Stone

by Wendy Laine

  The sun was rising by the time I made it back to Piper’s house to retrieve my laptop.

  Before heading home to sleep in my own bed, I sent an email to my dad asking him to overnight me a new phone and to find out what was in that syringe.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Piper

  I’d intended to confront him today. It was sensible, and I liked sensible things. I’d also forgotten that today was the day our entire Human Biology class went to the nearby college to look at a cadaver. Okay, so I’d intentionally forgotten—purposefully forgotten—and hoped the teacher would, too. Mr. Allen hadn’t. That meant we had an hour and a half bus ride each way, but, other than telling Hank I wanted to talk to him, I didn’t make much headway. Hank and Mattie had been memorizing the surface area of each other’s tongues. It was too much human anatomy for me every time I glanced back there.

  Everybody else in the bus had been talking about Jared ending up in the hospital. Nobody seemed to know why. ‘Course there were rumors. Plenty of rumors. Ranging from a drug overdose to the newcomer to town, Gris, taking him down.

  Hank was close-lipped about the whole thing.

  Then, we arrived at the college and the panic set in. I’d explained to Mr. Allen that death and I…we didn’t get along. Then, he told me this class trip was a huge percentage of my grade, and I made sure we agreed I’d still get credit if I passed out. He’d smiled when I’d insisted.

  He wasn’t smiling when I had to practically be carried out of the lab after fainting.

  I lasted longer than expected. The counting helped. But I was still going to have to repress this good and hard.

  The bus ride back to school was tedious and filled with snickering from all around me.

  Hank likely hadn’t killed Jester—though he’d looked far too interested in that dead body a couple of times. I’d seen Ben trying to make the cadaver’s fingers snap. Dale probably would’ve accomplished it. He’d laughed when I’d said I was dreading this trip. He’d wanted to trade places. My brother was far too interested in dead things. For all I knew, Gris might be just as interested in dead things.

  It felt good to slam my locker shut after collecting my books. Real good actually. I did it again. I forced myself to stop at twice. Partly ‘cause if I’d done it three times, I’d have needed to continue on to four. Once you slammed your locker four times…well, folks worried about you and parents were called.

  “Hey, Piper.” Mattie walked up beside me. “Hank said to meet him inside the gym. Said he’d talk to you before heading out to the field.”

  I blinked. “He did?”

  “He figured you were so persistent you’d just keep hassling him.” She shrugged.

  I’d been pretty considerate not to interrupt them until Hank was getting off the bus. “Uhh, thanks!” I called after her.

  “Whatever.” She turned around, walking backward. “Inside the gym.”

  “Yes. Inside.”

  I darn near ran to the gym. Luckily, I was driving myself home, so I wasn’t rushing to be anywhere. I stopped at the outside doors and yanked one open. All the lights were off, other than the emergency lighting. Dark. Very dark. I could do this. It couldn’t be worse than watching somebody peel back a cadaver’s face. I stepped into the gym, staying within the rectangle of light beaming through the wedged-open door. “Hank?”

  No answer.

  The air inside the gym felt unnaturally cold. Why was Hank meeting me in here when the locker rooms had outside doors?

  “Hank?” I called again.

  Maybe he just wanted to have a private conversation. If that were the case, my hollering wasn’t lending itself to that. I dropped my backpack in the doorway to hold it open. As I straightened, I palmed my pepper spray from a side pocket, and stepped forward. My mama didn’t raise no fools, and a face full of pepper spray might discourage a conversation, but I didn’t much care. Underestimating a person’s potential for violence wasn’t a problem I’d ever had. While I didn’t think Hank’d killed my dog, he wasn’t exactly right in the head. Too many tackles during the football season. I’d once told him the risks of multiple concussions, and he’d pushed me down.

  I took several hesitant steps forward and turned as the shadows moved. It was so cold in here. Why was it so cold? I sniffed, and the cold moved into my heart.

  Sulfur. I was growing too familiar with that scent. There were fiends in here. “Look. Joke’s over. I’m leaving.” As I spun around, my backpack slid sideways and the heavy gym door slammed closed.

  “Crap!” Not good.

  A low laugh echoed, bouncing off the walls.

  I rushed toward the weak beacon of the emergency light.

  Wispy arms grabbed at me. I sprayed over my shoulder with the pepper spray and an unholy screech rent the air. I yanked free of the claws that seemed to come from all directions. I felt them. I felt the fiends. I ran for the gym door and banged into it as talons caught my skin and tugged on my hair. I fell out into the sunshine, tripping over my bag in the process, and sprawled out on my hands and knees, gasping. Who’d been in there laughing?

  One of Hank’s jock friends?

  Coach Laramie?

  Somebody else?

  Black cleats stepped into view, and I looked up into Hank’s grinning face.

  “Who was that in there?” I asked, scrambling to my feet and brushing myself off. He didn’t try to help me up. He wouldn’t.

  “Who was in where?” His smirk should’ve been slapped off his face long ago.

  “In the gym. Don’t tell me you had nothing to do with that. You pulled my backpack out of the door, you asshole.” And I wasn’t about to apologize for my strong language.

  “It must’ve been the wind.”

  I snorted.

  Inside, the locker room door banged open and closed.

  “I should call the police,” I said.

  “I thought you wanted to talk.” Hank shrugged and turned to leave.

  “I do!” I reached out a hand to stop him, which was ridiculous because we’d prefer to never touch…ever. It was a mutual sort of loathing.

  Hank turned back around. “So, talk. You’ve got until coach shows up. He’s running late.”

  I swallowed. “I want to talk about Trina.”

  “My sister?” His disinterest dissolved. “Why do you want to talk about her?”

  “I think something bad happened to her.”

  “Why?”

  Here went nothing. “I sleepwalk.”

  He blinked.

  “I sleepwalk and the night your sister disappeared, I walked out to the fence. Now, I don’t know what I saw or what happened, but I started doing it all the time. All the time, Hank. I think maybe I saw something and it’s haunting me.” Along with a bunch of fiends but I didn’t add that.

  His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak.

  “I need to know what you know about the night she disappeared. It might help us solve it.”

  “Us?”

  I clenched my teeth. I knew him and Gris weren’t going to be besties anytime soon. “You and me.” Frak, a lie, and I couldn’t even cut myself for it. I’d made that promise. “If we can figure out what happened, we can…have closure or something.”

  “Or find her.”

  I nodded quickly.

  I felt somebody’s eyes on me. The prickling of awareness made me roll a shoulder to ease the discomfort. Was somebody watching us? Or had whoever’d laughed in the gym come outside already?

  “Nobody knows what happened to Trina and her boyfriend,” Hank said.

  “Was her boyfriend there that night?”

  “Yeah, but my parents didn’t mind him. Her previous boyfriends were real losers and stoned most of the time. Side-by-side, Troy wasn’t half bad. Plus, he had a good pitching arm.”

  Uh huh, and that would matter to Hank’s daddy.

  “So, Trina didn’t have any reason to run off?”

  He shrugged. “She’d snuck out that night, but that w
as her thing. It was more fun to sneak out than ask permission. They were going down to skinny-dip in Hidden Creek. I heard her window open.” He snorted in disgust, and his face twisted into a scowl. “She was laughing.”

  “She wasn’t running off.” It was a statement—not a question.

  “No. She didn’t take nothing with her. She kept a stash of money under a floorboard and it’s still there. Or it was. I used it once I knew she wasn’t coming back.”

  “Why didn’t the police investigate more?”

  “People see what they care to see.”

  “What did they find at the creek?”

  He squinted. “Why would they look at the creek?”

  “You said that’s where she was headed.”

  Hank shook his head. “They assumed she’d left town. That’s what my parents told them. It was basically good riddance in their minds. The police felt the same.” His jaw went tense, and he closed his eyes. One second…two seconds…and he opened them. His eyebrows jerked together in a wince and then it was gone.

  I stopped hating him. I couldn’t. He’d keep hating me, but it was easy to hate somebody you didn’t really know. I’d already known half of what Hank did, he did to impress his daddy. His daddy’s expectations were unreal and kept raising each time Hank proved himself in any way. Now, I knew everything he did lately was colored by the bitterness that his sister had been judged and forgotten. He probably even resented his parents’ preference of him, which hadn’t helped anybody figure out what happened to his sister.

  “Not that you’d care, freak.”

  It was a jab from a wounded animal. Aw, shoot. I’d really enjoyed hating him.

  Hank swallowed. “If you find out anything or remember anything, you owe me.”

  “Whatever,” I said. That was what he expected. But I would tell him. It’d only be fair. “Hey, do you know what happened to my dog?”

  He blinked. “Didn’t an animal kill that stupid thing?”

  “Did you see what did?”

  His eyes flicked to over my shoulder for a split second to the gym behind me. “No.”

  I turned to look at the gym. He knew. Hank knew who’d been in there.

  “Are we done here?”

  “Hank, who was in the—”

  “We’re done.” Whirling around, he strode toward the field. At the corner of the gym, he turned to look back at me. His mask of hatred was back on, even if it seemed softer at the corners. “You say anything to anybody…”

  He disappeared from sight without finishing the thought. That was all right, I could’ve finished it for him. We all had these stupid parts we played, patterns that went on forever. I sorta liked that, even when I didn’t. Even when they kept me up at night, it was still sorta nice that they were around. Patterns were like that.

  It still felt like somebody was watching me. I didn’t run to my car, but I walked faster than I ever had before.

  …

  I drove to my house with the intention of walking over to where Gris was staying after I dropped off my backpack, but Gris was sitting on my porch. It was nice to be wanted. I liked being wanted. He smiled widely when I got out of my car, probably in response to my grin.

  Dale was walking home from a friend’s house just as I arrived. He rolled his eyes at my expression. He was at that age where PDA of any kind, from anybody, made him uncomfortable.

  “Hey.” Gris stood. He nodded at Dale. “What’s up, Dale?”

  Dale stopped and stared at Gris. “Jared’s in the hospital. People are saying you put him there.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  Dale frowned, clearly disappointed.

  Gris looked at me and then asked Dale, “You were hoping I had?”

  Dale shrugged. “Well, he and Hank are always picking on Piper. I thought it was about time somebody stood up to them.”

  Gris’s eyes narrowed. “I have stood up to them, and Hank better not be messin’ with Piper.”

  There was something possessive about the way he’d said my name. I didn’t need anybody fighting my battles for me, but, at the same time, it was nice to hear he wanted to.

  “I’ve stood up to them, too,” I said.

  Dale snorted a laugh. “You’re half his size, Piper. Your standing up puts you at shoulder level. You and Hank”—he shook his head—”it’s like a fly going up against a giant. He just swats you down. The only one with any lick of control over him is Mattie, and she could do a lot better. A lot better.”

  I had my own opinion on why Hank sometimes listened to Mattie, and it was an opinion I wouldn’t be sharing with Dale. He was too young. Plus, he’d had a crush on Mattie since he’d arrived at the school and she’d flipped her hair. Most boys did. Heck, if Gris went to school, he’d probably have a crush on Mattie, too.

  The front door opened, drawing all our attention. Mama stuck her head out. “You’ll stay for supper won’t you, Gris?”

  Gris smiled as if his wildest dreams had come true. “Count on it, ma’am.”

  This pleased my mama to no end.

  Dale had a one-track mind, and he asked Gris, “You really didn’t put Jared in the hospital?” My younger brother looked so wholly crushed.

  Gris shook his head, though his forehead was all wrinkled. He knew the rest of the story and wasn’t sharing?

  Mama’s mouth dropped open. “ ‘Course he didn’t, Dale. What are you thinking? Gris isn’t like that, and I brought you up better than to think that of people.”

  Dale rolled his eyes and stomped inside.

  Mama gestured after him with an apologetic look at Gris. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”

  Dale’s music turned on full-volume a second later. Mama huffed and stalked after him for her hourly “Turn down that music. I swear you weren’t raised in a barn, but it don’t show” lecture.

  Gris leaned in and pulled the front door closed. “I think it’s funny that your mom thinks she knows what type of person I am.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “You reckon most people would find a gargoyle to be polite?”

  I shoved him, playfully. My mouth felt all tingly where he’d kissed it. I wanted a lot more of that.

  “How about you set your backpack down, and we’ll go for a walk?” Gris suggested.

  Last night’s walk had entailed a lot of kissing, so I wasn’t opposed to that idea by any means, but I had a better one. “I think we need to go check out Hidden Creek. The reservoir, I mean.”

  “I guess maybe I should grab my swimming trunks, then.”

  “Most people skinny-dip.”

  Gris froze and stared at me with his jaw dropped.

  “We‘re not skinny dipping,” I said quickly. “Hang on. Let me just put my backpack inside, and I’ll explain.”

  Mama would have had conniptions if I just dropped it inside. She didn’t like us cluttering up the front room, so I ran it to my bedroom. Before I went back outside, I checked in the front mirror to make sure I didn’t have anything in my teeth. I looked pink-cheeked and bright-eyed…and goofy.

  When I stepped outside, Gris was leaning against one of the porch’s beams, watching the door for me. My heart did flips. He was waiting for me. Just me.

  As we started walking, he grabbed one of my hands.

  I tangled our fingers together. “It’s not too far of a walk, but I don’t like to take the road—it’s not a straight line.”

  He nodded as he followed me into the field across from my house. I knew it was logical.

  “What really happened to Jared?” I asked.

  “What makes you think I know?”

  I frowned. I thought I was figuring out his expressions. “Don’t you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, tell me then.”

  “Somebody is messing with stuff way out of their league.” He shook his head. “I followed Hank to the cemetery last night. I don’t know who he was meeting, but whoever it was, they didn’t show. Jared was there as back-up and must’ve gotten bored and d
ecided to shoot up.”

  “With drugs?” My jaw dropped.

  Gris grinned at my shocked expression. “Apparently Hidden Creek has some secrets.”

  “Do you think Coach Laramie knows?”

  “Why would he know?”

  “He’s Jared‘s coach, and I’ve heard that he’d gotten in trouble at the last school he coached at. Everybody assumed it was either steroids or getting too friendly with students, but I don’t know what’s true.”

  “I haven’t heard from my dad about what was in the syringe—he’s got connections that I don’t have yet. But, in this case, it wasn’t the drugs necessarily that put him in the hospital. There were fiends inside the truck with him. Jared drove his truck right up to the cemetery fence and rolled out, already getting attacked. They would’ve killed him if I hadn’t been there.”

  “What did Hank do?”

  “He left.”

  I gasped.

  Gris raised his eyebrows. “I can’t believe that surprises you.”

  “He was acting fine today. What kind of psychopath leaves his friend to die and then makes out with Mattie on the bus the next morning? Why, when I talked to him…”

  “You talked to him? Piper! I thought we’d decided you weren’t going anywhere near him.”

  “No, you told me, and I ignored it ‘cause you were being overprotective. Besides, all we did was talk.”

  “I have reason to be overprotective. Somebody is gunning for you. Every time we turn around you’ve got more curse sacks in your bedroom. I can’t even figure out when the culprit has the time.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s on another list even.”

  We passed by the Porters’ house.

  “Well, that’s not creepy as hell,” Gris murmured.

  I looked to find Critch staring out the window at us. “Don’t profane,” I said, drawing a smirk from Gris. “I can’t figure out why you keep trying to stick him on my list.”

  “Because he belongs. He used to be a Watcher, up until I got the birthright. He figures I stole it from him.” Clearing his throat, he said, “Okay, first tell me about your list of who might’ve gotten into your house.”

  “Well, that’s just the thing—Mama is usually around. Though, she does take my sister to preschool in the mornings and stays in the foyer chatting with other parents.”