by L. J. Smith
She dialed the combination slowly, everything too bright.
The locker door opened.
This time she couldn’t even scream. She felt her eyes opening, straining as wide as the stuffed owl’s. Her mouth opened in a soundless gasp. Her stomach heaved. The smell . . .
Her locker was full of hamburger. Raw and red like flesh with the skin torn off, darkening to purple where it was going bad from lack of refrigeration. Pounds and pounds of it. It smelled like . . .
Like meat. Dead meat.
Cassie slammed the locker shut, but it bounced off some of the hamburger that was oozing out the bottom. She whirled and stumbled away, her vision hazing over.
A hand grabbed her. For an instant she thought it was an offer of support. Then she felt her backpack being pulled off her shoulder.
She turned and saw a pretty, sullen face. Malicious dark eyes. A motorcycle jacket. Deborah tossed the backpack past Cassie, and automatically Cassie whirled, following it.
On the other side she saw shoulder-length blond hair. Slanted, slightly mad blue-green eyes. A laughing mouth. It was one of the roller-blade guys—the Henderson brothers.
“Welcome to the jungle,” he sang. He threw the backpack to Deborah, who caught it, singing another line.
Cassie couldn’t help turning around and around between them, like a cat chasing a fur mouse on a string.
Tears flooded her eyes. The laughter and singing rang in her ears, louder and louder.
Suddenly a brown arm thrust into her field of vision. A hand caught the backpack in midair. The laughter died.
She turned to see through a blur of tears the cold, handsome face of the dark-haired guy who had stood with Faye that morning two days ago . . . could it really be only two days ago? He was wearing another T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the same worn-in black jeans.
“Aw, Nick,” the Henderson brother complained. “You’re wrecking our game.”
“Get out of here,” Nick said.
“You get out,” Deborah snarled from behind Cassie. “Doug and me were just—”
“Yeah, we were only—”
“Shut up.” Nick glanced at Cassie’s locker, with globs of meat still seeping out of it. Then he thrust the backpack at her. “You get out,” he said.
Cassie looked into his eyes. They were dark brown, the color of her grandmother’s mahogany furniture. And like the furniture, they seemed to reflect the overhead lights back at her. They weren’t unfriendly, exactly. Just—unimpassioned. As if nothing much touched this guy.
“Thank you,” she said, blinking back the tears.
Something flickered in those mahogany-dark eyes. “It’s not much to thank me for,” he said. His voice was like a cold wind, but Cassie didn’t care. Clutching the backpack to her, she fled.
It was in physics class that she got the note.
A girl named Tina dropped it on her desk, casually, trying to look as if she were doing nothing of the sort. She went right on walking and took a seat on the other side of the room. Cassie looked at the square of folded paper as if it might burn her if she touched it. Her name was written across the front in handwriting that managed to look pompous and prim at the same time.
Slowly, she unfolded the paper.
Cassie, it read. Meet me in the old science building, second floor, after school. I think we can help each other. A friend.
Cassie stared at it until the writing doubled. After class she cornered Tina.
“Who gave you this to give to me?”
The girl looked at the note disowningly. “What are you talking about? I didn’t . . .”
“Yes, you did. Who gave it to you?”
Tina cast a hunted look around. Then she whispered, “Sally Waltman, all right? But she told me not to tell anybody. I have to go now.”
Cassie blocked her. “Where’s the old science building?”
“Look—”
“Where is it?”
Tina hissed, “On the other side of E-wing. In back of the parking lot. Now let me go!” She broke away from Cassie and hurried off.
A friend, Cassie thought sarcastically. If Sally were really a friend, she’d talk to Cassie in public. If she were really a friend, she’d have stayed that day on the steps, instead of leaving Cassie alone with Faye. She’d have said, “Thanks for saving my life.”
But maybe she was sorry now.
The old science building didn’t look as if it had been used for a while; there was a padlock on the door, but that had been sprung. Cassie pushed on the door and it swung away from her.
Inside, it was dim. She couldn’t make out any details with her light-dazzled eyes. But she could see a stairway. She climbed it, one hand on the wall to guide herself.
It was when she reached the top of the stairway that she noticed something strange. Her fingers were touching something . . . soft. Almost furry. She moved them in front of her face, peering at them. Soot?
Something moved in the room in front of her.
“Sally?” She took a hesitant step forward. Why wasn’t more light coming in the windows? she wondered. She could see only glowing white cracks here and there. She took another shuffling step, and another, and another.
“Sally?”
Even as she said it, realization finally dawned on her exhausted brain. Not Sally. Whoever, whatever was out there, it wasn’t Sally.
Turn around, idiot. Get out of here. Now.
She whirled, clumsily, straining her dark-adapting eyes, looking for the deeper blackness of the stairwell—
And light shone suddenly, streaming into her face, blinding her. There was a creaking, wrenching noise and more light burst into the room. Through a window that had been boarded up, Cassie realized. Someone was standing in front of it now, holding a piece of wood.
She turned toward the stairway again. But someone was standing there, too. Enough light shone into the room now that she could see features as the girl stepped forward.
“Hello, Cassie,” said Faye. “I’m afraid Sally couldn’t make it. But maybe you and I can help each other instead.”
Chapter 8
“You sent the note,” Cassie said flatly.
Faye smiled her slow, terrible smile. “Somehow I didn’t think you’d come if I used my own name,” she said.
And I fell for it, Cassie thought. She must have coached that girl Tina on what to say—and I swallowed it.
“How do you like the little presents you’ve been finding?”
Tears came to Cassie’s eyes. She couldn’t answer. She felt so drained, so helpless—if only she could think.
“Haven’t you been sleeping well?” Faye continued, her throaty voice innocent. “You look awful. Or maybe your dreams have been keeping you awake.”
Cassie turned to cast a quick look behind her. There was an exit there, but Suzan was in front of it.
“Oh, you can’t go yet,” Faye said. “I wouldn’t dream of letting you.”
Cassie stared at her. “Faye, just leave me alone . . .”
“Dream on,” said Deborah, and she laughed nastily.
Cassie could make no sense out of this. But then she saw that Faye was holding a sheet of paper. It was smoothed flat, but it had once been tightly crumpled.
Her poem.
Anger blazed through her exhaustion. Blazed so bright that for an instant she was full of energy, lifted by it. She lunged at Faye crying, “That’s mine!”
It took Faye by surprise. She reeled back, dodging, holding the poem high out of Cassie’s reach.
Then something caught Cassie’s arms from behind, pinning them.
“Thank you, Deborah,” Faye said, slightly breathless. She looked at Cassie. “I suppose even a little white mouse will turn. We’ll have to remember that. But just now,” she continued, “we’re going to have an impromptu poetry reading. I’m sorry the atmosphere isn’t more—appropriate—but what can you do? This used to be the science building, but nobody comes here much anymore. Not since Doug and Chris H
enderson made a little mistake in a chemistry experiment. You’ve probably seen the Henderson brothers—they’re hard to miss. Nice guys, but a little irresponsible. They accidentally made a bomb.”
Now that Cassie’s eyes had adjusted again, she could see that the room was burned out. The walls were black with soot.
“Of course, some people think it’s unsafe here,” Faye continued, “so they keep it locked. But we’ve never let a little thing like that stop us. It is private, though. We can make all the noise we want and nobody will hear us.”
Deborah’s grip on Cassie’s arms was painful. But Cassie started to struggle again as Faye cleared her throat and held up the paper.
“Let me see . . . ‘My Dreams,’ by Cassie Blake. Imaginative title, by the way.”
“You don’t have any right—” Cassie began, but Faye ignored her. She began reading in a theatrical, melodramatic voice:
“Each night I lie and dream about the one—”
“It’s private!” Cassie cried.
“Who kissed me and awakened my desire—”
“Let me go!”
“I spent a single hour with him alone—”
“It isn’t fair—”
“And since that hour, my days are laced with fire.” Faye looked up. “That’s it. What do you think, Deborah?”
“It stinks,” Deborah said, then gave a little wrench to Cassie’s arms as Cassie tried to tear away. “It’s stupid.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I liked some of the imagery. About fire, for instance. Do you like fire, Cassie?”
Cassie went still. That lazy, husky voice had a new note in it, a note she recognized instinctively. Danger.
“Do you think about fire, Cassie? Do you dream about it?”
Dry-mouthed, Cassie stared at Faye. Those honey-colored eyes were warm, glowing. Excited.
“Would you like to see a fire trick?”
Cassie shook her head. There were things worse than humiliation, she was realizing. For the first time this week she was afraid, not for her pride, but for her life.
Faye snapped the piece of paper in her hand, forming it into a loose cone. Flame burst out of one corner at the top.
“Why don’t you tell us who the poem is about, Cassie? This boy who awakened you—who is he?”
Cassie leaned away, trying to escape the blazing paper in front of her face.
“Careful,” Deborah said mockingly from behind her. “Don’t get too close to her hair.”
“What, you mean this close?” said Faye. “Or this close?”
Cassie had to twist her neck to evade the flame. Little glowing bits of paper were flying off in every direction. The brightness left an afterimage, and she could feel heat on her skin.
“Oops, that was close. I think her eyelashes are too long anyway, Deborah, don’t you?”
Cassie was fighting now, but Deborah was astonishingly strong. And the more Cassie struggled, the more the grip hurt.
“Let go of me—” she gasped out.
“But I thought you liked fire, Cassie. Look into the fire. What do you see?”
Cassie didn’t want to obey, but she couldn’t help it. Surely the paper should have burned up by now. But it was still blazing. Yellow, she thought. Fire is yellow and orange. Not red like they say.
All her senses were fixed on the flame. Its heat brought a dry tingle to her cheeks. She could hear the crumple of paper as it was consumed; she could smell the burning. And she could see nothing else.
Gray ash and yellow flame. Blue at the bottom like a gas burner. The fire changed shape every second, its radiance streaming endlessly upward. Pouring out its energy . . .
Energy.
Fire is power, she thought. She could almost feel the charge of the golden flame. It wasn’t the vast quietness of sky and sea, or the waiting solidity of rock. It was active. Power there for the taking . . .
“Yes,” Faye whispered.
The sound shocked Cassie out of her trance. Don’t be crazy, she told herself. Her fantasy about the flame collapsed. This was what happened when you didn’t get any sleep. When the stress became unbearable and you got to the end of your resources. She was going insane.
Tears flooded her eyes, fell down her cheeks.
“Oh, she’s just a baby after all,” Faye said, and there was savage disgust in her voice. Disgust and something like disappointment. “Come on, baby, can’t you cry any harder than that? If you cry hard enough, maybe you can put it out.”
Still sobbing, Cassie tossed her head back and forth as the blazing paper stabbed closer. So close that tears fell on it and sizzled. Cassie was no longer thinking; she was simply terrified. Like a trapped animal, a desperate, pathetic trapped animal.
Dead meat dead meat dead meat dead meat . . .
“What are you doing? Let go of her—now!”
The voice came out of nowhere, and for an instant Cassie didn’t even attempt to locate it. Her whole being was focused on the fire. It flared up suddenly, dissolving almost instantaneously into soft gray ash. Faye was left holding only a stump of charred paper cone.
“I said let her go!” Something bright came at Deborah. But not bright like fire. Bright like sunlight. Or moonlight, when the moon is full and so dazzling you can read by it.
It was her.
The girl, the girl from the yellow house, the girl with the shining hair. Utterly dumbfounded, Cassie stared as if seeing her for the first time.
She was almost as tall as Faye, but unlike Faye in every other respect. Where Faye was voluptuous, she was slender; where Faye was dressed in red, she was dressed in white. Instead of a wild black mane like Faye’s, her hair was long and straight and shimmering—the color of the light streaming in the window.
And of course she was beautiful, even more beautiful this close than she had been at a distance. But it was a beauty so different from Faye’s it was hard to think of it as the same thing. Faye’s beauty was stunning but scary. Her strange golden eyes were fascinating, but they also made you want to run away.
This girl looked like something from a stained-glass window. For the first time Cassie saw her eyes, and they were green and clear, brilliant, as if light were behind them. Her cheeks were faintly flushed with rose, but it was natural color, not makeup.
Her breast was heaving with indignation, and her voice, though clear and musical, was filled with anger.
“When Tina told me she’d delivered that note for you, I knew there was something going on,” she said. “But this is unbelievable. For the last time, Deborah, let her go!”
Slowly, reluctantly, the grip on Cassie’s arms loosened.
“Look at this . . . you could have hurt her,” the fair-haired girl raged on. She had a Kleenex out and was wiping ash—and tears—off Cassie’s cheeks. “Are you all right?” she asked, her tone gentling.
Cassie could only look at her. The shining girl had come to rescue her. It was like something out of a dream.
“She’s frightened to death,” the girl said, turning on Faye. “How could you, Faye? How could you be so cruel?”
“It just comes naturally,” Faye murmured. Her eyes were hooded, sullen. As sullen as Deborah’s face.
“And you, Suzan—I’m surprised at you. Don’t you see how wrong it is?”
Suzan mumbled something, looking away.
“And why would you want to hurt her? Who is she?” She had a protective arm around Cassie now as she looked from one of the senior girls to another. None of them answered.
“I’m Cassie,” Cassie said. Her voice wobbled at the end, and she tried to steady it. All she could feel was the girl’s arm around her shoulder. “Cassie Blake,” she managed to finish. “I just moved here a couple of weeks ago. Mrs. Howard is my grandmother.”
The girl looked startled. “Mrs. Howard? At Number Twelve? And you’re living with her?”
Fear darted through Cassie. She remembered Jeffrey’s reaction to hearing where she lived. She would die if this girl responded the same wa
y. Wretchedly, she nodded.
The fair-haired girl whirled back on Faye. “Then she’s one of us! A neighbor,” she added sharply as Faye’s eyebrows shot up.
“Oh, hardly,” Faye said.
“She’s only half—” Suzan began.
“Shut up!” said Deborah.
“She’s a neighbor,” the fair-haired girl repeated stubbornly. She looked at Cassie. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know you’d moved in. If I had”—she threw an angry glance at Faye—“I’d have stopped by. I live down at the bottom of Crowhaven Road, Number One.” She gave Cassie another protective squeeze. “Come on. If you want, I’ll take you home now.”
Cassie nodded. She would have happily followed if the girl had told her to jump out a window.
“I forgot to introduce myself,” the girl said, stopping on the way to the stairs. “My name’s Diana.”
“I know.”
Diana had a blue Acura Integra. She stopped in front of it and asked Cassie if she wanted to get anything from her locker.
With a shudder, Cassie shook her head.
“Why not?”
Cassie hesitated. Then told her. Everything.
Diana listened, arms folded, toe tapping with increasing speed as the story went on. Her green eyes were beginning to shine with an almost incandescent fury.
“Don’t worry about it,” was all she said at the end. “I’ll call and have the custodian clean out the locker. For now, we need to get you out of here.”
She drove, telling Cassie to leave the Rabbit. “We’ll take care of it later.” And Cassie believed her. If Diana said it would be taken care of, it would be taken care of.
In the car, all Cassie could do was stare at a strand of long, shining hair falling over the emergency brake. It was like sunlight-colored silk. Or sunlight-and-moonlight colored, rather. For an instant, in the back of Cassie’s mind, a thought popped up about someone else who had hair that was more than one color, but when she grasped after it, it was gone.
She didn’t quite dare to touch the strand of hair, although she wanted to see if it felt like silk too. Instead she tried to listen to what Diana was saying.
“. . . and I don’t know what gets into Faye sometimes. She just doesn’t think. She doesn’t realize what she’s doing.”