by E. M. Fitch
A command or a request? Did it matter either way?
There weren’t any flowers on her doorstep. That was good. They came in uneven intervals, almost as though they were an afterthought. Though, maybe with Aidan’s newest escalation, the flower delivery would stop. Not that it really mattered. Be it flowers, burnt soccer fields, or painted buildings, she wasn’t rid of Aidan yet. And until she was, she’d wait until someone else was home before taking that shower.
She walked to the kitchen. On the counter, a pan of lasagna sat thawing. Cassie was unsure how long it had been out. There was a small puddle of water ringing the edges, but it still felt cold to the touch. She grabbed a plate and cut a square, microwaving it until she heard pops and hisses from behind the glass door.
Just as she was lifting the first bite to her mouth, she heard the bolt on the front door slide open.
“Cass?”
“In here,” she answered through a mouthful of pasta. Her father stomped down the short hall, smiling at his daughter when he entered the kitchen.
“You started without me,” he said, pulling a fork out of the drawer. Cassie shrugged. “Just as well. I told your mom I had this in the oven already. Completely forgot.”
Cassie laughed, shaking her head as her father ate right from the lasagna dish, not even bothering to warm up the forkfuls before he swallowed them.
As soon as she was done eating, Cassie headed upstairs. Before she turned the shower on, she checked behind the curtain. Nothing was there, of course, but Cassie couldn’t help but look these days. She twisted the knob until the water was full blast and as hot as it could get. She turned to the window, double-checking that the hatch was secure and the blinds in place, and then yelled a goodnight down to her dad. He had been out of sorts all throughout their informal dinner, lost in agitated thought. His stare was focused on the back window as he drummed his fingers absently on their dinged-up kitchen table. He mentioned something about lessons to plan for, but Cassie could hear the movie he started a few moments later. The dialogue, totally cheesy, echoed up the stairwell over the sounds of the water running.
It could have been her exhaustion, or the floral shampoo she used that masked the scent. It could even have been her distraction, or how she hadn’t expected it to happen. Whatever it was, she was caught completely off guard when she threw her bedroom door open, wrapped only in a towel, and saw the large and intricate bouquet of roses propped on her pillow, the dewy stems encased in bark.
The flowers drew her attention, and then her focus scattered. Placed around her room—tucked into her mirror frame, propped on her nightstand, even folded into the throw blanket she had over the end of her bed—were delicate strips of bark. They varied in size, a couple only the length of a deck of cards, the largest as big as the textbook it was propped against. The smooth backs of the bark strips were similar though; each one had a different picture etched onto its surface. They were portraits, really, a dozen little etchings of her. From all around her room, delicate engravings of her own face stared back at her. They stared, laughed, pensively wondered, looked back at her. Lifelike, intricate, and done in a hand so attuned to her presence, no little detail of her appearance had been overlooked.
It was as though she had modeled for them. Aidan had caught her every mood, her every expression, and committed them not only to memory, but permanently with soft impressions in the discarded husk of the trees he loved so much.
Cassie had taken the roses and pitched them from the window. The window that had been locked; she was sure it had been locked. She’d secured it again, though what good did that do? Was there another window open in the house? Was that how Aidan had gotten in? Or had her father forgotten and left a door open?
Cassie hadn’t known what to do with the etchings. She wanted to burn them. Agitated and upset, the best she could come up with was shoving them in the box she still kept to remind her of Laney. Her bloody fingerprint marred the side of the box that held the shattered remnants of her friendship. Seashells, Laney’s old shirt, the broken picture frames and glass shards that had ripped open Cassie’s fingertip on the night of Laney’s candlelight vigil were all now covered by the disturbing stacks of bark she piled in there.
She hated how intensely Aidan watched her, could barely tolerate the intricacy of those portraits. Thrown on the highest shelf in her closet, mixed with the broken picture frames that contained Laney’s smiling, human face, they would be out of sight, at least.
It was bad enough that he watched her from afar, but the thought of Aidan just casually strolling through her home—touching things that belonged to her, things she used intimately—bothered her tremendously. The fear mixed with revulsion. Everything she touched or brushed against, she thought, Did he touch this?
“I don’t think it was a good idea to go there, Cassie,” her mother said, standing up from the table, empty cereal bowl in hand. “I really wish you had told us first where you were going.”
Cassie was dragged from her thoughts, thoughts of Aidan’s fingertips running over the faded paint of the stair banister, trailing over the seat of the old, wooden bench in the hall. She blinked up at her mother, having difficulty piecing together what she meant. She didn’t have much of an appetite that morning and it was hard to focus. An empty weekend loomed ahead with softball practices canceled in the wake of the vandalism at the school. The smell of fresh roses, the same flower that had been burnt with precision into the center of the soccer field, invaded her thoughts.
“I can’t believe they shut the school down,” her father muttered. He pushed his plate away. Cassie could see his agitation in the way his forehead scrunched. “These kids, they’re going to get a good history lesson from me when school starts up again. Maybe we’ll start with Salem 1692. Or maybe I’ll jump to the 1980s in Southern California.”
“And where were you yesterday? Letting her go off like that … ”
“She was with her friends. There’s no danger anyway.”
“So you’re not going to take this seriously?” her mother asked, turning from the sink where she was rinsing out her bowl to glare at her husband. “This is just how it started before—”
“We don’t even know what started in the fall, or how,” her father interrupted. With a darting look at Cassie, he changed direction. “Regardless, I don’t think this was the same person. I’d bet my salary it was a teenage copycat, probably a kid who wanted out of a math test.”
“Last time they didn’t shut the school down,” Cassie interjected, knowing inherently there was no way this was a copycat. She didn’t look up from her own bowl. Her cereal was beyond soggy. She drew her spoon through the sludge in a small infinity sign. It felt sick that she knew it, but she could spot Aidan’s handiwork. The burning rose was his, just as it was his words imprinted on the bricks, and his bouquet left on her pillow.
“Last time the PTA wasn’t breathing down anyone’s neck. Greg Callum saw the school on his jog yesterday evening and went into full panic mode,” Cassie’s father complained. “He was the first to call it in. No one inside the building had even noticed yet. So Callum called the PTA head, the school, the police. I think someone stopped him before he got to the newspapers.”
“Greg Callum was right to call everyone. It could just be a dumb kid, but it could also be—”
“Cathy,” her father interrupted again, “it’s not. It’s nothing! A stupid prank by a stupid kid. That’s all it ever is.”
“History may repeat itself, Patrick, but that doesn’t mean it won’t break out of the mold every once in a while.”
Cassie drove to school with her father Monday morning. No kids lingered outside. The parking lot was noticeably empty. Parents either dropped their kids off, or they kept their kids home from school altogether. Cassie wasn’t sure yet which it was.
It was a strange feeling, the prickling up her spine. Chilling fear danced over every nerve ending, though it was laced with warmth from a remarkabl
y clear, sunny morning: unspoken terror coated in sunshine.
“Don’t even think about skipping out today,” her father warned in an undertone as he threw the car in park. Cassie didn’t answer. He was on edge, annoyed and aggravated by what he felt was all a hoax in bad taste. She didn’t bother to point out that she hardly ever skipped school, and in the past year did so only when rumors about Jessica and Laney had gotten out of hand.
The walk into the brick school building was short. A handful of people hurried along near them, heads down, eyes lowered. Cassie felt her attention shift toward the direction of the soccer field. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see it again, once was enough. Her father cleared his throat purposefully, daring her with a look to try and break away from him. Her lips pressed together in a thin line and she looked forward with the rest of the students. No one stared up at the faded clean spot on the front of their school, the bricks power-washed twice now in the space of a few months.
Cassie didn’t need to see the residue left by the message anyway, it was imprinted in her mind. Join Me.
What she hadn’t expected was the young female officer waiting at the front door. Her father nodded curtly as he went through, jerking his head at Cassie to follow. Her hand gripped the open door as the officer spoke.
“You’re Cassie Harris, aren’t you?”
Cassie nodded. The officer didn’t say another word. The skin around her eyes tightened, almost imperceptibly, and she gestured for Cassie to go ahead.
“Stay in class,” her father said after Cassie came into the building. “I’ll drive you home after.”
“I have practice,” Cassie said, her eyes lingering on the police presence at the front door. She wondered if there were more of them, if maybe Officer Gibbons was wandering around the school grounds, too. It would be nice to see a friendly face, she thought.
“Not today,” Patrick said, frowning. “All after-school events remain canceled for the next week.”
“What?” Cassie yelped, her attention finally pulled from the front door. “We already missed a whole weekend. Everyone will go crazy. Why would they do that?”
“Parents are upset,” her father said, his facial expression relaxing for a moment. “They’re all worried it’s a gang of some kind, or a drug ring.”
“That’s insane!”
“Yes, it is. I know there’s not some super drug circulating about. But this latest graffiti is really stirring everyone up. The Evans have demanded a town hall meeting to discuss what we’re going to do about it. All the teachers have already been asked to attend.”
“Are Laney’s parents … ”
Cassie let the question hang, and she instantly regretted asking. It sounded like Jessica’s parents were leading the charge, which Cassie didn’t find all that odd. They needed to find something at fault for their daughter’s death. Cassie understood that. It would be easier if a gang of drug dealers were to blame, instead of a heart condition they would spend the rest of their life wondering how they had ever missed.
But the Blakes, though in the same kind of pain, weren’t the type to go to town hall meetings or stand on soap boxes. They had barely spoken to anyone all winter long, had barely been able to make it out of the house. What would this new wave of disturbance do to them, if the town really did get all riled up in a panic? Cassie hoped it wouldn’t get to that point, they had dealt with enough pain.
Her father walked her all the way to her first class. Half of the students were missing. Ryan was there, Cassie knew he would be, but even Rebecca had been kept at home. Her parents had insisted that she and her younger brother Jordan give the school a couple days to sort everything out.
The teachers didn’t bother with their lesson plans, most of the students weren’t there for the lectures anyway. Cassie knew her father’s freshmen Social Studies class would be getting a presentation on mass hysteria. He had been grumbling about it since Friday.
The undercurrent going through the student body was a mix of restrained annoyance and giddy excitement. Cassie found both obnoxious. Already she had overheard underclassmen whispering in the corners, giggling under their breath.
“Join who, do you think?”
“Hey, if he’s tall, dark, and handsome, you can count me in.”
“Or rich!”
They shut up when they saw Cassie round the corner.
It wasn’t until lunch period that Cassie noticed some of her classmates getting called to go to the principal’s office. Ami Henderson and Lexi Winalski were two of the first called down. By their expressions on their return to the cafeteria, it had not been a pleasant encounter. Both girls looked red around the eyes, angry scowls plastered over their faces. What Cassie found even more disturbing was that the rest of the student body made way for them, parting like the Red Sea when the two girls walked past. For the first time to Cassie, they stood out, clothes black and strategically ripped, bags strung over their shoulders and smeared with paint from one of their many projects. Cassie had never really seen it that way before. She had practically grown up with those girls, they had always been around. That’s just how it was in a small town like theirs. And though they had all taken their separate ways and maybe weren’t invited to the same parties any longer, there had been no shared animosity. Cassie liked them both, and as far as she knew they didn’t have a problem with her. Yet now, looking at the two of them wading back through a group of their peers after having been singled out by the administration, you would have thought they were a couple of outcasts.
They took a seat at the same table they had left from, their immediate friends crowding around for support. Again, as though with new eyes, Cassie noticed how similarly they were all dressed, dark hues with errant splashes of color, some purposeful, some not. But again, these were all kids Cassie knew. Cassie, more than anyone, could confirm that none of them were involved with the graffiti.
Cassie waited for her turn to be called to the principal’s office all day. She had been expecting it, but the call never came. Lots of kids were called down, though. Cassie didn’t want to notice the similarities, but she couldn’t not. It wasn’t any of the athletes, nor anyone on the school council either. Every single kid called down was into the arts, or skateboarders who took over the town parks after school, or chronic ditchers. They each came back looking angry and betrayed, binding together with their small crowd and glaring at the rest of the student body.
It was inherently wrong. Not just because the vandalism, graffiti, and what happened to Laney and Jessica had absolutely nothing to do with these kids, but because they were being picked out and targeted simply because they had their fun off school grounds and not in the organized routine the administration promoted.
Cassie could tell how much it enraged her father. Every time she saw him throughout the day, she expected to see steam pouring from his ears. She had never seen her soft-spoken father so furious. What she hadn’t expected was the animosity from her own peers.
She had thought, at first, that the agitation was general and not directed toward anyone in particular. It wasn’t until she was alone in the bathroom that she realized that wasn’t true. The words had been smeared in red lipstick across the mirrors.
Screw the jocks!
It caught her off guard. The door sprang open a minute later and Ami Henderson barged into the tile-covered space. She took one look at Cassie, and then the smeared mirrors behind her, and her lips twisted in irritation.
“Ami, how are you?”
“Freakin’ fabulous,” the girl muttered, pushing past Cassie and ripping paper towels from the dispenser to wipe down the mirrors. Cassie moved to help.
“That’s all we need,” Ami said, scrubbing hard at the oily resin left by the cheap makeup. “One more reason to haul me out of lunch.”
“That sucked, I’m really sorry,” Cassie said, wetting her own wad of paper towels to better scrub the mirror clean.
“Are you?” Ami quipped, her
tone saturated with sarcasm.
“I know it wasn’t you, or Lexi, or anyone else in this school.”
“It sure as hell wasn’t!”
“It’s not right. I agree with you. So does my dad, I’m sure. He won’t let—”
“You know what really sucks?” Ami interrupted, throwing her paper towels, now bright red, in the nearest sink basin. Trails of red leaked from the paper, spreading like tear tracks toward the drain. “They shouldn’t be calling me in at all. It’s you they should be asking!”
Cassie felt her eyes widen as she looked at the angry girl next to her. She couldn’t find the words to argue.
“You were with Jessica when she died. And you supposedly saw the Blake girl get kidnapped. Weren’t you lost in the woods with Buckner at one point? Didn’t he get hit in the head? Every time something went down, you were there. But do they call you in? The darling daughter of a teacher and a varsity softball princess? No. Of course not. It’s weirdos like me and Lexi, because we wear black and like to paint. Well, effing excuse me if I don’t give a shit about a ball getting thrown around. My bad. Of course it must be me splattering blood all over the side of the school. Because, you know, I’m such a freak!”
Ami turned on her heel and strode out of the bathroom. Cassie let her go. She was right. It was ridiculous that Ami and Lexi or any of the others were being questioned but not Cassie. In silence, she cleaned up the rest of the mirrors, showing up late for her last period class.
Laney had always told her that babysitting would get her into trouble. Cassie had brushed it off, time and time again. Now, sitting alone in the darkened house with both Sheridan children sleeping upstairs, Cassie was officially creeped out. It occurred to her suddenly, she couldn’t remember the last time she had been alone.
The Sheridans had shown up on her doorstep, completely unexpected, only two hours before. Cassie had already been in her pajamas, watching television and ignoring her homework. The town hall meeting started at seven that night. They had gotten a babysitter, someone who was not Cassie, because they had wanted to attend. At the last minute, that other babysitter had canceled. So they came to Cassie, somewhat nervously, to ask if she wouldn’t mind watching the kids.