Chapter 19
“That’s it. That’s the dress.”
“Oh, thank God.” I exhale, taking in my reflection in the dressing room mirror.
“Well, don’t agree with me just because you’re exhausted,” Kayla snaps, well into our third hour of trying to find a Prom dress that strikes the right balance between gorgeous and sexy while also giving some shape to my sort of flat-chested but lean athlete’s body—not an easy task by a long shot. Kayla, of course, found the perfect dress only a half-hour after we showed up at the mall because she has a real eye for what looks good on her, which is everything since she’s built like she just walked out of a lingerie catalog. If Kayla weren’t here steering me toward outfits such as the knee-length, emerald halter dress I’m wearing right now, I’d probably end up blowing yet another hour of my life on shopping before giving up and going to Prom in jeans and one of my mom’s old Pearl Jam tour t-shirts.
“This is your Prom dress we’re talking about here,” Kayla continues. “You’ll be in this thing for hours, so you’d better be in love with it.”
I run my hand down the front of the dress and turn so I can view myself in profile. “It’s comfortable,” I start, which produces an immediate snort from Kayla.
“Comfortable? Who gives a rat’s ass if it’s comfortable? Do you like the way you look?”
I face myself head-on in the mirror once again, amazed at how the gathers of material—Kayla called it “ruching” earlier, which I’d never heard of before—actually create the illusion that I’m a girl with a tiny waist and something approximating a butt, all without plastic surgery. “Yeah,” I admit, allowing myself a little smile at my reflection. “I think I like it.”
“Good, because you look amazing.” Kayla reaches over and slides the ponytail holder from my hair, standing behind me so she can fluff my thick blonde mop out around my shoulders. “Here,” she begins, drawing strands from either side and catching them at the back of my head with the elastic. “You should wear your hair like this, down but swept up at the sides, do some curls—”
“Yeah?”
“Uh huh. Kieran’ll pass out when he sees you, you’ll be so hot.”
“You think?”
“Of course,” she says, smirking. “He’ll literally pass out. One look at you and he’ll fall asleep.”
I cover my mouth so I don’t laugh too much out loud here in the dressing room, and Kayla joins me. “That was bad,” I say, once my giggles subside a little. “Laughing about his condition doesn’t seem like a very ‘supportive girlfriend’ thing to do.”
“Sometimes you need to laugh about the whole thing. Trust me—it helps.”
I don’t have a good response, so I refocus my attention on twisting my body around in front of the mirror, trying to stare at the dress from every possible angle before making any decisions. “Zip, buy the thing already,” Kayla goads me. “It’s the perfect dress for your build and coloring, and it matches your eyes—really makes them pop. You’re going to be the hottest girl at Prom.”
“Let’s not be delusional,” I say, glaring at her. “But, yeah—I think this dress is the one.”
“Okay. You get changed and check out, and I’ll meet you over in shoes.”
Shoes. I guess I need shoes to go with this thing. Will the shopping hell never end?
Fifteen minutes later, my dress in a long plastic garment bag slung over my shoulder, I find Kayla in the shoe department. She’s holding up a single black strappy heel and a matching purse so tiny I’m guessing only my phone, car keys, and driver’s license would fit inside. “I’ve already got a guy in back searching for these shoes. You said you were a size eight, right?”
“Yup. And thank you, O Master, for teaching me your ways.” I make an exaggerated bow in front of her after resting the garment bag over the back of a chair.
“No big deal,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You’re a fast learner—you’ll be shopping on your own like a grown-up in no time.”
A college-aged guy interrupts us, and the shoe box he’s carrying contains a pair of size eights that fit me perfectly. I toddle around the seating area for a few minutes, happy I don’t have to wear heels and dresses every day. I get dressed up maybe one or two times a year, and usually someone’s either dead or getting married when I do.
After I pay for the shoes and the purse, Kayla and I carry my treasures to her Jeep. Feeling around for the hook above the window so I can hang up my dress, I glance down and catch sight of a green file folder in the floorboard stuffed so full with papers they’re coming out the sides and experience a moment of panic. “We don’t have a big project due in some class I’m forgetting about, do we?” I ask.
“What?” she yells from the back of the Jeep, where she’s placing the bag containing my shoes in the storage space behind the seats.
“This folder in the floorboard. Looks like you’re doing research for something.”
Kayla shuts the back hatch and walks over to my side of the car. She stares down at the folder, her eyes narrowing as if she’s thinking, trying to remind herself what it is. “It’s…it’s something I’ve kind of been working on for a while,” she tells me, glancing around.
“You okay?”
The way she’s whipping her head about the parking lot makes me wonder for a second if Kieran didn’t tell her about Frank Dozier. We promised not to say anything to anyone, and while I haven’t mentioned anything, Kieran trusts Kayla. Or at least he used to—after his birthday, maybe he’s not telling her as much anymore.
“I’m good,” Kayla assures me, refocusing her gaze on the folder in the floorboard. “Um…do you need to be home right away?”
I pull my phone from my jeans pocket, and the home screen tells me it’s just after three, hours before Kieran’s supposed to come over and watch movies tonight. “Nope,” I respond, and she nods towards a coffee shop named Coffee Time in the strip mall at the other end of the main mall’s parking lot.
“Want to hang out for a while?” she asks. “Drinks are on me.”
“In that case, lead the way.” I laugh as she reaches down past me to grab the folder from the floorboard, clutching the papers to her chest while she locks the car with the push button on her keychain. We don’t say anything until we’re almost at the coffee shop and Kayla breaks the silence. “It’ll feel so good to tell someone else about this,” she breathes, holding open the door to Coffee Time so I can walk in ahead of her. I stroll up to the counter and pretend to survey the menu near the ceiling for something I want, but I’m more focused on what’s in the green folder and what Kayla’s going to tell me about it.
How many more secrets are the Laniers carrying around?
Not a fan of coffee drinks other than first thing in the morning, I grab a bottled raspberry smoothie from the drink cooler next to the counter, while Kayla orders a cinnamon latté topped with whipped cream. After the girl behind the counter makes the latté and Kayla pays for our drinks, we ease into a booth of Kayla’s choice in the far back corner of Coffee Time, this whole deal seeming more and more like some kind of international spy game by the minute.
“Okay, what’s up?” I come out and ask as soon as my butt hits the vinyl seat. “You’re freaking me out here.”
“I don’t mean to,” she says, resting an elbow on the green folder as if she’s trying to protect it. “I’m probably just crazy paranoid.”
“About what?”
Kayla takes a deep breath before launching into her story. “Well, a few years ago, Mom did this home school environmental biology unit with us, and we were reading stuff about companies polluting drinking water and cancer rates spiking in places. I guess I started thinking…God, you’re totally going to think I’ve gone outer limits.”
I shake my head after gulping down some smoothie. “I won’t. Promise.”
“Well, I’d known the truth about Kieran for a while at this point, and I thought, why would Morgan Levert want to track Kieran down when he’d
barely been a part of his life in the first place? I mean, he and Jenna Bradley didn’t give a crap about him before everything went down, or they would’ve cleaned themselves up and tried to make a better life for him.”
“Could be like your dad said,” I offer. “Maybe Morgan thinks if he can get his hands on Kieran, he can make him commit crimes with him or something. You know—control him like he could sort of control Jenna and Frank Dozier.”
“Or maybe he wants to control all of us.” Kayla pushes the folder toward me, which I take as a signal to open it. I do so, slowly, as if I’m afraid creatures will come flying out at me like Pandora’s Box. But all I find is article after article on terrorist plots to poison U.S. water supplies and a bunch of articles about cults—some on a group named the People’s Temple, and a few more about some Marshall Applewhite guy and something called Heaven’s Gate.
“So you think Morgan Levert wants to poison water systems with this stuff?” I ask, careful to keep any note of doubt out of my voice.
“No clue. But think about it, though—he knows what the drug did to Kieran, and he knows what he was able to get Jenna Bradley and Frank Dozier to do when they were messed up. Dad said he wanted to pull off something bigger than robbing a liquor store. Maybe this is it.”
I tap my fingers on the smoothie bottle, trying to straighten out my thoughts. “You think I need to be committed,” she says, shifting her eyes to my fingertips on the glass.
“No. Just trying to get my head around everything. You think Morgan’s been sitting around in prison all these years plotting ways to turn people into living zombies?”
“Well, I can’t see inside his head, obviously, but I wouldn’t rule anything out. Even if he’s not planning something himself, he’s been locked up for years with people who might be willing to pay a lot of money for a substance that basically allows you to control people and might help some people get glimpses of the future. Or these people would know someone who would pay for something like that. I mean, Morgan’s a guy who’s never had a real job and spent his twenties and thirties in prison. Unless he picked up some amazing life skills while he was behind bars, he’ll probably be interested in an easy way to score some cash.”
I swallow some more smoothie, but the mixture becomes sludge in my throat and I need to cough a little to help it go down.
“Think about what someone could do with this stuff,” Kayla continues, thumbing through the articles and pulling out ones on Heaven’s Gate and the People’s Temple. I only skim the readings, but I get the general idea—the leaders of these two “churches” could talk their followers into doing anything, including committing suicide. “This Jim Jones guy?” Kayla says, pointing at one of the People’s Temple articles. “People first started following him because they thought he was a faith healer and had visions. Imagine how easy it would be for someone to convince you to follow him if he were actually having flashes of things that happen in the future. And then he could just start dosing you to get you to do whatever he wanted? I mean, if this stuff fell into the wrong hands—some crazy person or someone bad in the government or something—that’s some major scariness, Zip.”
“Yeah, but nobody really understands what this stuff can do,” I point out, thinking back over years of science classes and lab experiments. “Morgan was able to observe how it worked in two people besides himself. Kieran’s the only person who’s been exposed to it in the womb and has the sleeping issues. That’s only four people total, and their symptoms aren’t even consistent.”
Kayla stares down at the table, curving her hand around her cup, and I’m guessing she’s not thrilled about my trying to blow a hole in her conspiracy theories. So I do my best to travel a middle ground. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about any of this, but all we know is what one convicted felon told your Dad,” I tell her. “Nobody’s done a study or tests to find out what happens when you replicate exposure among a wider group of people. I mean, could be this stuff has absolutely no effect on some people, and then what good would it do to make a bunch of people drink it?”
“When was the last time you saw an evil scientist in a movie doing a clinical drug trial?” Kayla counters. “Morgan, or whoever he might be working with, probably isn’t going to care what this stuff does to some people but might not do to others. I think when you’re looking to cause a whole lot of mayhem, you just kind of jump in and cause it and watch what happens. This stuff obviously does something to some people—we know that much, and so does Morgan Levert.”
Now Kayla’s got me paranoid, and I start looking around the coffee shop in the same way she was checking out the parking lot earlier. No one else is here, save for the employees and a young couple at the counter buying frappacinos for their kids. Feeling dumb, I stare at my smoothie bottle and start picking at the white label right below an orange sunburst logo, both the sun itself and the rays extending from the sphere like octopus tentacles outlined in black. It takes me a minute to realize I’ve seen the symbol before, but when I do, I set the bottle down and push it away from me as if I’ve been drinking from a vial of poison.
“Something wrong with your smoothie?” Kayla asks.
I place my fingers on the edge of the table, not sure how to proceed with what I want to say, almost laughing inside at the strange role-reversal Kayla and I are undergoing—now I’m the one who’s hoping she’ll believe me. “Kayla, what if I told you I’m having dreams?” I ask.
“Well, everybody does,” she breathes through a slight laugh.
“I know. But I’m not one of those people who remembers a lot of my dreams. On the morning of my birthday, though, I woke up and remembered this really vivid dream about Kieran—”
Kayla presses her palms to her eyes and cuts me off. “Oh, my God. No details. I almost can’t believe someone’s dating my stupid brother in the first place, so I don’t want to hear any disgusting fantasies you’re having about him, okay?”
After she drops her hands, I wad up a napkin and zing it at her, the paper striking her nose and falling into her lap. “Not that kind of dream, you big perv. I saw him standing in this clearing in the woods, looking out at some mountains, and he was up high, like on another mountain or a hill or something. I thought it might be somewhere in North Carolina, because it seemed like descriptions I’d read in his dream journals and things you guys have said.”
“Okay,” she prompts, sensing I’m not finished.
“I’ve read how sometimes stuff in your waking life influences what you dream, so I thought I was dreaming about North Carolina or wherever because Kieran had shown me his journals, you know? But then I started having these dreams about Prom,” I continue, using the plural because I’ve had four of them now, all of which I’ve meticulously recorded on my computer. “Kieran and I are dancing, and I’m looking out at everyone else having a good time. Then everything goes dark, like I’m watching TV or something and the power cuts out.”
Kayla leans forward, folding her arms across the articles we’ve spread out between us. “I get what’s happening. I did this, too, when I first found out about Kieran,” she tells me, voice comforting. “You start thinking you’re having dreams like he is, even though you know it’s not possible. You think every dream means something.”
I’m moving my head back and forth almost before the last sentence is out of her mouth. “This logo?” I say, grabbing the smoothie bottle and turning it around so she can see the sunburst. “I dreamed about it three weeks ago.”
Kayla’s eyes shift toward the sunburst and back to me. “You’re sure?”
“Like I said, for three weeks, I’ve been remembering everything I dream about like I never have before. I wrote everything out on my laptop.”
Kayla squints as if she’s thinking something through. “No—wait a minute,” she says, eyes blinking back to their normal state. “This is all coincidence. I mean, Kieran’s not contagious. What you think is happening to you doesn’t make any sense.”
I exhale, rea
dy to lay my last surprise on her. “Frank Dozier’s in Titusville,” I say, shutting my eyes.
“What?” Kayla shrieks so loudly that when I open my eyes and turn around, I see the young couple from the counter looking back at us from their table just inside the front door. I’m guessing that to them, we seem like two teenage girls gossiping and nothing more.
“At least he was in Titusville,” I tell her. “Kieran and I think we might’ve scared him off.”
“Kieran’s seen him, too?”
“Yeah. He was working at the Downtown Diner. Big guy waiting tables. I’m not sure when he started working, but Kieran and I always sat in the same booth, so he would wait on us every day.”
“I’ve been to the Diner a few times with Brad on weekends, but I’m not sure I saw him,” Kayla says, cocking her head as she tries to remember. “I never paid much attention to who was waiting on us.”
“You know what Frank Dozier looks like?” I ask.
“Sort of. I found pictures of Morgan and Frank on the web years ago, but I don’t think I’d recognize either of them right away now.”
“Well, Kieran and I looked them up, too, once your parents told us everything,” I tell her. “Pretty much the second we saw Frank’s picture, we knew who he was. So we went to the Diner and tried to get him to talk a little bit about his background, you know, just to find out what he’d say, and...”
“And you tipped him off with all the questions.” Kayla sighs as she finishes my thought for me.
“We think so. We went back the next day and he was gone. Dewayne said he didn’t leave a trace. So we’ve got no clue whether he really left or if he’s hiding out somewhere. Kieran didn’t want to tell your parents anything because he’s afraid they’ll make you move again.”
“He’s right. They’d pack us up in a second if they found out.” Kayla glances up at the ceiling for a moment as if the solution to our predicament lies somewhere in the white tiles. “I don’t know what the point would be in leaving now, though. My parents lied to people around Asheville about where we were going when we left, so my aunt’s the only person in North Carolina who knows we’re here. But Frank Dozier was obviously able to track us down somehow. What would stop him or Morgan Levert from figuring out where we’ve gone if we run again? If they can find us once, they can find us twice.”
I watch as Kayla drains the last of her latté, her expression mildly panicked when she puts down the cup as if she’s just thought of something. “So you think your dreams and Frank Dozier being in Titusville are connected?” she breathes.
“I don’t know, but your poisoning theory makes more sense to me now. Frank Dozier waited on us every day, Kayla. Every day, I sat there and drank, like, two or three diet sodas. Sometimes we’d get refills to go, too.” I shut my eyes in order to concentrate and do the math out loud. “About four sodas a day every weekday for six weeks, so…four times five is twenty, times six is…one-hundred and twenty times he could’ve slipped me something.” Slumping back against the booth, I feel my body deflate like a beach ball losing air as reality sets in. “Oh, my God,” I whimper. “What if Frank and Morgan are using me as some kind of human guinea pig to see how this stuff works?”
“Okay, okay. Wait a minute,” Kayla says, her voice completely calm. “Don’t panic. Let’s be cool about this and think everything through.”
I breathe, mouth fully open, lungs gasping for air. Bobbing my head up and down, I’m grateful Kayla’s here to talk me down. “Anything else happening besides the dreams?” she asks. “Anything weird with your sleeping patterns? Or have you been really tired lately?”
“No.”
Kayla’s questions make me feel like I’m having the most bizarre doctor’s visit in history, although anyone listening in with no context for what we’re talking about might wonder if we’re speculating on some everyday illness or a reaction to a new medication I’m taking.
“Blackouts?” she asks.
“No.”
Kayla’s nose scrunches up as she thinks. “You’re sure? Kieran describes his blackout moments as being like he’s watching a movie with the scenes messed up. One second he’s somewhere and the next he’s somewhere else, but with no logical movement from Point A to Point B.”
“Nothing like that’s happened to me.” Yet, I end the sentence inside my head. Nothing like the walking blackouts or sleeping at strange times has hit me so far, but who’s to say something won’t start later? Who knows how this stuff works in my body, in anyone’s body, really?
What’s going to happen to me?
Leaning forward, I lower my head, the chill of the fake marble table top against my cheek tempering a bit of the fire I feel spreading throughout my body. I’m nauseous, but running to the bathroom and throwing up won’t do anything but bring up my smoothie and some bits of the turkey sandwich I ate before Kayla picked me up to go shopping. What I really want to force out of me won’t leave. It’s probably surging through my bloodstream right now, changing me forever.
“Zip? You okay?” Kayla whispers.
“No. So not okay.”
I lift my head enough to rest my chin on the faux marble. As if she’s trying to sympathize with me, Kayla leans down and mirrors my posture, the two of us headless bodies on either side of the table. Anyone watching us would think we’re insane.
“So nothing’s out of the ordinary besides the dreams?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then this could be coincidence,” Kayla pronounces, sitting up. “We don’t have any proof Frank Dozier was slipping Joy Juice into your sodas. He may not even be able to make the stuff. And your dreams…that could be Kieran’s influence.”
“What about the Prom dream?” I ask.
“You’re probably just nervous about going,” she points out. “Your brain’s trying to convince you something bad’s going to happen.”
“Okay,” I say, willing to follow her line of argument—to a point. “What about the sunbursts, though?”
“Kieran doodles stupid crap like that almost every day. That’s where you’ve seen them before.”
I grab the bottle again and tilt it toward Kayla. “But they’re never like this when Kieran draws them, and I dreamed them exactly like the one here—orange with a black outline.”
Kayla takes the bottle from me and studies the symbol. “This is the Malsun Foods logo, Zip.” She sighs so hard, I’m surprised she doesn’t add You dumbass on the end of her statement. Leaning across the table, Kayla extends the bottle toward me, her thumbnail below some tiny orange print next to the sunburst, and I reach out and pull the glass cylinder close to my face so I can read the words Malsun Foods.
“You probably see this everywhere and don’t realize you do,” Kayla continues. “They make, like, everything—NutraSmoothie, NutraWater, NutraNut Bars, Cinnamon Puffy Os, Shock! Sodas…”
That explains it—I eat NutraNut Bars in the morning sometimes, and my mom always makes sure we have a box of Cinnamon Puffy Os in the house. And both Mom and I have been known to chug a Diet Shock! Soda or two in the mornings when we’re out of coffee, thanks to the fact Shock! has twice the caffeine of other sodas.
“Frank Dozier didn’t drug you,” Kayla insists. “You’re dreaming of things you’ve already seen or that you’re anxious about. And however Frank Dozier figured out we’re here, hopefully you and Kieran spooked him enough that he’s gone.”
“What if he’s not?” I whisper, as if I’m afraid Frank Dozier can hear us.
Kayla swirls the last few droplets of latté around in the bottom of her cup. “Then we keep our eyes open and live our lives until he decides to show up again. And we’re going to go to Prom and dance like nobody’s watching.”