He gave me a significant look. “In what way would splashing sensationalist headlines all over the place improve the situation?”
I wasn’t exactly a newsie, but being the daughter of the police commissioner, I was probably more conscious of current events and news than most people my age. I raised an eyebrow at my dad and said, “Since when do reporters care whether their reports improve the situation?”
He conceded my point with a nod—it was a rare police commissioner who thought very highly of the press. “They might not, but I do, and, more importantly, the mayor does.”
“So what you’re saying is you’re suppressing the story.”
“To the best of our ability. But unless the madness stops, we’re not going to be able to hold it back much longer. A day, maybe two, tops. The only thing that’s helped keep it under wraps so long is that no one can capture anything on camera. Can you imagine a mainstream news channel going on air with the photo of a perfectly ordinary parking deck and claiming there are gargoyles on it even though you can’t see them?”
I could see where he was coming from, and it made sense that the traditional news outlets would listen to the mayor and police commissioner when they suggested they not report anything until they had something with which to back up the story. “What about the tabloids? They don’t mind being thought of as crackpots.”
My dad made a sour face. He didn’t much like the mainstream press, but he loathed the tabloids. “Take a look at some of the headlines next time you’re in the grocery store. They’re reporting it—it’s just that no one really believes what they read in tabloids.”
Not ordinarily, maybe, but I had a feeling that the people who were seeing the changes were much more receptive to what the tabloids had to say right now.
“It’s a mess out there, Becks,” my dad said. “The crime spree and the craziness seem to be related, and they’re both getting worse every night. I don’t see myself getting home at a normal hour in the near future, but I think it’s best you stay inside as soon as the sun goes down. If you need anything at the grocery store or whatever, get it when it’s still light out. Take Bob out right before sundown, and then I’ll walk him again whenever I get home. He can hold it that long if he has to.”
Bob had gone to sleep at my dad’s feet, but he woke up at the sound of his name, raising his head to look at Dad and wag his tail. He probably wouldn’t have been so cheerful if he understood English.
“Isn’t that going a little overboard?” I asked. “I feel pretty safe with Bob, and if he ever starts acting like he did in that alley, I know better than to ignore it now.”
“I know. But I’d feel a whole lot safer if I knew you were indoors.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “It’s killing me that you’re home alone so much. If something happened to you…” His voice choked off, but I got the message.
I wanted to argue, because what Dad was describing sounded almost like being grounded again. Under house arrest. But it wasn’t as if I went out a whole lot at night, at least not during the school year. And it was obvious the stress was already getting to my dad. The last thing he needed was to have me adding to it by tempting fate just to prove something. Staying inside once the sun went down seemed like a damn good idea, at least until things got back to normal—assuming they ever did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The news broke the very next day. It started slow, just one local news station having the guts to mention that something genuinely bizarre might be happening. The talking heads worded everything very carefully—lots of “claims” and “alleges” and other words to help cast doubt on the story—but predictably, that first news story brought all the wackos out of the woodwork. The trouble was, it was hard to tell the difference between the wackos and the people who had legitimately seen bizarre changes.
My dad, of course, was called into work first thing in the morning, even though it was a Saturday, and once the news started getting out, I knew it was going to be another marathon day for him. I made sure our pantry was well stocked so I wouldn’t have to go out after dark, then tried once again to work on my term paper.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the willpower to disable my Internet connection while I worked, and I kept getting sidetracked by “breaking news” as more and more legitimate news outlets picked up the story. Most people were calling it all a case of mass hysteria, and the groundless, often ridiculous speculations would have been laughable if I weren’t dealing with my own case of “hysteria.” The reporters seemed to think that starting every theory with “We don’t want to speculate, but…” meant they could say whatever they liked, without a shred of evidence. Some evil mastermind had put hallucinogens in the Philadelphia water supply. Some new virus had sprung up out of nowhere and was spreading. Philadelphia was experiencing the first effects of a terrorist attack using previously undocumented biological or chemical weapons. And those were just the ideas the legitimate news sources were throwing out there. Never mind the tabloids, with their aliens and government conspiracies.
I wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on the stories as the news went national. My sister called to see if I was okay. I lied and told her everything was fine, because that was the path of least resistance. I love Beth, but she’s five years older and we’ve never been super close. She was the poster child for everything my parents valued—drive, determination, decisiveness—so of course we had almost nothing in common.
My mom’s phone call came about thirty seconds after I hung up with Beth. We were barely past hello before she was telling me to pack a bag and catch a train to Boston until whatever was going on in Philly was smoothed over.
“I have school,” I reminded her. “I can’t just abandon ship.”
“Of course you can,” she said. “You can keep up with your classwork from home, and you’ll be off on Thanksgiving break in a couple of weeks anyway. I’m sure your father is camped out at his office, and I don’t like the idea of you being home alone all the time.”
Her voice fairly oozed with righteous indignation. Just because she and my dad were now divorced, it didn’t mean they’d stopped fighting, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see my mom was spoiling for one of those fights. I’d tried playing peacemaker when my folks were still married, and it hadn’t gone well. But when I thought about how hard my dad had been working lately, how haggard he looked, I knew I had to head my mother off at the pass. Dad didn’t need her haranguing him on top of everything else.
“I’ve got Bob,” I reminded her, keeping my voice conspicuously light. “And the press is exaggerating like you wouldn’t believe. It’s really not that big a deal.”
The prospect of heading off to Boston for an indefinite stay held no appeal. Maybe I’d be safer there, but my mom was as much of a workaholic as my dad, which meant I’d be spending most of my time alone in her condo in a strange city where I knew no one. No thanks.
The fact was, as screwed up as everything was around here, this was my home. I’d used school as an explanation/excuse for why I chose to stay with Dad instead of moving with Mom, but that had only been one of my many reasons. At least when Dad left me home alone for hours on end it was for a good and important reason. Mom did it because she was at the beck and call of her corporate clients, who thought the bottom line was the only thing that mattered in the world. I would never admit it to her, but that was an excuse I couldn’t muster much respect for. Especially when she complained so bitterly about Dad’s hours.
“But with everything that’s going on—” she started, but I cut her off.
“I’m fine, Mom. And I don’t want to miss school. I’d never be able to keep up, and you know I can’t let my grades tank my senior year if I want to get into a good college.” Our teachers reminded us of how important our senior year grades were all the time, though I suspected their motives were somewhat self-serving. “It’s not like there’s rioting in the streets or anything.” Yet.
I could tell my mom wasn’t quite bu
ying it, but she reluctantly backed off. I made a mental note to call my dad and let him know I hadn’t told Mom what I’d seen. I had a feeling she’d be calling him herself sooner rather than later, and I didn’t want him letting the cat out of the bag. If she knew I’d experienced some of the weirdness up close and personal, she would probably come to Philly herself and physically drag me off to Boston.
After getting off the phone, I made yet another valiant effort to work on my term paper. My brain still wasn’t exactly laser focused, but I managed to get a couple of paragraphs written before someone knocked on the front door. I was up in my bedroom with my laptop sitting on my lap, and I frowned in annoyance at the interruption.
Bob was downstairs, barking like a hellhound. I wasn’t expecting anybody, so I sat on my bed and waited for whoever it was to go away. As a general rule, no one who comes to your door unexpectedly in the city is anyone you want to talk to, especially during a crime spree.
Bob kept barking, and whoever was at the door knocked a second time. That was unusually persistent, and I wondered if there was any chance it could be Luke.
Probably not, I told myself. Luke would have known to call first. My dad was a walking PSA and was always preaching about how to maintain personal safety while living in the city. Not answering the door when you weren’t expecting someone was one of his oft-repeated safety tips for women.
Even with this realization, I found myself putting the laptop aside and hopping off the bed. There was a third knock on the door as I was making my way down the stairs—Bob was barking so hard and loud I feared for the structural integrity of our house—and then my cell phone chirped. I pulled it from my back pocket and saw a text from Piper: Come to the door before Bob barks himself to death.
I stopped halfway down the stairs and stared at the message. It was Piper at the door? She had certainly heard my dad’s safety lectures before, and the thought that she had shown up unannounced was slightly shocking.
Coming, I texted back, wondering what she was doing here. Getting a spot on Piper’s social calendar was usually nearly impossible without extensive advance planning, and it was totally unlike her to just show up out of the blue like this.
Bob was majorly worked up by the time I got to the door, and it took some effort to get him to back off. He was still bristling, his lips twitching with barely suppressed snarls, when he finally obeyed my command to move aside and sit. Maybe I’d let him bark for too long and now he was having trouble reining it all in. He’d never bitten anyone before—except in training, when he was supposed to—but something about the way he looked now made me uneasy. I decided I’d rather be safe than sorry, so I grabbed his collar and led him into my dad’s office at the top of the stairs and closed the door before finally letting Piper in.
The girl I let in my front door barely looked like the Piper I remembered. She’d cut her beautiful golden-red hair until it was so short on the sides you could see her scalp, and she’d dyed it white-blond. The longer section on the top was styled into a severe, punky-looking ridge that was kind of like a sideways-leaning Mohawk.
Piper grinned at my look of slack-jawed amazement, turning to give me a 360-degree view. “What do you think?” she asked when she faced front again.
“Um…” I struggled to find something suitably noncommittal to say, because there was no point in telling her the truth, which was that I thought it looked awful. “It’s different,” I finally said.
Piper laughed. “In other words, you hate it.”
“I didn’t say that!”
She snorted. “You didn’t have to. You have the worst poker face I’ve ever seen.”
Polite instinct told me to lie a little more convincingly, but I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge. The stark white color and the severe angles of her new haircut somehow leeched all the warmth and friendliness from her face, made her look unapproachable, even cold, despite her usual winning smile. The look set me completely off balance. There was no way I could convince her I actually liked it.
“What do your parents think?” I asked instead, but I already knew the answer.
Piper’s smile turned into a self-satisfied smirk. “They loathe it, of course. My mom said I should wear a wig until it grows back. But hey, one of my cousins is getting married next weekend, and I bet my mom will let me out of going. She wouldn’t want her snobby friends to see me with my hair looking like this. So it’s a total win.”
I wondered what Luke thought of all this, but I refrained from asking. “Did you just stop by to show me your hair?”
“Nope. Get your coat. I want to do some shopping. I need to get some clothes that go with my new look, and shopping is no fun alone.”
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was three thirty. It would be getting dark in a little more than an hour, and that would leave precious little time for shopping. “Maybe some other time,” I told her. “It’s kinda late, and I don’t want to be out after dark.”
Piper made a dismissive noise. “You’re not buying into all that bullshit on the news, are you?”
I shrugged, feeling not a bit tempted to tell her about my own encounters with the weird. “I believe we’re in the middle of a crime spree and that the wackos are coming out in force at night. Maybe we can go tomorrow.”
“We’re going now,” Piper said firmly. “I have my car, and I’ll make sure you’re back home safe and sound by dark.”
“That’s only an hour from now,” I pointed out, not sure she had any idea what time it was.
“So it’ll be a short shopping trip.”
“You don’t do short, remember?”
Her grin was still impish, even with the new crazy hair. “So don’t count on me to keep track of time. You set an alarm on your phone, and when you have to go, you just say so.”
I hesitated. It would certainly be more fun to go out with Piper than to sit around the house by myself for the rest of the day. But when had Piper ever managed to get me home by whatever deadline I or my father had set?
“Come on, Becks,” Piper wheedled. “I know I have a bad track record, but you have to admit, it’s not all my fault. You never speak up until it’s already too late. As long as you’re paying attention to the time, everything will be fine. Please?”
The fact was that getting out of the house for a while was a temptation too great to resist, and Piper’s argument made perfect sense. It was true that when she’d made me late in the past, it was because I’d been unwilling to put on the brakes myself. As long as I trusted her to listen to me when I said it was time to go, there was no reason I couldn’t spend the next hour or so doing a little shopping. It would get my mind off some of my troubles, and, as she said, I could set an alarm on my phone to make absolutely sure I got home before dark.
I’m not sure I was completely convinced by my own rationalization. But I went anyway.
* * *
Piper has money coming out her ears, so she tends to be a high-end shopper. Myself, I’m more of a bargain hunter. Not because my parents didn’t have money but because they’d instilled their own innate frugality in both me and my sister. Since we were shopping specifically for Piper, I thought we’d go to a fashionable stretch of Walnut Street, where there was a mix of trendy chain stores and exclusive boutiques. But I could tell right away that wasn’t where we were headed.
“Where are we going?” I asked her, already feeling a niggle of unease. Everything about this little scenario was strange, from Piper’s surprising appearance on my doorstep to her ugly new hairdo, and I remembered Luke telling me she’d been acting strange lately, even pushier than normal.
Piper smirked at me. “You’ll see when we get there.”
I glanced at my watch. We’d eaten up a bunch of time already walking to Piper’s car, since she’d parked three blocks away. “The further we get from my house, the less time we’ll have to spend shopping.” The stores on Walnut Street would have been a short drive, assuming we didn’t have too much trouble finding
somewhere to park, but we were already well past them and now had less than a half hour before sunset.
“Relax, Becks,” she said, as she ran a red light. Someone honked indignantly, and Piper responded almost absently, flipping them the bird. “We’ll have fun, I promise.”
I frowned at my best friend and rechecked the security of my seat belt. “Are we really going shopping?” I asked. I was already sure there was something else up, but I had no idea what it might be.
Piper turned her head and winked at me, and I flinched at how close she came to smacking into some pedestrian who was trying to cross the street.
“Watch the road!” I snapped at her. Whatever she was up to, I knew I didn’t like it. “What has gotten into you?”
“Remember how I said the other day that I had to find some way to set you up with a guy? Well, I found a way.”
I suspect my eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I met a guy last night at a party.”
At the rave she went to without Luke, she meant. But I didn’t want to explain how I knew about that, so I didn’t say anything.
“He is seriously hot,” Piper continued, “and he’s also seriously unattached. He was hitting on me last night. I told him I was unavailable but I had a friend I thought he would like. So we’re meeting him at the Bourse for coffee, then going to a movie.”
For a moment I was stunned speechless. Piper had never pulled anything remotely like this before, and I felt like I was being ambushed. I was certainly willing to entertain the idea of letting her set me up with someone, seeing as it was nearly impossible for me to meet guys on my own. But at a time and place of my own choosing. The Bourse was about as far away from my house as you could get and still be in the heart of Center City. And if I was going to risk being out after dark, it sure as hell wouldn’t be for some movie at the Bourse Ritz, which showed art films and documentaries. I’d let Piper drag me to one once and had been so bored I practically fell asleep.