Grabbing coffee with Salem after not seeing him for a whole year felt good. More than good, it felt great. Kirby knew it was long overdue, and it felt great because it was right. Salem had been pretty much her only friend back in Manhattan. He had always calmed the noise of her life. Only now, her life was noisier than anything she'd ever known, the idea of silence out of the question.
It was the following Wednesday morning, before school, since she had entrusted the disclosure about Frankie Ellery to her friends. She agreed that until the police found Paige and Frankie was released from solitary, there wasn’t anything more that they could be doing.
Salem and Kirby were walking around town together after stopping to grab coffee. They kept walking until they were leaving the confines of the city, strolling alongside aged oaks and withering pines on the outskirts of Armor Falls. The weather was breezy and warm, perfect for their jaunt of reminiscence.
“So, Mercer, huh?” Salem stated, sipping on his caramel latte, thankful for its warmth on the chilly day currently enveloping everywhere their heads swiveled.
Curiosity itching along her senses, Kirby laughed at the vague variation in conversation. “What about Mercer?”
“Nothing.” Salem gazed, meeting her interested look. “He seems like a great guy.”
“He is.” A swallow of her white mocha dark roast followed the incline of her head. “Mercer is amazing.”
“And he knows…”
“About the baby, yes.”
“And that I’m…”
Kirby chuckled, making sure to step over a flattened styrofoam cup from one of the local fast food joints in town. “Salem, you’re just fine in the eyes of my boyfriend.”
“His best friend’s cute.”
“Bridge?”
The flush of red lit Salem’s cheeks like rose lights implanted under his skin. He avoided contact with her eyes, resolving to drink his latte in lieu of a riposte. An uproar of delirium echoed upon Kirby’s throat, swatting Salem’s leather glossed arm with her own leather lathered limb. It was funny that time had separated them so, yet their mutual love of leather jackets remained as true as ever.
“Shut up.” he sighed.
“You have a thing for Bridge.” It was a statement rather than a question, a fact that she happened to know held all verity.
His face contorted as he grimaced. “I sort of already had a thing with Bridge actually…”
“You what?”
“Right before that dinner you guys had about the fate of the asylum. We may or may not have hooked up in the bathroom of a nearby bar.”
“Salem!”
“What? He needed a rebound, I had just gotten to town. He’s hot, I’m hot. We made heat together. Explosions, actually. Volcanic explosions.”
“Lord, Salem.” she chuckled, feigning the act of being overwhelmingly grossed out. “So what are you both doing now then? Does Mercer know?”
“We’re not doing anything. We called it off. More accurately, he called things off, which is cool. I’m not, like, into him or anything. My point is, is that no one knows. Except you.”
“Right.” She drew out the word, disbelief of his coolness of the situation evident by the slowmo delivery. “Good luck with that. You haven’t told me, by the way.”
“I thought I just did.” His neck snagged at a slant as he thought on it. “Oh, the tattoos.”
“Not about Bridge or the tattoos, but I’d love to hear more about both.” She smirked. “I was talking about why you’re here in Armor Falls.”
Their amicable stroll slowed, a weightful exhale lowering from his lips. Kirby felt the vibrating hesitation drying out his flesh as they kept walking in the grass by the vacant road connecting the town with the drive out towards the scenic countryside. Salem peered at his former best friend turned exgirlfriend with misty eyes and a mouth full of lead.
“It’s not a good story.”
“Trust me, my stories aren’t cotton candy and gumdrops.”
He readied himself, needing a second to strengthen his mind in order to let Kirby inside, a blockage at the door to his past.
“My dad died.”
Kirby dropped her coffee instantly, the latte splattering all over her worn Manolo Blahniks. “No! When!?”
“A few months ago, back in April.”
A slight weight repositioned inside him, the deafening sound of crumbling cinderblock filling his senses, one side of his walls coming crashing down at an alarming, but needed rate. Salem dared a sharp gaze to gage her reception to such a deep misery. Her eyes were already twitching at the arrival of tears, her skin blue in mourning, her lips wrestling against each other to silence the scream itching to break free. Wordlessly, her hand found his, Kirby’s grip hard next to his shaking fist.
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
“Oh my God.” Her free hand swiped at a tear, evicting it from her face. “Salem, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.” No other words seemed to appropriately portray the dismal damage from losing his father, but Kirby didn’t seem to mind.
“How did Sahalia take it?”
“She got pregnant.”
Salem’s big sister being with child was way too wild a concept to wrap her head around. She had just let go of her friend’s rough hand, fully prepared to badger every detail out of him when a car popped up at the end of the road they were walking toward. The driver was swerving dangerously across the pavement, closing in on their location.
“Look at this asshole.”
His blasé comment bore no comfort to her flourishing anxiety as the vehicle neared them evermore. But then it was clear that the person operating the car was either losing control over the metallic monstrosity or was intentionally throwing away every fear over their wellbeing, looming trees elongating their branches to lure the driver to meet their end against their potentially brutal bark.
“Salem—”
And then metal clashed offkey on wood, the tan sedan careening into a nearby redwood. Salem leapt into hero mode, scrambling to make the light trek over to the freshly cultured crash site. Slower than her counterpart, Kirby found a path to the mangled, dark face of the halted Honda with her cell phone dialed and pressed firmly at her ear.
A random officer picked up the phone and said, “Armor Falls Police Department.”
A full rendition of the event in front of her had been queued up on her tongue, keen and ardent. Salem threw open the driver’s door and her prepared words dissipated off her earnest taste buds.
“Oh my...God.”
“I’m sorry, what seems to be the matter, miss?”
She ignored the cop. “Get me Dagger.”
“Kirby, what is it?” Salem’s regard momentarily killed any viable heroism.
“Don’t you recognize her from every news report every five minutes?”
A clicking was heard on the other end of the phone call, indicating that her call had been successfully transferred. Then a familiar booming voice clearly spoke into the phone. “Detective Dagger.”
Altering her priorities, Kirby declared distinctly into her phone’s receiver. “Alston, it’s Kirby. I’m just off of Wheats Valley Road. You’re going to need to get here. Fast.”
“What? Why?”
A scoff of incredulity involuntarily fell from her mouth, a leaf of information in an updraft of discovery. “Because we’ve just found Paige Honeycombe.”
Waking up felt awful. Once her unconscious was ailed, everything hurt. Her nerves rebelled against her with significant force, every movement a cataclysm of molten affliction. Paige’s eyes stuttered, flapping aimlessly like window shutters in the throes of a terrific tornado. A flutter of facts presented themselves while she struggled to open her eyes.
The first was Ben. How much she loved him, how badly she wanted him, how she craved for their life together. But something snagged at the sentiment, telling her that she was forgetting an important detail. Then she thought of Bridge. She felt unfathomable
rage for him, though she was clueless as to why the emotion consumed every atom within her.
Paige saw light bending and darkness fading, her eyes finally finishing the act of breaching confinement and allowing her green irises to breathe for what felt like the first time.
“Hey.” Ben’s smile both sent her shocks of anguish as well as pangs of bliss. “How are you feeling?”
“Whatwhat happened?”
He moaned in discontent, a crater of a pant leaving him with earnest. “You were in a car crash.”
In her head she heard scraps of metal and the shrill wail of an ambulance, yet nothing even close to a fragmented memory was tangible by her mind’s grasp.
“A car crash?”
“Don’t you remember?” Ben, skirting closer to her from his seat next to the hospital bed she resided in with inverted eyebrows, felt hope at her loss memory to save his own mistakes taken out on their relationship. “Don’t you remember...anything?”
A massive swirl of nothing came to her, a blank slate of missing memories. A wrinkle concaved in the space between her eyebrows.
“I remember chaperoning Homecoming.” Paige coughed a few times, her throat suddenly raw from either the apparent crash or her compulsory slumber. “After that…” Paige knew a big calamity happened at Homecoming, but her head was hazy, full of fuzzy forgetfulness. Her brain was a maze filled with thorny turns and blinding sunshine. “How long was I out?”
“About twelve hours.” Ben admitted. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”
Then, something did hit her recollect, a whisper of remembrance floating between her ears. “Blanche Baxxen.” Paige shuddered, the truth cold along her cerebral cortex. “Blanche Baxxen is dead.”
“Yeah.” Ben curled up next to her, leaving his chair and crawling into the hospital bed and cradling her. “Yeah, she is. But you’re not, and that’s what you should be concentrating on.”
As Ben kissed her forehead, telling her it would all be okay, Paige wasn’t able to shake the feeling that everything was very, very wrong.
“What do you mean, ‘Paige is at the hospital’?”
Dagger let Bridge’s question linger in the room. He had pulled them from class just a half hour prior. He was just telling them that Paige Honeycombe had woken up less than thirtysix hours ago. He had waited to tell them after Dagger himself had a chance to meet with Paige, with failed advance. And the four teenagers that claimed Paige as their stalker weren’t taking the news of finding her, and not arresting her right away, so well.
“Why isn’t she in jail?” Abram exclaimed, screeching his chair across the concrete of the secluded interrogation room.
“Bridge gave you evidence. She tried to flee town and then she ended up in a car crash!” Mercer yelled.
“You had no problem locking Bridge up!”
“Enough!” Dagger said, ending Alex’s spew of incompetence. “Paige hasn’t been arrested because she doesn’t remember.”
“But—”
“But we can’t question her if she has no memories.” Dagger elucidated, toes tapping the surface of the floor. “The doctors are corroborating her condition, and they won’t release her until tomorrow.”
“So what are we supposed to do then?” Alex asked.
“Until they release her tomorrow night, we can’t bring her in for questioning. I only brought you in to inform you of the circumstances.” Dagger sighed, waving to the single officer in the room with them. “I’ll have Officer North drive you back to Westbrooke.”
By the time they were back at school, they had decided to skip the rest of first period, since it was almost over anyway, and gathered at their spot in between the cafeteria and the science building.
“All of this is bullshit.” Bridge breathed with boisterous irritation. “Paige just conveniently acquired amnesia the mere second she was found? I don’t buy it.”
“Doctors have signed off on her status, Bridge.” Mercer heaved, berated sorrow clashing in his voice. “There’s nothing we can do right now.”
“There is one thing we can do right now.”
“I’m not gonna go finish first period, Alex.” Bridge scoffed.
“No, we can break into the solitary block at Arclan and talk to Frankie Ellery.”
“What happened to waiting?”
“Things have changed, haven’t they?” Alex squared up.
“Alex,” Stepping closer to his slightly shorter boyfriend, Abram tilted his head, angling his blue spheres evenly. “We’re not breaking into Arclan...again.”
“Aren’t you tired of waiting, Abe?” He looked from Abram to the rest of his friends. “Aren’t we all tired? This is our chance to get one of the only answers we have access to. Paige has amnesia and we think we might have missed our chance with the enigma of Emmy Walker, but we still have a chance with Frankie Ellery.”
“You’re crazy.” Bridge yelled. “How are we supposed to accomplish that? I’m sure the solitary block has way more security than a regular patient’s hallway.”
“We still have an Arclan expert.” Alex used his head to gesture in his boyfriend’s proximity. “We can do it tomorrow.”
“Um, hello? Someone becomes a birthday boy tomorrow.”
“Bridge, Frankie could have something that we could take to Dagger while he waits for Paige’s release from the hospital.”
“And what about simply getting into Arclan Asylum?” Mercer’s words mimicked Bridge’s disposition, the group evenly divided.
“They never demolished the passage connecting Arclan and Shadows Manor, just blocked it from the asylum’s end,” Alex’s eyes were sparkling with perfectly finessed cognition. “They lifted surveillance at both ages ago. We can sneak off during the party and make this happen.”
“I can get us in.” Abram nodded. “I think I can get us in through Shadows Manor.”
“Okay, now you’re both crazy.” Bridge chuckled. “Are we supposed to just knock on the door and say ‘What’s up, Hendrick? Celia asleep? Because we really need to hit up your son’s bedroom and prance through the passage to your asylum’. He’ll get Dagger to throw us in a room in Arclan in milliseconds.”
“We can do this, you guys.” Abram’s adamancy was a rapturous neon sign capsizing over his face. “One last raid at Arclan before we turn everything over to Dagger and the entire Armor Falls Police Department.”
“You guys agreed,” Bridge’s perfectly plucked eyebrows formed a straight line of apprehension. “Full skeleton makeup for the party. How is it going to look when four specters with Día de los Muertos sugar skulls for faces start roaming an asylum’s halls?”
“They’ll think we’re ghosts, it’ll be fine. And if not, who’s going to believe anyone about seeing something like that on Halloween, especially at a place where things aren’t exactly as they seem?” Alex swore, making sure to use his eyes to give Bridge and Mercer some unshakable reassurance.
A bell brought them down from their high hopes of further breaking and entering charges, manifesting the completion of first period, students pouring out of their classrooms and filling other areas of travel.
“We’ll meet at my party.” Bridge sighed. “Be at the farmhouse at seven. Don’t be late.”
He went to strut away, in a locale other than with them to their shared second period class.
“B, we have calc, remember?”
An easy sneer touched down on Bridge’s face when he looked at Mercer and the remaining pair making up his best friends.
“I know. Cover for me?”
He spun back, having bigger affairs to attend to than turning in his butchered, contrived calculus homework. And he had to confront said affairs now before it jeopardized his extremely vital birthday shenanigans.
Bridge found his way into Armor Falls Memorial Hospital, walking hurriedly to a nurse’s station. Once blessed with the precise knowledge, he got off the elevator on the third floor, seeing the beeline straight for the room of Paige Honeycombe. Only he ha
dn’t exactly anticipated being thwarted by the likes of his exboyfriend.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Ben’s choice of tone was sizzling and sinful, a quick slap that burned an invisible handprint on Bridge’s face. He ushered the almost legal adult down the hall, cutting a corner away from the room where Paige was still recovering.
“Jesus, Ben—”
“No, why are you here?”
Bridge shook his head. “Dagger said she didn’t remember, I wanted to see if it was true for myself. I didn’t even think you would be here.”
“You have to go.” he determined.
“Why are you here, Ben? You and Paige broke up in a pretty big way if I recall.”
“She doesn’t remember, Bridge. Paige needs someone right now!”
“You told me you were in love with me!”
Ben closed his eyes, holding back the true tendencies that were squirming underneath his tanned skin. Hands firmly locked to his hips, the older of the two rocked his head, saying, “Bridge, this is complicated, okay? The cops, they’re saying…” His eyes were suddenly slick with the shaky tears thriving on top of the warm and welcoming brown pools where his eyes lived. “They think that Paige might have done this, crashed her car, on purpose.”
Sympathy washed any and all other emotions Bridge felt away like the tide. The thought of Paige purposefully attempting to terminate her life was so heinous, even despite what she had put Bridge and his friends through. He wanted justice, sure, but he certainly didn’t want Paige to kill herself.
“Shit.”
“All she remembers is me,” Ben went on. “So that’s what I’m giving her because I at least owe her that much, after what I did.” He matched his eyes on Bridge’s frequency. “After what we did. I know she’s the main suspect as your stalker, but—”
“No, I get it.” Bridge said, exasperated breaths beating out of him like a snare drum being played with lazy hands. “I just...needed to know for myself, I guess.” He looked off, in the direction of Paige’s room, a conflicting contrast of standing on how he felt about his incessant stalker burrowing in his skull. “I should go, so I can make it in time for the lunch bell.”
“Bridge,” He felt a hand as Ben’s fingers intertwined with his own. “I still am, in love with you. And you have every right to hate me for wanting to help Paige, but I have to. I just do.”
“I know.” Bridge smirked, sloppy and unrefined as his eyebrows rose in a maneuver to accompany his departure. “I gotta go. Good luck.”
He left Ben and then hospital, not knowing how he was supposed to feel about the headache inducing conundrum concerning the current health status of Paige Honeycombe.
Pacing the floor wasn’t working, though it never really did for anyone who decided to take up pacing as a means to try and alleviate their mental woes. And it definitely wasn’t aiding the anguish of Adelaide Llewellyn. Since it was Halloween, she was dressed as Piper Halliwell, her favorite fictional character. Her husband was donning a Rick Grimes inspired outfit, both parents representing their entertainment niches.
“Addie, please sit down.”
“How can I sit?” Adelaide stressed, her syllables slothily spilling out of her. “We have to tell them, Ethan. It’s eating me alive.”
“Honey, we talked about this.”
Adelaide eliminated her previous pacing, settling in front of her loving husband with a wisp of another battle on her lips. “Ethan, please. Isn’t this killing you like it’s killing me?”
“This isn’t just some simple conversation with our kids. This is something that could change our lives, our kids’ lives.” He huffed in heavy, concrete breaths. “Can’t we just pass out candy to the neighborhood kids like we’d planned? Faith and Alex are still upstairs, so you need to keep your voice down.”
“I’m sorry. Your reasons are conclusive and justifiable, but this is killing me from the inside out. We have to tell our children the truth.”
“Which is what?”
Both of them suddenly facing the stairs, Alex and Faith were staring at them fixedly in spite of their skeleton makeup for Bridge’s birthday party. Alex had on a tuxedo made to look like it was decaying, with tattered seams and fraying ends. Faith’s dress was giving the effect that it had been on fire at one point. And their faces were scary perfect, exact immaculate portrayals of the extraordinary Día de los Muertos traditions.
“Dad?” Faith’s voice wobbled with consummate uneasiness.
Ethan received a glimpse from his wife, a grand prayer for the green light to unravel the biggest Llewellyn family secret. Ultimately, Ethan nodded and said, “Come sit down.”
“Is it really that serious?” Alex sighed. “We’re going to be late for Bridge’s party.”
Catching the swap betwixt their parents, Faith tensed up like every one of her nerve endings had just been simultaneously struck like the chord of a violin. “Alex, it’s serious.”
“Please sit.” Ethan said again.
The twins sat across from their father in the living room, Adelaide warily taking her descent next to her husband.
“There’s something you need to know, something you deserve to know.” Adelaide stated, slithering a hand around her husband’s for tactile support.
“Okay.” Alex said.
Faith added, “Go on.”
“Your father,” Adelaide faltered, her grievances overruling her precogitated speech.
“I’ve always known.” Ethan stated, verbally stepping in. “So we don’t want you to think I’ve been in the dark about this, because I haven’t.” He grinned extensively. “I’ve always wanted this.”
“This hasn’t been easy, is what we want you to comprehend.” Mama Llewellyn intervened, love tapping Ethan’s hand tenderly. “But it’s been too long, too much has happened to keep this a secret any longer.”
“Mom, what is it?”
Ethan answered his son’s question with a fully improvised elocution. Their kids abided on sighs of preambles and pauses comprised of long forgotten tales of reticence. Adelaide wiped the cold sweat shimmer from her face with her elongated forearm, the seconds that passed feeling like centuries for all entangled.
“You know that your mother and I met in college. And that we got married a few months after we graduated.”
“Is that not true or something?”
“No, Faith.” Adelaide smiled casually. “All of that is true, but your father and I made our connection while I was still dating another guy.”
“Oh my God.” Faith howled, sheltering her mouth in object protest.
“What?” Alex turned to his sister, wondering why he wasn’t grasping what she so noticeably had mentally seized.
“Alex, your mother and I—”
“I was pregnant, when I met your father.”
“You what? But—”
“And it’s him!? Why, Mom?” Faith shrilled her voice. “Why would you both keep this from us?”
“What’s going on?” Alex pleaded.
“Alex, open your eyes.” Faith stood up, her posture an indication of her vehemence as she slanted in her moderate heels. “We already know someone Mom dated before Dad, and he’s in town!”
Foggy pictures of authenticity parted for Alex, everything he had been missing abruptly crisp and abundant with rigor. He looked into the eyes of his parents and it was in the reflection of their corneas that the cloudy revelation started to seep to the surface of Alex’s mind.
“But wait, that would mean that…” During his beat of reassurance, both of his parents nodded in synchronization. “...that our biological father is Alston Dagger.”
At the earth shattering epiphany, Faith fled from the house, falling into her malice laced trample to the car she shared with her brother.
“No.”
“Alex—”
“No!”
He stood up, much like his sister before him, blinded by the molten malevolence swimming around the blood that glided throughout his
irate anatomy. Ethan and Adelaide soared from their seats as well, tears stinging their souls to match their eyes.
“Why would you keep this up?” He stared at his father. No. At ‘Ethan Llewellyn’. Alston Dagger was his father. This was way too much to deal with, especially with what he and his friends had going on tonight. “Why would you agree to it?”
“Because I love you and your sister more than anything, and I’ve been so happy for so many years, Alex.” Ethan concluded. “You kids and your mother mean everything to me. I wanted this. I still do.”
“So, he knew this whole time? Dagger knew about us and didn’t think to mention it during the multitude of hours we’ve been spending together?”
Silence met him, lapping at his face with as much control as an adolescent Labrador. Faith honked the car’s horn from its parking space just outside, adding to the anxiety of the emotionally fragile parents.
“Dagger doesn’t know?” His nostrils flared, his blood slowing and thudding to the beat of negligence. Alex screeched his following words, his vocabulary overruling any residual parental respect. “How could you do this to us? Dagger doesn’t even know we’re his!?”
“He didn’t want you!” Adelaide leapt forward in anger, developing an immediate infuriation over being badgered by her teenage son in the realm of right and wrong. “Alston told me way before I got pregnant that he never wanted the ‘unruly burden of siring eventual mistakes’.”
“But you’ll never know, Mom! Because you were too selfish to tell him he had two kids!”
“Alex—”
He ignored his father’s outburst, looking forlorn at the front door. “I’m going to be late.”
“Alex!”
His mother’s outcry fell on unresponsive ears, Alex fuming as he left the now unfamiliar Llewellyn household. He felt like a phantom in his own skin, something he’d only felt once before when he was living as Lissa. It scared him to think of himself as someone he didn’t recognize anymore. And he couldn’t help but again see a stranger when he glimpsed through the window of Alex Llewellyn’s life.
“Heading home, sir?”
Glancing up from his desk, pouring things into his bag, Dagger smirked at the ever diligent Officer North. “Yeah, here in a bit. Everything good at the Mathison farmhouse?”
He had ordered extra, unmarked police presence at the vast location for Bridge’s Halloween birthday bash. It never hurt to be a dash overly cautious, notably when it came to the unpredictable deviance of Sumner Shadows. Bridge’s birthday conveyed the exact affair that would inspire another jolt encounter with the elusive corsair.
“Yes, sir.” North responded. “Looks like most of Westbrooke emerged for the occasion.”
“They would,” he commented with a scoff curled under his breath, latching his bag to secure his array of belongings. “Sumner’s friends are infamous.”
“Halloween patrol is a go as well.”
“Good, good.”
North smiled at the respected detective ardently before drumming his fingertips along his crossed arm. Dagger swung his bag over his shoulder as the officer changed the axis of his head and said, “Plans with Athena tonight?”
It was known at the precinct that Alston and Athena were quickly becoming a severely serious item. Normally, Dagger didn’t discuss his personal life at the station, but North was harmless and he’d actually been one of the few people around Armor Falls Police Station that Dagger trusted to do even more than what was expected of him, soaring performance his vital key in winning him over. An answer pulsed on his lips but his cell phone’s blaring of Michael Jackson’s ‘Smooth Criminal’ halted any resolution. Swiftly scanning his screen, Dagger gestured at it with a booming beam.
“That’s her now.”
North let his eyebrows do a suggestive wave. “Have a good night, detective.”
“You too, Aaron. Say hi to Cindra and the kids.”
Dagger was left alone in his office then, free to answer the phone to his heart’s desire.
“I was just talking about you.” He purred into the cellular device.
“Alston.”
Her voice shook with palatable fear, oozing with penetrating petrification. It stunned him to where a few excess moments transpired, putting his reply on a flaky hold. They hadn't been dating a handful of years, but he could already sense that something wasn’t right.
“Athena, what’s wrong?”
“You have to get here.” Her seemingly feeble tone trembled on. “Now.”
“Talk to me. What’s going on?”
He was an immobile hyena, crazed to know what information she had, but too scared to move toward the truth’s surface
“I figured it out.” The dread temporarily vanished from her, a gasp slipping between her strained breaths. “I know what Blanche Baxxen knew, why she was killed. I found out why Sumner started all of this.”
Dagger felt like his response time had been tuned to half speed. Like a sloth lathered in molasses had invaded his senses, a tortoise tittering dangerously on his brain. He finally felt the gravity of his girlfriend’s words, a massive ship of understanding sinking into the forming pit in his stomach.
“So tell me.”
“I can’t, not over the phone.” Like the snapping of fingers, Athena’s tone was restored to one of fright. “I think someone’s here, Alston. Someone knows that I know and they’re watching me.”
“I’m coming to you, right now.” Dagger insisted, already storming out of the station and running to his car as their call progressed. “Lock your doors and stay upstairs until I get there, okay?”
“Alston?”
“Yeah?”
“Hurry.”
She hung up, cutting off their supplementary communication. Dagger got on his walkie as he drove out of the station’s parking lot, telling an officer to follow him out to the Wheaton residence in case Sumner Shadows was trying to terrorize his girlfriend with the likes of murder.
Straton and Hugo were doubtlessly late for Bridge’s party. But that was mainly because Hugo was busy with a support group. Ever since he had revealed to Straton, and the rest of their friends, that he had seen Sumner over the summer, he’d vowed to stop drinking. After all, it was the dark suitor of alcohol that had kept the vital information from Hugo’s most primal of memories. So, here they were, running late because Hugo was doing the right thing for himself.
The support group was a smaller scale of what Straton assumed Alcoholics Anonymous would consist of, and was hosted at the youth center just across from Armor Falls Memorial Hospital. Hugo had begged and begged Straton to come as a show of support, and being the good best friend that he was, he had finally agreed. The meeting was just wrapping up when Hugo disbanded from group of wellwishers and approached Straton. He had been partaking in the free food the entire time Hugo had been pouring out his heart and soul to the surrounding strangers, and their sweet tea was sweet serenity.
“You drink too much of that and you’re going to turn into a share of Lipton.” Hugo laughed, clasping his friend on the shoulder. Straton chuckled along with his bro as he finished his cup and tossed the styrofoam into a designated trash bin. “But seriously, dude, thank you for coming tonight. It really means a lot me.”
“Of course.” Straton smiled, giving Hugo a half hug that ended with a pair of smiles between them. “I do think we should get going, though. We still have to conjure up some type of skeletal makeup on our way to the party we’re incredibly late for.”
“I know,” Hugo nodded. “But I brought some supplies for us, and it’s a simple skeleton look that we can put on before we see anyone at the party. Let’s head out.”
After giving their thanks to a few people in the group, as well as the curators of the night’s occasion, they made their way across the parking lot and made it into Straton’s vehicle. They were just driving by Armor Falls Memorial Hospital, when someone was running from its doors and was almost flattened by Straton’s BMW.
And th
e person running out in front of them was a freshly released Paige Honeycombe.
Once his tires completed screaming against the pavement, both Hugo and Straton hopped out of the car, Paige standing there in front of them as immobile as a monument.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Straton yelled, suddenly realizing the weight of what Paige had done to his friends as he delivered the ambush of words to her. “I almost flattened you.”
“Sidetracked by Halloween, I guess.” Then, really looking at them, she spoke with wildly intense eyes that vibrated with analysis. “Wait, you’re Straton and Hugo, right?” When they nodded, she added, “I saw you at Homecoming. You’re both acquainted with Bridge and the rest of his friends.”
“And you’re their amnesiac stalker.” Hugo huffed.
“No.” She ricocheted her head with profound potency. “I remembered something and the hospital only just let me leave.”
Straton’s ears perked up with intrigue. “Remembered what?”
“The cops thought I was trying to kill myself when I crashed my car.” Paige began to shake, sobs cascading from her like the water at Niagara Falls. “And I fled from my house because I was running from the truth.”
“Spit it out.” Hugo barked.
“I was trying to kill myself.” She admitted between suppressed whimpering. “But not because I’m their stalker.” Paige looked at them with unwavering dismay. “It’s because I found out who it really is.”
21
THAT NIGHT