She swallows a laugh and smolders. You can see the evil radiating from her like heat off a summer sidewalk.
“I don’t take too lightly to people trying to steal what’s mine,” she seethes.
“What’s mine?” I hold back a laugh.
Kresley is quickly becoming the cruel joke within this nightmare.
She leans in and whispers directly into my ear. “When I’m through, you’ll wish you never knew him. You’d better watch your back, bitch.”
I step away and inspect her. Her harsh glare, her wild temperament, Wesley could never love her, and if he does, clearly he’s insane.
“I can wield a pitchfork like a ninja.” I say it slow like singing a lullaby. “I could leave you bleeding for hours without hitting a single major artery. If you know what’s good, it’s you who’s going to back the hell off—bitch.” I emphasize the expletive for her benefit.
“Laken.” Wes steps in. His face lights up disbelieving, but there’s a smile playing on his lips. It wants to take over, but he holds it like a secret.
“Can we go outside?” I lean into him. “I think we need to talk.” Among other things I plan on doing with him to ensure I enjoy the rest of my psychotic stay.
“No,” she hisses, appalled at my audacity. “You cannot go outside or inside or to another damn planet with him.”
Funny, because it feels like I’ve just been transported to one.
She slings an arm around his waist, and for the first time the picture emerges that Wes and the she-monster might actually be a couple.
“Wesley Paxton is taken.” She laughs into me as if I were a joke—as if this were the stake she had prepared to thrust in my heart all along.
Wesley Paxton?
“Making friends?” Fletcher slaps me on the shoulder as if this were par for the course, as if I hadn’t cried a solid year for him and Wes. Fletch has the same caramel hair as me, same denim eyes and he doesn’t look a day over dead.
I latch on and hug him so tight I think I might actually kill him with the effort.
“Fletch, it’s really you.” Tears spring up unexpected and before I can get a grip I’m weeping over my not-so-dead brother’s shoulder. In all honesty we were never that close, but death has a strange way of making you like people just a little bit more.
“Shit,” he hisses, full with disappointment. “You’re tanked.”
“I’m not tanked.” I gape at my brother in awe. It’s him, not some replica, or close second. I’m actually standing in the same room with Fletch and Wes, and neither of them seems too overly concerned about that whole drowning in the lake thing. In fact, the last time we were in the same room together, they were getting tucked into their caskets for their eternal naps.
“All right.” Fletch yanks me back by the shirt. “You made your point. You’re the new girl—Rycroft rules, Ephemeral sucks. We get it. I’m taking you back to your room.”
“There’s no way I’m leaving without Wes.” A loose smile plays on my lips just this side of elation. It takes all of my self-control to stop from running my fingers over his face like a blind man, memorizing the landscape of his features by way of my lips.
You would think I declared war—pulled the pin on the grenade I’ve been lording over Kresley for years, the way the room dulls down to a whisper and all neighboring eyes narrow in on yours truly.
Kresley steps in. “You know what they say is a girl’s favorite subject at Rycroft?” She rolls her head, playing to the entire room. “Hoe and tell.”
An explosion of laughter erupts.
“Takes one to know one,” I fire back.
Her hand flies up unexpected. Kresley’s fingernails spike across my face at such an accelerated rate, it takes a few good seconds for the pain to register. Without warning, I land hard on my back with Kresley on top as she entombs me with her snake-like tresses. She kicks and growls, wraps my hair around her wrist like a rope and gives a series of wild tugs that hold the promise of bald patches by morning.
Wes plucks the screaming menace off my person as my head explodes in a ball of hot spasms. Fletch shouts something, but I’m in too much blinding pain to piece the words together. To say she launched the headache that had the power to kill all nine of my unassuming lives would be the understatement of the millennium.
“Let’s go,” Fletch barks, helping me to my feet. “We’re out of here.”
“I’m okay.” I dust off my thighs and right myself by holding onto his shoulder. If Wes isn’t going, neither am I. Although, I don’t dare verbalize that fact should Kresley’s unbridled passion to scalp me return with vigor.
Wes presses into me with a curious gaze, his face bleaches as he inspects my cheek. I’m spellbound by his thick lashes, the way his lips have filled in, red as pomegranates. Mom always said ruby lips were a sign of good health. And, dear God almighty, Wes is healthy, alive, and breathing in the very same room as me.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” Wes glides his hand soft against my cheek and exposes a fresh seam of blood along his fingers. “I’ll walk you back.” He ticks his head toward the door.
It’s as if he doesn’t fully understand who I am to him—the things we’ve done or been through.
“It’s me, Wes.” I hold his gaze and something in him softens. His eyes round out as though he were seeing me for the very first time, as if he were on the cusp of remembering a dream just out of reach.
Wes wraps an arm around my shoulder. We stride past Kresley, in her bloodied fingernail glory, and don’t offer her so much as a glance.
We head for the door, and for the first time in over a year—it feels like I’m alive again.
Fletch follows Wes and I out onto the porch as the damp night air wraps around us like a pair of loving arms.
Two guys wearing matching navy jackets spring up out of nowhere and douse Fletch with a bright red liquid that holds the threat of a permanent stain. The boys melt into shadows around the corner, laughing while howling their victory into the velvet reserve.
“I think you were just assaulted by preppies,” I say, tapping his chest. Come to think of it, so was I.
“You got me!” he shouts after them, shaking off the excess fluid. “Damn pledges. I know you put them up to this.” He darts a finger at Wes. “I gotta run up and change. Do me a favor, get her to her room and butt a chair up against the damn door, so she can’t escape.” He turns to me. “Refrain from alcohol,” Fletch bemoans as if this solid plea were the bane of his existence. “You need a ride tomorrow?”
“What’s tomorrow?”
“Beach day.” He plucks at the T-shirt beneath his flannel. “I’ll be by at noon. Be ready. I’m director of activities—can’t be late.” His hair looks darker in this muted light, a richer shade of auburn. His ears peak back as I inspect him. Fletch always reminded me a little of an elf with his pointy ears. For a while I nickednamed him Elfy, but that ticked him off magnificently. Needless to say, after he knocked me around a bit, I let the nickname drop off the charts.
“I’ll be ready.” I press a hand against his chest and feel his heart thud up against my palm. I need to feel him one more time to assure myself he’s real. “Is Lacey here?” The thought hits me unexpected as a Mack truck. If we were all here, it would only make sense. Maybe you don’t need to die to land in this unfortunate version of Connecticut. Jen’s not dead—although technically, that’s not really Jen.
“Who?” He squints into me before making a face at Wes. “Get her some ice.” He shoots me a look before disappearing back into the sea of bodies.
“Great,” I say mostly to myself as I wipe my hand on my jeans.
“Let me run back and get you something for that cut.”
“No.” I grab a hold of his hand and interlock our fingers. “I don’t need anything. I just need you.”
He holds my gaze a moment unsure of what to make of this. “I’m pretty sure I’m not enough to slow down that swelling.” His chest rumbles with a gentle laugh. It beg
s me to press myself against it.
“I’m pretty sure you’re more than enough.”
Wes leads me off the porch and across an expansive lawn that glows blue under a low hanging moon.
“Nice,” I whisper.
“What’s nice?” Wes purrs, stroking my hair carful and slow like the fur of an untamed animal.
“This,” I say, waving my hand around at the landscape before pulling him in. “You. You’re nice, Wes.”
“I can’t believe she attacked you like that.” He presses out a deflated smile in lieu of an apology.
It takes everything in me not to drag him into the bushes, have my way with the boy I lost sleep over and fantasized about until the sun came up. I wept rivers thinking about those jade eyes, that mischievous smile. I died every day that Wes was held captive by the reaper.
Without hesitation I lean up on the balls of my feet and push in a kiss that could seduce a monk out of a vow of celibacy. I missed this. I missed getting lost in the heat of Wesley Parkers mouth more than I did just about anything else. Wes lets out a gut wrenching moan, indulging himself in something deeper and richer before pulling away.
“Whoa.” His lids stay closed long after he exhales the word. “Laken.” He glances back at the house and gives a depleted sigh. “I’m actually seeing someone.”
“Kresley?” It sails out from my lips, dumbfounded, even though I know this to be true.
“Yes.” His eyes enlarge as though this were a reality I should have long since realized.
“Are you in love with her?” If she thought shopping for engagement rings were a possibility, chances are, yes, he is in fact under her dubious spell. I stare at him in disbelief as he writhes in the moment as if it were too painful to answer. If he says yes, I’ll want to die all over.
“I don’t know about love.” He wraps an arm around my shoulder as we walk along the crest of a hill. Down below, the dorms lay out like the rectangular pieces from a game board, glinting against the black soulless hills like smoldering tinder. “I like her.”
My stomach comes to a sharp boil as I glance back at Henderson Hall.
Kresley’s wild interpretation of what might happen tonight comes back to me.
“Were you going to ask her to marry you?” I can barely choke out the words.
“No.” It speeds out of him like only the truth can. “In fact, I need to talk to her about that. I’ve been hearing rumors all week.”
“She mentioned you were going to give her something.” I try to brush it off. I can’t believe I’m here standing on the same side of the soil as Wesley Parker and we’re discussing his girlfriend of all things—and it isn’t me.
He digs into his pocket and fishes something out, holds it flat on his palm so I can see. It’s a small earring, just one, a cut diamond enwreathed in platinum.
“Found it in my room. She thought she lost it.”
I don’t even want to consider what she might have been doing in his room of all places. In the event Kresley bashing my head in didn’t drive home the point she was truly with Wes, the earring she left rolling around under his bed dealt the final blow.
“How’s your head?” He touches the pads of his fingers softly over my brow and winces.
“Hurts like hell.” Worse now that I have an inadvertent visual of what Kresley’s tanned limbs might look like wrapped around my boyfriend’s back.
His features dim to pitch. “I told your uncle they let you out too soon.”
“My uncle?”
“Yes.” He bounces into a soft nod, completely perplexed by my lack of common knowledge.
“Let me out of where?”
“The hospital.” He blinks into the sorry state of disrepair my brain has fallen in. “You slipped out of the old tree house. You got all sentimental when he said he was taking it down and flew through the floorboards as soon as you got up there. And evidently,” he whispers, “you’re still struggling with your memory.”
I study him for a moment. Casper used the word programmed earlier. She said there were people I belonged with and they would find me. I’m beginning to wonder if Wes is one of them. I hate to say it, but programmed sounds like the right word to describe everything about him, right down to his Lacoste sweater, his pale blue tie and dress shirt lurking beneath as if they were ashamed to be there.
“You don’t remember anything, do you, Wes?” The words fall like tears.
“Remember what?” He circles me with a look of confusion. There’s a level of concern brewing in his eyes that lets me know Kresley may not be my biggest obstacle, that one of us is wrong about the past and Wes is convinced it’s me.
“Why did she say your name was Wesley Paxton?” Confusion reverberates in me like an echo, amplifying my pain.
“Because it is.” He gives a decidedly worried look as if I just confessed to the slaughter of his entire family. “What did you think it was?”
“Parker.” I draw my arms tight around my waist. “I thought it was Wesley Parker.”
There are some moments you etch into your being, the ones that singe you, leave you emotionally jarred for either good or bad reasons, and for me it’s this one.
The moon showers over us with its feathery beams. The mist pools around us, threatening to whitewash the landscape, to steal Wes and make this strange new world disappear forever.
Wesley Parker might be standing here in front of me with God’s own breath in his lungs, but there’s favorable evidence he doesn’t remember a darn thing about who we used to be, Kansas, or the way his lips once covered mine like a habit.
“You felt something for me in there. I saw it in your eyes.” I don’t mean for it to come out as accusing as it does.
“Laken.” He petitions me with a sad affection. “I have a girlfriend, and you’re like a sister to me. We practically grew up together. I can’t—” He looks wild-eyed out at the horizon. “I can’t think of you that way.”
His words jag through me like a knife.
Tears lie just beneath the surface. One more power blow to my heart, and I’m going to end this nightmare by blubbering like a baby—that, or a knifing will ensue. I’d gladly gut Kresley for the fun of it.
“I don’t believe you.” It takes everything in me to push out those words.
Neither of us say anything—neither of us move. I can feel the heat radiating off his person, powerful as a furnace. He feels something, his lips might say no, but his eyes affirm everything I say is true. He sweeps over me and rubs his thumb against my cheek.
“Well then.” He licks his lips as though I were a meal. “Maybe I’m a liar.”
5
The Beach
In the morning I inspect the foreign landscape outside my bedroom window. Arid white billows swirl along the crimson path. A breeze from the forest shepherds the fog like an army of poltergeists through the sharp, rolling hills. They move lethargically north, rowing their ghostlike arms in some invisible race.
The world outside seems devoid of any color, with the exception of the emerald lawn that campaigns hard for my attention. It lays flat over the hills, thick as felt and makes me want to run barefoot through the curious carpet just to see if I end up somewhere altogether different.
The dull brick dormitories sit interspersed like giant chess pieces from a long forgotten game. Its players abandoned the effort, died, or found themselves in Kansas. It all seems probable, inevitable on some level.
“School is way up there.” Casper comes alongside me and points east.
“Yesterday, this woman with dark hair. She found me, told me to come to Austen House, said my sister would be here to greet me.”
“Ms. Paxton—school mistress. She can give a rat’s ass what we do. I think she’s seeing your uncle.”
“Interesting.”
Casper motions for me to tie her bathing suit, so I do. Her papery flesh reveals way too many ribs—vertebrae rise like dunes all the way up her back.
“I guess I’m meeting him th
is weekend.” I pause at the absurdity of going along with these people. “Wes told me that I fell out of a tree house—that I hit my head.”
“You hear it long enough, you’ll believe it.” She holds out her arm exposing a purple line that jags from her shoulder to her elbow. “Fell out the fifth floor window onto a glass platform. The woman posing as my mother swears it happened.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I ran through a glass slider back in Texas where I lived with my real family. I thought it was open, and it shattered. I cut my leg really bad, must’ve bled through.” She pulls a metallic two-piece from out of the drawer and dangles it in the air before tossing it at me. “Kresley gave it to me for my birthday,” she over annunciates the words. “I think it’d look really good on you.” She gives an impish grin. “It’s the perfect F.U.”
I examine its scant existence, the barely there bottom that would require both physical perfection and getting intimate with the business end of a razor.
A passive smile pulls on my lips. I think pissing off Kresley is my new favorite pastime.
Fletcher drives Carter, Grayson, and I through barren country roads as if he were dodging serious traffic at rush hour with the entire robot apocalypse in hot pursuit.
“Would you slow down?” I tug on my seatbelt to ensure its resilience in the inevitable event of a crash. “And what the hell’s with the swerving?” Fletch never drove so erratic back home. Must be something to do with the brain malfunction he’s operating under. Obviously, the masters of this universe rewired him for vehicular manslaughter charges in the not so distant future.
“Relax.” He dives in front of a white truck in the opposite lane before maneuvering back. “You gotta live a little. Have some fun.”
“Yeah, well, I’d like to live a little longer.” An ironic statement, in and of itself. But still, I can’t help but feel like every windshield has it out for me, and Fletcher isn’t exactly helping the situation.
It takes over an hour to arrive at a beach called Kettles.
We get out and stretch our limbs, nimble as kittens. The fog has eaten away most of the shore, and the salty breeze licks at my bare skin. I take off my shoes and let my feet sink into the sand, soft as baby powder.