7 Souls (25 page)

“Stop it. Just stop this instant!” Patrick’s mother spoke through clenched teeth, stepping closer to him and glancing back at the front door through which Mary had exited.
Because we can’t be seen fighting
, he thought bitterly.
It isn’t done. You can call me worthless, as long as nobody overhears, right, Mom?
That painful feeling in his throat—the certainty that he was going to cry—had not gone away, and Patrick swallowed, still staring back at his mom. “I’m all done being manipulated by you! The free ride’s over. I want you out of the Peninsula by Saturday.”

The words hit him like a smack in the face.

“I’m calling what’s-his-name, Grayson, that manager, and cutting you off,” she went on. “I’m giving you until Saturday.
Check-out time
Saturday—I’ll make it very clear.”

“What?”

Patrick realized something right then: she was serious. He really had reached the end of the line.

“You heard me,” Mrs. Dawes repeated, quietly, deliberately. “Patrick Kensington Dawes, you are cut off. No more payments. No more credit-card bills.”

“But Mom—” Patrick could hear the helpless panic in his voice—the whine of the eight-year-old he used to be, who would argue against being punished; always trying to persuade his parents to take it back.
I’m going to be doing this the rest of my life
, he thought dismally.
There’s just no escaping this family
. “Where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to live?”

“I don’t care!” Mrs. Dawes snapped, and Patrick realized she was close to tears herself. “I don’t care where you go, you … you junkie!”

“Mom—” He was crying now too, and, more than anything else, he wanted to reach out to her, to touch her. “Mom, please don’t—”

Mrs. Dawes flinched. “Get out of here,” she whispered. Her lower lip was trembling. “Don’t come back until you’ve straightened yourself out.”

Then she turned away and Patrick turned to leave the apartment, his passport shoved pointlessly into his back pocket. He rubbed the tears from his chiseled face, feeling like a child who’d just been sent to his room without any dinner.

“Oh, take a little longer,” Mary teased him when he emerged into the vestibule. She was leaning prettily on the open elevator door, holding its heavy brass edge. Her smile faded when she looked at him. “Everything all right?”

Oh, you’ve got some nerve
, Patrick thought dangerously. He stepped past her into the elevator and hoped she didn’t notice how his shoulders and arms were shaking with fury.
You’ve got some nerve, Mary Shayne, I’ll give you that
.

“Everything’s fine,” he lied, still not looking at her. He stabbed the elevator button as the door rolled shut and they began to sink toward the ground floor.

M
ARY DROPPED THE EMPTY
Krylon spray can, staring at the word that was garishly painted across the striped silk wallpaper, feeling a hoarse tightness in her—Patrick’s—throat.

The memory, Patrick’s memory, was somehow even worse than the others she’d experienced. Scott’s hopeless anger at being propelled all over the city with her schoolbooks, Joon’s fury at losing Patrick, Amy’s rage when her secret, fragile hopes were dashed so coldly—the searing psychological pain of enduring those experiences had been brutal. But this was different, somehow. Milder, yes, but
worse
, harder to face.

I just screwed him over for no reason
, Mary told herself, staring at the
GOODBYE
painted ten feet wide on the wall in front of her. She had assumed, as she’d come through this room, that the word was directed at
her
. But now she realized what Patrick had meant—what bitter message he was leaving on the wall of the Peninsula.
And he’s going to be out on the street and it’s my fault. No
wonder
he hates me. No wonder
.

There was somebody else in the hotel suite.

Mary froze, hunching her—Patrick’s—shoulders as she flicked her eyes back and forth. She was sure of it: she’d heard something coming from the bedroom. Looking at the base of the closed door, Mary could see shadows moving around—somebody was coming out of there. Mary looked around for a place to hide, but it was impossible; there simply wasn’t enough time before the bedroom door swung open.

“Poor Dylan …,” Ellen sobbed, entering the room. “Oh my God, poor Dylan …”

Mary stared at her, amazed.

Her sister looked exactly as she had hours before, when this same room was packed with screaming, dancing, drinking people. But she also looked completely different.
There you are
, she thought incredulously, gazing across the smoke-filled room at her sister.
The reason this all happened
.

Ellen’s eyes were red and raw, her face was deathly pale, and it was obvious she’d been crying. Tears had smeared her inexpertly applied mascara. Her mouth was twisted into an anguished grimace that Mary didn’t recognize at all.

“Where
are
they, Patrick?” Ellen demanded—Mary saw fresh tears running down her face. “They called from the
road
. Joon called, like,
three hours
ago, from the road—why aren’t they
here
yet?”

“What?” Mary heard Trick’s familiar voice croaking the word as she answered. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing—even though it made perfect sense.

That’s who Joon called
, Mary realized, remembering sitting in the backseat of Scott’s car, watching Scott and Joon react to Dylan’s escape maneuver.
She called Ellen
.

There was a part of Mary’s mind that, despite everything, simply couldn’t accept Ellen’s guilt—couldn’t imagine
why
Ellen had done what she’d done. But that part of her mind was losing the argument, and she knew it.

“They’d better get here soon, because Mary’s on her way—it’s almost showtime,” Ellen muttered, pacing back and forth, clenching and unclenching her fists. “How did this all go so wrong?” She raised her glasses to wipe her streaming eyes.

Mary stood against the vandalized wall, staring at Ellen, trying to think of anything she could say—anything she could ask. A glint of reflected light on the edge of her vision made her suddenly remember Patrick’s watch—looking down at it, she saw that it was 2:14
A.M.

Ellen just called
me, she realized, trying to keep the timing straight in her head.
She called Real Mary, at home, and found out what happened to Dylan. That must have
just
happened
.

“How did Dylan get
shot
, Patrick?” Ellen’s voice had climbed into a register of hysteria that was frightening Mary badly. Her sister was nearly insane with desperate fear and rage. “How the hell did that happen? Can
you
figure it out?”

“No,” Mary said, truthfully. She was running out of resolve—running out of reasons to keep struggling, to keep fighting to understand what had happened to her and how to stop it.

(showtime)

“I told Joon exactly what to do. I gave her Dylan’s address. I told her how to get to the fire escape, and she promised me she’d handle it.” Ellen looked at her own watch. “I hope … I just hope …”

(
showtime)

Something about that word seemed familiar … and, just like that, Mary was recalling another of Patrick Dawes’s memories—

T
HE SKY WAS A
vast white dome far above the roof of the Chadwick School, featureless except for a tiny, barely visible flock of gulls high overhead. Patrick stood on the tarpaper with the others, gazing around at the tops of the elegant Upper East Side apartment buildings stretching off in all directions. Looking south, Patrick could just barely see the glittering towers of Midtown—he could even make out the very top of the Peninsula—and, turning his head to one side, he could see the deep emerald bed of Central Park, inlaid into the city like a precious stone in a piece of ornate jewelry.

“Showtime,” Ellen was saying. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the wind. Surrounding her in a circle were Trick, Amy, Joon, and Dylan. Everybody was holding the thick paper notes Ellen had given them—the ones with the three lines of writing below the mesmerizing red symbol that seemed to keep moving, crawling on the page when you weren’t looking, like one of those optical illusions you see in kids’ books. When he’d first gotten Ellen’s text message, summoning him to the roof (the same message they’d all gotten), he’d had no idea what to expect, but once the page was in his hands, any doubts about the oddness of the gathering melted away.
TODAY IS THE DAY
, the note said, and those four words conveyed a wonderful sense of purpose, of
correctness
, that had filled his heart from the moment he’d first read them. He found himself repeating them in his head, over and over, basking in the knowledge that
today
was the glorious day they were going to get Mary Shayne back for everything she’d done to them.

“Mary’s on her way,” Ellen went on, checking her watch. She’d been talking for a while, explaining her plan, and every word had been music to their ears. “We’ve still got a few minutes…. She’s wandering down Madison Avenue, fantasizing that she’s Audrey Hepburn.” Joon and Amy made faces at this, sneering contemptuously. “No, it’s true! She spends an hour each week trying to channel Holly Golightly, believe it or not…. I’ve timed her for two months and it’s like clockwork. We’ve still got a few minutes before she gets here. Trick, you know what to do?”

“I sure do.” Breaking up with Mary Shayne was such an appetizing prospect that he was bouncing on his toes with impatience—he couldn’t
wait
to be face to face with her and do the deed. The fact that it was going to look like a fakeout later in the evening just made it all the sweeter.

“Good. You’d better go straight down to the street and wait for her there,” Ellen said, checking her watch. “Next up is Dylan—you’re going to ask her out on a date.”

“All right,” Dylan said readily. “When?”

“It’s got to be at the end of the school day,” Ellen said firmly. “I want her suffering all afternoon. Joon and Amy, you’ll get her ready for the date.”

“That’s
our job?” Joon said, sounding disappointed. “That’s
all?
That sucks.”

“Don’t worry,” Ellen told her, smiling secretively. “There’s going to be more—a
lot
more. I know how mad you are about, well …” Ellen trailed off, not looking at Joon, but Joon’s and Trick’s eyes met, and it was clear to Patrick that they’d both gotten the message.

“What’s the coup de grâce?” Dylan asked. His scruffy hair blew in the mild wind. “The big prank at the end,” he explained, seeing their puzzled faces.

“She’s going to try to off herself,” Ellen told them, eyes glittering with excitement. “She’s going to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger. The gun won’t be loaded, of course, but she’ll learn her lesson.”

Gun?
Amy was mouthing quizzically.

“What gun?” Joon asked.

“Patrick, that’s your next job,” Ellen went on, shivering slightly in her orange hoodie as she turned toward him. “You know what to do? Are you up for it?”

“Sure,” Trick assured her. Ellen had explained that part, moments earlier, while they’d waited for the others to arrive—and now he understood what Mason’s nearly brand-new, gray-market Smith & Wesson automatic was for.

“My buddy Mason’s coming to the party,” he told them all. “He’ll have his gun with him. He’ll probably hit on Mary—he’ll
definitely
hit on Mary,” he corrected, making them all laugh. “That’s when Joon comes in. Joon, you’ll like this guy—he’s really ripped.”

“Yum, yum,” Joon said flatly.

“You’re going to have to get the gun away from him,” Ellen told Joon in her calm, reasonable, authoritative voice. “Can you do that?”

“Absolutely,” Joon said with regal assurance. Trick believed it; Mason loved to show his weapons to girls—he thought it turned them on. Trick was beginning to understand the master plan, and he approved. Ellen was in charge, completely, and it was a good thing, too—it just made so much
sense
to listen to what she was telling them to do. It had made sense since he’d awakened that morning, filled with a strange, calm certainty that
everything was going to be all right
, today—that somebody was going to tell him what to do, and once he’d done it all, the biggest problem in his life would be gone.

“I have a question,” Amy said, her red hair billowing around her face as the wind whipped across the roof. “I’ve got to drive her to that house, right? How will I know where to go?”

“Patrick’s job again,” Ellen explained. “Patrick, I’ll draw you a map; you’ve got to memorize the directions and repeat them back for Mary and Amy. Your car’s ready?”

“Full tank of gas,” Trick assured her.

“And I’m supposed to send her a scary text,” Joon added. “Right?”

“Right,” Ellen affirmed. “Sometime after ten, once Scott signals he’s got everything set up at the farmhouse. I’m going to find Mary right then. I’ll be with her at the party when she gets Joon’s text—I’ll make sure she takes it seriously. Once we’ve got the gun I’ll take the bullets out and get ready for the big event while you’re giving her the runaround.”

“Will she do it?” Amy asked. “Will she actually pull the trigger?”

“Yeah,” Ellen said, nodding calmly. “Yeah, you bet she will. You’ll all be gone, and she’ll think it’s all her fault.”

“She never thinks
anything’s
her fault!” Patrick objected. “She’s got the biggest fucking ego on the planet. What makes you think she’s even
capable
of blaming herself?”

“That’s all bullshit,” Ellen said. “She hates herself more than all of us combined. That’s why she needs to feel like such a fucking star all the time. That’s why she needs to treat everyone else like shit. It’s because she can’t stand herself. Believe me, she’ll do it. She’ll pull the trigger.”

Patrick found himself picturing that image, and felt a warm rush of excitement. From the looks on their faces, the others seemed to be doing the same thing.