A Girl Called Dust (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

Fletcher thought I should continue to
record myself because I obviously didn’t exhibit the strange behaviors every
night. The second night I recorded again and curled up on my futon to watch it
before school. At first it was the same as the night before, so I pushed the
fast forward button, watching myself sleeping fast in motion until something
changed. Pressing the play button, I watched the video at normal speed.

I had thrown my covers back in one wild
and hard motion and jumped down to the floor, crawling around on my hands and
knees. Stopping abruptly, I cocked my head to one side and clawed at the
floor—the very spot with the scratches that I had always blamed on Sheba. My
face was scrunched and my teeth were bared, like I was angry at something. I
barked and I howled like some kind of animal, just as Bailey said. The weird
part was that no one else in the house seemed to hear me. How come neither my
mom or sisters had woken up and stopped me? This went on for a little over an
hour, and then I crawled over to my bedroom door, opened it and crawled out.

Almost thirty minutes later, I came back,
still on all fours, and climbed into bed. Where had I gone? I decided to keep
this from Fletcher, at least from the time being. It was hard to admit that
Bailey had been right. I couldn’t blame her for breaking off our friendship. I
should have been grateful that she had continued to be my friend after seeing
me act like that once. Something was seriously wrong with me. Maybe I needed to
swallow my pride and go back to Dr. Scarlett. Maybe I was insane.

Fletcher sealed his fate as the Biggest
Freak Ever on Thursday morning. When I met him on the sidewalk before school,
he stared intensely at the school building, bouncing on his toes. He ignored me
as I approached.

“Fletch, what’s wrong?”

He said nothing at first, then he
eventually looked at me. “It’s eating away at me. I have to tell her. Mom
doesn’t want me to, but she’s wrong.”

“Tell who what?”

He sighed and looked back at the building.
“Ms. Melcher. She’s a nice lady, and even if she wasn’t—it wouldn’t be right.”

A group of rowdy boys walked by. One
grabbed Fletcher around the shoulders and gave him a noogie. “Whitelock, we’re
wrestling today in PE, and I’m gonna kick your ass,” the guy said as if it
would be some huge feat. He was twice Fletcher’s size.

Fletcher simply shrugged him away, not
losing focus on the school building, and the guys moved on.

“Fletcher, what—”

“I’m going to talk to her now. You
shouldn’t come.”

That was all he had to say for me to
follow him inside the building. I had the uneasy feeling that Fletcher was
about to do something incredibly stupid.

We pushed through groups of students
chatting away, exchanging the current gossip. The door to Ms. Melcher’s
classroom was open. Fletcher knocked on the doorframe. Ms. Melcher sat at her
desk, while one of the history teachers stood in front of it sipping from a
coffee cup.

“Fletcher, Arden, come in,” Ms. Melcher
said once she saw us.

I suddenly wished I weren’t there because
I would be associated with whatever Fletcher was about to do.

The other teacher looked slightly annoyed
at having us interrupt their conversation, but Ms. Melcher smiled and waved us
in. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing,” Fletcher answered as he stepped
into the room. I hovered in the doorway. “You’re going to die though.”

The other teacher gasped, and Ms. Melcher
stood up. What the hell, Fletcher?

“Fletcher, what are you doing?” Ms.
Melcher asked. She looked as confused as I felt.

The other teacher slammed her coffee cup
on the desk. “Isn’t it obvious? He’s threatening you.”

But she was wrong. So wrong. I had no idea
what Fletcher was doing, but he would never threaten anyone. There had to be
some explanation for his craziness.

The teacher made a move toward Ms.
Melcher’s phone. “I’m calling Principal Sharpe.” Then she glared at Fletcher.
“We don’t play around with these sorts of things.”

I was afraid, but Fletcher wasn’t because
he kept going. “Call who you want, but I’m just trying to warn you. You’re
going to die. I can’t tell you how I know, but I just do. You might be able to
stop it if you’re careful.”

Ms. Melcher sat back at her desk, looking
as if she were on the verge of tears, and students gathered by the door because
Fletcher was screaming. The other teacher had made the call and stood against
the wall looking terrified, as if Fletcher had a bomb strapped to him.

Moments later, security pushed their way
through the crowd. They grabbed Fletcher and dragged him toward the office,
where Principal Sharpe was surely waiting. I heard someone say they had called
the police.

Chaos erupted, and I felt sorry for Ms.
Melcher as teachers came in to comfort her. It had to be awful and scary to
have someone tell you over and over that you were going to die. What was wrong
with Fletcher?

By the end of second period, the word
spread that Fletcher had been suspended indefinitely, and the school board was
discussing the possibility of expulsion. It was one thing to be weird, but what
Fletcher had done was flat-out crazy.

Thursday night, Mom went to her book club
meeting alone. Even though it was for couples, Mom always went when Dad was out
of town.

A little after ten that night, Mom texted
that she was going to be late and that we shouldn’t wait up. That was strange.
What could she be doing that late on a Thursday night?

After fighting with my sisters to get them
to bed, I dozed off without the video camera recording. Maybe in a few nights
I’d try it again, but for the time being, I’d seen enough. This wasn’t as easy
as watching a movie. It was scary to watch myself go completely out of my mind
and not be able to control it.

Friday morning, I woke up, got dressed,
and grabbed a few pieces of beef jerky. Mom would flip if she’d known I was
eating jerky for breakfast, but she was usually still in bed by the time I left
for school, so she’d never know.

When I got home that afternoon, I was
surprised to find Paige and Quinn curled up on the couch on their phones,
texting and watching music videos. They both should have still been in school.
Empty cereal bowls and potato chip bags littered the coffee table. “What are
you guys doing here? Are you sick?” I asked even though they looked perfectly
fine. There had to be some reason they weren’t at school.

Paige rolled her eyes. “Because you didn’t
wake us up for school, doofus. By the time we got up, we figured it was too
late, so we just stayed home.”

“What? I never wake you guys up. Mom
does.”

Quinn grabbed the remote and flipped
through the channels. “Yeah, well, Mom’s not here. She never came home.”

“Are you serious?” But neither of the
girls answered me. They were engrossed in something on the TV.

I dashed up to my parents’ bedroom. The
driveway had been empty, but I could never go by that because Mom always parked
her car in the garage. Sure enough, I found their bedroom empty and no signs
that Mom had been there since she’d left the night before. Where was she? Had
something happened to her?

My heart raced as I pulled my phone from
my pocket and dialed her number. Mom picked up on the fifth ring.

“Arden? Hi, honey. Is everything okay?”

“No, everything’s not okay. Where the hell
are—I mean, where are you?”

“I told you last night. I had something to
do.” She was speaking quickly and breathing heavily like she was nervous and
rushing to get off the phone.

“No, you told us not to wait up. You said
nothing about never coming home. How was I supposed to know I needed to get
Paige and Quinn up for school? Where are you?” Seriously, where had she been
that she needed to stay there all night? What would Dad think?

“I can’t get into that right now, but I’ll
be gone for the whole weekend.”

I went into my bedroom, closing the door
behind me so the girls wouldn’t hear. “The whole weekend? For what? Mom, are
you having an affair?” I’d seen enough Lifetime movies to know the signs.

“An affair—Arden, of course not! I’m just
taking care of something that I can’t talk about right now.”

I wanted to believe her. “I don’t mean to
jump to conclusions, but you just disappeared on us. This is weird.”

“I know, honey,” she said, not sounding
concerned at all. “But you’re responsible. You can handle this. You still have
the emergency stash?”

“Yeah.” A while ago my parents had given
me an envelope with two hundred bucks, which I kept in my nightstand. I was
only supposed it to use in case of an emergency when they were out. Mom and Dad
trusted me not to spend it unless I needed to, so I hadn’t touched it.

“Good,” Mom said speaking in an even lower
tone than before. “Use it for food this weekend. I’ll be back Sunday night. I
promise. Tell the girls to be good. Call your grandmother if you need
anything.” She hung up after making it perfectly clear that I shouldn’t call
her again.

“Okay,” I said as I slid my phone into my
pocket. This wasn’t going to be a fun weekend. It was hard enough to get my
sisters to listen to me for a couple of hours on Thursday nights, but now I had
to try to control them for an entire weekend. Wonderful.

I decided not to tell them about Mom being
away until later. I wanted to sneak down into the basement to work on my new
dress, and if they thought Mom would be coming home at any minute, they’d be on
their best behavior. At around six, I figured I’d better do something about
dinner.

I checked the fridge and the cupboard.
Everything seemed to be running low. Friday mornings were when Mom did the
grocery shopping.

My sisters, still glued to the couch,
giggled over something on Paige’s tablet. “Get dressed and put your shoes on.
We’re going to Gerdy’s.”

“What?” They both looked at me as if I
were speaking gibberish.

“We’re going to Gerdy’s. Mom’s not coming
home until Sunday, and there’s barely any food in this house.”

After not being able to answer a gazillion
questions about where Mom was, I began to lose my patience. “Come on.” I
pointed to the junk they’d left on the coffee table. “Clean this mess up and
get ready. I want to go and come back before it gets dark.” Gerdy’s store was awfully
close to the woods, and most people still stayed away from the area after
nightfall.

“So go by yourself,” Quinn said. “We
stayed by ourselves while you were at school. We’ll be okay.”

This was going to be a long weekend.
“You’re coming because I need you to help me carry things, and if you don’t
come, you’ll be eating nothing but my favorite snacks all weekend.”

My sisters gagged. They hated olives and
beef jerky. I didn’t mind because I never had to worry about them going into my
stash. Quinn rose from the couch, but Paige pulled her back down. “Wait. Can we
get soda? Grape soda?” Soda was not allowed in our house because Mom said it
was poison. She’d let us drink it on vacation or sometimes when we went out to
eat, but that was it.

“Fine,” I replied. If I hid the empty
bottle at the bottom of the recycling bin, Mom would never know. “Let’s go.
Clean up and change unless you’re going in your pajamas.”

The girls cleaned up and mumbled their way
upstairs, but they did what they were told. Almost thirty minutes later, we
were in Gerdy’s.

I spent the first couple of minutes laying
ground rules after Paige and Quinn had started to fill the cart with nail
polish, a variety of lip glosses, and trashy gossip magazines.

“Listen,” I said firmly, “you can each get
a container of ice cream, a bag of chips, and one other snack you like, but
that’s it.”

“And grape soda,” Quinn added quickly.

“And grape soda.”

We headed for the freezer section when a
familiar cackle made me feel queasy. I paused in the middle of an aisle as
Lacey and Trista headed our way. A basket dangled from Lacey’s arm, filled with
sparkling waters and bags of Dove chocolates. “This should be enough, huh?” she
asked Trista. Trista nodded because what else would she do but agree with her
queen? I hoped they would pass by and completely ignore us, but of course that
was too much to ask.

Lacey’s lips curved into a sly smile when
she saw us. “Oh, look, Trista. It’s Dust and her little dust bunnies.”

Lacey looked from my sisters to me and
then probably realized they were nothing like me. Paige and Quinn looked more
like her sisters than mine. They both wore designer jeans, Ugg boots, and
trendy cardigan sweaters—cute and perfect.
Nothing to make fun of here,
Lacey. Move along.

Lacey smirked. “Wow, Ms. Melcher was
right. DNA is a mother, isn’t it?”