Dead Ringers 1: Illusion (4 page)

With the bright morning sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, it seems ridiculous to believe an evil clown snatched me off the street, injected me with a syringe full of sedative and tied me to a chair.

And yet as I get out of bed, that’s pretty much where my head is.

Do I get any sanity points because I realize the scenario sounds nuts? Or does that make it more likely that I’m a paranoid schizophrenic?

Like my mother.

Voices drift down the hall from the kitchen. My bedside clock reads a little before nine a.m. Oh, crap. I’d meant to wake up earlier to make sure Suri and Julian weren’t alone with her.

I hurry down the narrow hallway, forgetting the bulge in the carpet where it isn’t pulled tight enough. I stumble, putting out a hand to steady myself on the wall. A framed photograph of our family of five before Mom left us crashes to the floor. I leave it behind.

Suri and Julian are sitting at the butcher block kitchen table, plates and silverware already laid out in front of them. Our mother is at the stove, flipping a pancake in the frying pan. Her dark hair is up in a flattering style and her short-sleeved pale pink blouse is paired with a navy skirt and high-heeled sandals. The sun shines through a kitchen window onto her unlined face. There aren’t even circles under her eyes.

“Good morning, sweetheart.” She smiles at me while the pancake sizzles in butter, as though our bizarre conversation last night didn’t happen. “Would you like me to make you some, too?”

In the months my mother was gone, before my stepdad turned into a sort-of-armed robber, it was up to me to make sure Suri and Julian ate breakfast. Sometimes I’d pop frozen waffles into the microwave and drizzle maple syrup over them, but most of the time all three of us ate cold cereal.

“No, thanks.”

“Good.” Julian holds his fork upright like a pitchfork. “More for me.”

“I want two.” Suri gets up from the table and prances over to the stove with her plate. Like Julian, she’s adopted. She, too, has black hair and eyes. Suri, though, is Asian. Since our mother signed her up for ballet lessons, Suri walks everywhere on tiptoes. My eight-year-old sister’s hair is done up in a pretty French braid, the kind Mom is always offering to do for me.

“There’s enough for everybody,” Mom says with a chuckle.

I’ve been up half the night trying to figure out whether I need to protect Julian and Suri from her. Grabbing my brother and sister by the hand and making a mad dash for the family car suddenly doesn’t seem like such a brilliant idea.

“Mom’s taking me with her to work today!” Suri announces. “We’re gonna go through houses built on special.”

Mom’s a real estate agent out to make a buck on the new face of Midway Beach, yet another thing to hold against her.

“On spec,” Mom corrects. “That means the houses were built with no specific buyer in mind but the builder is pretty sure they’ll sell.”

She deposits a pancake onto Suri’s plate like she’s Martha frigging Stewart. Anybody on the outside looking in would be fooled into thinking life was grand with the Greenes. Suri and Julian seem fine, though.

Making a snap decision to get the hell out of there, I grab a cinnamon apple fruit bar from the pantry closet and head for the back door. “Later.”

“Wait a minute, Jade.” My mom’s voice stops me, but I don’t turn around. “Today’s your day off, right? What are your plans?”

For lack of another idea, I thought I’d go down to the strip, walk around and see if I can spot any wicked clowns. If I told her that, though, she’d probably offer to come along and help.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I was hoping you’d do me a favor.” She’s acting like we have a normal mother-daughter relationship where it’s possible I’ll say yes. “Julian’s having friends over to play video games. Can you keep an eye on them until I get home?”

The favor, then, isn’t for her. It’s for Julian. Since she’s been back, Mom’s been real strict about having friends over without supervision. If I say no, she’ll tell Julian to uninvite them. My brother’s been through a lot, too. I can’t do that to him, no matter how much I want to defy her.

“I’ll do it for Julian.” I reverse directions, stepping over the photo on the hallway carpet and retreating to my bedroom. I eat my fruit bar in my bedroom behind a closed door that doesn’t block the delicious smell of the pancakes.

Julian’s friends are running late. They arrive after lunch and park themselves in front of the X-Box in the family room, giving me plenty of time to research schizophrenia on my laptop. Since Mom was diagnosed when Suri was a toddler, I know a little about it already. It’s a chronic condition that requires lifelong treatment. Patients are supposed to be on medication even when they feel like they’ve got the condition beat.

The new bit of information is that the condition has a strong genetic link.

The symptoms, though, aren’t what I expect. I can’t ever remember my mother being angry, violent or argumentative. It wouldn’t surprise me if she hears voices, but the only other symptom that truly fits is she’s delusional. I mean, enemies? C’mon.

I’m the one who has enemies, Roxy Cooper among them.

“Oh, shit,” I say aloud, remembering the genetic link. “Paranoid much?”

I clamp a hand over my mouth. Now I’m talking to myself.

By the time Mom and Suri get home, though, I still can’t make myself accept that the incident in the forest with the clown didn’t happen. Sick of my own company, I head for the door. My mother follows me into the driveway, hovering nearby while I yank on my bicycle helmet and check the pressure of my bicycle tires.

“Why don’t you stick around for dinner?” she asks. “I’m making lasagna with some of that crusty bread you like.”

She’s trying to bribe me with my favorite meal, like I’m Julian or something.

“No thanks.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out. Don’t wait up.”

She tilts her head. “But it’ll be dark soon, sweetheart.”

“What? Are you afraid I think that evil thrives in the darkness? That my enemies are out there, lurking in the shadows, waiting for their moment?”

“Do you?” Empathy shines out of her eyes, the way it had last night when she theorized how alike we were. “Should I make an appointment for you to talk to someone?”

“No.”

Priority number one is getting the hell away from her. Hopping on my bicycle, I coast down the driveway and turn toward town.

“Be careful out there,” my mother calls after me.

I pedal faster, putting distance between us before I retort something like
Nobody with pasty skin is getting near my neck!

Halfway to town, a car horn blares. An expensive-looking red convertible zips by me, close enough to touch. I jerk my bike wheel to the right so I’m riding nearer to the shoulder of the road. The car takes the turnoff to the Estates at Ocean Breeze.

“Go back to where you came from!”

The driver can’t hear me, but I feel a little better.

Midway Beach is small enough that there’s nowhere else to go except the boardwalk, a half-mile stretch of mostly restaurants and souvenir shops. I’m way more likely to find answers there than I am sitting in the house. If only I can figure out how to ask my friends if they’d seen any suspicious-looking clowns lately.

I chain up my bike and start walking. The tourists are out, like an invasion of ants. Most of the faces I pass are unfamiliar. None are slathered with white makeup. People my age hang out either at the arcade or the carnival. I reach the arcade first.

It’s at least as old as I am. The majority of the video games are throwbacks, like Midway Beach itself. Pacman, Frogger, Galaga. When I was a kid, my dad used to challenge me to a game of Skeeball every Sunday. I thrust aside the memory, shove through the doors and hit something solid.

“Ow!” someone yells. Not just anyone. Hunter Prescott. He hops back on one foot with his hand covering one of the most perfect noses God ever gave out.

“Your poor nose! I’m so sorry!”

“Ish okay.” He speaks through a long-fingered hand as flawless as the rest of him. He’s six feet two of perfection, all lean muscle, golden-brown hair and striking blue eyes that at the moment are narrowed and crinkled at the corners.

In the hand not covering his nose are a couple of wedges used to prop open the doors and let in the ocean air once the heat of the day has passed.

“It’s not okay,” I say above the mechanical noises, music and hum of conversation that fill the arcade. Later tonight when it gets crowded, it’ll be almost impossible to hear.

“I’m fine. Look.” He drops his hand. His nose is red but as long and straight as before, thank God. He looks even hotter than he did the night we took in one of the
Paranormal Activity
movies, then walked along the beach. At night. In early February. I was so nervous wondering if he’d kiss me that I planted one on him first.

That kiss is the best thing that’s happened to me all year.

“You sure you’re okay?” I touch his arm. God, he smells good. Like a strong, masculine soap. “Can I get you something? An ice pack maybe?”

He lowers his right leg so both his feet are on the ground and winces. It’s still possible I’ve broken his toe.

“I could kick myself for not paying attention to where I was going,” I say.

“Don’t do that. Wouldn’t want to bruish those pretty legsh.”

Hunter’s noticed my legs? They’re strong and toned, a soccer player’s legs. He’s smiling and looking into my eyes, the way he did on the beach after we kissed. I’ve been waiting since our date for him to look at me like that again.

“I wouldn’t really kick myself. I mean, that would be pretty stupid.”

Kind of like that comment.

“Good,” he says, still smiling.

“I’m not usually such a klutz.”

“You’ve got a lot of things on your mind.”

“Come again?”

“Yesterday.” He cocks an eyebrow. “The funhouse. I heard about the bloodcurdling scream.”

My face burns like I’ve spent hours too long in the sun. “I guess Lacey told you.”

“Lacey?” Hunter’s perfectly shaped eyebrows shoot up. “What would she know about it?”

No point in explaining I was trying to rescue his cousin when he didn’t even know she’d needed rescuing. “How’d you hear, then?”

A couple arcade employees are across the aisle, beside the row of pinball machines. One of them is Porter McRoy, a guy so clueless he doesn’t seem to realize Becky is nuts about him. Or maybe he’s shy. He graduated with us but I’ve hardly ever heard his voice. The other employee has arms covered with tattoos. He says something to Porter and nods at me. They both stare. Then I get it. The Mouth of Midway Beach has struck again.

“I’m gonna let Maia have it.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She’s worried about you. We all are.” Hunter is no longer smiling. “How ya doin’? You know, since that thing last winter.”

It’s the first time he’s brought up the forty-eight hours I lost. Not surprising. I can count on one hand the number of times Hunter’s said anything at all to me since February.

“I’m fine.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to reassure Hunter or myself, maybe a little of both.

“I hope you are.” He lowers his head. “Hey, if you need someone to talk to, call my aunt. I should have told you about her before. She’s in practice with two other women. Their website is psychthree.com.”

The aunt he lives with is a psychiatrist. The only way this could get worse is if my mother made an appointment for me with her. I shift my weight from one
pretty
leg to the other. Hunter’s gaze doesn’t dip.

Maia comes toward us, long black hair swinging behind her with a yellow chrysanthemum tucked behind her right ear. The yellow T-shirt the arcade employees wear is even uglier than the orange carnival T-shirt. Her skin looks sallow in the artificial arcade lighting. “Oh, hey, Jade.”

She sounds irritated. It takes me a moment to remember her outburst. Did that really happen only yesterday?

Maia turns to Hunter, her face a cool mask. She’s always annoyed at him. She and Hunter were an item back in the eleventh grade when he first moved to town. Their relationship only lasted a few months before she dumped him for reasons unknown. Since then, she barely speaks to him, except, it seems, to spread gossip about me. “Adair’s almost an hour late. Is she still sick?”

My onetime friend Adair Adams is Hunter’s current girlfriend. They’ve been dating since shortly after I gushed to her about that kiss on the beach.

“No clue,” Hunter says.

“Her home phone went to voicemail.”

“Yeah, she never answers that one. And her parents are vacationing in Europe.”

“I couldn’t get her on her cell, either.”

“She might have it turned off,” Hunter says. “She does that sometimes.”

“I’ll cover for her this time but she’s on her own if it happens again. Tell her that, okay?” Maia stomps away without waiting for a response.

Hunter finishes propping open the doors, securing them with the wedges.