Envious (25 page)

Todd fell back against his car, leaning on the closed door. He shook his head, same as before. In a quiet breath he said, “No…”

“Get away from me!” I shrieked, grabbing my head in my hands. The world was beginning to spin around me. I felt strangely hot standing in the falling snow. “Get away from the car, Todd! Back up!”

He did as I demanded. I stumbled over to the car and pulled out my belongings one by one. I threw them to the snow-coated pavement.

“Go!” I yelled at him as I backed away from the car. “Leave me alone. Go! Get away from me.”

He seemed to shrink before my eyes. He slouched lower and lower, with snow gathering on his shoulders and in his hair. “Sandy, I can’t leave you here.”

“GO!” I yelled as loud as I could. “Get in your car.”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I couldn’t.”

“Get. In. Your car. Now!” I screamed.

His nose was red and his eyes began to line with pink as he slowly obeyed me. He sat down in the driver’s seat, his bare hands shaking in the winter air. A car pulled in to the far side of the lot, but I didn’t care. Todd was my main focus now, my only focus.

“Close the door, Todd. Close the door and drive away, you fucking ass.”

He cautiously closed the door and put his hands on the steering wheel, but he didn’t turn on the car. I knew he wouldn’t listen to me. It wasn’t in his plan to let me get away.

I saw a stick, laying in the snow, half covered. With a shaky hand, I dragged my damp, waving hair out of my face and picked up the stick. It was a half of a broken bat and heavy in my grip
. My head was pounding and my vision was beginning to pulse. Todd yelled to me. He had opened his car door and was half out, yelling, “Sandy, calm down, okay? Just breathe-”

With one sure swing, I sent the heavy stick down on his outstretched arm. I heard a sickening crack and his eyes shot unbelievably wide. He grabbed for his arm in pain.

“Stay away from me,” I said in a low tone.

He fell against his car and slipped into the seat, closing the door quickly with his uninjured right arm. He breathed hard, heaving heavily with each breath. Up and down his head bobbed as he took in short, deep breaths through the obvious pain. But his stubbornness outlasted his sense. He began to slowly roll down the window of his salt-coated old car. He opened it a crack and said, “Sandy, please, don’t-”

But I refused to hear another word. I swung the broken bat down on the glass, cracking it. The cracks ran like veins over the window. Todd stared horrified at me through the glass, but I raised my arms again. I sent the bat down hard, shattering the window. Shards showered down on Todd, some cutting him slightly. I ran the bat along the window’s edges as Todd scrambled to start the car. The remaining bits of glass fell onto his shoulder and lap. The car’s engine roared and I sent one last swing down on the car’s window frame, bending the old metal as Todd jammed his foot on the gas pedal and drove off, using only one hand on the steering wheel.

I fell to my knees, dropping the bat. I held my head with my hands, slowly rocking forward and back. I fell backward, landing on a mound of old snow and crossed my legs. Sitting, I continued to rock. My head was pounding in rhythm with my heartbeat. The two together felt like enough force to move the earth. A ringing sound erupted in my ears and I screamed in pain and misery. I let darkness consume me.

1205

The guard pressed my back against something hard. I felt as he wrapped ropes around my body, securing me to the object I stood against. I wriggled a little, and pain shot through my body. I wanted to scream, but I was afraid. I was so afraid. I couldn’t see my surroundings and I couldn’t move. I had no idea what was happening, but I heard the crowd around me begin to cheer. My blindfold was removed and the first thing I saw was my feet, standing on branches and logs. Then I realized I was standing on a pile of them. The eager crowd around me drank and cheered excitedly.

Two guards came forth with wine pitchers. I stared, horrified at them. One ignored me, but the other smiled: a wicked smile, an eager smile. They began to pour the wine around my feet, over the branches. The evil guard poured some wine into his cupped hand and rubbed it on my chest, grabbing a clothed breast in his grip as he did so. The crowed cheered as he violated me. I tried to squirm away from him, but I couldn’t move an inch. The other guard poured the wine over the log I was bound to. It ran down the back of my hair and soaked into the back of my dress. The nasty guard poured the remaining wine over my face and body as the crowd erupted into more eager yells and screeches of delight. The men and the women of the crowd both cheered at my embarrassment and fright. The liquid dripped over my face and lips. It tasted strange and weak. Sweet.
Was it truly wine?
I sputtered and squinted my eyes as the liquid threatened to fall into my eyes.

The old man who had blindfolded my face now came forth, shooing the guards from my presence. He took a cloth and wiped my face and neck free from the liquid. He touched the cloth to my skin so tenderly and with such care, that it lulled me into a small sense of security. Then he slowly backed away from the pile I stood on and yelled, “BRING THE FIRE!”

A guard touched his torch to the pile and it immediately lit up in flames. Fire danced around my feet for a moment until it caught my dress, sending it up in flames, lapping up my body. I stood in pure shock, watching my death approach. The crimson flames spread around me and I began to feel its heat. Steam and heat rose all around me. First warm, then hot, then burning. I screamed out in pain as the flames began to overtake me. I felt my skin beginning to tighten and burn. I screamed and writhed, trying to break free, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t. I was caught.

My eyes searched the crowd for some familiar face, or some kind face, but my panicking gaze caught on the Princess, the one who tricked me and put me here. I watched her sniveling face twist into a horrifically pleased smile as my flesh burned and my hair caught fire.
Aurora.

CHAPTER 22

FINDING NORMAL

I swam in a sea of darkness, dreams haunting me. I was lost in nowhere… My eyes slowly opened to see the ceiling of a car. I slowly moved my hands. They moved at my will. I wasn’t bound and I wasn’t burning, at least not anymore. I carefully and calmly looked over my hands. I could still feel the heat from the fire. I could still smell the smoke of burning wood and flesh. I felt numb, but I was slowly coming to. Staring at the ceiling I realized this wasn’t where I had been when I slipped into a vision.

Todd?!

I jumped forward in my seat, but the seatbelt caught me halfway, jerking me backward.

“Cassie, you’re awake.” I violently whirled my head to see Mike driving the car. Mike, the sleaze, the slimeball, the strange, creepy friend of Eric.

“Mike?!”

“You are one lucky chicky. I saw you sleeping in the snow, so I brought you into my state of the art heating system here. It’s called a car.” In other words, it was not just a car but a brand new car. A Beemer. “So, was it some bad booze?” he asked. I nodded, just to get him off my case.

I searched my surroundings. We were about twenty minutes from school. I looked in the back seat and saw all my stuff piled there.

“I grabbed everything, know why? Cuz I’m a good guy.” He flashed me one of his slimy smiles. I forced a smile in response. That seemed to satisfy him for the time being. “Want to go anywhere? Just me and this sweet thing?” he asked, looking me up and down while barely looking at the road. Was he stupid? I must look awful. My hair hung in stringy, mostly dry strands. My clothes still felt wet. I peeled my shirt away from my skin, the water acting like a suction to drag it back. “Want me to take those wet clothes off for you? It would be my pleasure.”

“No thank you,” I said. “Just take me to the dorms…please.” My head was already beginning to pound again. I turned off the heat, hoping to rid myself of the painful and all too vivid memory I had just suffered.

When we pulled up in front of the dorms, Mike put his hand gently on my shoulder and said softly, “Cassie, I really enjoyed the opportunity you gave me to get closer to you.” He leaned forward, and I froze as he kissed me on the cheek. “Need help with your bags?” he asked.

“No,” I answered as I got out and proceeded to pull them from his car.

I brought them up the stairs, one by one, stacking the mushy wet cardboard outside my new door. Of course, I didn’t have a key. Stupid Resident Life Office wouldn’t give it to me early. I could have been done with this last semester, just brought everything down the hall. It was like they wanted to make things more difficult. Once everything was inside the building, I went to the office and found it locked. Wonderful. What was that saying, the cherry on the crap sundae? Whatever. I climbed back up the stairs, wishing I had some caffeine or something. I was so tired of going up and down, up and down. Wandering the hall, I found the RA’s room. She had a huge whiteboard hanging on her door, with little magnets on a calendar to show where she was. A little green magnet covered a box, letting me know she was inside. I knocked impatiently. Just as I was about to knock again, the door opened and an Asian girl with long black hair stuck her head out.

“Yeah?” she asked, clearly not caring why I was there.

“I’m moving in down the hall,” I began.

“Name?”

“Cassandra Whitmer.”

“Okay,” she said, turning around. She pulled a little yellow envelope off a table and handed it to me. “Happy moving,” she said as she shut the door in my face. So she’s my RA.
I can see I’ll really be able to count on her for anything.
Yeah, right.

When all of my bags were finally in my new room—which looked a lot like my old room but less pink—my new roommate entered. “Oh, are you Sandy?”

She was shorter than I was and a little pudgy. Her dark brown hair lay straight down to her shoulders, and it was amazingly thick. I nodded as she continued to talk.

“I’m Bailey, and this is our room! I guess you’d already figured that the empty side of the room was your side. Well, I’ll let you unpack then,” she said as she swiftly exited the room. I had one screaming thought about her. She was unusually, and very strangely, peppy. She seemed to have all the energy I had somehow lost, combined with her own energy. I sighed as I pulled my clothes out of my bag and began to stack them. I opened my dresser and found it was already full. I sighed again, then jumped as Bailey popped back into the room.

“Hiya! Oh, uh, you can have both closets. I like drawers.” I stared at her as she smiled, urging me to take the deal. “You can have the top drawer too for your socks and stuff.”

I faked a smile and said, “Fine. Great.”

Bailey hopped onto her pale green bed, bouncing up and down on the old springs. “This is gonna be great. I didn’t have a roommate last semester. Well, I did, but then she left. Got an apartment or something. But this will be great.” I nodded absently. She was way too excited over having a roommate. I’d give anything not to have one.

At about six o’clock, I was satisfied with my unpacking, and relaxing by reading
Harry Potter
. Bailey had gone down to dinner a while ago. I didn’t feel like eating. I just wanted to read and forget the day. It was so dark out. I hated winter and its short days. I absorbed myself in the book’s pages and lost myself in the words, until one thought struck me hard, like a slap to the face, waking me.

I had beat Todd with a bat…
Oh my God.

Was I crazy, had I really gone crazy?

The memory struck me so hard. It felt new. What had I been thinking? What was wrong with me? I didn’t have to hurt him. But he didn’t have to betray me. He didn’t have to defy my trust to purposely hurt me.
He had sex with Aurora.
I couldn’t believe it, or that she wanted him to hurt me. She had always done what she did to keep me away from Eric. That was her goal, to have Eric to herself, not to have me killed. That wasn’t necessary anymore. It may have been in the far past, but not now. I was moving away from Eric. Besides, Todd said this all happened before I had even met Eric, before Aurora had even met Eric.

It didn’t make any sense, and I knew why. Because Todd was lying to me. Lying was nothing new to him. He lied to make me feel scared and hateful. That was always what
he
wanted. He hated me, hated everyone, and now I had an even better reason to hate him. Maybe he wasn’t going to actually hurt me, but he had thought about it. I could tell.

He had a need to control people and make them into what he wanted. He did that to my parents, making them believe he was on his way nowhere. He hid how smart he was and all his successes. But I discovered his secret and he found a way of warping me, too. He made me into a liar. The first time he made me lie was for his drug habit. Then, when I discovered he was going to Yale, he made me lie again. That’s what I hated most about him, how he warped my sense and made me change. He’s the reason I was able to become so secretive, lying whenever I wanted and hiding what I really thought. That was how I could easy to lie to Aurora each time I saw her, how I learned to manipulate people. I would never be as good as Todd, but I still had manipulated Eric for a while. I convinced him to lie to Aurora and keep my secret. I was becoming more like Todd each day, and that was a frightening thought.