Fury (27 page)

“Hi, Mom.” Em tried to keep her voice on an upswing. She felt that she was on the verge of telling her mom everything, of pulling over, breaking down, and spilling it all.

“Hi, sweetie,” her mom said, a note of concern in her voice. “I wanted to check in, see where you are.”

Em imagined the words tumbling from her mouth:
I’m driving to the hospital to see Sasha Bowlder. Chase humiliated her, she hurt herself, and now he’s dead. Someone’s following me and I’m scared that they’re going to hurt me too. . . .
Even in her inner monologue, the words sounded insane. No. She couldn’t say anything yet. Once she saw Sasha, things might be clearer.

“I’m just out and about,” Em said vaguely. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“You driving carefully? It’s supposed to start snowing again.”

Em squeezed the wheel, trying to focus on her mom’s voice. “I’m being careful, Mom.” Em’s voice almost cracked. “I promise. I’ll see you soon.” If school had called about Em missing classes today, her mom was clearly letting her off the hook.

“Okay, Emily. I love you.” The words felt heavy in Em’s head. As she hung up, she couldn’t help thinking of Chase’s mother. She wondered what Mrs. Singer was doing right now. How empty that sad trailer would feel to come home to, when she ever came home.
If
she ever did. The thought made Em
nauseous and she rolled down her window for some air, despite the chill outside.

The assisted-living condo facilities that surrounded the hospital glowed eerily as she finally approached. She pulled into the nearly empty visitors’ lot.
Shit.
Visiting hours ended at four p.m. Her parents worked at a different hospital—one of the larger ones in Portland—but she wished she could tell them what was going on. Maybe one of them would know what to do.

She smoothed her hair, which was all staticky from the cold, and tugged at her wool sweater, suddenly very itchy, as she walked into the echoing reception area of the East Wing. It was a place for hopeless cases. This was where Em’s grandmother had been for nearly two months before she died, after sustaining head trauma during a bad stroke. She recognized the nurse on duty, Carol, as one who had tended to her grandmom. Other staffers bustled around, but only one of them manned the desk near the doors Em needed to go through. Em shifted on her feet; hospitals made her anxious. She dawdled by the entrance.

As soon as she saw Carol push through the double doors on the other side of the desk with a stack of manila folders in her hand, Em took a quick look around and walked briskly toward the desk. In a single move, she pulled open a filing cabinet drawer, shoved it closed, and opened another. It was horrifyingly easy to find the patient files. B for Bowlder. Sasha. Room 17. She threw the file back into its spot in the drawer and
headed for the swinging doors. She tried to look like she was supposed to be here. No one seemed to notice.

The sounds of the nurses’ station faded as Em crept down the hall, which was freshly scrubbed and smelled both antiseptic and old. Like dried flowers. Like death. She looked for room 17, around one corner, then another. She hated how quiet the hallway was, and how loud her footsteps sounded, even in sneakers. She tried not to look into the rooms she passed—the glowing monitors like sinister creatures looming next to each bed. She scanned the numbered placards next to every door.

Then there it was. Number 17. This door, unlike most of the others, was closed.

Em paused and glanced behind her—no one there—before pushing the metal bar and stepping inside.

The hospital room was small and dark; the only lights came from the electronic monitors next to the room’s sole bed. Those beeped, quietly, eerily, steadily.

Em felt hot and flushed. She fumbled to unbutton her coat, fingers shaking. She hadn’t known what to expect—she’d never seen anyone in a coma before. Sasha lay there silent and unmoving.

Em took two shaking steps toward the bed. She pulled her sweater cuffs between her fingers and her palm and shoved her thumbs into holes in the loose knit. She grabbed her hair and shoved it into a bun. For a moment she considered backing out,
but then she remembered the way Chase had rubbed her back as she’d sobbed in the gym that day. Zach’s warm hands and stubbled face, Gabby’s wide blue eyes, blinking at her trustingly—and then, just a week later, with hate. How quickly everything had fallen apart.

You can do this.
Em tucked some remaining strands of hair behind her ears and moved closer to the bed.

She would fix things; she would make the horrible mistakes of the last few weeks disappear. She would sit down and bare her soul to the sad, sleeping Sasha, and she would be absolved of her sins. All of them. There had to be some way to escape her mistakes so that they wouldn’t get her the way they’d gotten Chase. There had to be some way to stop whatever was happening.

Sasha,
she’d say.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all your pain and I’m sorry for mine too, and Gabby’s, and what I’ve caused.
Em bit her lip, thinking about mistakes, about disgusting impulses, about those shaky, exciting moments with Zach by the fire, in the car, on his bed. . . . About the way she’d felt possessed by her desires.

She gulped, tasting metal, fighting back the lump in her throat that was choking her.

And then Em heard something—a tiny rustling, a whisper. Her chest seized. There was someone else in here. She whirled around, but the room was empty. The robotic beeping continued.

But did it sound faster now?

Em’s heartbeat quickened too. What if Sasha woke, right here, right now? What if she could respond to Em’s confession and, like an angel, deliver her, forgive her? If Sasha woke up—if Sasha was
okay
—it would make everything else okay too. It would have to.

Em took two steps closer to Sasha, and then another two, her sneakers squeaking timidly on the linoleum floor.

“Sasha . . . ?” Em whispered. Nothing. She licked her lips. “Sasha? Can you hear me?” Em leaned over the body in the bed. Her index finger brushed Sasha’s right hand. For a brief second she noticed the glinting snake charm on the dresser next to Sasha’s bed. It was just like the one that Drea always wore. Its eyes appeared to be watching her. She leaned in a little closer.

Suddenly, Sasha Bowlder sprang up like a jack-in-the-box. A maniacal smile spread over her deathly pale face. A smile like Ali’s: all-knowing. Wicked. Her eyes were inches from Em’s—black, dead. A puppet’s eyes.

Em let out a whimper; it caught in her throat and she choked on her own saliva. Coughing, struggling for breath, she tried to back away, but a cold force kept her rooted to the spot. She put her hands out, as if to shield herself from those black-hole eyes.

Em felt like she was nailed to the floor and at the same time like she was drowning, suffocating. She couldn’t breathe.

And then Sasha’s mouth opened, and a creaking whisper
came from that sick, smiling face. Em could smell her breath—like burnt ashes.

“Ready for your turn to pay,
Em
?” A trickle of deep-red blood spilled over from Sasha’s bottom lip and down her chin.

And then it began, a shrill, high, piercing sound that penetrated Em’s brain, cutting through the feeling of suffocation. It was the machines. They were screaming—or was that her?
Beep, beep-beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Em stumbled backward, into the monitors, sending one of them clattering to the ground. Then she turned and bolted into the hallway. She ran, gasping, heart exploding, running to save her life.

Three nurses and a doctor headed past her in the opposite direction.

“Code! Code!” she heard them shout behind her.

And just before she went out of earshot, she heard this: “Code Black.” She kept running, the cold slamming into her like a wall, but as she did, she heard the words again in her head.

Code Black.
She knew what that meant.

Sasha Bowlder was dead.

“JD? JD, are you there?” Em shouted into her phone. She wasn’t even sure if he’d picked up yet. That thing in the hospital . . . she couldn’t get the image out of her head.
Ready for your turn to pay, Em?

Terrified thoughts lashed like eels squirming in her head. Sasha was dead; so was Chase. He was dead because his actions had led to Sasha’s death.

Now Em was going to pay. She was going to pay for something she’d done: an eye for an eye.

An eye for an eye makes the world go blind.
She had heard that somewhere.

“Em? Hello?” She heard JD’s voice faintly in her ear.

“JD!?”

“Em, are you okay?”

“Oh my god, JD.” She was crying now. “I saw her.”

“You saw who? Em, what’s going on?”

“I can’t . . . I can’t explain. I’m going to pay—I don’t know what it means.” She was hysterical now, gasping and gulping.

“Em. Calm down. Just come over here and we’ll talk.” JD’s voice was soothing, like cream applied to a burn.

“Okay. Okay. Okay.” She repeated the word, trying to convince herself.

“Em, I’ve never heard you like this. Do you want me to come get you?”

“No. No. I’m fine. I’m coming.” She turned on the car and eased it slowly into drive, thinking only about getting to JD’s and collapsing into his arms.

She turned on the classical station, hoping the music would steady her racing thoughts. Em knew that there was only one thing she’d done recently that would be worth paying for. The only transgression for which revenge made sense: Zach. What she’d done with her best friend’s boyfriend. How she’d felt about him. How little control she’d had over her own emotions—how little control she’d wanted to have. Those were sins, definitely. She swallowed back the feeling that she was going to be sick.

Thou shall not covet thy best friend’s boyfriend.

As she mulled it over, biting on her lower lip, compulsively pushing her hair back from her forehead, she saw a car
approaching behind her. It was surprising; she’d decided to take the usually deserted back road, the Peaks Road route, to her house. It was slightly quicker, if you knew how to hug the turns. You had to be careful at the downhill stretch, though. Especially in wintertime.

The car was coming faster than it should have been. And when it got just a couple of car lengths behind her, it started flashing its brights. It was like a disco ball in her rearview mirror, nearly blinding her in the dark.

What the hell? Em sped up slightly. No change, the blinking continued.

And then in the split second between the flashes, Em had her own moment of flashing terror: It was blond, scary, bloody Ali, who’d been stalking her for weeks.

The one who had first given her the flower, she now realized—the one who had probably left her that note inside her coat pocket.

As soon as the idea came to her, she
knew
. She was being hunted. And this time she would end up like Chase. She would be the one to pay.

Acting on sheer panic, Em took a quick left, down Old Mark’s Lane. Then a right onto Pemaquid Road. The car was still behind her, even closer now. In a panic, Em pulled around Pemaquid’s hairpin turn and then back onto Peaks. The car tailed her, coming closer even when Em thought there was
no room between their bumpers. She was taking short little breaths now, eyes wide, shoulders hunched. And then, as the two cars approached the steep slope of Peaks Road’s most dangerous stretch, the car slammed into her from behind at a slight angle. From the moment of impact, it was like slow motion, like watching a cue ball hit the eight ball at just the right spot. Em felt the car moving straight toward a low snowbank. And then, with a horrible jolt, it was embedded there.

There was no time for making sure that she was all in one piece. In a mad dash, she tumbled out of the car and into the night. She was desperate. Willing her feet to move even as they dragged heavily along the ground. Sobs racked her body. “Leave me alone! Stop! Stop!”

She got about twenty feet before she realized that whoever was following her was also shouting.

“It’s okay,” a girl’s voice called out. “It’s okay! It’s Drea! From school!”

Em slowed down, but only a little. She turned around, but kept moving backward, stumbling over branches and rocks, the breath still rasping in her throat.

“It’s me, Drea Feiffer. There’s something wrong with your car.” Drea stepped into the beam of her headlights, revealing herself fully. Standing there, her clothes the same color as the night, all black and gray and silver. She’d buzzed one side of her head, leaving black strands to fall asymmetrically over her
left cheek. She was holding up her hands, as if to prove that she came in peace. “I was behind you on Peaks when I noticed something leaking from your car. I was worried it might be brake fluid.”

Em was relieved and also, suddenly, furious. Was this chick for real? She’d run Em’s car off the road because she thought it was leaking brake fluid?

“Really. My friend Crow taught me about cars. I saw you were going for the downhill part and I was worried that you wouldn’t be able to stop. I had a weird sixth sense about it. So I bashed you. Gently. It was a gentle bash.”

“You rear-ended me because you thought there
might
be something wrong with my car?” Em shook her head, trying to make sense of it. With a shudder she remembered where she was coming from. The hospital. Sasha’s room. Sasha was dead, and Drea didn’t know it yet. Em softened, unballing her fists and pushing her hair away from her face.

“Let’s check it out. If I’m wrong, I’ll have Crow fix your car, no charge.”

“And just how are we going to check it out?” Em leaned over, putting her hands on her knees to catch her breath. The world was still spinning a bit.

“I have a toolbox in my car.” Strangely, Drea stuck out her hand toward Em. “I’m really sorry I scared you. You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Em turned her face away, stomach lurching. She didn’t take Drea’s hand. “Let’s just get this over with, okay? It’s freezing out here.” She jogged a bit, partially because she was cold, partially as though to shake off the way Drea was looking at her searchingly.