Glimmer (14 page)

All around me, Mollie’s is waking up noisily. The kitchen’s completely covered with white powder. The smell of smoke and chemicals is overpowering. Feeling sorry for whoever has to clean up this mess, I shrug, grab a moist towel, and start wiping powder off the grill.

The pixie redhead, who’d passed out on the ground, stretches and saunters over to me with the same peaceful smile as before. “Are you, like, the new guy or something?” she asks.

“Marshall.” I stick out my hand. “Yeah, I’m brand-new.”

Chapter 23
ELYSE

I linger in the women’s locker room, showering off each and every molecule of chlorine, then slowly dressing. In front of the mirror I blow-dry every section of hair till my waves smooth out into a glossy curtain that blankets my shoulders and covers my bruises.

When I step outside, the guy and girl who work the front desk are flirting. Smacking each other on the head with their name tags and giggling. I let out a heavy breath. Dan’s nowhere to be seen. He gave up on me. For now.

By the time I reach downtown Main Street, the afternoon light’s slipping to pink and purple around me. The sidewalk’s bustling with tourists and local teenagers alike, mostly couples. At one of the metal sidewalk tables outside Mollie’s Milkshakes, I spot Carla in a group of couples snuggled up with a guy in a letterman jacket. Auburn hair.

“Pete!”
He’s out of the hospital already. He’s all right. Thank god.

But as I rush toward them, Carla and the guy turn, and I see it’s not him. It’s some guy I’ve never seen before. Carla’s already moved on.

“Leese?” Carla says in a worried voice. “Who’s this Pete guy you keep talking about?”

“Never mind.” I shake my head. “Just someone I used to know.”

Carla’s brow creases, and too late I realize how nuts I sound. “We know all the same people,” she says. “I’m worried about you. You’ve been having a lot of weird . . . moments.”

Suddenly demon butterflies are attacking my stomach. People think
I’m
going crazy, because I’m the only one who remembers Carla’s maimed boyfriend? “I’m fine, really.”

“If you say so.” Carla looks around expectantly. “Where’s Dan? Still at the pool?”

Announcing that I broke up with Dan is just going to cause more problems. “Dan and I just had separate plans tonight.”

Another cheerleader laughs. “I thought you guys took your ‘nature hikes’ on Fridays.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I felt like doing something else for a change,” I say.

Carla glances around the table, and her new boyfriend nods encouragement.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Carla says finally. “I’m going to call Dan and have him pick you up.” She pulls out her phone. “I think we’d all feel better knowing you’re not alone.”

That’s the last thing I want. “I need to get home and help my mom,” I say. “I won’t be alone, don’t worry.” And I hurry past before anyone can stop me.

Near the quiet end of Main Street, the homeless lady’s bouncing up and down on the pavement, red ringlets hopping around her head like snakes, a spray-paint can clutched in her dirty fingers. She’s already sprayed an obscenity on the sidewalk.

“What’s going on, girl?” she calls to me, like we’re old friends. “We haven’t heard from you in days.”
We?
Is that her and her multiple personalities? I turn away from her crazy eyes and wait for the stoplight to let me walk.

On the other side of the street, facing me, a thin woman digs frantically through her purse. She’s in her fifties and the purse is worn and brown and something about her looks, I don’t know, motherly, and the next thing I know I’m smiling at her, like it’s okay, you’ll find it, whatever it is. As she hoists the purse over her shoulder and crosses toward me though, her mouse-colored bob starts to shimmer, and then her complexion does too. She’s one of them. Her grin has frozen into a hunger-trance, and she’s bounding straight for me. My heartbeat’s shaking my whole body.

“’Samatter, girl, you forget how to run?” the homeless woman shouts at me.

I take off, her laughter bouncing behind me. I duck behind the library, dash down the dirt path, halfway to the falls before I meet the main road again and risk spinning to check behind me. No one’s there. Yay for running track. Is this why I became a sprinter? I pause to catch my breath, panting frantically.

It’s not till I’m halfway up the driveway of Preston House that it hits me: I’m not the only one in Summer Falls who can see ghosts. The homeless lady can see them too. But then why didn’t she run? Why did she just stand there laughing? The answer is because she’s crazy. But how did she get to be crazy, anyway? She’s hardly the only one, either—there’s an asylum right outside town. I’m working on a glimmer of a theory, but I need to talk to Marshall before I can get further. It always helps to talk to him.

I have so much to talk to him about that I decide to walk around the house, through the yard, and straight to the cottage rather than going upstairs.

When I knock on the cottage door though, Jeffry opens it and pulls me in. For once he’s not smiling.

“I came to install the new shower rod,” he says calmly, “and what do I find in here?”

He’s pointing to my goofy old bunny slippers, on the chair where I left them.

Shit. My heart’s pounding as if I just sprinted up a hill. “We were just talking—”

“You’re
lying.
” The slap almost knocks me down. “He can’t even speak English. What were you doing in there at night with that grubby foreigner?”

“Nothing.” Grubby foreigner? I back away from him, panic rising. Tasting blood from where he split my lip. “Where’s Liz?”

“You tell me.” He hurls the slippers across the room. “She disappeared again, without making dinner. I can’t seem to keep track of all the things the two of you do while my back’s turned.” He sounds so paranoid and angry, I suddenly get why she felt she had to lie to him. “Slut,” he says grimly.

Even though I was calling myself the same bad word earlier, his saying it feels like a knife tip slashing my belly. It feels like my insides are coming out for him to see and poke at with disgust. Shame leaks out of me, the shame I’d been carrying since I met Dan and realized I’d (probably) cheated on him.

“My own daughter’s a slut.” Jeffry’s voice is thick with disgust. His dark blond mustache twitches above his squeamish grimace, as if he’s manning up to crush a giant cockroach. The roach is me, and also sex itself. The whole idea of it horrifies him: sex and bodies and dirt.

I dodge the next slap, but now I’m trapped in a corner. Jeffry lunges for me, pins me against the wall, his hands clamping down on my shoulders. Jerking them so I have no choice but to shake with his will. Every gasping breath I take reeks of his medicinal pimple cream. The back of my head smacks the wall, and somewhere deep inside me a dark flower blooms. Rage. Rage, but I can’t use it to move, to fight back. It’s far away from what powers my limbs, wrapped up in a spiderweb of mental fuzz. Then Jeffry shifts one huge hand to my throat and squeezes, not quite hard enough to choke me. Just hard enough for me to seize up in terror.

Suddenly it feels like there are two Elyses. There’s the conscious me that’s livid, shocked. How could he? Why am I not fighting back? Why am I just waiting for it?
He could kill me.
Then there’s the deeper me, my body, and it’s not shocked at all. Of course he can do this,
he’s done it before.
This me has no ego, no will but the will to survive. And this is the me that takes over.

As if drugged, I go limp, and Jeffry nods and kind of grunts in approval, like this is what he expected from me all along. Ashamed but even more scared, I sit still and let him move his right-hand grip to my upper arm, big fingers digging into my flesh till it feels like they’ll pierce through and meet his thumbs. A groan of pain escapes me, and I hate myself for crying out, even though it hurts so bad.

Jeffry fixes me with a cool, stern gaze. “Let’s see, now,” he says calmly. “You live in my house. I let you have my name. Is it too much to ask that you not pollute yourself while you’re under my roof?”

I don’t want to answer him. But I’m in trouble here. Marshall’s not coming back; Liz is nowhere; no one’s going to rescue me. “No.” I whisper it. Not me. My body. It’s made its calculation: I’ll be safer not fighting. It won’t
let
me fight.

“Is it too much to ask that you don’t shame me by acting like a filthy whore?”

“No, sir,” I breathe, hating myself for my own fear, my own weakness. My mind’s still foggy, but my body’s twitching, pulsing, shaking, sweating in anticipation of more pain. And I’m starting to understand that I need to trust my body, because whatever else it may be, it is always, always right.

My body knew it was him who gave me the bruises, right from the start.

He reaches back one arm and cuffs my left ear, hard enough to make it ring. He doesn’t care how much he’s hurting me. I’m not a person to him, I’m just a malfunctioning machine. “Tell me where your whore mother went.” His voice so calm, despite the crazy things he’s saying. “She should be here making dinner. What’s she out doing that’s more important? Or
who.
”

I’m ashamed to admit this even to myself, but the fearful part of my brain is spinning, trying to think of something to say that will make him stop hurting me. To divert his wrath. I think of Liz, tiny harmless Liz who runs this place with hardly any help and never complains. Whose happiest moment was painting her daughter’s bedroom pink. No way am I sacrificing her to feed this monster’s paranoia.

Fight back.

I force myself to raise my knee, but he blocks it with his own.

A knock on the door startles us both.

Jeffry’s voice hot in my ear. “Keep quiet.” He’s leaning over me, so close I can smell the acrid, angry sweat mingling with his acne cream. My throat opens to gag. His mustache tickles the back of my neck, and the dark flower of rage deep inside me bursts open. Instead of retching, I scream as loud as I can in Jeffry’s face.

The glass door slides open, and I see Jim and Candace standing there, wearing twin somber looks of horror.

Jeffry drops his arms and I slip away from him, feeling numb.

He clasps his hands together and smiles at them, all warm and jovial again. “Oh, hello, folks! Anything I can help you with? Fresh towels?”

Jim swallows. “We came out to watch the sunset and heard yelling.”

“We were just having a discussion. Right, Elyse?”

My scalp is tingling, like an alarm. Not danger, but urgency nonetheless. There’s something I have to do
right now
. I have to get to my room. Without saying a word, I grab my backpack by its plastic top handle—it feels featherlight—and turn toward the door.

That’s when I see the ghost slide in behind Candace and Jim, laying a hand on each of their backs. She’s an older lady with a beehive, wearing an old-fashioned suit. Candace and Jim gasp and topple to the floor, and the ghost grabs on to Jeffry next.

I make a beeline for the door and run through the balmy backyard, sucking down hungry breaths, not stopping till I reach the kitchen.

Liz is humming cheerfully at the counter as she chops carrots into evenly spaced little orange coins. On the counter a loaf of crusty bread peeks out from the top of a grocery bag. “Hey, you’re home.” She leans over to peck my cheek, and I don’t even feel her lips. “Can I get some help with dinner?”

“I need to talk to you.” I barely recognize my own voice, it’s so quiet and serious, but Liz doesn’t even look up, just slides her chopped carrot from the cutting board into a roasting pan and starts chopping a second one.

“I got a late start, hon, so why don’t you peel potatoes while we talk?” She grins and with her free hand passes me a peeler.

I inspect its loose steel blade and rusted handle. It looks a hundred years old, like maybe Mrs. Preston left it in a drawer somewhere before she died, and then when Liz and Jeffry bought this place it was just one more thing that didn’t have to be changed because it still technically worked.

“I’m not cooking for him,” I say.

Did she not hear me? Of course she heard me, she’s just pretending she didn’t. Pretending everything’s okay. Like she must do every day. But I can’t do that. What happened to me today can never happen again.

My fingers are tingling again. Have to get in my room,
now.
Lock the door. Shove the dresser in front of it too. I drop the peeler in the sink and back out of the kitchen.

All the way upstairs my fingers are on fire. As soon as I’ve barricaded the entrance, I march over to my sock drawer. I pull out my stash, stack the bills, and wrap them in a rubber band, and dump it in my backpack. I can’t stay here tonight; I’d rather sleep on a park bench in the town square like that crazy redhead. Sooner or later I’ll find Marshall and we’ll figure out a plan—together. I crumple up all the Hollywood crap into one ball and slam-dunk it into the pink-and-white-striped wastepaper basket.

Something’s still not right, though, still feels left undone.

My pulsing fingertips reach for my backpack again, but this time they lift out my binder. Experimentally I tear out a piece of loose-leaf and stare at it. Why’d I just do that? It’s not like I’m going to solve math problems at a time like this. My head turns to face the desk, my eyes focusing in on a blue gel pen. Before I know it the pen’s in my hand and I’m scribbling, filling the page with what just happened. The horrible names he called me. The horrible things he did. At first I write it cold and clinically, then I add in my fear. My helplessness and shame. Angry tears sting my eyes as I write it, but when I get to the end, all I feel is exhaustion. Drained, I sigh a deep breath.