Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) (5 page)

"He's in Boston," Lily said.

"Oh, right, he'd decided on Boston
College."

"Well, he's still considering his
options."

"Oh." Barny adopted a concerned and slightly
embarrassed tone. "I guess I must have misunderstood him, then. Of
course."

Lily pushed the hair out of her face. "Wait,
why. What did he say?"

"Just a sec," Barny said, gazing off past
her. "Hold up, I gotta go handle something."

Lily made a fumbled grab for his sleeve.
"Wait, what did Derek say?"

Barny strode off purposefully, calling to a
friend that had left the party an hour earlier. "Hey, Kyle, hold
up!"

Away from the firelight and confident that
the girls had lost sight of him in the dark, Barny circled around
the Spot's abandoned concession stand to watch Lily and her
friends. He couldn't get close enough to hear what they were
saying, but he made a mental note to check up on them later and see
how Lily was taking things.

***

"Yeah, you seemed
pretty upset about something." Barny idly passed the football from
hand to hand. "Derek, I think.You guys have a fight?"

Lily brushed the question aside. "We were
drinking?"

"Yeah. I was surprised. I didn't think you
drank."

"I don't. I didn't."

Barny tilted his head. "Well, you had a cup.
Maybe you were just holding it for someone."

Lily turned away, towards the school, arms
crossed. This really wasn't helping her mood.

"Or maybe one of the other girls was the
designated driver?" Barny rubbed his chin. "No, you all had cups. I
know that Ash and Lauren drink, but aren't you usually their
D.D.?"

"I don't remember."

"Right, yeah," Barny said. "You know, I
remember something from psych class, something about how when the
mind is confronted with something horrible, something so terrible
that it can't face it, it will block out or alter those memories
just so it can live with itself."

Lily felt a thickness in her throat as
Barny's words came at her rapid-fire and nearly monotone.

"Do you think you might be experiencing
something like that, Lily?"

She looked back at him, and her vision
seemed to suddenly sharpen beyond any focus she'd ever achieved.
She could see the individual stitching in his shirt, count the
hairs in his stubble, hear the steady rhythm of his heart. Before
she could even wonder at this sudden acuity, she saw for the first
time the slight smile at the corner of his lips, heard the faint
mocking edge to his concern. Worst of all was the ugly coldness in
his eyes, the hunger there, the way he was drinking in every moment
of her discomfort.

"Do you think?" Barny repeated.

The cold sickness in her gut turned into a
bright hot ball as the pounding in her ears drowned out the sound
of his voice. She struck out towards him with her fist, knocking
him back and away off of his feet, cutting off his vile words
mid-syllable. A feral half-scream escaped her lips as she turned
from him and fled, running from her guilt, from her rage, and from
the fear that he could be right.

CHAPTER FIVE

Gideon watched Lily's
flight from Barny with some concern, but it still took him a few
minutes to get to her. Not because he didn't know where she was
headed -- there were few hiding spots in Laton's high school, and
even fewer that a good student like Lily would be able to find --
but because he didn't want to get caught. Lily might have free
reign of the halls, but Gideon had skipped several classes that
day, and was often hassled by the faculty on the good chance that
there was something he'd done recently that warranted
it.

Even worse, he'd spotted one of Bill's
deputies down on the first floor, walking the halls. Brummel. Oh,
Brummel was a bastard, to be sure. Not all of the deputies were.
Some of them even seemed sympathetic towards Gideon, at least when
his father wasn't around. But Brummel? Brummel was a bully, plain
and simple, getting off on the power he had over other people.

Someday, Brummel'd get his.

Someday.

Gideon waited until the deputy had passed
the stairwell he was hiding on, then silently slipped past his back
to the door to the utility room alcove. Like the roof access, there
used to be a lock to the alcove, but Gideon had jammed it his
Sophomore year. Just like he thought, the school had removed it
rather than paying the cost to replace it.

He was sweating almost before the door
closed behind him, and once it had, the place became a veritable
oven. Even though the alcove wasn't very spacious, Gideon didn't
see Lily right away, even after his eyes had adjusted to the
furnace's dull glow.

"Lily?" he said.

"I really need to be alone right now." Her
voice came, harsh but fragile, from the corner beyond the janitor's
tool rack.

Gideon would have missed her if it wasn't
for the stark whiteness of her sneakers.

"Okay, just gimmie a second." Gideon sat in
the small chair near the door.

Lily's only reply was a sniffle, and he felt
embarrassed. For himself, for her, for the silence between them. It
somehow made his flushed cheeks feel even hotter.

"I don't want to get busted," he said to
fill the silence. "There's a deputy out there."

Lily stopped her sniffling, and Gideon could
hear her holding her breath.

"He's not here for you!" he said. "It's me.
I had a fight with da-- with the sheriff this morning, and he's got
his guys looking for me. Make sure I don't skip classes. Saw
another one drifting the streets this morning."

He heard Lily exhale, and relaxed a little
himself.

"Besides, it'd take them longer to get here
if someone called them about how you decked Barney."

Her voice was small. "Am I going to get in
trouble for that?"

"I don't know. Probably not. Technically
it's assault, but I been in lots of fights, and the only time the
sheriff got involved was because he's my dad."

"Okay."

"I mean Barny could press charges, but then
he'd be admitting you laid him out like that."

She gave a small chuckle. "Yeah, I don't see
that happening."

Gideon smiled in the
darkness, crossing his ankles. "You really smacked him, though.
I've never seen anybody hit like that in real life. Just
bam
, and down he
went."

"I never hit anybody before."

"You did damn good for a first time." Gideon
shifted in his chair. "I'm sorry. I guess you didn't get what you
wanted from him."

"He's a dick."

"That he is."

"I shouldn't have hit him--"

"No, he pretty much deserved it."

"I still don't know what happened last
Saturday." Lily's voice cracked. "Like, was I driving? Did I kill
Lauren?"

"Whatever happened, it's not your fault. It
was just an accident."

The girl leaned forward, around the rack,
and Gideon could see the haunted look on her face. "If I was
driving? If I was drinking?"

"Lily--"

She leaned back out of view. "I don't
even... I just want to know what happened."

In that moment Gideon wished for nothing
more than to be able to say something, to alleviate the pain Lily
was feeling, to help her somehow feel some sort of resolution. "The
accident report would say who was sitting where and what your BAC
was."

Lily stared at him, eyes wide. "Can you...
can you get that? The report?"

Gideon felt a fluttering high. It was new to
him, someone looking at him with hope in their eyes, relying on
him, counting on him for something other than to be disappointed.
"What, me? No."

"The sheriff's your dad."

"Yeah, but I don't have access to his files
or anything. He doesn't keep them at home."

Lily dropped her head. "Oh."

He wasn't willing to give up that high so
easily.

"I know someone who might be able to get
them, though."

"Really?" Lily's voice rose.

"Shit yeah." Gideon stood, a grin appearing
on his face. "Let me check to see if the coast is clear."

Lily hesitated. "I don't want to skip school
completely."

Gideon's grin broadened. "Don't worry. We
don't have to leave the building."

***

Lily followed Gideon
as he moved with exaggerated care down the hallway. He was
cumbersome and not particularly graceful, but he knew when to move
and when to stay still, how to evade detection by the faculty, and
when to slip past an open door and when to wait. Something about
this, the sneaking, guiding her, seemed to excite and vitalize him.
It seemed natural to him.

She wasn't complaining. Gideon was a
burnout, a pot-head, a troublemaker who defied authority. They
moved in different circles, but she didn't see in his eyes the
mockery that Barny's words had held. He was helping her. Whatever
his own reasons were, she was grateful for it. It made her feel
less alone.

"Where are we headed?" she whispered.

"Library." Gideon stopped outside the
doors.

"Think Mr. Gonzales can help?"

"What?" He cracked the door open, then
looked back at her like she was crazy. "No."

He slipped in, gesturing for her to
follow.

Laton High didn't have a large library, but
it was very modern, paid for with a generous grant from the
International Church of Christ Everlasting. Unlike the rest of the
school, whose decor had been firmly established in the late
seventies, everything in the library looked like it came from an
Apple store or Ikea catalog. The black and white furnishings had
rounded corners and an ergonomic aesthetic.

"Then what are we here for?"

Gideon crossed the library soundlessly while
Mr. Gonzales, the librarian, had his head down and his attention
buried in a crossword puzzle. Lily followed as he slipped into the
Computer Annex.

The Annex was half the size of the already
small library, but its equipment was no less modern.There were
banks of computers, high-end academic models that most students at
the school had never seen, let alone used. It seemed like a bit of
a waste to Lily, particularly since most of the students had
computers at home, and even their phones were almost as
powerful.

Gideon gestured towards the lab's only
resident, a petite girl sitting by herself at one of the machines.
"You know Delilah Klein?"

Of course she knew Delilah. Everyone knew
Delilah. Or at least, everyone knew of Delilah, the way that
everyone knew everyone else in Laton. Lily had never spoken with
her, but it was impossible to be ignorant of a girl whose academic
prowess had enabled her to skip into high school while her peers
were just entering middle-school. The fourteen-year-old senior was
younger than some of the incoming Freshmen, yet carried with her a
sense of icy self-confidence that few could match.

Delilah was smarter than you were, no matter
who in Laton you happened to be, and everyone knew it.

"Gideon..." The girl looked up as Gideon
approached, a slight smile forming that froze with as her gaze
shifted to Lily. "You've brought a friend."

"You know Lily?"

She was small in person, slight even for her
age, and almost lost in the hoodie she wore. "It's a small town,
Gideon."

"Hi," Lily said.

Delilah's eyes half-lidded and she gave a
barely perceptible nod.

"You heard about her accident?"

"Small town." Delilah pulled her hood up and
slouched back in her chair, hands folded over her belly.

Lily fiddled with the rings on her hand,
feeling more insignificant and dismissed than she had in her whole
life. She glanced towards the doorway, then back towards the girl,
trying to match the coolness of her gaze and failing.

Gideon looked back and forth between the two
girls and shifted his stance. "Um. Yeah. Look, Delilah... she's
trying to figure out what happened and everything, and, um..."

"Gideon thinks you can get me a copy of the
accident report."

If Delilah was surprised she didn't show it,
shifting her gaze levelly between the two older teens. "How exactly
am I supposed to do that?"

"Well, you can get into the town's record
system," Gideon said. "You know. With hacking."

Delilah's jaw dropped open for a moment
before she spoke. "Are you nuts?"

"I know you can do it. You--"

The young girl's frosty demeanor shattered
as she bounced up, standing on her tiptoes to wave a finger in
Gideon's face. "Nnuh nnuh! Zip it!"

"But--"

"Shoosh!" She glanced back at Lily. "I can't
just... hack... into police records, Gideon."

"You totally can, you--"

"It's a
felony
,
idiot."

Gideon frowned.

She turned to Lily. "I'm sorry, I can't... I
mean, I see what you're going through, it's just that I can't risk
my future. For someone I hardly know."

Lily sat down heavily, the hope that had
buoyed her from the boiler room sliding away, feeling both old and
fragile.

Delilah was watching her. She glanced back
at Gideon, a whine in her voice "You know?"

"It's important," Gideon said. "She--"

"No, it's okay," Lily said. "I get it. She's
right. It's not fair to ask her to risk jail for someone she hardly
knows."

"That's all it is," Delilah said. "I would
if I could."

"I know." Lily slipped her head into her
hands, closing her eyes. This was her cross to bear, and she
couldn't expect more from anyone. "It's okay."

"Right?"

Lily cracked an eye, gazing askance towards
the pair she shared the room with. She watched the bewilderment and
slight disappointment on Gideon's face, and compared it to
Delilah's resolute determination -- a determination that
nevertheless sought validation from the older boy. She didn't know
them, either of them, very well, but she'd been a big fish in her
peers social pond long enough to recognize infatuation when she saw
it.