Last Breath (19 page)

Cassidy felt dizzy. Her lungs weren’t providing enough oxygen to her brain. She could pass out at any time. “What did I hit on the road near Nightmare Hall?”

“Malcolm.”

“Malcolm?”

“Sophie’s stuffed, life-size alligator. Don’t worry, though, Cassidy, there’s hardly a scratch on him. You didn’t hit him very hard. He’s back in his chair in our room, where he belongs.”

Between coughing spasms, Cassidy managed, “You were deliberately trying to make me think I was losing my mind. Why, Talia? I don’t understand.”

“I couldn’t help it, Cassidy. I needed to see what it would take to drive a really strong mind insane. It was very important to me. I picked you because I knew you had that kind of mind.” Talia began swinging the inhaler absentmindedly, back and forth, back and forth.

The sight of her lifesaving medication, so close and yet so unattainable, was maddening to Cassidy. “That’s crazy,” she gasped, clutching the can in her hand more tightly. “Why didn’t you just ask your mother? She knows all that stuff.”

Talia threw her head back and laughed, loud and wildly. “My mother? My
mother
? My mother isn’t a
doctor
. My mother is a
patient
. Has been for years. In that same prestigious hospital where you all believed she was on the staff.” Talia laughed again. “On the staff. That’s so funny. Don’t you think that’s funny, Cassidy?”

“Your mother is…your mother is a mental patient? But…but you said I could call her, ask her for advice.”

Talia laughed again. “My mother couldn’t give advice to the baskets she weaves. But I knew you’d never call her. People like you never ask for help. You’re so busy proving how strong and independent you are, you can’t bear to hand that control over to someone else.”

Travis had hinted at the same thing.

“I meant it when I said I understood how you felt, being laughed at,” Talia said. “I was ten when my mother ran out of the house one day in her slip and bare feet and tried to hang herself from a tree in the front yard. Half the town saw her before she was taken away.” Talia’s voice grew bitter. “Ten-year-olds think that kind of thing is very funny. They never let me forget it. I decided then that I would study the mind when I grew up.”

“But…but you said she was a
doctor
,” Cassidy accused.

“When I got here, and all the rest of you had relatives working in the field of psychiatry, I decided to promote my mother from patient to doctor. I get letters from the hospital, updating me on her condition, so I figured it would be easy to pretend. And it was.”

Cassidy could no longer sit up. She sank back again against the tire well. They were, she had realized, parked behind the infirmary on campus. Why couldn’t someone in there hear the horribly loud, agonized sounds she was making? Dr. Mandini would know what they were. She would recognize the sound and come running, wouldn’t she?

“My father,” Talia said in that same conversational tone of voice, “said my mother lost her mind because she was weak. I didn’t believe him. That’s a horrible thing to tell a little girl, that her own mother is weak. I needed to prove him wrong. I’ve always needed that, more than anything. And if you had fallen apart the way I wanted you to, you would have proved him wrong for me. You would have proved that she wasn’t weak, after all, that even a strong person can have a mental breakdown. But you didn’t prove my father wrong, Cassidy, and I can’t forgive you for that. I
hate
you for it, and I’ll never forgive you.”

“Yes, I did, Talia,” Cassidy gasped, “I did prove your father wrong! You
did
drive me over the edge. I was hysterical when Jess and Ian took me to the infirmary. But then Dr. Mandini told me there really was a TransAm, and I knew I hadn’t imagined things, so…”

Talia’s face filled with rage again. “Stop lying! It didn’t work, my father was right, and I hate you for that. I don’t need you anymore. No one needs you, Cassidy, so I’m going to close the trunk now and leave. When I come back, in a couple of hours, you’ll be dead. I’ll take you out of the trunk, prop you under a tree, and take this car back to its owner. You won’t have your inhaler when they find you. Everyone will know you left the infirmary because you were too rattled to know what you were doing, you had an attack, and without your inhaler, you died. There won’t be any questions.”

Red-and-orange spots began to dance before Cassidy’s eyes. She knew she had very little time left.

“I’m not weak like my mother,” Talia said, standing up. “I’m strong. I have to work very hard at it, but I’m going to succeed. I’m never going to be like her, never!”

“I…think…you…are,” Cassidy whispered weakly between agonized spasms. “I…think…your…mother’s…ill-ness…is…hereditary. You’re…as…sick …as…she…is.”

The transformation in Talia then was terrifying. Her face contorted with fury. There was no vestige left of the calm, cool, smiling Talia of moments before. “That’s not true!” she screamed, leaning over the open trunk. “How dare you say such a thing? You take that back! It’s not true! I’m not like her, I’m not!”

The life-saving inhaler was only inches away from Cassidy. But she refused to let go of the can or the garden tool. She needed them even more.

“I wish I could watch you,” Talia hissed. “I wish I could stay here and drill a hole in the trunk and just watch every second of your struggle to breathe. I want to see your eyes bulge out and your lips turn blue and know that those lips will never be able to tell anyone the truth about me or my mother.”

“Yes, they will,” Cassidy gasped, and she brought the can up and pushed down on the little white button at the top, praying that the can wasn’t empty.

It wasn’t.

A fine spray of foul-smelling chemicals hit Talia full in the face. She screamed, her hands flying to her eyes, and Cassidy raised the garden tool and swung. It was a weak swing as she struggled for breath, but the metal tip caught Talia just above the temple. She toppled sideways like a felled tree.

To the sound of the hoarse croaks escaping from between her lips, Cassidy crawled out of the trunk. She scooped up the inhaler and pressed it to her mouth.

She was bending to see if Talia was breathing when a figure came running from the infirmary, shouting, “What’s going on out there?”

Cassidy breathed a sigh of relief when she realized it was Dr. Mandini.

“What are you doing out here?” the doctor asked, hurrying toward her, not close enough yet to see Talia lying on the ground. “That was strong medication I gave you. You shouldn’t be walking around. Are you crazy?”

“No,” Cassidy said, in a strong, clear voice, “I’m not.”

T
HE REC CENTER LOOKED
exactly as Cassidy had pictured it in her mind. The round tables were covered with floor-length black velvet cloths, and there were silver candlesticks in the center of each table, mated with a silver bud vase housing a single red carnation. More silver candlesticks stood on shelves and on tables near the bandstand, turning the plain, square room into a softly-glowing fantasyland.

“You were right about the black and silver,” Sophie told Cassidy warmly. “It’s perfect.” Sophie looked adorable in the pale blue dress she had picked out by herself.

Cassidy smiled at her. “It is, isn’t it? Well, if you ask me, it’s about time something was perfect.”

Ann passed by with her date, her face pale and lovely and expressionless. She nodded at Cassidy and Sophie. Cassidy returned the nod without a smile. It was still hard to believe that Ann hadn’t known about the existence of the TransAm. She had told all of them that she had never gone into the garage and Professor Benham had never mentioned the car. She had said that she never saw Talia come for the car. That Talia had only come when Ann had taken the children to the park or to a movie. That she had absolutely no idea the car even existed.

Maybe. But it had seemed to Cassidy that she had seen something in Ann’s eyes, something that said she wasn’t telling the complete, unvarnished truth.

Travis must have seen it, too. He had called Cassidy the day after Talia had been taken away. They had talked for hours. She had agreed to slow down a little, now that she had already proved how strong she really was, and he had agreed to let her set her own pace.

“When I have my own house,” Cassidy said as Travis took her hand and led her out onto the dance floor, “I’m not even going to use electric lights. Only candles.”

“Cost you a fortune in fire insurance,” he said.

“Oh, you’re such a romantic,” she said, but she smiled as she said it.

“Great dance, Cassidy!” Sawyer called out as he danced by with his date. “You did a terrific job, as always.”

“Yes,” she said, not at all out of breath from dancing, “I did, didn’t I?”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Nightmare Hall Series

I
WATCH HER RACING
around the tennis courts, and I can’t stand the sight of her.

She took something from me. She stole from me.

Oh, it wasn’t an ordinary theft. Not the kind where you call the police and fill out forms for the district attorney and attend the trial of the criminal who ripped you off.

This was a different kind of theft. No police, no D.A., no trial. She was never even punished.

She took something that I needed, and then she went blithely on with her life, as if nothing had happened.

I went on with mine, too. Got up every morning. Brushed my teeth and my hair, put on my shoes, ate, talked, did what I was supposed to do, slept. As if nothing had happened, just like her.

But something
had
happened. Something outrageous. An injustice.

Of course, I can’t leave it this way. It’s not right. It’s just not right.

To balance the scales, I must take something from her.

I must take something that she can’t run right out and replace, as if she’d simply lost her wallet or her keys or a pen.

There is only one thing that I can take from her that’s completely irreplaceable.

Her life.

And that is what I’m going to take.

N
ICKI BLEDSOE HESITATED IN
the doorway of the sports shop in the Twin Falls shopping mall. The store was huge. All she needed was socks. Tennis socks. The ten-minute trip from campus and the eternity it would take her to find something as minor as socks among basketball and baseball equipment, roller and ice skates, skis and badminton nets, volleyballs and tennis balls and soccer balls, suddenly seemed like a gigantic waste of time. She could have bought socks on campus. Not the kind she liked for playing tennis, but the time saved would have been worth a little discomfort on the court.

She was due at her first practice in forty-five minutes. Her stomach recoiled in alarm at the thought. Meeting a whole new team, walking in cold, knowing no one … her palms were sweaty from dread.

And yet, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t been through it before. Military brats changed schools faster than square dancers changed partners. In twelve years, she’d attended eight schools, and that horrible feeling of facing new people, of proving who she was all over again, had, like any nightmare, never left her. She hated it.

She had thought that once she got to college, the moving would end. She’d be on her own then, and could stay in one place forever if she wanted.

But just as she was finishing her first semester at State, Salem University’s well-known tennis coach and former Wimbledon champion, Marta Dietch, had arrived on State’s campus with an offer for Nicole Bledsoe: a full-tuition athletic scholarship if she’d switch to Salem and play tennis.

Nicki hadn’t wanted to leave State. She’d already made friends there, she liked her fellow tennis team members, and hadn’t she promised herself she would stay in one place from now on?

But her father had retired from the military, and her parents were living on a pension. A good pension, but still … Nicki didn’t see how she could turn down a full scholarship.

So at the end of the semester, she had once again packed all of her belongings and left a place where she’d become comfortable to start all over somewhere else.

She was perfectly willing to admit that Salem University’s campus was much prettier than State’s. The buildings were red or buff-colored brick, or white stone, many of them covered with ivy. She liked the old-fashioned, round globes on the tall pole lamps that lined the walkways, and the huge old elm and maple trees, bare of leaf now, that sheltered the rolling, snow-covered lawns.

But arriving on campus after everyone else had already been there a full semester was worse than entering a new high school, which she had done three times. The university was so much larger than any other school she’d ever attended. People had already made friends, joined sororities and fraternities, and selected activities. She’d done all of that at State, made a nice life, and now she had once again left that life behind and had to create a whole new one.

Still, she had learned shortly after she began playing tennis at the age of eight that the sport was a great equalizer. Once she started practicing and playing, she would automatically make friends and build a social life.