Nearly Gone (12 page)

I took the city bus to the end of its route, then walked the rest of the way to North Hampton. The doors to the school’s gymnasium were closed, but not locked. I peeked inside. The lights were on. It still smelled like warm bodies, but the gym was empty, and I slipped under the bleachers, unnoticed.

The air under the stands was at least two degrees cooler. I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust. Metal columns slowly came into focus, but it was too dark to make out anything beyond them but shadows. I withdrew a penlight from my pocket and hoped the lights on the other side of the wooden platforms over my head would be enough to keep anyone from noticing the flashlight’s thin beam through the slats.

I flipped it on. If there was a message here, hidden in the dark, I’d find it. I started at the high side nearest the wall, illuminating cinder blocks covered in graffiti. Finding nothing unusual, I turned the light toward the splintering underbelly of the bleachers themselves.

Bingo.

A shiver passed through me at the sight of the familiar blue ink.
“Aren’t you a little far from home?”
I jumped and switched off the light, dropping it as I spun toward the echoing voice. He stood in silhouette at the bleachers’ opening, arms resting on the risers over his head. I could feel his stare, steady on me, even in the dark. Reece ducked under the tiers and I let out a breath.
“You scared me to death.” I hid my hands in my pocket. “What are you doing here?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.
I
used to go to school here,” he said.
I jumped at a
snap-click
, like a pocketknife or a switch blade flipping. But it was only a flashlight. My light, that he’d retrieved from the floor.
The beam flashed to my face, obscuring him and blinding me. “What’s your excuse?” he asked.
I averted my eyes and took a step back. “Get that thing out of my eyes.” I shielded my face with both hands and he lowered the light. I blinked, adjusting to the creepy dim shadows it cast over the walls. I was face-to-face with the bleachers, the exact spot where I’d found the message a moment ago. I risked a glance.
A glimpse of blue graffiti. Like the letters on my chem lab table. Like the letters on the dead cat’s box.
Printed. Bold.
Two lines buried in years of old scribble. The cops probably hadn’t even noticed it was there.
“Looking for something?” he asked.
He couldn’t have noticed. It had only been a glance.
Reese stepped toward me, blocking my exit. He braced a hand on the wooden tier over my head and dipped his face low enough for me to feel the heat radiating off his skin. To smell hot leather and sweat. I swallowed, not sure if it was the closeness of his body or the cryptic blue message that sped up my breath. “I should be going.”
He didn’t move. I could have stepped around him, but I didn’t.
“Why do you do that?” His voice drew goose bumps over my skin.
“Do what?”
“Run away. Every time I get close, you run.”
Close. All I could see was his face. Purple shadows, green bruises, and his blue eyes.
“Does it bother you?” he whispered. “Being close to me?”
“No.” I barely shook my head, unable to look away from his lips. “Yes.” They were too close, disorienting. “Maybe.”
He stepped in closer even though there shouldn’t have been any space left between us. “Where did you go on Friday? You took off after the flume ride and I spent hours looking for you. Where were you?”
I looked from his mouth to his eyes. Found all the same questions that had been in Jeremy’s and Rankin’s. Everyone tiptoeing around me while they pointed questions like fingers. Where was I? What was I doing? Why? Why? Why?
“None of your business,” I said, feeling cornered. I took a step back and bumped my head on the bleacher. But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He stared past me, his eyes flicking side to side. His body, smooth and relaxed a moment ago, stiffened. He took a step back and straightened slowly, focused on something behind me.
I lurched at the slam of a gymnasium door. A sound, like the squeaky wheels of a mop bucket, made its way across the floor.
Reece was the first to speak. He was distant and cold. “It’s getting late. We should get out of here.”
I should have been grateful for his shift in focus, but I wasn’t. I was humiliated for no reason that made any sense at all. I stepped around him, avoiding his arms as I brushed by.
“I was just leaving anyway.” My voice wavered, relief and disappointment warring inside. I focused hard on the white light at the end of the bleachers. But when I got there, he wasn’t behind me. I looked back. Reece stood in profile, flashlight shining against the underside of the bleacher where I’d just stood. He turned toward me, his face unreadable in the dark.
I knew he’d seen the same thing I had. Two lines of blue graffiti that read like all the others.
It’s personal. I’ll put it all on the table for you. Are you clever enough to find me in time?

I sat at the kitchen table, scribbling numbers on a sticky note. Ten. Eighteen. Three. I’d gone over them countless times. Rearranging them. Looking for patterns. Nothing made sense.

It’s personal. I’ll put it all on the table for you.
Could the numbers have something to do with the messages on my lab tables? There had only been two. A reference to Schrödinger’s cat written in ink on my chemistry table. And a reference to Archimedes’ Principle carved into my table in physics. But there hadn’t been any equations. No way to plug in the numbers to come up with a solution. I tapped my pen, making a mental note to check all my lab tables again today.

A familiar rumbling grew louder and died outside my trailer. A motorcycle. I ripped the sticky note off the pad and stuffed it in my pocket while I sprinted to the door, flinging it open and blocking the stoop before he could knock and wake my mother.

“What are you doing here?” I made a roadblock with my hands. Reece rested a hip against the splintered rail and squinted up at me.

His eyes drifted down to my pajama pants. “Suspension’s over. I’m taking you to school.”
I gritted my teeth. Like if I bit down hard enough, it could block the flow of blood to my cheeks. And maybe keep him off my porch. “I have a ride.”
He came up the steps anyway, backing me into the door. “I’ve seen your ride and he’s not doing much for you. He was kind of a dick on Friday—”
“So were you!” I braced my hands on the frame. No way was I letting him inside.
“Yeah, we didn’t really get to finish our conversation about that. About where you went when you disappeared on Friday?”
This “where were you the night of Friday May 23” crap was getting old. And I had no intention of telling him I’d gone to the same bathroom where Posie had been found. I didn’t owe him anything. “I rode the bus home from the class trip with Jeremy.”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Yeah, Lonny made a point of mentioning it—”
“Lonny? When?”
He gripped the top of the door frame and leaned in close. “When he promised to put a cap in my ass if he found out we were lying.” He didn’t blink.
I glanced toward Lonny’s trailer, where his Lexus idled. I could just make out the shape of his head, hunkered down in the front seat, watching us in his mirrors.
“You let him think you’re my girlfriend, and that’s the only reason he didn’t impale me with my own ribs that night in the park. He’s got his eyes on both of us, waiting for us to trip in our own bullshit. Running away from me at the amusement park and going home with Jeremy just made him suspicious. I had to make up some lie about you being pissed off at me.”
“Where’s the lie in that?” Our eyes met and held. “I saved you once. No one said I had to do it again.”
“Who said anything about saving
me
?”
The bike’s engine cooled with a series of soft clicks. Traffic hummed on Route 1, and the smell of rancid trash was growing stronger as the morning sun glinted hot off the cans. I looked down the street. Lonny’s face was clear in his side mirror. He looked straight at me, touched his index finger to his lips, and blew a kiss like it was smoke from the barrel of a gun.
“Wait here,” I said. “I’ll get my things.” I opened the door and headed to the kitchen, cursing under my breath as I slapped together a quick PB&J and shook open a paper bag. Reece reached over my shoulder and grabbed it off the counter.
“I thought I told you to wait outside!” I hissed.
He inhaled half of my sandwich and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he pushed past me into the hall, paused at the No Smoking sign, and let himself into my bedroom.
“You can’t be here! My mother will have a stroke!” It came out as a frantic breathy whisper.
“If you’re quiet, she’ll never have to know.” He rummaged in my closet, shuffling through my scant collection of secondhand clothes.
A pair of frayed low-rise jeans landed on my feet. A designer label Mona’d found at a yard sale in Belle Green, practically a give-away because of the bleach stains. She’d retired them to the closet a year ago, saying they showed too much skin. I couldn’t agree more.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you ready for school.” Reece examined a stretchy collared shirt, two sizes too small. It had been part of a sweatervest set I’d worn to middle school graduation. He tossed it to me. “Put this on.”
I plucked the hem of my heavy metal T-shirt. “What I have on is fine! It’s too hot for a sweater vest.”
“You’re not wearing a sweater vest.”
I held the blouse against my torso. “It’s too small!”
He raised an eyebrow and grinned. “I know.”
“Why are you making me wear it?”
“Because Lonny doesn’t believe you’re my type.”
I waved the shirt in his face. “And this is your type?”
He looked at the shirt, then at my chest, and smiled.
I made a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh. A minute passed on my desk clock. He didn’t move. He didn’t care if we were late.
“Fine!” I started to push him into the hall and paused. If Mona woke up and found him in the living room, I’d be dead. If he was here with me, at least I could shove him out the window. I checked the lock. “Turn around.” I twisted him to face the wall.
I slipped off my pajama pants, pulling my shirt down to cover myself while I eased on the ones Reece picked out. I looked twice to make sure he wasn’t peeking, then wiggled out of my shirt lightning quick and stuffed my arms into the blouse. The stretchy material was too tight across the chest, pulling the fabric taut between each button. I picked at the fabric, wishing there was more of it, and tapped Reece’s shoulder with an exasperated sigh.
“Satisfied? Can we go now?” I looked ridiculous.
He reached toward my chest and I flinched.
Give me a break
was written all over his face. “I’m not trying to feel you up.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, covering the buttons with both hands.
“Trust me.” He reached again before I could object, unfastening the top two buttons and drawing the collar wide across my chest. Blood rushed to my cheeks and I held perfectly still, too freaked out to move. He gave the fabric around my waist a few quick tugs, then reached lower. I swatted his hands but he’d already unfastened the bottom two buttons, the stretchy material pulling apart to reveal a triangle of pasty-white belly.
“What are you doing?” I covered my stomach with my hands, then shot them up, missing his as he mussed my hair with his fingers. I muttered something about all the corners of hell where he could shove himself while he unclasped the thick chain behind his neck and fastened it around mine. It was still warm from his body, as warm as his fingers when they brushed my skin.
Feelings bloomed under his touch, stealing my breath. I closed my eyes against a tender ache, an emptiness beneath the shallow rise and fall of my chest. The pendant ignited a heartache inside him, the same way my father’s wedding ring did. He let it go slowly as if it were difficult to part with, making me curious about who he might be missing.
I captured the pendant between my fingers. A class ring. Class of 2013. North Hampton’s mascot, the hornet, was carved on one side. I turned it over and saw an odd, thornylooking flower that matched Reece’s tattoo.
“What is it?”
“It’s a thistle,” he answered, still frowning over my ensemble.
“A thistle?”
“Yeah, you know . . . little . . . prickly . . . pain in the ass. It suits you.”
I dropped it and scowled as his gaze climbed back up my body. “I know what a thistle is. What’s the story behind it? Why the tattoo?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“Maybe I don’t ask enough.”
His eyes found mine and his sly smile fell away. He looked broken, and I couldn’t tell if it was the fading bruises on his face, or the sadness beneath them that kept me from asking any more.
Slowly, he reached both hands toward my face. I caught him by the cuffs. I knew exactly what he wanted.
“No,” I said, determined to draw this line in the sand. “The glasses stay.”
“Fine,” he smirked half-heartedly. “Sexy librarian works for me. My job is done.”
He turned me toward the mirror. It was as bad as I’d feared. The shirt clung to me, the pendant hanging like a glaring focal point over my chest. I fidgeted with the collar, trying to tuck the thistle inside, but Reece stopped me.
“Leave it,” he said.
“I can’t go to school like this,” I protested. “People will notice. They’ll stare.”
“That’s the idea. Lonny will see me ride the new and improved Leigh Boswell to school, and by the end of the day everyone will believe we’re a couple. Besides, you can’t keep hiding from guys like Vince under big glasses and hoodies.”
“I’m not hiding from anyone.”
“Neither am I.” He surprised me, catching my chin on his finger. His resolve bled into me, cool and solid in my veins. “Leave the pendant where it is.”
He was invading me like a drug. I could feel him inside me, uninvited and pushing himself closer to my heart. But it was all a lie. I stepped out of reach. “Why?”
He stared at the pendant, worry pulling at the bandage over his eye. “The thistle is mine. There are people who will recognize it and know that you’re . . .” A flash of hesitation crossed his face. “They should see you wearing it. That’s all.”
“Are we talking about Lonny or Vince?” Looking at his face, I already knew. I had more than just Vince and Lonny to worry about. He wanted Nicholson to see me wearing it, but why? Was he trying to show Nicholson that he’d worn me down? That he’d done his job and made good on his end of the bargain?
“Why are you doing this?”
He let out a long slow breath before answering quietly. “Because it’s my turn to save you.” He grabbed his jacket from my bed and reached for the door.
He was so close. So close to saying something with a glimmer of truth in it, without me having to take it from him. Without me having to feel it. “Save me from who, Reece?”
He paused before twisting the doorknob. “From yourself.”
I watched him go, too dumbstruck to speak. The bike roared to life. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and went after him.