On the Fringe (23 page)

“But not Mom or Dad?”

He nodded again.

“You already knew everything!” I accused, remembering how calm he had been while Mom and Dad explained everything.

He didn’t deny it.

“Who told you?”

“Addie.”

“
Addie
called you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What did she say? When did she call?”

“I don’t know, sometime this afternoon,” he said, looking down at his watch. “Just after you guys got home from the park, I think.”

I could only stare at him in disbelief. I was pretty sure they hadn’t spoken a single word since Daniel died. How did she even get his number?

“Wow, that must have been weird,” I said more to myself than to him.

“Yeah, but at least she thought to call.”

I felt a little guilty when he put it that way, but I also felt somewhat defensive. “Matthew…you
do
realize we haven’t talked…
really
talked…in months?” His brilliant eyes watched me briefly, and then peered off to the side. He still didn’t say anything.“What happened–”

“What happened?” he asked, cutting me off. “What
happened?
Come on, Claire, I watched my best friend die. I saw a bullet go through his head!”

It was the first time he had ever spoken of Daniel’s murder. I didn’t move. The air was uncomfortably tense.

“Sorry,” he spoke more softly, looking in my eyes. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. That’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”

“It’s okay,” I replied, regretting the way the conversation had turned, realizing our relationship might always be strained.

He coughed, and then lay on his back, staring upward. “I couldn’t go through it all again. Not with you, too.”

“Go through what?”

“When I heard you almost drowned, it really got to me, but I pushed it away. Forgot about it like it never happened, just like with…well, Daniel,” he explained reflectively. “But when Addie called today and told me what was going on here, I felt like everything in my life was slipping away, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I just can’t let it happen again. Not to you, too.” He finally took a breath, and then covered his face with his hands like a shield.

I stared at him in shock. Sure, I expected him to struggle, knowing he was hurting all this time, but was entirely unprepared for this naked soul to emerge—the Matthew I used to know and love.

“I’m glad you came back,” I smiled, not knowing what else to say. He sat up and looked at me, then shifted his eyes down. An uncomfortable silence followed.

“What are you doing, anyway, getting into all sorts of trouble now that I’m away?” he teased, pulling us out of the uneasiness with his infectious smile.

“You know me,” I laughed, “always causing trouble.”

“Hardly. Addie, on the other hand…”

I dove on the bed next to him, where we spent the next hour or so catching up. College sounded like it had been the best thing for Matthew, even if we still missed him. He already met a couple of girls, though no official girlfriend yet.

My life, on the other hand, especially over the last few months, was a little more difficult to retell. My mind jumped from one place to another, like I was back in that stream where Daniel had found my ring, carefully hopping over the slippery rocks, trying not to fall in. Part of me wanted to tell Matthew everything, to let him in on my ballooning secret, but the wiser part of me noted that he was the one who had gotten all of Dad’s left-brained genes.

Finally, our stories caught up to the present, and I yawned and looked over at the clock. 9:13. No sign of Daniel yet.

“So how long will you be here?” I asked, briefly touching Matthew on the back as he stood up.

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided.”

“What about school?”

“Missing a few classes isn’t going to sink me, Claire. I’m a little brighter than that.” He smiled, knocking his finger on his temple a couple of times for effect. He made it to the door, then paused and turned back. “Tell me the truth.”

“Huh?”

“Are you scared?”

“What?”

“Scared. You seem remarkably calm, considering the last 24 hours.”

If it wasn’t for Daniel, I would be terrified.

“Yes,” I sighed. “But I’m also okay, if that makes any sense.”

“I just keep thinking about the note,” he said.

“What about it?”

“What did it mean?”

“How would I know? It was just an idiotic threat,” I answered, afraid to make the connection.

“But how did this freak know you almost drowned? That was a month ago. Do you really think he’s been stalking you this whole time?”

“I haven’t had time to absorb everything yet, much less attempt to delve into a lunatic’s mind.”

Matthew just stared at me, waiting for more, like he knew I was hiding something. But I didn’t say anything else. I’d already given the police the spiel—that I had no clue what the note meant or what it was referring to, except for the fact that I
did
almost drown on my birthday—but that was about it.

“Matthew, I…” I wanted to tell him even a little bit about Daniel, but didn’t know where to start. It felt like old times, like we were lying out under the stars, laughing about the crazy people in the world (everyone but us). We were untouchable then.

His hand rested on the wall, waiting for me to continue.

“Do you believe in…?” I started, looking up at the ceiling for a second, hoping to gain a little courage before chickening out. “Do you believe in life after death?”

“
What?
”

Oops. Maybe a mistake, but I forged ahead, anyway. “Where do you think Daniel is right now?”

“I don’t know,” he answered abruptly, looking past me, like I was starting to annoy him.

“Well, have you ever thought about it?”

“No. Why?”

I sighed. Was this really going to go anywhere, other than making me look nutty?

“I just…I…”
Ughhh.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I said, giving up.

“Just stay safe, okay?” Matthew said as he walked out of the room without waiting for a response.

I collapsed into the pillows.

Daniel

We slowly circled the room, facing each other like we were in a duel.

“I should thank you for saving Claire’s life,” Aden said, feigning politeness. “If it wasn’t for your heroic love, I’d be stuck haunting scum like Felix, here, instead of enjoying the thrill of someone who can actually see me.”

“Listen–”

“No,
you
listen. I’m done with you! We’ve had our little talk. You can quit trying to find me, quit trying to convince me to leave your girlfriend alone. I’m through with you and your little Boy Scout act. I have better things to do with my time.”

I shot toward him, ending our rotation, shouting the only thing I could think of. I was out of ammunition. “I’ve stopped connecting with her. So now where are you going to get your little thrill?”

Aden looked surprised, but just for a second. “Nice countermove from someone who can’t even tie his shoes.” He laughed. “But you’re the one who’ll suffer, not me. I have Felix to help me now. Either way, I get Claire. And when I’m done with her, there will always be plenty more to haunt. In the meantime, it’s nice knowing I’ve taken from you the only thing you ever wanted, just like you took everything from me. Touché, don’t you think?”

He darted away from me down the dark hallway, but I stuck right on his tail. He shot through the wall into the alleyway where long shadows, cast by the setting sun, buried the street in darkness.

“Now this is more fun!” Aden shouted, rushing into a busy intersection where cars plowed through us. “Come on…where’s your spirit?” he taunted. “Don’t you want to hear what I think of your girlfriend? Should I tell you how I watch her when you’re away…how she tosses and turns when she’s asleep…where Felix fits into all of this? Is that what you want to hear?
Is it?
”

He tried fading away, and I lunged at him. Just like before, he somehow pulled me to him, and I was stuck. Again. He shifted with me to another place—a strange city filled with honking cars, glass skyscrapers reaching to the sky, and hordes of people all speaking another language. I looked around anxiously, wondering where we were.

“You like following me?” he asked, seamlessly shifting us away from the foreign city to a dark pier as the waves crashed beneath us. A young couple holding hands strolled right through us just as Aden let go of me. “I’ll give you this much, just to watch you squirm.”

I lunged at him, trying to grab him the same way he’d somehow grabbed me, but found I was powerless. Next thing I knew, he was shoving his head through mine and holding it there until everything in front of me went muddy gray. I tried pulling away, but it felt like a clamp was forcing my head in place. I yelled out, but couldn’t hear myself because something like a movie started to creep into my hearing and vision.

At first I was confused, not sure where or what I was seeing, until I looked across the room and saw part of Matthew’s bloody face buried beneath a bunch of moving bodies. Fists were swinging, people were screaming, beer was spilling all over the place as music thumped on top of it all. I must have been back inside my own memory of the night I died, though I wasn’t sure how. I didn’t remember the fight from this perspective—from across the room like this.

When the back of my own head came into view in front of my present vision, I felt dizzy, like I was going to pass out. At first, I didn’t realize the head was mine, until the viewpoint took a new position to get a better look at my face. I watched myself rushing into the fight and throwing punches, and then pulling Matthew toward me, asking him if he was okay. Matthew’s head was bloody, his eye swollen, and he seemed to be going in and out of consciousness.

“Watch out!” someone yelled.

Everyone in the room screamed at once, but it was too late. I saw myself turn around to face the barrel of a gun held by someone wearing an oversized black hoodie. I tried to stop what I was seeing, knowing what was about to happen. I even screamed at myself, at the room full of drunken kids, and threw myself into the outstretched arm of the kid holding the gun. But it was impossible to change the memory—
Aden’s memory
.

He’d been there the whole time. Aden watched me die.

The blast exploded through the air and I saw my head jerk backward. Everyone screamed. My body fell forward into Matthew’s lap as Aden’s viewpoint turned toward the guy holding the gun. The killer glanced my way and then shoved the gun into his pants before turning and running out the back door.

Light and color exploded through my mind when Aden pulled me out of his memory. My head felt heavy as I watched him drift backward, smiling. “How’s that for a killer ending?” He said, drifting over the black ocean, leaving me alone on the pier. This time I let him go without a chase.

My fight was gone.

It felt like my whole body was shaking, even though I knew it wasn’t. Panic seemed to choke me from the unwanted glimpse at my murderer, and I fell over, trying to rid my mind of the killer’s face.

My killer.
Felix.

I knelt on the dark pier, battered with confusion, my mind a pulverized mess. The waves sprayed all around me as people unknowingly walked through me. I couldn’t stop thinking about Felix. And Aden. And how he was probably haunting Felix’s mind right now, telling him what to do next. Aden’s puppet had killed me without even flinching, point blank. What would he do to Claire? How was I supposed to warn her if I couldn’t even connect to her without letting Aden back in?

Maybe it would be better to just fade away from her life and hope everything, including Felix, went away, too. It wouldn’t be that hard to find some remote part of the world, some interesting place like the Amazon, and hang out there with the natives, right?
Right?

No. I couldn’t do that. Not to Claire.

I shifted from the strange pier back to Hidden Lake, trying to push away my fears, but it was impossible. And as embarrassing as it was to admit—right then I was scared-of-monsters-frightened; I didn’t know what to do. There was no one to talk to. I was completely alone in this. Powerless.

Drifting up the hill, I stopped in front of Claire’s house, wondering what to do next. That was when I noticed a familiar black Jeep parked in the driveway, one that hadn’t been there in months.

Matthew.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MATTHEW’S SECRET

Claire

The image in the mirror stared back at me. With my hair pulled into a ponytail and a doublewide headband across my forehead, I scrubbed my face clean. After being accosted at the park, talking with the police, and being surprised—no,
shocked
—at Matthew’s return, the day needed to end.

Immediately.

Daniel was apparently a no-show, too. Not a great way to usher in a good night’s sleep, but I decided to end my hellish day anyway.

I never realized how much I missed Matthew until he came home. It felt good talking about nothing in particular or important, just hanging out like old times before Daniel’s death. It also felt weird having him worry about me so much—this from someone who used to hide behind doors just to scare me. I had to admit I liked this Matthew, even if everything felt different.

After splashing cool water on my skin and burying my face in a warm towel, something brushed against the back of my arm. I dropped the towel, ready to scream until I saw Daniel and then fell into his arms.

“Daniel,” I whispered. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

He hugged me tightly before pulling back. “We almost missed it.”

“
You
almost missed it,” I corrected him playfully. But when his eyes drooped and his lips turned down, my excitement fizzled. “What’s wrong?” I held his hands loosely. For some reason, he looked like he didn’t want to talk. At all. “Were you with us at the park today?”

He nodded.