One Hundred Candles [2] (11 page)

“Good.”

“Why don’t you get something to eat from the kitchen?” Mom suggested. “We’re just answering some emails.”

I led Noah into the kitchen. “Listen,” he said. “I have something for you. It’s the reason I missed my bus, actually.” He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a disc. “This was waiting for me in my locker after school.” He pushed the disc toward me and I picked it up. It was a normal recordable DVD, but there was a yellow Post-it note stuck to the front.

I didn’t recognize the scraggly writing on the note, but I did recognize the message, and it triggered an echo of pain in my arm.

The curtain has been pushed back again.

fourteen

The crowd of people above me were stomping their feet so hard I was sure the bleachers would come crashing down on my head at any moment. I hunched down lower and scanned the ground.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” I asked Noah. He didn’t hear me over the suddenly jubilant screams, which I interpreted to mean that our team had scored a basket.

“Over here!” he yelled. I made my way over to him, carefully avoiding the sticky puddles of soda pop smeared across the gym floor. Every time I bent over, my amethyst necklace banged against my chest. I hated wearing it, but Mom was insistent. Whenever I left the house, her eyes scanned my neck to make sure the chain was secured there.

“It’s really gross under here,” I said. “Have you looked up? Some of that gum stuck under the seats is probably older than we are.”

Noah pointed down. “See that?”

“It’s a scuff mark from somebody’s shoe.” I frowned. “Noah, there are a ton of these on the floor. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“But this would be about the location of the camera. So maybe it belongs to the person behind it.”

“And maybe it’s just a random mark like the hundreds of others.”

It had been a week since Noah showed me the DVD left in his locker. We had waited until our moms left the house to run an errand—I suspected Mom was taking Trisha to Potion and would be gone for a while—then watched the shaky footage together.

The first shot showed our school’s empty gymnasium. The only light source was the red glow of the exit signs, so it was dim. The camera moved, and it was apparent from the motion that someone was setting it on the gym floor so that it pointed toward the center of the room. After a few seconds, the camera shifted again, this time facing a wall, and when it was moved back to its original spot, there was a girl standing in the middle of the gym.

A girl with white hair.

“This is one of the stories,” I told Noah.

“You sure?”

“Yes. A girl choked to death at a basketball game. That’s her.”

The girl appeared on-screen for less than two seconds before the camera moved again, then cut to black completely. We froze the image, trying to make sense of what we were seeing. It looked like a real, live girl, not a wispy apparition. Her head was down, and the long white hair concealed her face. She was dressed in jeans and a gauzy white shirt, but strangely, she was barefoot.

“This is creepy,” Noah said.

“This is another hoax,” I replied.

Noah agreed with me, but I knew the image was unsettling to him. We decided to wait for someone else to leak it to the rest of the school. I was convinced it would show up on the Haunted Hallways website within a day or two, but a week passed with no mention of it anywhere. In fact, nothing at all unusual had been happening at school.

Until Friday morning.

Noah was waiting for me by my locker when I got to school, his face anxious. I braced myself for an onslaught of complaints about Shane, who had taken Trisha out to dinner the night before.

“Do you smell it?” Noah asked.

“Smell what?” I dropped my backpack to the floor and began twirling my locker combination. As I popped open the metal door, I caught a whiff of something fruity, like a very sweet perfume. I looked at Noah. “Peaches.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s even stronger in the junior hallway, especially right near my locker.”

“The story about your neighbor who died,” I said. “This is it.”

“I should never have told that story,” Noah said. “It was way too personal. But it was either that or tell everyone about what happened to us in Charleston, and I knew you wouldn’t want that.” He looked around as if afraid someone might be listening. “If this is all a hoax, then someone is trying really hard to get our attention.”

I agreed. And after the peach incident—which everyone detected and caused a fresh new wave of interest in the hundred candles game—Noah decided that we needed to discover, once and for all, who was behind the pranks. But he didn’t say
pranks.
Instead, he referred to it as the
happenings.
I wasn’t sure if he thought the cause of everything was human or not, but either way, he was now determined to figure it out, and figuring it out began with a trip beneath the bleachers, where we were sure the DVD of the white-haired girl had been filmed.

The footage of the girl didn’t scare me, but the note attached to the disc did.
The curtain has been pushed back again.
As I read those words, I could almost hear the voice that had erupted from Marcus, and it gave me the chills. If someone wanted my attention, they had it, but not in a good way. When I found out who had been messing with me and disturbing Noah, I was going to expose them as publicly as possible.

After a few more minutes of crouching beneath the bleachers searching for clues that probably didn’t exist, I tapped Noah on the arm. He turned around as a buzzer went off, and I had to cover my ears. “I’m getting out of here,” I shouted. “Harris will wonder where I’ve been!”

Noah nodded and I scuttled out from beneath the bleachers. I glanced around, hoping no one had seen me. Luckily, most people appeared to be focused on the game. I wiped dust off my jeans, trusted that nothing disgusting had somehow fallen into my hair, and returned to Harris, who was sitting on the opposite side of the basketball court. We were supposed to be on a date, but so far, I’d spent half the time away from him.

I sat down and he handed me a paper cup filled with lukewarm soda. “You missed a great shot right at the buzzer,” he said.

“Are we winning?”

Harris laughed. “Only by a dozen points.”

Across the gym, Noah darted beneath the bleachers. At the end of the third quarter, he emerged with something in his hand. I watched as he searched the crowd. When his eyes found mine, he nodded.

The game ended. Our team won, which thrilled Harris. He was in a particularly good mood as he reached for my hand, giving it a squeeze as we left the crowded gym. Someone brushed past us, bumping me into Harris. It was Gwyn, and she seemed to be in a hurry.

“What’s with her?” I asked.

Harris sighed. “It’s my fault. We got into a fight right before the game.”

“You got into a fight with Gwyn? Over what?”

“Over who,” he corrected.

We walked outside into the cool night air and headed toward his car. It was just after ten, and I had a full two hours before I needed to be home. I waited for Harris to say more about Gwyn, but he didn’t immediately offer anything. Their relationship puzzled me. Avery had said that Harris and Gwyn’s older brother were best friends, and they’d grown up across the street from one another, so I imagined he knew Gwyn pretty well. But anytime they crossed paths at school, he seemed distant and she acted like she was bordering on the furious. It was possible, I thought, that Gwyn harbored a crush on my boyfriend, but I knew he didn’t return her feelings. He barely acknowledged her. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe she wanted a piece of the daily attention he was giving to me.

We got into Harris’s car. “You want to go somewhere? I’ll tell you all about it.”

“I’m up for anything,” I said.

A few minutes later we pulled into a popular burger place, the kind where you can order from your car and stay parked while you eat. Harris ordered milkshakes and onion rings. “How retro,” I joked.

“I love this place,” Harris said. “There’s more grease than meat on the burgers.”

After our food arrived, I asked him about his fight with Gwyn. He chewed on an onion ring before he answered me.

“So, Gwyn and I have known each other for, like, ever,” he began. “I was always over at their house, and she always tagged along with me and Greg.”

“Her brother,” I said.

“Right. Well, Greg left for college last year, and things between Gwyn and me changed. We don’t talk to each other at school as much, that kind of thing.”

I sipped my chocolate shake, relishing the cold, sugary creaminess of it. The drive-in’s orange lights glowed above us, but inside the car it was darker, almost as if we were sitting by candlelight. For a moment, I thought that this could actually be romantic—if we weren’t talking about an angry girl.

“I got to the game early tonight,” Harris continued. “Gwyn wanted to talk to me about the stuff going on at her house. She says it’s gotten worse, and she wanted me to talk to her brother about coming home from college to help out. I said no.”

“What does she think her brother can do to help?”

Harris nodded. “Exactly! Why drag him here? Their mom is going nuts trying to make it stop. She’s talking to witches and hiring all kinds of weird specialists to come in and burn grass or something.”

I laughed. “They’re burning sage. It’s an old ritual called smudging.”

“Does it work?”

I shrugged. “It makes people feel better.”

Lots of strange things made people feel more in control, and the older or more peculiar the practice, the better. Smudging was a very simple, very common rite that I had witnessed dozens of times. The only thing it really did was make a room smell rich and earthy.

Harris played with the straw poking out of his shake. “This whole thing at Gwyn’s house—it’s got her really upset. She called me a few weeks ago, hysterical. She said a table had moved by itself.”

“Sounds like something my parents might be interested in investigating.”

Harris sighed. “Yeah, well, they weren’t. Gwyn’s mom called them months ago.”

“Oh.” I knew my parents were overwhelmed with the number of people contacting them, and they were doing their best to investigate the most serious claims. “I could talk to them,” I offered. “Maybe Gwyn’s case was overlooked, for some reason.”

The smile on Harris’s face made my stomach warm. “You would do that? Really? Charlotte, I can’t thank you enough.”

He set down his shake, brushed some crumbs from his jeans, and moved closer to me. I tried to move closer, too, but it was difficult with the console dividing our seats. Harris reached one arm over and let his hand rest on the back of my neck.

“I really like you,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I hope you know that.”

“I like you, too.”

“I know I haven’t been as…
attentive
as I could be, and I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.” Our noses were nearly touching, and his lips were so close to mine that when I spoke, mine brushed lightly against his. “I know you need to help out your dad. And you’ve been great, really. Those roses you sent me were beautiful.”

“The roses,” he repeated. Then he pulled me in and we were kissing. His mouth felt warm and tasted faintly like onions and chocolate, but it wasn’t a bad combination. Different, yes, but not bad. He pulled away first, but kept his face close to mine.

“I know this is early, but I want to ask you something.”

I felt tingly from our kiss. “Ask me anything.”

“Will you go to the prom with me?”

Instead of answering, I kissed him again. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured.

After more kissing, we finished our shakes and Harris drove me home. The downstairs lights were on as we pulled into the driveway. “Looks like your folks are waiting up for you,” Harris said.

“Just my mom.”

I still had some time before curfew, and I wanted Harris to keep driving somewhere, anywhere, so we could be alone together and I could tell him all about my parental problems. I didn’t get to ask him, though. His phone buzzed and he sighed.

“Probably my dad,” he said. “Sorry.”

I kissed him on the cheek. “Not a problem. See you later.”

“I’ll call you.” He waited until I had reached the front porch before driving away. I watched the lights from his car become smaller and smaller until he turned down the end of the street and was gone. Then I opened the front door—and walked right into a disaster.

“You’ve gone too far this time, Karen!” Dad shouted.

Mom was more controlled. “Please don’t scream at me, Patrick. It’s not helpful.”

I stood in the foyer, my hand frozen on the doorknob. My parents were in the dining room, and they would see me as soon as I shut the door and walked toward the staircase. I remained still and hoped to make sense of what they were fighting about this time.

“I have asked you repeatedly not to pursue this case,” Dad said, his voice lower. He was still seething with rage, though. “And now you have not only done that, but you have chosen to bring
him
into it, despite my clear—and totally justified—disapproval.”

“I understand that you’re upset right now,” Mom said. “But this was my choice to make, and I felt he could be very helpful to us.”

Dad erupted again. “This was
not
your choice to make!”

I’d never heard him yell that loudly. It startled me so badly that I let go of the doorknob and bumped against it, causing the door to slam shut.

“Charlotte? Is that you?” Mom asked.

I took a tentative step toward the dining room. “Yeah. I just got home.” I looked at my parents. They were standing at opposite ends of the room. “Hi, Dad. What are you doing here?” I acted like I hadn’t just heard him scream at Mom.

Dad cleared his throat. “I stopped by to pick up some case files,” he said. “I was about to leave, actually. How was the dance?”

“I was at a basketball game.”

“Right. The game. How did that go?”

“We won.”

“Excellent. Well, I need to get back.” He nodded at Mom. “I’ll speak with you later.” He walked swiftly to the foyer, where he planted a quick kiss on the top of my head. “See you soon.”

He left. Mom stood in the dining room, looking stunned. I dropped my purse on the foyer table and went to her. “Mom? Are you okay?”

She nodded, but I could see tears forming in her eyes. “Your father is under a lot of stress right now,” she said softly. “I’m very tired. Maybe tomorrow you could tell me about your date?”

“Sure. Okay.”

Mom gave me a small smile and went upstairs. I remained in the dining room, wondering what had just happened. Why was Dad so angry about a case? And who had Mom brought into it? A man, obviously, but who? Maybe she had an old boyfriend she’d turned to? Or worse, someone she was having an affair with? But that didn’t seem possible. Mom would never cheat on Dad. Of course, I never thought they would be living apart from one another, either.