Second Child (30 page)

As Melissa watched, a new face slowly began to emerge. It was still her face, but somehow it had changed. Her features seemed to have taken on a new definition.

And inside she felt different, too. As she watched her face develop, she began to feel a strange sense of confidence grow inside her. And then she knew what was happening.

I’m not me anymore,
she thought. I’m turning into someone else. Someone … pretty!

She held perfectly still, hardly daring to move while Teri worked. Finally, after what seemed to Melissa to be an eternity, she stood back. “There. How’s that?”

Melissa stared at her image in the mirror, hardly daring to breath. “It—It’s weird,” she whispered at last. “I mean, I don’t even feel like myself anymore. I feel like—like somebody else.”

“That’s the way you’re supposed to feel,” Teri told her. “That’s the neat thing about costumes and makeup. When you put them on, you can be anybody you want. I mean—” The doorbell rang, and Teri glanced at the clock on Melissa’s bed table. “Oh, God,” she said. “It’s already after eight. They’re here.” She handed Melissa the wig. “Put this on while I go let them in, and I’ll come back to comb it for you.”

She hurried out of the room, and Melissa fingered the wig for a moment, her eyes still fixed on the image in the mirror.

The image that wasn’t her but was still familiar.

She started to put the wig on, then hesitated as a strange thought drifted into her head. Once the wig was on, once her own hair was covered, the transformation would be complete.

The last vestige of her real self would be gone and she would become someone else.

Who?

D’Arcy?

But D’Arcy wasn’t real, she told herself once more. D’Arcy was only a story, and a friend she’d made up.

Taking a deep breath, she put the wig on her head and let the long blond hair cascade down over her shoulders to frame her face.

And now, in the mirror, she was looking at a stranger.

But it was a stranger who was familiar to her, a stranger whom she had met before.

She picked up the brush on her vanity and began stroking it gently through the mass of blond hair.

And with every stroke, she felt the personality in the mirror, the personality that was not her own, gaining strength inside her … 

*   *   *

Teri pulled the front door open, smiling at Brett Van Arsdale, who was wearing a black matador’s costume trimmed in a pink that matched her dress almost perfectly. She grinned at him and pulled the door wider. “How did you know?” she asked. “Did someone tell you what I was wearing?”

Brett cocked his head. “Maybe I’m psychic.”

Teri rolled her eyes, but then as she looked outside at the empty black Porsche sitting in the driveway, her grin faded. “Where’s Jeff?”

For a split second she thought a guilty look flashed through Brett’s eyes, but then he shrugged. “He got sick,” he said. “He called me half an hour ago and said he was barfing all over the place.”

Teri’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re making this up—” she began.

Brett held up both his hands in a protesting gesture. “Hey, is it my fault if Jeff got sick? I got him to ask Melissa, didn’t I? And that was the deal—if I got him to ask her, you go with me. But if he got sick, what am I supposed to do? I mean, I can’t make him go, can I?”

Teri thought quickly. How was she going to get Melissa to go to the dance if Jeff was standing her up? She could already see the tears streaming down Melissa’s stupid cheeks. She’d probably throw herself on the bed and have a tantrum or something. But then, as she thought about it, the answer came to her.

It would be just like the story.

She grinned at Brett. “Do me a favor, okay? I’m going to tell her that something happened and that Jeff’s going to meet us at the club. If I don’t, she won’t come.”

Brett snickered. “So what if she doesn’t come?” he asked. “Nobody’ll care.”

“Oh, yeah?” Teri asked, her grin turning into a sly smile. “The way she looks tonight, nobody at the club’s going to want to miss her. Just wait here.”

She hurried up the stairs to Melissa’s room, already working out the details of the story she would tell her half sister.

But when she got there, Melissa’s room was empty.

Quickly, she searched the second floor, then went up
and looked in the attic. But Melissa seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. At last she went back downstairs where Brett was waiting by the door.

“She’s gone,” she said. “She must have heard us talking and taken off.”

“Taken off?” Brett repeated. “Where would she go?”

Teri rolled her eyes once more. “Who knows?” she said. “But you know Melissa—when something gets to her, she runs away.”

“Yeah,” Brett agreed, his grin widening again as he opened the door and led Teri down the steps to the Porsche. “And maybe this time we’ll get lucky. Maybe this time she won’t come back.”

Teri said nothing, but as the Porsche sped down the driveway, she glanced back at the house.

And, as she had on the night she’d taken Blackie’s body out to the pottingshed, thought she saw a flicker of movement in one of the attic windows.

But she’d looked in the attic and Melissa hadn’t been there.

Or had she?

Jeff Barnstable lay on his back staring at the ceiling. The television on his desk was on but he was oblivious to it, concentrating instead on the rock music blaring directly into his ears from the headset of his Walkman. His right foot moved in a steady rhythm, keeping time to the beat, and every now and then his arms swung wildly as he smashed at an imaginary percussion set.

The tape came to an end, the last chord fading away, and Jeff reached for another one, glanced at the label, then tossed it back on the night table. Getting up, he wandered over to the window and gazed out into the gathering dusk. In the distance the lights of the Cove Club were beginning to glow brightly on the tip of South Point. A small frown furrowed his brow as he imagined his friends all dancing to the music of a live band.

Still, when he’d awakened this morning and thought of actually taking Melissa Holloway to the dance, just the idea of it had almost made him sick to his stomach, and by the time he’d made up his mind to follow through on Kent Fielding’s idea of pretending to be sick, he wasn’t even
sure it was a lie anymore. Now, though, an hour after the time he was supposed to have picked up Melissa, he felt fine.

In fact, maybe he’d change his clothes and go to the dance after all. By then it would be too late to go get Melissa—knowing her, she’d be in the middle of a crying fit anyway and wouldn’t want to go even if he showed up at her house.

He grinned as he imagined himself showing up at her door, all dressed up, maybe even with a bunch of flowers from his mother’s garden. And there she’d be, her eyes all red and swollen, staring at him. She’d probably slam the door in his face, and then he’d get credit for actually
trying
to take her to the dance. But what if she were just sitting there, waiting for him? Then he wouldn’t have any excuse at all for getting out of it.

The soft buzzing of his parents’ party, still going strong downstairs, suddenly increased as his bedroom door opened. He turned around to see his mother, standing with her back against the jamb, her face set in an expression of disapproval that always meant she’d caught him doing something wrong.

“Feeling better?” Paula Barnstable asked, her voice neutral but her eyes betraying her anger at her son.

Jeff started back toward the bed, doing his best to look sick again. “I—I just needed some fresh air,” he stammered.

“It seems to me,” Paula said slowly, “that perhaps you need some fresh manners, as well.”

Jeff dropped down onto the bed. “I’m not feeling so good—” he began.

But his mother didn’t let him finish. “I suppose I should have known you were up to something when you said you didn’t feel well this afternoon. It isn’t really like you to skip a party, is it?” Jeff glanced uneasily at his mother but said nothing. “How do you think I felt when Phyllis Holloway told me how nice it was of you to have asked Melissa out tonight?” Paula went on. “Aside from the fact that I knew nothing about it, I also knew you were up here, ‘sick.’ ” The last word flicked from her lips like a whip, and Jeff cringed, knowing he was indeed in trouble.

“But I
was
sick,” Jeff began again.

“I don’t want to hear it, Jeff,” she told him. “I don’t
want to know what led up to this, and I don’t want to hear any excuses. What I want to know is if it’s true.
Did
you invite Melissa to the dance tonight?”

“Y-Yes, but—”

“Then you’ll go,” Paula informed her son. “I can’t imagine
why
you invited Melissa, but I can tell you right now that since you did, you will take her. Aside from the fact that there’s nothing wrong with Melissa that getting out from under her mother’s thumb wouldn’t cure, there’s the matter of simple good manners.” Her voice dropped, a sure sign that she was angry. “You don’t make a date with no intention of keeping it, Jeff. It’s not only rude, but it’s cruel, and no matter what you or anyone else thinks of Melissa or her mother, you have no right to be cruel to her.”

“But—”

Paula shook her head. “No buts,” she said. “If I’d known you had a date tonight, I’d have called the doctor this afternoon. And if you’d been sick enough to warrant it, I’d have called Phyllis and Melissa myself and explained the situation. But now,” she went on, her voice dropping further, “if you’re really sick, I’m sorry for you. Because you’re going to get off that bed, get dressed, and go get Melissa. You’re going to take her to that dance, and you’re never going to leave her side. And if you don’t, believe me, you’re going to have a very lonely summer, because there will be no more parties, no more days at the club, no more days on the beach. You’ll sit here and think about what it means to go back on your word.” Without waiting for her son to reply, Paula turned and left his room, silently closing the door behind her.

Jeff sat on his bed for a moment as if paralyzed, his mother’s words echoing in his head. He should have known he’d get caught—he’d been stupid even to think he could get away with it. Sighing, he pulled himself off the bed and went to his closet. It was too late to figure out a costume now. He’d just have to wear a sports jacket and make the best of it.

But he could already hear Kent Fielding laughing at him when he showed up with Melissa on his arm. As he finished dressing a few minutes later, though, another thought occurred to him. He’d made a deal with Brett Van
Arsdale, and if he had to make good on his part of it, then Brett had to make good on the rest of it.

Pausing as he went out the front door to drain a nearly full drink that someone had left on the table in the entry hall, he headed along the trail toward the club to get the Porsche from Brett Van Arsdale.

Cora lifted the heavy tray of hors d’oeuvres, still covered with a layer of Saran Wrap, then backed through the kitchen door into the butler’s pantry. She nearly dropped the tray as she turned around in the cramped space, but recovered herself and went on into the dining room where she added the tray to the three others already on the big oaken table that Tag had lengthened to its full twenty-four feet earlier in the evening. She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then began arranging the silverware in the difficult crescent pattern her mistress always insisted upon—and always inspected to be certain it was perfect. Momentarily, she wished she’d taken Tag up on his offer to help her this evening, but quickly decided she’d made the right decision—her grandson worked hard enough during the week without having to spend his Saturday night setting up a party he couldn’t even go to.

She glanced at the French doors to the terrace, reminding herself to turn on the lights before she went back to the kitchen, and was about to begin arranging the napkins, when she thought she heard a sound from upstairs. She paused in her work, her eyes automatically gazing upward as if she could see through the floor.

The sound came again, barely audible, and a frown creased the old woman’s brow. The house was empty—she’d seen the mister and missus leave long ago, and heard the roar of Brett Van Arsdale’s Porsche as it sped up the drive just before she’d come in to start setting up the after-dance party the Holloways were hosting.

So the house should be empty.

Her frown deepening as the faint sound came again, she abandoned the napkins and walked into the foyer, mounting the stairs a moment later. Coming to the second-floor landing, she paused, listening, and then heard the sound again.

It was still coming from above, in the attic.

A moment later she was certain she knew the answer. It had to be Tag, taking advantage of the fact that Mrs. Holloway was gone to search the attic for the missing dog once again. “I just think he must be up there,” he’d told her only that afternoon. “If Melissa says she saw him, I believe her.”

Cora had done her best to talk him out of it, explaining once more about Melissa’s tendency to sleepwalk. “I’m not saying she was lying,” she’d finished. “But sometimes she has dreams that are so vivid she thinks they’re real.”

But apparently she hadn’t convinced the boy, and now, as the sound she’d heard before—a sound that was now clearly that of footsteps—echoed from above, she started toward the attic stairs.

At the top of the flight she found the door standing ajar, but the lights were off. What was Tag doing? Hunting through the attic in the dark? But it was almost nighttime now, and even the windows in the dormers were all but indistinguishable in the darkness of the attic.

“Tag?” she called. She reached for the light switch, but as her eyes adjusted to the darkness in the chamber beneath the roof, she saw a faint glow of yellowish light coming from the far end. Her lips compressing into a thin line of annoyance, she flipped the switch and started through the attic.

The pool of light from the single bulb faded quickly as she moved away from it, but she could still make out the flickering light ahead of her. It seemed to be coming from the little room where she’d found Melissa a couple of times, sound asleep on the cot which was almost its only furnishing. At last she was in front of the room’s door. Like the door to the attic itself, it was standing slightly ajar. She reached out and pushed it open, fully expecting to see Tag, looking guilty, turn to face her.