Secrets (13 page)

Sneakers, she realized. Sneakers on the cement stairs below them. Heading
up
toward the landing they were
heading
down
to.

Rae and Yana exchanged a look, then they both turned and ran back up the stairs. Rae tried to stay onher toes, but
one of the chunky heels of her shoes came down on the edge of one of the steps, and the sound echoed through
the stairwell.

Yana reached the top of the stairs, grabbed the doorknob, and jerked. “It’s locked,” she whispered, twisting the
knob back and forth.

“Can I help you ladies?” a friendly voice called.

Rae and Yana turned around, and a forty-something guy with one of those old-guy little gray pony-tails climbed the
stairs toward them. He didn’t look pissed off or anything.

“We were just… trying to find the darkroom,” Rae blurted out. “I was thinking about taking a photography class
here.”
Please let them give photography classes,
she thought. “And my friend is interested in knitting,” Rae added,
ignoring Yana’s snort.

“You’re heading in the wrong direction,” the man answered. He reached the door, pulled out a key ring, and let
them back out into the main hallway. “I’m Aiden Matthews,” he said. “I’m one of the instructors here. I’d be happy to
give you a little tour. And I know just the place to start.” He led them to the end of the hall and around the corner.

“What do you think?” He gestured to a glass case filled with knitted sweaters. “A couple of sessions and who
knows-we could be displaying your work out here,” he told Yana.

“Cool,” she muttered.

Okay, you’ve got a chance to get some facts here,
Rae thought.
Use it.
“I was wondering, how long have you
worked here?”

“I started here right out of college, if you can believe that,” Aiden answered.

He could have known her,
Rae thought, a mix of excitement and apprehension rolling around inside her. “Really?

Wow. You must have been here when my mom was taking classes,” Rae said. “It was almost twenty years ago.

Before I was born. Obviously, right. I know she really liked this place. She made a lot of friends here.”

Stop,
Rae ordered herself.
Too much. Too much.

“What’s your mom’s name?” Aiden asked. “Maybe I’ll remember her.”

“Melissa Voight,” Rae told him, watching his face. His eyes widened slightly, but that was his only reaction.

“Actually it wasn’t a class, exactly. Some kind of a group, a New Agey thing, my dad said.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh.” Aiden glanced down the empty hall behind him, looked back at Rae and Yana, then checked the
hall again.

Talk about your ants-in-the-pants syndrome,
Rae thought.
He looks like he wants to run out of here and never

stop. What does he know?

“I’m teaching a class that starts in a few minutes,”Aiden said. “It… it slipped my mind when I said I’d give you a
tour. I’ll have to ask you to leave because it’s against our rules to have nonmembers wandering around unescorted.

But if you want to give me your addresses, I’ll send you some info on the knitting and photography classes.”

What class starts at twenty minutes after the hour?
Rae thought, glancing at her watch. Aiden clearly wanted to
get away from them and get them out of here.
He definitely knows something.

Rae pulled a notebook and pen out of her backpack, letting her old thoughts rush through her without paying
attention to them, and scribbled down her name, address, and phone number. “You can send me the info for both,”

she told him. The guy was acting weird. There was no reason to give him direct contact with Yana. “Can I call you if I
have questions?” she asked.

“I don’t know that much about those particular classes,” Aiden said. “But if you call the center, the receptionist can
put you in touch with any of our teachers. I know they’d be happy to talk to you.” He checked his watch. “I really
have to get going.”

Rae stretched out her hand. It was time to get what she came for. “Thanks for showing us around.”

Aiden grabbed her hand. His was damp with sweat, which made it easy for Rae to slide her fingers down until she
and he were fingertip to fingertip.

Instantly it was like his thoughts were hers. Not just his thoughts. His memories. His fears. His emotions. Even the
stuff he kept hidden from himself, buried deep in his unconscious.

Focus,
Rae ordered herself.
You don’t have much time.
There. There was an emotion cluster about hearing her
mother’s name-anger, fear, chased with nausea. Rae tried to stay with the emotions, and they led her to a tangle of
thoughts.

/ho
w m
uch does she know
/a
nd I showed her aro
un
d/kno
w
abou
t
expe
rim
e
nt
s
/g
o
nna
get re
am
ed/ho
w
she

died/does she kno
w/
her mother/her mother/

Reluctantly Rae released Aiden’s hand. She knew there was so much more she could have gotten from him. But
not without keeping the fingertip-to-fingertip contact, which would make anyone suspicious. “Don’t forget to send
me the stuff. We’re definitely interested in those classes,” she told him.

And I ’ll definitely be coming back here,
she thought.
Because Aiden-or someone else here-knows everything I

need to know. I can feel it.

“I won’t,” Aiden said over his shoulder. He was already halfway down the hall.

Rae led the way out of the building. “Well, that was a total bust,” Yana said.

“Yeah,” Rae answered, needing most of her concentration to keep walking to the car. Her knees wereweak with
fear-some of Aiden’s, some of her own. The word
experiments
kept ricocheting through her head. That word, it had
felt almost… almost
evil
when she pulled it out of Aiden’s mind. What kind of experiments was he thinking about?

And were they done on Rae’s mother?

nthony dressed quickly and headed out of the locker room after Friday’s practice. He wouldn’t have minded a little
time in the steam room-how unbelievable was it that he went to a school that had a steam room-but he didn’t feel
like hanging out with the other guys.

Because, you wuss, you got your feelings hurt by that little miss rich girl yesterday. How pathetic is that?
It was
completely pathetic. It was also true. Even with the guys on the team, the guys who’d welcomed him to the school-after he’d kicked their butts on the field-the guys he’d partied with, little snatches of what Jackie’d said kept going
through his mind.

You’re a novelty here, which is an advantage. Just a loser from Fillmore who happens to be able to throw a football.

Run along and have fun while you’re still the interesting new boy. Don’t talk. Don’t talk.

It’s all crap,
he told himself.
It’s just the ravings of one girl who got her panties in a bunch because you told her the

truth-that she was acting like an idiot.
But Jackie’s words kept whispering in his head.

Just a loser. Don’t talk. Run along. Novelty. Have fun while-

“Hey, Fascinelli, wait up,” Marcus called from behind Anthony, interrupting the loop of Jackie’s voice. “There’s
something I want you to take a look at.”

Anthony stopped and turned around. Marcus loped toward him, looking as friendly as a big blond golden retriever.

If he was just pretending to
accept
me or whatever, he wouldn’t
- Anthony refused to let himself finish the thought.

He was turning into a total girl, analyzing every friggin’ thing. “Whatcha got?” he asked.

Marcus glanced behind him, then he pulled a long velvet box out of the pocket of his team jacket. “Keep this
between us, okay? The guys are already ragging on me enough about Rae.”

Rae. Crap. Why did it have to be about Rae?

Probably because you let him cry on your shoulder over her at the party,
Anthony answered himself.
Probably

because you don’t go around saying what a nut job Rae is. Probably because as far as Marcus knows, you’ve

practically never even spoken to her.

“No prob,” Anthony said.

“Okay, so what do you think?” Marcus opened the box, and Anthony saw a thin little gold-link bracelet-a thin little
gold-link bracelet with freakin’ diamonds all over it. Or what looked like diamonds.

“Are those real?” Anthony blurted out.

Marcus laughed. “No, I’m trying to get Rae back by giving her fakes.” His smile faded. “So do you think she’ll like
it?”

“Yeah,” Anthony answered, thinking how he and Marcus might as well be from two different planets. “What’s not to
like?”

“Right. But lately with Rae, I don’t know what to expect. It used to be that I was everything she wanted. Before we
started going out, I’d see her looking at me, you know? And it was all over her. A lot of girls are like that-” Marcus
shook his head. “I sound like such a jerk. But you’ll see. Now that you’re on the team and everything, girls will be
doing anything to get your attention.”

Yeah, right,
Anthony thought.
Rae’s been trying to climb me like a tree.

“Anyway, like I said, Rae, she wanted to be withme. I know she did. Practically all I had to do was smile at her, and
that was it,” Marcus said. “Right before she, uh, had her breakdown, we were getting real close to doing it, and-”

“But now?” Anthony interrupted, afraid he’d break out in hives if he had to hear any more. He liked Marcus. And he
thought Marcus was the kind of guy Rae should be with. Marcus could give her freakin’ diamonds, for chrissake.

But he did not want to, could not, hear any more details.

“But now when she looks at me, it’s like she’s trying to decide something,” Marcus answered. “Like will I mess up
again. Sometimes we’ve had a couple of minutes where it felt almost like it did before. No, I’m lying. Where it felt like
it could eventually be like what it was before.” Marcus snapped the box shut and shoved it back into his pocket. “Do
I sound whipped or what?” he asked, sounding disgusted with himself.

“Yeah, you do. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about it,” Anthony joked, glad to have the bracelet out of his sight.

“It’s sick,” Marcus exploded. “Why do I even care? There are a whole bunch of girls who are giving me that look.

All I’d have to do is say one word and-” He shook his head. “But it wouldn’t be the same.”

Marcus looked at Anthony, clearly waiting for some kind of advice. At the party it hadn’t mattered what he’d said
because Marcus was drunk off his butt. But now Marcus was looking for something real.

“You know, I’m not exactly an exp-” Anthony began, then he spotted Sanders and McHugh pounding toward them.

“You guys hear?” McHugh gasped out as he came to a stop next to Marcus. He didn’t wait for either of them to
answer. “They found Jackie passed out in the girls’ locker room.”

“They think she took a whole bottle of aspirin,” Sanders added.

In the distance a siren began to wail. It grew louder by the second.
The ambulance coming for Jackie,
Anthony
realized, his body going ice cold.

“The number you have reached has been disconnected. There is no new listing. If you believe you have reached
this number in error, please hang up and try again.”

Rae slowly hung up the phone, but she didn’t try again. She’d already tried three times, hoping that somehow her
fingers had slipped up and dialed wrong again and again. With a sigh she crossed the name Shelly Baroni off the
list she’d made that night at Mandy’s.

The list is getting pretty ragged,
she thought. A lip liner pencil wasn’t made for paper, although it might be an
interesting addition to a painting.
I’ll copy the list over,
Rae decided. She grabbed her sketch pad off her desk and
impulsively pulled a calligraphy pen from the Monet mug she kept all her writing stuff in.

You’re stalling,
she told herself as she began to copy the names, using elaborate curlicues and loops. She didn’t
start writing the names more simply, though. Because she wanted to stall. She’d already tried to find five of the
people on the list, and nothing. Nothing but disconnected phones, and new tenants who’d never heard of the
person she was looking for, and, oh, yeah, the two people who weren’t listed anywhere in Atlanta.

It’s been almost twenty years. People move around. They get married. They get divorced. They-

They die.

Like Rae’s mother. Like Mandy’s mother. Like Erika Keaton. What if everyone on the list was dead? What if that’s
why she hadn’t found even one of them?

“Hello, you’re not living in
Scream VII
or something,” she muttered. Well, except for the part where someone had
tried to kill her. And the part where someone had sent her Erika Keaton’s ashes. That had definitely been like
something out of a horror movie.