Six Months Later (21 page)

I will go home. I will go home and talk to my parents, and we will go to the police and everything will be okay. Except when I round the corner to my street, my house is completely dark. No porch lights. No lamps inside. Not even the pale blue flicker of a television.

Saturday night. Date night. They’re probably at dinner or at a movie or somewhere else. And that’s just too damn bad. This is an emergency.

I immediately remember my cell phone shattering on the street. My psychologist in a pool of blood.

What if he comes after my parents? What if I get them involved and they end up like Dr. Kirkpatrick? The idea sends bile rising in my throat. God, what the hell am I going to do?

The cold has sharp teeth tonight, biting through my puffy coat and turning my jeans into sheets of ice against my legs. I can’t stay out here forever. But where do I go?

Inside, my house is strangely quiet, which makes me jumpy and nervous. I scan my mother’s note on the table and the plate she left for me in the fridge. Dinner and a movie. They’ll be home by midnight.

I stare long and hard at the phone on the kitchen wall, but in the end, I walk away. I can’t lose them. If knowing this puts them in danger, then they can’t know. But I can’t stay here. I can’t sit in this kitchen surrounded by takeout menus and used coffee cups and pretend that my entire world isn’t falling apart. And that my almost-boyfriend isn’t one of the people responsible.

I need help.

Maggie
.

I try her phone, and it goes straight to voice mail. Did they shut down her phone? Oh God, are they tracking her too?

I try her home number, and it rings busy. My stomach plummets to my knees. I envision Maggie slumped over like Dr. Kirkpatrick. No! No, she has to be all right. She has to.

The clock in the living room chimes six o’clock, and I cringe. One hour ago I had answers. Answers and a boyfriend and a best friend who was safe. Sixty minutes should not have enough power to change all of that.

I stumble back into the night, desperate to find Mags. To make sure she’s all right.

Snow is falling, thick white flakes that cling to my hair and coat. Christmas lights shine from the windows in my neighbors’ houses, mocking me with their message of peace.

I cut through the Campbells’ backyard, my eyes scanning the brightly lit windows for signs of life. I jog to the back steps, steps that have seen me through skinned knees and late night truth or dare sessions. This place is full of goodness. Every step I take crosses the shadow of a game once played, a ball once thrown. It is the closest thing I have to sacred ground.

I climb the familiar stairs with my heart thundering behind my ribs. I should go around front, but I can’t. My feet feel like lead weights. I have nothing else in me.

I knock hard on the door, banging and ringing the little bell next to the handle. I even call Maggie’s name, but the windows stay empty and the knob won’t twist beneath my fingers.

I’m alone. I don’t know where anyone is or if they’re okay, and it’s cold. It’s so terribly cold.

A sob tears out of me, and I cross my arms over my chest. I’m no better off than Julien now. If I go to the police, they will see a lunatic. The poor, crazy girl with big stories and a ruined future.

The panic that’s been buzzing along my skin for the last hour seizes me like an iron fist, squeezing hard around my chest. It hurts to breathe. Hurts like blades are slipping between my ribs. I try to remember Dr. Kirkpatrick’s words, but all I can think of is the blood on her desk. So much blood.

My arms and legs go numb, and my vision blurs. I feel myself falling, hands flailing at empty air before I hit the steps hard.

The mix of pain and fear takes me like the tide, rolling me under and pulling me out to sea. My eyes drift closed, and I can’t even fight that. I can’t fight anything anymore.

***

“Chloe!”

My name, in stereo, drags me back. Two voices: one high, one low. They are shouting back and forth to each other, words bouncing between them so quickly I can’t pull them apart. They make no sense to me—only noise.

I feel my body lift, the ruthlessly cold concrete giving way to something warm. And then I’m moving. Being carried, I think. The air changes. I feel it happen, the cruel wind giving way to stillness. I feel the heat at once, seeping into my clothes, melting the snow on my face and hair.

“T-tell me she’s b-breathing.”

Maggie. I turn my face toward her but can’t seem to manage to open my eyes. She’s not the one carrying me though. She’s not strong enough.

“She’s breathing,” Adam says.

Adam. Adam’s carrying me. I take a breath of cinnamon and soap and leather. And then I open my eyes.

“Oh, thank G-god,” Mags says. I hear her sniffle.

Adam doesn’t say anything. He just tips his head skyward and breathes hard. The fragile flesh beneath his eyes is so dark it looks bruised. I know that I should be mad at him, but it hurts me to see him like this.

I touch his face without even realizing I moved. He looks down at me, anguish etched in every feature.

“I did this to you,” he says.

His words lance through my middle, bringing tears to my eyes. I bite my lip and turn away from his face, but somehow I move tighter against his chest too. I don’t know why.

I think I might hate him.

And I know I love him.

I don’t even know which is worse anymore.

Maggie looms into view, eyes puffy and red. “You s-scared me half to d-death.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. My voice is stronger than I thought it would be. My mind, though, is still reeling. “How are you here?”

“I live here,” Maggie deadpans.

“And I was convincingly desperate,” Adam adds.

Maggie nods in agreement, but it seems impossible. She all but commanded me not to trust him. Now they’re all buddy-buddy?

She seems to read my mind, waving a hand dismissively. “We’ll cover all that later. Let’s g-get you on your feet.”

Adam scoots back from me, giving himself the space to stand up. I shiver on the floor. It’s colder here without him against me. When I look up, I see them both, hands outstretched to help me up.

I reach for Maggie with my right hand and Adam with my left. Our fingers connect, and the floodgates open.

I
shouldn’t be driving. I don’t even know why I’m in the car or where I’m headed, but my head is pounding and swimming at the same time and it’s hard to see the road with the snow pouring down like this.

I
lick
my
lips, recoiling at the acrid, lemony tang in my mouth. An image of Blake flashes through my head. We’re in his house. In his father’s office. We’re shouting and then we’re not. I shove something into my purse when he’s not looking. I try to remember what, but it’s all in jagged pieces now.

I’m terrified. Struggling against someone. No, it’s fine. I’m fine. Blake kisses me at the car. Smiles and tells me to take care of my head.

No, it doesn’t make sense. I was at Blake’s but…There is nothing but blankness. I feel stuck, like a badly copied music track. There are blips of silence in my evening.

Not
right. It can’t be right. My head hurts so bad. And I’m so cold. Where the hell is my coat? Why am I driving?

My
car
slides
a
little
coming
up
to
a
red
light. I try to pump the brakes, but the back end fishtails to the left. I hear my purse slide off the seat, dumping on the floor. The car comes to a rest, and I grope blindly through the mess on my passenger mat: lipstick and wallet and my iPod and then—what the hell?

My
fingers
close
around
a
black
box. Something rattles inside, tinkling like glass. The sound turns my stomach to lead.

I
have
to
hide
it.

The
snow
falls
and
my
head
reels. Everything blurs. There are snowy streets. And then I am walking. I watch my feet crunching through a thin layer of snow. I hear myself grunt and feel the agonizing burn
of the snow I’m shoveling away barehanded.

My
head
spins
and
spins. It aches and I feel sick. Just sick. I open my eyes and I am back in my car. Driving again. I see dirt under my fingernails. The box is gone. I don’t know how. Oh God, I don’t know.

I
feel
a
sob
shake
my
shoulders. I’m so cold. So sick. I pull out my phone and blink hard, trying to clear my vision. I tap out the only number I can think of and wait for it to ring.

“Don’t tell me you’re stuck on number twenty-nine,” Adam says by way of greeting.

I
try
to
keep
my
voice
normal. “Can you meet me?”

“Yeah. What’s wrong? You don’t sound right.”

“I’m okay,” I say, swerving over double yellow lines. I’m not okay. I’m a million miles from okay. I glance around, getting my bearings. The school bus lot blurs by on my right. “Maybe we’d better meet at the school.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

I
shove
my
phone
deep
into
my
jeans. Then I park in the front lot. I’m shivering in my sweater, so I can’t stay out here. The latch on the cafeteria door is ice-cold, but I move it up and left, leaning on it hard like Adam taught me.

I
slip
inside
and
feel
the
quiet
surround
me
completely.

It’s darker than dark. I feel my way through the tables, my eyes fixed on the red exit sign glowing at the back doors. I need to sit down. Like now.

I
don’t understand why I’m here or why it’s so dark or what I’m so freaked out about. I just need to rest for a minute. I just want to close my eyes. I stop in the first classroom I find, study hall from last year. Thank God. I can just sleep. Just for a minute.

Everything
feels
slow
and
dull. My eyelids droop as I slide into my seat from last year. I sink down low in the desk, watching the snow fall like tiny white butterflies. It is the last thing I see.

“Chloe!” Adam’s voice brings me back to the present. His hands are on my face now. Maggie is clasping my hands. I’m sort of sandwiched between them, only half upright.

I gasp, filling my lungs with the sweet, yeasty air of the Campbells’ kitchen. “I remember. I remember the night I woke up.”

“What n-night? What are you t-talking about?”

“The night in the classroom?” Adam guesses. “The night I met you there?”

I nod, feeling stronger and warmer with them so close. “I was at Blake’s. I found something. They did something to me, but they didn’t take what I found. I had it.”

My heart is still racing. I feel Maggie’s hand, a soothing pressure against my shoulder. But it is Adam’s eyes that anchor me. “I remember calling you, Adam. I remember the box, but I don’t know what was in it. I hid it though. It had to be important.”

“They would have never let you leave with any evidence. Hell, after tonight—” He stops, taking a harsh breath. “God, after tonight, who knows what they would have done to you.”

I remember myself, remember exactly who it was I called that night and all the lies he’s told me since. I pull away from his touch. “
They?
”

He has the decency to flush, dropping his hands to his side. “I was never one of them. I was a guy who worked for them.”

“And how do I know you’re not working for them right now?”

“Maybe you don’t, but I d-do,” Maggie says. “He let me tape a confession from him detailing everything he knows. It’s on my phone.”

“That doesn’t fix this,” I tell him. “Dr. Kirkpatrick is dead. You can’t fix that, can you?”

Adam doesn’t say anything at all. He nods once and then slips outside to the back steps where they must have found me. I half expect him to keep walking, but he doesn’t. He just stands there waiting, his profile frozen in the moonlight.

“It’s real, you know,” Maggie says quietly. “The way he feels about you.”

“Funny, I thought you were Team Stay-the-Hell-Away-from-Adam like two days ago.”

“I was.”

“And what? You find out he really is just as bad as you thought—hell, worse than that—and suddenly you think he’s hero of the day?”

“I d-didn’t say that. I’m still not sure what I think of him.”

I glance outside the back door again. He’s still there. “I know what I think. I think he betrayed me.”

Maggie sinks into a chair, sighing. “Yeah, well, d-don’t start flinging stones in your little g-glass house.”

“What does that mean?”

Mags looks at me with a flinty expression. “It means you b-betrayed me too.”

I wince at her words, torn between curiosity and dread. “What happened, Mags? Tell me what happened to us.”

“
They
happened to you, Chloe.” Her face goes dark and sad. “I t-told you that group was wrong. It was almost like a cult. You hung out at the same places, wore the same kind of clothes. You started d-dating each other, for God’s sake.”

I shake my head. “It still doesn’t make sense, Maggie. We didn’t stop being friends when you went through your Danny obsession or when I was on the volleyball team and at practice ten thousand times a week.”

“That’s because you didn’t insult me!” She takes a shuddery breath, and I can see that her eyes are too bright. Her chin trembles when she speaks again. “When I t-told you something felt wrong, you said I was paranoid. Time after time you blew me off, and then when ignoring me wasn’t enough, you staged an intervention. You sat me d-down with a couple of your study bitches and t-told me you wanted to help. You told me that maybe if I spent a little more t-time centering myself that maybe I w-wouldn’t, that m-m-maybe I wouldn’t…”

I fill in the blank with a hollow voice. “Stutter.”

It can’t be true. I can’t be capable of that. But somehow, her words prickle at my mind, whispering of a memory that’s waiting to be recovered.

“You always p-protected me,” she says, swiping tears off her cheeks angrily. “Even way b-back in the second grade, you never t-treated me different. Not until that d-day.”

I slump back against the wall, my heart in pieces.

We’re both crying now, quiet sniffs punctuating the silence of her kitchen. I finally brave my voice, which is every bit as weak and shaky as I feel. “I don’t even know what to say. I know sorry isn’t enough. I don’t know what would be. I don’t know how I could ever believe…”

She picks up where I trail off, stepping closer. “
They
made you believe. You b-believed these people and all the b-bullshit they fed you, Chloe. Maybe not as much as the others, but they had you.”

I repress a shudder, still revolted by the idea of those words on my lips. Maggie isn’t looking for me to talk yet though. She looks right past me to the back door where Adam is still waiting. I see his hard profile in the moonlight, his sharp jaw and thin nose.

“They had him too.”

***

I step outside and he turns to me. He is prettier than a boy has any right to be and far too beautiful for the ugly things he’s done.

“I don’t trust you,” I say.

He doesn’t look at me, but he flinches like it stings. But also in a way that tells me he gets it.

“It doesn’t change the fact that I want to help,” he says.

“Maybe I don’t want your help.”

Adam turns toward me then, his expression stony. “Then I’ll go to the police and tell them everything I know.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

I feel fury under my skin, heating me up despite the snow. “If you do that, we have nothing. We might never find the evidence I had.”

Adam shrugs and I feel my jaw clench.

“It’d be my word against Daniel Tanner’s, Adam! Do you understand that the only proof I have was stolen from a recent murder victim? He’d come through this smelling like a rose, and I’d probably look like the killer!”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care? You don’t care about the possibility of me being a murder suspect?”

“That’s right, I don’t! Because you’d be alive! If I go to the police, they’ll launch an investigation and you will be watched. Protected. He’d be too smart to come after you then because it would lead a trail of bread crumbs back to the study group and eventually to him.”

“So you’d let him get away with what they did to Julien? You’d just walk away?”

He closes in on me, his head bending down until his face is lost in shadow. His hand reaches for my cheek, and I hold my breath. When he speaks again, his voice is so low I can feel it as much as I can hear it. “You have no idea what I’d do to keep you safe, do you?”

The back door opens, and Maggie lets herself out. I’m half irritated when I turn to her, but the look on her face shuts my mouth. Her skin is pale and her eyes are wet. Too wet.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“Look,” she says, pointing blindly back to the house. Her laptop is open on the kitchen counter. “I was j-just checking my stuff, and—”

“And what?” Adam asks. He moves his head, like he wants to see the screen. “Are they looking for us?”

Maggie shakes her head, and I see that her cheeks are wet. She’s crying. I reach for her hands. She’s cold. Shaking. “What is it, Mags?”

“It’s Julien. She’s d-dead.”

***

The
bright
future
of
a
former
local
honor
roll
student
was
cut
tragically
short
when
she
took
her
own
life—

I stop reading. I’ve already read the post a half dozen times. We all have. I don’t know why. Maybe we think reading it over and over again might make it untrue.

But it is true. Julien is dead. Mrs. Campbell found her hanging in her bedroom two days ago.

I try to think of Julien dead, but the truth is, I don’t really know what death looks like unless you count my glimpse of Dr. Kirkpatrick. I mean, I saw my grandpa Frank at his visitation, but I was eight and all I remember thinking is that he looked kind of orange and that he probably wouldn’t really like the lacy satin pillow under his head.

But he was old and Julien isn’t.

Wasn’t.

God, this just shouldn’t be possible. I’m pretty sure I should feel something other than this. Because I don’t feel anything. I’m just…numb.

Adam lets out a low sigh and pushes his fingers into his hair. Maggie sniffs into a tissue, and I wince. Her crumpled face makes me ache, but is that for Julien or for Maggie?

And what about Mrs. Miller? I remember her so vividly, her soft hands closing around the bag of maple nut clusters. Her tired eyes and perfect smile. She found Julien.

She found her daughter hanging in her room.

“We need to do something,” I say. Not that I really have any ideas. I had to say something though. Because I can’t think about Mrs. Miller. Not for one more second.

“L-like what?” Maggie asks.

“We can’t bring her back,” Adam says. He too looks shaken. Stunned.

And I’m still sitting here, cold and hard like a stone while, somewhere in California, Julien is dead. She killed herself, and it wasn’t because of a bully or a bad breakup. It wasn’t anything stupid or childish. It was because of Daniel Tanner.

“We can’t let him get away with this,” I say.

“No,” Maggie says, and her eyes go flinty.

“How?” Adam sits back in his chair, shoulders slumped. “I’ll do whatever you want. You know that. I’ll do anything. But we don’t have proof.”

“I do have proof!” I say, and then I wince. “I did. I had it before.”

“Do you remember anything?” he asks.

Swirling snow. My tires slipping on the pavement. Dirt crusted on my half-frozen fingers. I remember so much. And nowhere near enough.

I shake my head, and Maggie touches my hand. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not okay. I need to figure it out.”

“It’s locked somewhere in your head,” Adam says. “It’s not like you can just force something like that out.”

I don’t say anything, but I know he’s wrong. They’ve already forced my mind to forget things. And if they can do that…

“Let’s go,” I say, standing up.

“W-what? Where are we going?”

“We’re going back to the school.”

“Why? What for?” Adam asks, though he stands up with me.

I know what I have to do. It scares me to death, the idea of someone poking around in my head for the second time. But I can’t let this rest. I have to try.

I push down my fear and square my shoulders. “What do you guys know about hypnosis?”

***

We decide to meet at the school. Mags needs to check in with her mom, who’s still at the bakery, and I need to pick up a couple of reference books from home, including the one I checked out of the library. I don’t know why I have Adam drive me, because I don’t exactly trust him. But the world still feels steadier when he’s close.

I’m grateful that I don’t need to explain this to Maggie, who watches us from her front window as we drive away.

Adam tunes the radio to a station playing Christmas carols, and I stare out the window. Houses draped in pine swags and twinkle lights drift past. For a moment, I can almost pretend this is a date. That we’re two normal people, stretching out the last bit of a perfect evening.

“It’s different now,” I say, maybe to remind myself more than anything.

“Maybe,” he says. “But it doesn’t change anything. Not for me.”

He pulls to a stop at the curb beside my driveway, and then he comes around to my side of the car, and everything’s just like it was before. Except we don’t touch. We don’t hold hands or sling arms around each other’s shoulders. We just walk side by side, crunching up the snowy sidewalk until we’re at the foot of my porch steps.

“Chloe,” Adam says, moving in front of me.

I suddenly feel like I’ve run a marathon. Breathless and light-headed, I can’t seem to do a thing but watch him as he slides his hands to my face. “I’m a liar and a thief and thousand other shitty things, but I would
never
hurt you. I need you to know that.”

I nod because I know he wouldn’t. Truth told, I don’t think he’d hurt anyone. Except maybe himself.

“I don’t deserve you.” He moves in, and I could sooner resist breathing than I can resist curling my hands in the edges of his coat, pulling him until I can feel the heat from his chest and breathe in the smell that I now know as well as my own.

My hands are shaking and cold when I press them to his cheeks. He doesn’t flinch or pull away; instead he breathes harder, like every whisper of my fingers is magic.

“No more lies,” I say.

He nods but doesn’t say anything. Like he knows I’m not done.

“I don’t know what this means,” I say. “I don’t trust you now. I don’t know if I ever will.”

“I’ll wait,” he says, and I think he will. I think he’ll wait forever if that’s what it takes. And it might.

Still, I pull him down and kiss him until the cold disappears. His hands are tangled in my hair, and the world is a tiny, insignificant thing sliding sideways beneath my feet. It feels better than good. It feels right.

When we pull apart, the snow has stopped. The moon is bright and full in the star-pricked sky. I gaze at the pale ring around it, remembering that it’s an omen of something the future will bring. I wish I could remember if it’s good or bad.