Spree (YA Paranormal) (10 page)

Immediately, the Takers whipped throughout the party. The Flow, a dark mist of disembodied energy, divided, in small black waves, until they found the next likely candidate, a kid fighting to get a car to start. The kid giggled as the car shorted out, then swore. It was obvious from the slur that this kid was also drunk. The Takers used their manipulation of energy to jumpstart the car just so this drunk could take death to the streets. I felt another Taker, a girl with half her head missing, step forward, propelling this drunk to make the same mistakes she made, to end up just the way she did. The kid did crash into a pole, but was rendered unconscious. A few Takers still swarmed around him, to see whether or not he might be taken for dead.

I attempted to call out, to warn the boy, but The Flow turned on me. All I could say was, “People do care.”

“Did they care about you?” a Taker said.

“Your classmates will be better off dead,” another Taker added.

“They will be..shortly,” yet another Taker taunted.

The Takers laughed. Even their laughter sounded painful.

The Flow showed me a picture of the school in the days after my death. My friends still struggled, but the faculty spoke of being anxious to put the episode, as they called my death, behind them. They complained about how the kids were unfocused, about how the lazier ones used it as an excuse to do no schoolwork. Even a few of the kids walking by said, “It’s not like she really did anything important. People should just move on.”

Oddly, I didn’t feel insulted.

“I hope they do move on,” I said.

The Flow began convulsing, shaking me free.

Yet the Takers held on.

“They have nothing to move on from,” one Taker said.

“You were a drunk,” another Taker added.

“You were such a waste,” multiple Taker voices insisted.

I was shown countless images of myself wasted, too drunk to even walk. I saw myself coming home after school, grabbing the whiskey in the top cabinet, reserved for my mother’s hard work days,

and having a few drinks. I saw the occasional drink grow and grow until I knew where all the places to get illegal liquor were, until I memorized my mother’s credit card to order bottles over the Internet. I knew I’d always be home first, that she’d be working, and I found easy ways to support my habit until I had as great a party reputation as any girl at my school.

I fought against the images, fighting to project visions of myself loving, caring for someone else, fighting nights to stay sober, if only to lose again. I showed moments when I reached out to friends, moments when I was human.

Slowly, I began to hear less of The Flow. It still held me; I’d never truly break free. No Taker ever does. But I knew I had my own will, that I didn’t just have to go along with the other Takers if I kept something of my goodness, something of my humanity.

I’d be a reject from hell, never dark enough for the Takers to drive me there.

Just yet.

And as I woke up from Crazy T’s curse, I sensed that The Flow worked two ways. He could sense me, but I could also sense his thoughts. He knew my fears, but I also knew his.

I realized then that the woman’s name was Lisa Walters and that she was Crazy T’s obsession once upon a time. I knew that her rejection of him fueled his rage, that the loss of her, the humiliation he faced, the shame of his father, that they all made him angry enough to kill.

And I knew just where to find her when the time came.

In fact, I still owed her a detention.

ONE DAY TO GO

Chapter 8

Throughout school the next day all the kids could talk about was the Friday game against Franklin Shore. Alex and the other players were on the news, dedicating the game to my memory. If I didn’t stop Zipper, I wondered if they would play back that clip after the bleachers and the better part of town was blown away.

Takers swarmed the school, walking behind nearly any kid they could get next to. They whispered lies, encouraged the players to talk up the game. They hardly needed to. Not even a few small town deaths could stop Burgundy Hill from competing for the state championship. As if Alex, Tom, and the rest of the players weren’t arrogant enough, they actually allowed local TV cameras on site to talk to the students about their memory of me and the dedication of the game.

“She was a sister to me,” Gretchen said, breaking down.

We barely talked.

Alex, the photogenic captain of the team, said only: “She will be missed.”

I was the love of his early life, but he said only four words.

The Takers laughed at that one, held at bay only by the sheer volume of explosives already lying in wait.

Tom, looking especially arrogant, said before the cameras: “We’ll play like never before. I plan to make my first goal for Fay and my second for Cindy.”

The principal escorted the TV crew to a few classes where crisis counselors were still at work with small groups of teens.

“What’s your favorite memory of Fay and Cindy?” the counselor asked the kids.

It was a phony question, purely for the cameras.

“She helped me learn how to bike,” one girl said.

It was Sue, my old drinking buddy. I’m sure she was right. I did help her ride without training wheels because I was the big girl who beat her out of the gate. But I couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t mention getting drunk with me on weekends or even at school. I couldn’t count the amount of times we snuck into the bathroom to drink at our leisure. Then there were the times, too many to count, when we took out water bottles in class and took a swig of whatever kept us buzzed that day. The teachers looked right at us as we did it, and they often just continued with their lessons. I’d even gotten drunk in Mrs. Walters class, and she was a good teacher.

As for Sue, she’d have some scotch before she left school that day.

“That’s good,” the crisis counselor said. “Why don’t we explore those memories more?”

The reporter cut from the scene to pitch the game as a great memorial to the traditions of Burgundy Hill High in the face of overwhelming tragedy.

At an angle, watching the reporters with red, squinty eyes, was Steph. She shook her head and walked off. I followed her.

* * *

From her aura alone, I could tell that Steph had some restless nights. Her dreams, mired in Takers, were full of dark shadows and voices that sounded like her mother. Deep black chasms opened up and even familiar town streets were cast in endless shadow. She hadn’t slept a full night since the crash and though she was cleared from the hospital without serious injuries, she was still hurting from some bruises and what could quite possibly turn out to be an undiagnosed concussion.

I appeared next to her as she brushed her teeth and went through the nightly ritual of going to bed. The girl was still in shock; her whole life had been crushed and mired worse than the body of the caravan. In her aura floated moments of emotional memory, and I could see her with her mother.

They had a special relationship, the kind I never really had with my own mother. They drove everywhere together, shopped for Coach purses together, laughed at the same inside jokes, and even called the same guys cute. Lynn, Steph’s mom, was the version of herself Steph wanted to be, and in one night’s drinking I took her away forever.

Steph finished washing her face and headed towards her bedroom.

She’d have to cross her mother’s room diagonally to get to hers. She’d have to hear her father crying in there alone. Steph was close to her dad, too, but it wasn’t the same. She peeked towards the doorway, but she ultimately crept into bed. How wounded her energy was, full of fading blues and whites. She was a void, still too frozen and shaken by the events to have a good cry. As she got in the covers, she looked over to a picture of her mother and her out in front of some lake, on matching water skis. She wasn’t much of a tomboy, and the skis weren’t exactly a natural fit, but the smile shared between mother and daughter was real, too real for my comfort.

Steph got between the covers and just lied there. Judging from the aura, she was thinking about her mother, about her crying father, about her own inability to cry. Her frustration and shock easily grew into anger, and I sensed that she was angry enough to strike a girl and that she’d been using a few drinks here and there to take the edge off. She felt especially guilty, given that my drinking took the life of her mother, but she couldn’t talk to her father and she found herself short on friends. No one could take the place of her mother, and now pictures like the one on her bureau were all that she had left. She was spiraling already. Takers fed off of her blue and red swirling energy and pushed her on with darker thoughts of her friends, of me, of the pain she’d always feel if she chose to go ahead and face reality. Every time her wounds smarted enough for her to cry, Takers ate away at the emotion, pigging out on it, fueling the anger that fed them even more. If Steph survived the shooting, which was unlikely, I could tell that in a year or two she’d take my place. She’d give in to a life of drugs, alcohol, cutting, and sex, just to channel all that emotion, to keep sane. I had to do something.

“Can you hear me?” I whispered to her.

No response.

“I never got to apologize,” I said.

Steph rolled over, too lost in her own thoughts to hear mine.

“You have so much to live for,” I told her.

As she drifted off into a fitful, crying sleep, I showed her images of herself and of a man she might marry, if she chose a different path. I showed her an image of my ex-boyfriend. There were images of a wedding, with white crystal vases and silky floral arrangements, of her mother, standing there, watching the new bride receive her fist kiss, crying. Steph half awoke, wondered if what she saw was real. The red of her aura grew. The feeling was too raw.

My mother will never see my wedding
, she thought to herself.

I tried to spread images of light, but I was still a creature of darkness.

The Taker in me fed on her despair.

Out of the corner of the window I saw Crazy T smiling, looking in.

“Don’t worry,” he said to me. “In two days her grief will be at an end. You can finish pigging out on her energy then.”

Steph lay there, stifling her cries. I sat on the bed next to her, trying to show her images of who and what I was, of the plan she’d have to play a part in. I failed. She kept sobbing as quietly as she could, hoping her father wouldn’t hear her. I never felt so alone as when I saw her there, crying because of me.

* * *

The strength of their energy brought me to Aliya’s mom who was by Aliya’s side, in the hospital.

Aliya had awoken, was unable to move her lower body.

Despite the meeting of our spirits, she was scared, deathly afraid, as she awoke. She felt that her lower legs should move, but there was nothing there, no motion, no sign of life in her lower body. She was crying out, and her mom was looking for a nurse. Mrs. Bilki, Aliya’s mom, pressed the emergency call button, but the hospital was full of overworked nurses who had to attend to too many rooms. Hers wasn’t the only emergency of the hour.

When a nurse finally came, Mrs. Bilki called out, “My daughter. She’s screaming.”

“I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said.

She walked out, leaving Mrs. Bilki to take her daughter’s hand.

“I can’t move,” Aliya hollered.

“It’s your spine,” her mom told her. “It was damaged in the accident.”

Aliya stopped hollering. The thought struck her.

“I’m never going to walk again, am I?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” her mother said.

By the time the doctor got there, Aliya was bawling. There was anger in her aura, a pale red, and a chalky gray, the sign of her immense gloom.

The doctor came and said, “Hello, Aliya. I’m Dr. Nordstom. I want to tell you first how lucky you are to have survived. If your spine or neck took any other blow, you may not have been so lucky.”

“Lucky?” she asked. “You call this lucky?”

Dr. Nordstom said nothing.

“Is this my life?” Aliya asked bitterly.

“It’ll take time,” Dr. Nordstom said. “But we have specialists looking at your case this very moment and facilities that can help you train your body to move to the fullest extent possible. You do have the use of your arms. That will help.”

“Help me to do what?”

“Get around.”

Aliya thought of me briefly; I could swear she looked right at me.

I’ll be here
, I whispered.

I knew even that might prove an empty lie.

Mrs. Bilki was there when Aliya’s father came in with the first hospital bill. He didn’t show it to Aliya’s mom, who was too busy holding Aliya’s hand. I could see it, though. It was already high enough to be a second mortgage.

Mr. Bilki had just gotten off the phone for the first of many times with the insurance company.

He’d just learned that on top of dealing with a grieving daughter, on top of a major life adjustment, he’d soon be in for the fight of his life: the fight with his insurer.

He blamed me and he blamed my mother for all of this. His aura was a peaked red.

Just as soon as he got off the phone with his insurer, he called a friend of his, a lawyer.

Chapter 9

Keepers swarmed around my mother as she met with the women from the Burgundy Hill Mothers against Drinking and Driving.

The Burgundy Hill Mothers hadn’t let up on calls, on e-mails, since my mother first called them back. Though she was conflicted about joining, my mother agreed to meet, to accept some kind of condolence basket that, for some reason, they thought was in good taste.

I knew my mom. She was always a private woman, kind of the opposite of me. She stopped taking phone calls from well-wishers, and she stopped opening her email after the funeral. She just wanted time to adjust, to find a new normal. But it was far too soon. She’d clean up after messes that weren’t there, find the time to paint the bathroom now that she wasn’t dealing with phone calls from guidance counselors and endless parent-teacher meetings. She kept the pictures of me all around, as if I were just on some long trip. She couldn’t bear to take them down. If only she could speak to Steph, if only Steph could speak to her, they might find some comfort. But their only connection was an accident both wanted to forget.