The Athena Effect (9 page)

He brought Caledonia her bag, and insisted on dropping her off at home. He watched as she made her way down the path to her aunt’s door, feeling defeated without really knowing why. Maybe a few drinks would make him feel better.

He had to get out of this place too.

~

Caledonia opened the door to her aunt’s house, slipping in and closing it quietly behind her. She started up the stairs in the dark, startled when the lights suddenly flipped on. Phil was waiting on the landing, towering over her with a grin on his red face.

“You’re not so innocent after all, are you Cal?”

~

Chapter Seven – EVADE

~

“I knew it,” Phil said smugly.

She tried to brush past him to get to her room, but he moved to block her. He was drunk, confrontational, and pulsing with an ugly brownish red. It was a dangerous combination.

“Where’s Aunt Angie?” Cal asked, backing up.

He advanced on her, a stinking cloud of sour frustration, “You little tramp! Now I know what you’ve been up to when you sneak out of here at night. I saw you with that punk.”

“Did Angie get home yet?” she asked, her voice higher pitched with fear. He took a step closer, backing her to the door.

He leered at her, “Do you put out for
all
the boys, or just those bikers down the street?”

She spun around and darted back out the front door.

Cal ran down the walkway and out into the dark night street. She never wanted to go back into that house ever again. Her mind was racing, wondering how far away she could get with her money. She thought about the scary man at the bus station, remembering that the world was a dangerous place, full of predators. She set out down the street, not sure where she should go.

She didn’t even have her knife for company.

Cal was scared and cold, thinking that she probably should have taken her chances with Calvin and his brother. She headed back towards his house hesitantly, trying to work her courage up. Maybe he’d know what to do. Maybe if she gave him all of her money he would give her a ride back home on his motorcycle, and she could hide in her parent’s little cabin without anyone knowing.

She was suddenly afraid that she could never find her way back to the remote place, panicking when she tried to remember the long grief filled ride to the Sherriff’s house. Her memories were slipping away, and life back home was already starting to seem like something that happened a long time ago. She struggled to remember her parent’s faces, scared she would lose the last trace that remained of them.

She closed in on Cal’s house to find that the party had gotten even louder. Slowing her pace, she crept past the motorcycles to peek in nervously from the shadows. A group of about ten people stood around a fire pit, laughing, drinking and smoking. All of the women had on skimpy outfits, their low-cut tops revealing a lot of cleavage despite the nighttime chill that was settling in.

She scanned the crowd anxiously, spotting Cal’s shaggy head with a little gasp of relief.
 
He was sitting in a plastic chair by the fire, draining a bottle of something. He looked up and smiled his crooked smile, and her heart leapt into her throat.

A girl in a short skirt approached him, returning his smile and waving two more bottles in her hands. She handed him one and he tossed the empty over his shoulder with determination before reaching out for it. She flipped her straight blonde hair over her shoulder, and plunked down on his lap casually, playing with his hair while he drank from the second bottle, his other hand on her thigh.

Cali’s face burned with a sudden flash of heat. She backed up, turned around and fled as fast as she could. She was stupid, she thought, going to him for help. She walked off into the dark night, looking over her shoulder anxiously, realizing that she was completely, utterly, on her own.

~

Calvin got to school the next morning with a pounding headache, wondering why he even bothered. He was a senior, and had been pretty much phoning it in for the last few weeks before graduation. His grades had slipped, along with any real plans for life after high school. All around him his classmates were fired-up about college applications and prom dates, but ever since the accident, none of that stuff seemed important at all.

Seeing his grandparents had brought back a flood of memories, and he was feeling more melancholy than usual. There was only one reason he even showed up today. The truth was, the only reason he even got out of bed was to see her.

He looked for Caledonia in the halls around her classes, but she was missing. He searched the hidden spots behind the buildings to no avail, waiting out front after school with a heavy heart. He couldn’t reach her by phone, and he thought about going to the condo and knocking on the door. He didn’t know what he’d say after that.

He just wanted to see her, that’s all.

Angry with himself, he couldn’t understand why she had to be so difficult. He knew at least four or five girls he could call that would come running, happy to hook up with him at a moment’s notice. The last thing he needed was some girl that was always hiding away; he could get plenty of action without all of the head games. She was too much work.

But try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking about her, and the images that flashed through his mind– wildly different images – were difficult to reconcile. The fierce, knife wielding girl at the cemetery, her devastated, tear-streaked face at the pound… And his favorite, the radiant girl that smiled up at him as she petted a lamb. How could she be all of them?

She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever met, and just thinking about what to say to her made him nervous. He decided that he should drop it; he would forget all about her and move on. Deep down inside, he had to admit that he doubted he could.

~

Caledonia had also dragged herself to school that morning. The weather was mild, so she’d spent the night curled in the brush next to the graveyard, getting up to pick the leaves out of her braid, trying her best to make herself presentable until she could get to the school bathroom and splash some water on her face.

It took some doing to dodge Calvin that day; he seemed to be everywhere she had to be, and he nearly made her miss getting a school lunch. She couldn’t afford to miss her lunch. She used every trick she knew to blend in, hide out and evade him. She wondered why he even bothered hunting her.

He may not have seen her, but she saw plenty of him. Leaning up against a bank of lockers with a bored look on his face, he was as handsome as the first time he’d caught her eye at the bus station. A girl came over and draped herself onto him, and Cali felt a little surge of annoyance. She hated that it bothered her, swearing to herself she’d never be like one of those girls.

All of her romantic notions came from books, and the casual way he went from girl to girl disgusted her. Calvin was no gentleman like Mister Darcy, and he could never be as loyal or passionate as Heathcliff. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she must protect her heart from him. She didn’t want what he had to offer.

She had to wait a long time after school for Calvin to leave. When she finally made her way down the street to her aunt’s, it was late afternoon, and she was feeling drained. She stepped inside the house with trepidation, wanting only to take a shower and get some fresh clothes. Her aunt heard the door, and came around the corner, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

“Cal, can you come into the kitchen? We need to talk.”

She followed her aunt in and stopped short when she saw Phil sitting at the kitchen table. He glowered at her, his eyes sending a warning.

“Phil tells me that you’ve been running around with those trashy bikers while I’ve been at work. He says you got dropped off here last night on a motorcycle.”

Cal was stunned at her accusatory tone, “I haven’t done anything wrong… I just took a ride from a friend.”

Her aunt looked at her sadly, “You should be happy that Phil cares enough about your well-being to let me know what’s going on. Cal– I know you’re naive, but those people are trouble… I thought I warned you to stay away from them!”

“But–”

“Listen, you’ll be eighteen soon, and then you can move out and do whatever you please. I just want you to know I won’t tolerate any foolishness under my roof. If you’re smart, you’ll stay far away from those losers.”

“But–”

She smiled patronizingly, “Don’t look so upset. We wouldn’t say anything if we didn’t care.”

Cal’s wounded eyes met Phil’s gloating ones over Angie’s shoulder, and she felt like throwing up.

She climbed the stairs numbly, exhausted and defeated.

Caledonia resumed her pattern, dodging Phil at night and napping in the afternoons before an increasingly harried Angie left to work her double shifts. One day she woke up to find Phil standing over her bed, watching her sleep with hungry eyes. She jumped up with a cry, running to tell her aunt.

To her dismay, Angie believed Phil’s story about needing to get something from one of the boxes of his things that remained untouched in her room.

“Don’t be so selfish,” she had scolded Cal. “You should be grateful that Phil was nice enough to give up his office for you! And don’t you think it’s kind of lazy for you to lay around sleeping all day?”

Cal nodded sadly; there was no point in arguing because her Aunt Angie had no desire to believe her. Caledonia knew by Phil’s color what he’d had in mind, but unfortunately, she had no proof. Instead of waiting around for something bad to happen, she continued to avoid the house as much as possible.

Her life became even harder now that she had someone to dodge at school too, but it pained her to see Calvin, and she was so stubborn about avoiding him that she even missed getting her lunch a couple of times. Constantly ravenous, she started wasting away, growing thinner and thinner.

Wandering the streets at night like a ghost, she stumbled upon a little convenience store that was open all night, shocked by all the different things she saw inside it. She was forced to spend some of her precious dollars on food, taking it with her to the little clearing that she rested in at night. She stayed quiet as a mouse, fearful of attracting the frightening vagrants that sometimes shuffled by her hiding spot in the middle of the night, muttering to themselves.

She was back to only being able to read in the daytime, curling up in the quiet recesses of the school library, usually falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion. By the end of the week, she was coming to the end of her rope.

On Friday, Calvin finally caught up with her at school, cornering her in the cafeteria. He sidled up to her in line, getting right up next to her before he announced his presence.

“Hey,” he said casually.

Her head snapped up to see him, and she froze, poised to run like some wild thing. When their eyes locked, the two of them stood rooted to the spot, staring at each other. The world all around them faded into the background as he scrutinized her with deep blue concern.

“Where have you been?” he asked her.

“Nowhere,” she replied, her voice barely a whisper.

She recovered, taking her food and leaving the building with him hot on her heels. She walked fast, going to the farthest bench to sit down and take out a book. His shadow fell across her.

“Are you avoiding me?”

She looked up at him, “What do you want from me?”

He was startled by her directness. She was nothing like the coy, flirtatious girls he was used to. She unnerved him, and he found himself groping for words.

“Hey Cal!” Where have you been hiding?” They both looked up to see a pair of girls approaching. One of them hooked her arm around Calvin’s in a territorial display. Caledonia recognized the girl he had been kissing.

“Who’s she?” the girl asked, following his eyes.

“Hillary, Debbie…This is Caledonia,” he said her name slowly, enunciating each syllable.

“That’s a weird name,” the girl clinging to him laughed shrilly.

“It means Scotland,” Cal said, making Caledonia’s eyes narrow up at him suspiciously.

“Oh my Gawd!” Hillary squealed, “What is
wrong
with your eyes? That is so freaky!”

Caledonia looked at Hillary coldly, “It’s called heterochromia iridium. That means they’re two different colors.”

She laughed again, “Like, duh– I can see
that
! What, are you some kind of science geek or something?”

She looked down, “I read it in Grey’s anatomy.”

Now Hillary really laughed at her, scoffing, “Oh really? You can
read
a TV show?” The other girl joined in, and Caledonia looked confused.

“It was a book first, stupid,” Calvin said, pulling his arm back from Hillary.

Caledonia snapped her book shut and got up to leave without saying a word. Calvin stood watching her hurry away around the corner, too proud to chase after her.

“A bunch of us are going to the fair this weekend, wanna go?” asked Debbie.

“I don’t know,” he said, finally stalking off to look around the corner and see that Caledonia had already disappeared into the crowd.