Vengeance (12 page)

I opened the door to the field house. My eyes took a second to focus from the shift in light. I flicked the light switch, ready to pop open the can of paint and be done with this. But the room smelled off. Too much like gasoline, not enough like sawdust and sweat and paint. The floor was darker, like my house’s when the water had seeped across the wood floors.

But this was gasoline.

One of the red containers was on its side, the nozzle lay beside it, and the floor was soaked in gasoline. The container was near the nets, which I had moved to get the cones, but I had been careful. I had checked. When I left, they were upright and sealed; I was sure of it.

And now this whole place was charged and waiting, seconds from going up in flames. The whole room, waiting for me.

Waiting for a spark.

I raced across the field, like it was chasing me.

Mr. Hayes said it was an accident, but I think he really assumed it was
my
accident. “It’s all right,” he said. “Appreciate you telling me. Could’ve ended badly.”

“It was like that when I walked in,” I said. Coming for me. Waiting for me.

“Sure, sure. Probably one of the coaches knocked it over on the way out and didn’t notice.”

“But the lid. Shouldn’t that be
on
? Isn’t that the point of it?”
Water dripping down the walls. Glass shattered on the floor. Gasoline clinging to the insides of my lungs
.

“Yeah, it is. Probably somebody forgot to tighten it.” An uncapped top. An accidental nudge while I was out. A string of small mistakes that could’ve ended in disaster.

Or one event. One person, unscrewing the top, watching as the gasoline spread across the floor. Waiting for me.

But nobody knew I was still in there. To anyone else, it probably looked like I’d finished four days ago, like I was supposed to. I was just avoiding everything now. Going through the motions. Counting the days until they became weeks, the weeks until they became months, until all of them disappeared—to schools all over the country, to jobs with long hours, to apartments with friends.

Or they’d disappear from school, becoming lifelong fixtures in this town. Not the same people. Like the alumni who stuck around and put their old jerseys on during homecoming, becoming the people they’d once been. We never noticed them around town any other time of year. Just that one day, when they became who we remembered.

Everyone would disappear. I knew that now.

But not Delaney. She’d always be here. Or the ghost of her would always be here. The legend of her. An image of her, floating under the ice, clawing to get out. She’d live in the stories, the warnings, that generation after generation would tell.
Don’t touch Falcon Lake. It wants you. It wants
.

I never did finish painting the field house. Mr. Hayes had to clean up the spill. He said he’d finish up. I knew, next time I went back, the doors would be locked.

I checked my car. Around my car. Checked the streets at each intersection, even if the light was green. I checked her house. Ran my fingers along the window frames, making sure they were locked.

I shouldn’t stay here. What ever was happening—the water, the windows, the gasoline—it was targeted at me. I was sure of it now. I was the only one tying it all together. When I got home from Boston, I’d figure out a way to convince my mom to let me leave. Though from the activity going on in our house—there’d been an electrician yesterday, a drywall company today—I figured it wouldn’t be much longer, anyway.

“Some help with the groceries, Decker?” Joanne was watching me from the hall with two paper grocery bags in her arms. I hadn’t heard her come in. “
Listen
,” the lady in 2B had told me. I hadn’t even heard the garage door.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, backing away from the front window. I went to the garage and pulled a few bags from the trunk.

“I see you less now that you’re actually living here,” she said when I got back to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” I said, emptying the bag. I knew where everything went in this kitchen. I practically grew up here.

Joanne cleared her throat. “And don’t worry about those windows. …”

“I wasn’t,” I said, even though of course I was.

“Well, anyway, we just had an alarm system installed.” She pointed to the keypad on the wall. “So no need to worry, if you had been.”

“I wasn’t,” I said again.

“Two-five-four-three,” she said.

“Huh?”

“The code,” she said.

“Oh, that’s okay, we’ll be moving out soon.”

“Decker, don’t be ridiculous. Two-five-four-three,” she repeated.

I pulled out three containers of hamburgers. “Sale on burgers,” I mumbled as I searched for space in the freezer.

Joanne put a hand on her hip. “We’re having a barbecue tomorrow. It’s on the calendar.” She pointed at the calendar stuck to the side of the fridge, then shook her head to herself. “Am I the only one in this family who checks the family calendar?” I didn’t want to point out I wasn’t actually a member of this family, and once I moved out, I wouldn’t be here much at all anymore. “Seriously, you’re worse than Delaney,” she said.

We were leaving for Boston in two days, and I was supposed to be at that barbecue at Delaney’s house in less than an hour. So was Maya, I guess, because when I showed up at Justin’s basement after school, she said, “Oh good, you can drive me,” like we were friends.

I wanted to tell them about the gasoline, about the feeling of something after me, but not with Maya there. None of us knew how to talk with Maya there. Kevin kept having to pause and explain things in the middle of a conversation.

“We need to do something bigger,” Janna said, resting her head back on the couch.

“Bigger than what?” Maya asked, and Kevin had to explain about the field house again.

“I’m thinking Johnny’s,” Janna said, which made sense since we’d all eaten there since we could do anything by ourselves.

“Who’s Johnny?” Maya asked, and Kevin had to explain that it was the pizza place in town.

“Oh,” Kevin said. “My parents own that building, Janna. So no.”

“Your parents own the
building
?” Maya asked, but this time Kevin didn’t respond.

Janna narrowed her eyes at him. “And they have the money to handle it.”

“What’s the point?” Justin asked. “If they just paint over it again?”

“You could talk to your parents,” she said to Kevin. “Get them to leave it.”

“Yeah, no. A creepy message on a sign would be bad for business, which would be bad for my parents. See how that works?”

“Yes, I see how that works,” she said, her words short and snipped. “So then you come up with an idea.”

This would be the time when Carson would butt in and tell his sister to chill out, to stop being so bossy, and he’d hook an arm around her and say something like, “
Don’t mind her, she’s pissed about a math test. A-minus. Such a disappointment
.” And smile at her. She’d roll her eyes. It would be over. But now, the silence just sat there.

“I’m gonna go,” Janna said, and I said good-bye louder than I needed to, trying to shake off the awkwardness.

“Decker,” Kevin said. “What ever’s going on with Delaney, fix it already. You look like shit. It’s messing with my mood.”

“Enough,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Enough from you. Break up, fine. But the moping and gloom and angry eyes, it stops. It’s awkward. Every lunch I get, like, a tension headache or something,” he said. He rolled his shoulders back. “I think it’s giving me neck pain.” For a second, I thought Maya whispered that speech in Kevin’s ear. But Maya was staring just beyond me. At a silent, frozen Janna.

“You’re blocking me in, Kevin.” She was irritated, like something was forcing us all to be together. He tossed her the keys from the couch.

“Sexist, much?” she asked.

“How the hell is that sexist? I’m trusting you with my car. That’s the opposite of sexist.”

I needed out. I hated the gaps of silence. The way Carson’s absence could fill this room. The way it was pushing us apart, instead of the other way around. “Let’s go, Maya,” I said. She tried to lean into Kevin, to say good-bye in the way she always said good-bye to him, but his arm stiffened and he pulled away.

Kevin was looking at me like Janna’s attitude was also somehow my fault.

“What?” I said.

He leaned his head back on the couch, like Janna had done when she was thinking. “I just want everything back how it used to be.” But I didn’t see how that was possible when one of us didn’t exist anymore.

Janna came back in while Maya was getting her bag. She held the keys on her finger in Kevin’s direction, but she didn’t step closer. He held his hand out, palm up, still sitting on the couch. The room was silent. Even Maya stopped rummaging through her bag to watch. Janna slowly tilted her hand down, and the key slid off her finger in slow motion. It collided with the hard basement floor, shattering the silence.

The car alarm was going off in the distance. Must’ve hit the panic button when it fell. But Janna left it there. Kevin left it there. The alarm blared in our ears. I went to pick them up, to silence the damn noise, to put an end to the standoff.

“Wait,” Kevin said as he got up off the couch. Walked over to Janna. Bent to pick up the keys. He pressed a button, silencing the alarm, as he stood. And as he stood, he circled his arms around Janna, pulling her toward him. He whispered
something in her ear, and she started sobbing into his chest, like Carson had just died all over again. And Kevin had his other hand over his eyes, his face resting on her shoulder.

Justin said, “Shit,” and he bent in half on the couch, his forehead resting in his hands.

I felt my insides bend in half. Felt him die again. Right now.

I heard Maya start to speak beside me. Half a word. “Wh—”

I dragged her by the arm and pulled her up the stairs. Out the door. Out from where she didn’t belong. “Don’t talk,” I said. We drove in tense silence to Delaney’s.

“I get it, you know,” she said as we pulled into our street. “If my brother … Well. I get it.”

But she didn’t get that Carson had been one of my closest friends or that he had helped save Delaney’s life, and then he had died on the side of the road from a rare, sudden seizure disorder, with Delaney by his side. And Delaney had never told Janna why they were in the car, headed down the highway together. And Maya didn’t get all the steps that led up to that, when you looked in reverse.

“Delaney told you about falling through the ice, right?”

“No. I mean, I
know
, but she never told me.”

Everyone knew. The town practically breathed it. “Then I guess she never told you why she was out there in the first place. I was pissed at her. It was before we were together. I walked in on her and Carson a few days before. On my couch.” I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “And Carson
knew
that I … he knew.
Everyone
knew. So I was jealous and I made her do it because I knew she didn’t want to. And when she stopped in the middle, I saw Carson waiting for us, and I gave her shit about it, and then I left her there.”

I pulled into my driveway, but Maya didn’t move to unbuckle her seat belt. “And then she fell,” I said as I turned off the engine.

“Why are you telling me this?”

I had no idea. But it felt like something I had to say. That Carson wasn’t perfect, that none of us were, but it didn’t matter. That everything, every horrible thing that happened over the last year could be traced back to me. “Because you
don’t
understand,” I said.

“You think I’m such an idiot,” she said. “That I’m just some girl your friend is screwing around with. That I’m incapable of thought.”

“I don’t,” I said.

“And now,” she said, unbuckling her belt and flinging open the door. “You’re lying.”

Everyone was too cheerful, too loud, at Delaney’s. Maya transitioned just fine, smiling and saying, “Thanks for having me,” and going to join the crowd out back where Ron was grilling burgers while Joanne manned the kitchen. A few of our neighbors were over. My mom was here. Everyone was eating out back or had finished eating and was now sitting around. The windows were all open. Probably one of the last days
they’d be able to be open. I brought my food inside and picked at it over the kitchen counter before relocating to the empty living room, listening to the conversation through the open window.