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  The hall outside was dim, the overhead fluorescent lights casting a dull gleam on the waxed floors. In my head, I told myself this was my school. I belonged here. And even though it was jarring every time I reminded myself I was now a junior, despite the fact that I couldn’t remember finishing sophomore year, eventually the strangeness would wear off. It had to.

  The bell rang. In an instant doors everywhere opened and the hall flooded with the student body. I fell into step with the current of students fighting their way to the restrooms, locker bays, and soda machines. I kept my chin tilted slightly up and leveled my gaze straight ahead. But I felt the eyes of my classmates when they looked my way. Everyone took a surprised second look. They had to know I was back by now—my story was the highlight of local news. But I supposed seeing me in the flesh cemented the fact. Their questions danced front and center in their curious stares. Where was she? Who kidnapped her? What kinds of icky, unspeakable things happened to her?

  And the biggest speculation by far: Is it true she can’t remember any of it? I bet she’s faking. Who just forgets months of their life?

  I fingered through the notebook I’d been hugging to my chest, pretending to search for something highly important. I don’t even notice you, the gesture implied. Then I threw back my shoulders and faked a look of indifference. Maybe even aloofness. But under it all, my legs were shaking. I hurried down the hall with only one goal driving me forward.

  Pushing my way inside the girls’ bathroom, I locked myself in the last stall. I dragged my back down the wall until I was sitting on my bottom. I could taste bile rising in my throat. My arms and legs felt numb. My lips felt numb. Tears dripped off my chin, but I couldn’t move my hand to wipe them away.

  No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, no matter how dark I forced my vision, I could still see their leering, judgmental faces. I wasn’t one of them anymore. Somehow, without any effort on my own, I’d become an outsider.

  I sat in the stall several minutes longer, until my breathing calmed and the urge to cry faded. I didn’t want to go to class, and I didn’t want to go home. What I really wanted was the impossible. To travel back in time and get a second chance. A do-over, starting with the night I disappeared.

  I’d just climbed to my feet when I heard a voice whisper past my ear like a cold current of air.

  Help me.

  The voice was so small, I almost didn’t hear it. I even considered the possibility that I’d invented it. After all, imagining things was all I was good for lately.

  Help me, Nora.

  At my name, goose bumps popped out on my arms. Holding still, I strained to hear the voice again. The sound hadn’t come from inside the stall—I was alone in here—but it didn’t appear to have come from the larger area of the bathroom either.

  When he finishes with me, it will be like I’m dead. I’ll never go home again.

  This time the voice sounded much stronger and more urgent. I looked up. It seemed to have floated down from the ceiling vent.

  “Who’s there?” I called up warily.

  At the lack of a reply, I knew this had to be the start of another hallucination. Dr. Howlett had predicted it. My thoughts turned anxious. I needed to remove myself from the setting. I had to distract my current train of thought and break the spell before it overtook me.

  I reached for the door lock, when a sudden image burst across my mind, eclipsing my sight. In a terrifying twist of scenery, I could no longer see the bathroom. Instead of tiles, the floor under my feet became concrete. Overhead, metal rafters crisscrossed the ceiling like giant spider legs. A row of truck bay doors ran along one wall.

  I’d hallucinated myself inside a—

  Warehouse.

  He sawed off my wings. I can’t fly home, the voice whimpered.

  I couldn’t see who the voice belonged to. There was a stripped lightbulb overhead, illuminating a conveyer belt at the center of the warehouse. Aside from it, the building was empty.

  A drone reverberated all around as the conveyor belt turned on. A clanging, mechanical noise carried out of the darkness at the end of the belt. It was carrying something toward me.

  “No,” I said, because it was the only thing I could think to say. I swept my hands in front of me, trying to feel the bathroom stall door. This was a hallucination, just like my mom had warned. I had to push through it and find a way back to the real world. All the while, the awful metallic scraping grew louder.

  I backed away from the conveyor belt until I was pressed up against a cement wall.

  With nowhere to run, I watched as a metal cage rattled and clanged out of the shadows, moving to the edge of the light. The bars glowed a ghostly electric blue, but that wasn’t what seized my attention. A person was hunched inside. A girl, bent to fit the confines of the cage, her hands grasping the bars, her blue-black hair tangled in front of her face. Her eyes peered through the screen of hair, and they were colorless orbs. There was a length of rope emitting the same eerie blue light tied around her neck.

  Help me, Nora.

  I wanted to run for an exit. I was afraid to try the bay doors, fearing they’d only lead me deeper into the hallucination. What I needed was my own door. One I created right now that I could escape through to the inside of the school bathroom.

  Don’t give him the necklace! The girl shook the bars of the cage fiercely. He thinks you have it. If he gets the necklace, he can’t be stopped. I won’t have a choice. I’ll have to tell him everything!

  My skin was damp at my lower back and my underarms. Necklace? What necklace?

  There is no necklace, I told myself. Both the girl and the necklace are wild concoctions of your imagination. Force them out. Force. Them. Out!

  A bell shrilled.

  Just like that, I was jolted out of the hallucination. The keyed-up door of the bathroom stall was inches from my nose. MR. SARRAF SUCKS. B.L. + J.F. = LOVE. JAZZ BAND ROCKS. I reached a hand out, tracing the deep grooves. The door was real. I slumped in relief.

  Voices carried into the bathroom. I flinched, but they were normal, happy, chatty. Through the door crack, I watched three girls line up in front of the mirrors. They fluffed their hair and touched up their lip gloss.

  “We should order pizza and watch movies tonight,” one of them said.

  “No can do, girls. It’s just me and Susanna tonight.” I recognized the voice as belonging to Marcie Millar. She was in the middle of the lineup, tidying her strawberry blond side ponytail, pinning it in place with a pink plastic flower.

  “You’re ditching us for your mom? Um, ouch?”

  “Um, yes. Deal with it,” Marcie said.

  The two girls on either side of Marcie made a big show of pouting. Odds were they were Addyson Hales and Cassie Sweeney. Addyson was a cheerleader like Marcie, but I’d once overheard Marcie confess that the only reason she was friends with Cassie was because they lived in the same neighborhood. Their bond was due to the simple fact that they could afford the same lifestyle. Peas in a pod—a very affluent pod.

  “Don’t even start,” Marcie said, but the smile in her voice clearly stated she was flattered by their disappointment. “My mom needs me. Girls’ night out.”

  “Is she … you know … depressed?” the girl I believed to be Addyson asked.

  “Seriously?” Marcie laughed. “She got to keep the house. She’s still a member of the yacht club. Plus she made my dad buy her a Lexus SC10. It’s sooo cute! And I swear half the single guys in town have already called or stopped by.” Marcie ticked each item off on her fingers so fluidly it made me think she’d been rehearsing this speech.

  “She’s so beautiful.” Cassie sighed.

  “Exactly. Whoever my dad hooks up with will be a major downgrade.”

  “Is he seeing anybody?”

  “Not yet. My mom has friends all over. Somebody would have seen something. So,” she transitioned with a gossipy voice, “did you guys see the news? About Nora Grey?”

  My knees went a little
soft at the mention of my name, and I flattened a hand to the wall for support.

  “They found her in the cemetery, and they’re saying she can’t remember anything,” Marcie went on. “I guess she’s so messed up she even ran from the police. She thought they were trying to hurt her.”

  “My mom said she was probably brainwashed by her kidnapper,” Cassie said. “Like some skeezy guy could have made her think they were married.”

  “Ew!” they all said in unison.

  “Whatever happened, she’s damaged goods now,” Marcie said. “Even if she says she can’t remember anything, she knows what happened subconsciously. She’s going to be dragging around that baggage for the rest of her life. She might as well wrap herself in yellow tape that says, ‘Stay out and do not cross.’”

  They giggled. Then Marcie said, “Back to class, girlies. I’m clean out of late passes. The secretaries keep locking them in their drawers. Whores.”

  I waited long after they had filed out, just to be sure the bathroom and halls would be empty. Then I hustled through the door. I speed-walked all the way to the end of the hall, shoved through the outside exit, and broke into a jog toward the student parking lot.

  I flung myself inside the Volkswagen, wondering why I’d ever believed I could waltz back into my life and expect to pick up right where things had left off.

  Because that was exactly it. Things hadn’t left off.

  They’d moved on without me.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I PREPPED FOR DINNER WITH HANK AND MY MOM by changing into flats and a billowy bohemian dress that fell above the knee.

  It was nicer than Hank deserved, but I had an ulterior motive. Tonight’s goal was twofold. First, make my mom and Hank wish they’d never invited me. Second, make my stance on their relationship crystal clear. I was already mentally rehearsing my discourse, which I’d deliver on my feet at top volume, and it would end when I doused Hank with his own glass of wine. I intended to usurp Marcie’s Diva Queen throne tonight, my own propriety be damned.

  But first things first. I had to lull Mom and Hank into believing I was in the right frame of mind to be taken into public. If I exited my bedroom foaming at the mouth and dressed in a black LOVE SUCKS tee, my plan would never get off the ground.

  I’d spent thirty minutes in the shower, hot water beating every inch of my body, and after vigorously scrubbing and shaving, I’d pampered my skin with baby oil. The tiny cuts crisscrossing my arms and legs were healing fast, as were the bruises, but both shed a crack of unwanted light on what life had been like during my abduction. Combined with the filthy skin I’d arrived at the hospital with, my best guess was that I’d been held deep in the woods. Somewhere so remote, it would have been impossible for a passerby to stumble across me. Somewhere so godforsaken that my chances of escaping and surviving would be to next to nothing.

  But I must have escaped. How else could I explain making it back home? Adding to this speculation, I envisioned the dense forests spanning northern Maine and Canada. Though I had no evidence to prove I had been held there, it was my best guess. I’d escaped, and against all odds, I’d survived. It was my only working theory.

  On my way out of my bedroom, I hesitated in front of the mirror long enough to scrunch my hair. It was longer now, falling halfway down my spine, with natural caramel highlights, thanks to summer’s sun. I’d definitely been someplace outdoors. My skin held a kiss of bronze, and something told me I hadn’t been hiding out in a tanning salon all those weeks. I had the aimless thought to buy new makeup, then scratched it. I didn’t want new makeup to match the new me. I just wanted the old me back.

  Downstairs, I met Hank and my mom in the foyer. I vaguely noted that Hank looked like a life-size Ken doll with icy blue eyes, a golden skin tone, and an impeccable side part. The only discrepancy was Hank’s lithe build. In a brawl, Ken would have won, hands down.

  “Ready?” Mom asked. She was all dressed up too, in lightweight wool pants, a blouse, and a silk wrap. But I was more aware of what she wasn’t wearing. For the first time, her wedding band was missing, leaving a pale stripe around her ring finger.

  “I’ll drive separately,” I said brusquely.

  Hank squeezed my shoulder playfully. Before I could squirm away, he said, “Marcie is the same way. Now that she has her license, she wants to drive everywhere.” He raised his hands as if offering no argument. “Your mother and I will meet you there.”

  I debated telling Hank that my wanting to drive separately had nothing to do with a piece of plastic in my wallet. And a lot more to do with the way being around him made my stomach roll.

  I swiveled to face my mom. “Can I have money for gas? Tank’s low.”

  “Actually,” Mom said, aiming a help me with this look at Hank, “I was really hoping to use this time for the three of us to talk. Why don’t you drive with us, and I’ll give you money to fill up the car tomorrow?” Her tone was polite, but there was no mistaking. She wasn’t offering me a choice.

  “Be a good girl and listen to your mother,” Hank told me, flashing a perfectly straight, perfectly white smile.

  “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to talk at dinner. I don’t see the big deal in driving by myself,” I said.

  “True, but you’re still going to have to ride with us,” Mom said. “Turns out I’m all out of cash. The new cell phone I bought you today wasn’t cheap.”

  “I can’t pay for gas with your credit card?” But I already knew her answer. Unlike Vee’s mom, my mom never loaned me her credit card, and I didn’t have the moral flexibility to “borrow” it. I supposed I could have used my own money, but I’d taken a stand and I wasn’t backing down now. Before she could shoot me down, I added, “Or what about Hank? I’m sure he’ll spot me twenty dollars. Right, Hank?”

  Hank tipped his head back and laughed, but I didn’t miss the lines of irritation forming around his eyes. “You’ve got quite the negotiator on your hands, Blythe. Instinct tells me she didn’t inherit your sweet, unassuming nature.”

  Mom said, “Don’t be rude, Nora. Now you’re making a big deal out of nothing. Carpooling for one night isn’t going to kill you.”

  I looked at Hank, hoping he could read my mind. Don’t be so sure.

  “We’d better get going,” Mom said. “We have reservations for eight and don’t want to lose our table.”

  Before I could roll out another argument, Hank opened the front door and motioned my mom and me out. “Ah, so that’s your car, Nora? The Volkswagen?” he asked, looking across the driveway. “Next time you’re in the market, stop by my dealership. I could have hooked you up with a convertible Celica for the same price.”

  “It was a gift from a friend,” Mom explained.

  Hank let out a low whistle. “That’s some friend you’ve got.”

  “His name is Scott Parnell,” Mom said. “Old friend of the family.”

  “Scott Parnell,” Hank mused, dragging a hand over his mouth. “The name rings a bell. Do I know his parents?”

  “His mom, Lynn, lives over on Deacon Road, but Scott left town over the summer.”

  “Interesting,” Hank murmured. “Any idea where he ended up?”

  “Somewhere in New Hampshire. Do you know Scott?”

  Hank dismissed her inquiry with a shake of his head. “New Hampshire is God’s country,” he murmured appreciatively. His voice was so smooth, it instantly grated.

  Equally as irritating was the fact that he could have passed as Mom’s younger brother. Really and truly. He had facial hair, a fine scruff that covered most of his face, but where I could see, he had excellent skin tone and very few wrinkles. I’d considered the possibility that my mom would eventually start dating again, and maybe even remarry, but I wanted her husband to look distinguished. Hank Millar came off as a frat boy hiding under a shark-gray suit.

  At Coopersmith’s, Hank parked in the rear lot. As we climbed out, my new cell phone chirped. I’d texted Vee my new number before le
aving, and it appeared she’d received it.

  BABE! I’M @ UR HOUSE. WHERE R U?

  “I’ll meet you inside,” I told Mom and Hank. “Text,” I explained, jiggling my cell.

  Mom sent me a black look that said, Make it fast, then took Hank’s arm and let him escort her toward the restaurant doors.

  I keyed in a response to Vee.

  GUESS WHERE IAM.

  CLUE? she texted back.

  SWEAR U WON’T TELL A SOUL?

  U HAVE 2 ASK?

  I reluctantly texted, @ DINNER W. MARCIE’S DAD.

  #?@#$?!&

  MY MOM IS DATING HIM.

  TRAITOR! IF THEY GET MARRIED, U & MARCIE …

  COULD USE A LITTLE CONSOLATION HERE!

  DOES HE KNOW UR TEXTING ME? Vee asked.

  NO. THEY R INSIDE. I’M IN THE PARKING LOT—COOPERSMITH’S.

  THE PIMP. 2 GOOD 4 APPLEBEE’S, I SEE.

  I’M GOING 2 ORDER THE MOST EXPENSIVE THING ON THE MENU. IF ALL GOES WELL, I’M GOING TO THROW HANK’S DRINK IN HIS FACE 2.

  HA! DON’T BOTHER. I’LL COME PICK U UP. WE NEED 2 HANG OUT. BEEN 2 LONG. DYING 2 SEE U!

  THIS SUCKS SO BAD! I texted back. I HAVE 2 STAY. MOM IS ON THE WARPATH.

  TURNING ME DOWN?!

  PAYING FAMILY DUES. CUT ME SOME SLACK.

  DID I MENTION I’M DYING 2 SEE U?

  ME 2. UR THE BEST, U KNOW THAT, RIGHT?

  WORD.

  MEET @ ENZO’S TOMORROW 4 LUNCH? NOON?

  DEAL.

  Hanging up, I crossed the gravel parking lot and let myself inside. The lights were dim, the decor masculine and rustic with brick walls, red leather booths, and antler chandeliers. The smell of sizzling meat overwhelmed the air, and the TVs over the bar blared the day’s sports highlights.

  “My party just came in a minute ago,” I told the hostess. “The reservation is under the name Hank Millar.”

  She beamed. “Yes, Hank just came in. My dad used to golf with him, so I know him really well. He’s like a second father to me. I’m sure the divorce has just devastated him, so it’s really nice to see him dating again.”

  I recalled Marcie’s earlier comment that her mom had friends everywhere. I prayed Coopersmith’s wasn’t on her radar, fearing how fast news of this date might travel. “I guess it depends on who you ask,” I mumbled.